Another College Football Season in the Books

THIS WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JANUARY 8, 2007

THE BIG (Pre)TEN(d)
Let’s start out with a simple question. What do you get when you take a Midwest football team out of the Midwest?

A LOSS!!!!

As we all know, I love the SEC and always rave about how good they are. In turn, everyone who knows me also knows that I despise the Big Ten. The only good thing to come out the Big Ten was Brian Ingram (Northwestern). So it was no surprise to me, and I’ve been telling anyone that would listen, that the Big Ten would lay an egg in the bowls, including their two golden boys tOSU and Michigan getting trounced. And what do you know, they did. If I only had a bookie. Throw in the grossly overrated Notre Dame and you have the 3 most praised, hyped and oh yeah OVERRATED teams in the nation losing by an average of over 3 TDs each. Can everyone get off of the Big Ten now? It was clear to see how incredibly overrated the conference was this season, yet NOBODY wanted to say it. Everyone wanted tOSU to be the great story and everyone wanted an undefeated champion, but quite honestly they might be the fifth best team in the country.

Looking at their schedules, neither team beat another great team. Everyone points to the Texas win in Austin for the Buckeyes, granted it was a nice win, but last time I checked Vince Young was no longer in Austin, he was busy winning the NFL Rookie of the Year. Texas wasn’t all that great this season and they should that in their bowl game, squeaking by Iowa. A BAD Big Ten team. Here is a little tidbit for you. The Ohio State University beat two teams this season that will finish ranked, one being Michigan, and I think Pete Carroll and USC showed how good they are and the other being Texas. Michigan also beat just 2 teams that will end the season ranked. Wisconsin, which I do feel is a good team, and Notre Dame who has managed to make BCS games the past two seasons without beating a ranked team. Both teams were exposed when they finally lost. First of all they lost to a great team, the first one that either team had played. Secondly they lost to a team that had speed. It is that old saying, “speed kills,” and it did just that to the Big Ten this year, it killed them!

Since we are on the topic of teams being overrated and what not, here is a simply solution STOP THE PRESEASON RANKINGS. Yes I know they sell magazines and newspapers, but they mean nothing and actually hurt teams come November or December. Look at Auburn a few years back or even Rutgers this year, they both started the season so low or not ranked at all that neither school even had a chance to play for the national title o matter what happened. So because we want to act as if we are smarter than we really are, by putting out these ridiculously rankings when in reality nobody has any idea which teams are good and which aren’t, we actually making college football as a whole suffer. Look at Notre Dame this year, #1 in some preseason polls, enough said!! My solution here, rankings don’t come out until AFTER the 1st Saturday of October.

Enough beating up on the Big Ten, the conference has already taken enough beating this bowl season.

A BOWL SEASON in REVIEW

Right here would be a perfect spot for me to point out that the Big East won the Conference Bowl Challenge, by becoming the 1st conference since it started to go undefeated in bowl play, but I won’t. I will actually knock the whole system that we have to watch football under during the holiday season.

Okay, so I will mention the Big East again, but just to prove a point. The Big East wins the conference challenge, does that mean the Big East is the best conference? Of course not, the Big East was about the 3rd best conference this year, but happened to luck into the fact where they played NOBODY during their bowls.

Here is my solution. Yes, Ideally I would say have a playoff, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon, so lets move on. Lets drop the whole conference affiliation thing for bowls. Forget the fact that the Big East has 6 bowl spots and each game is mapped out where they will play and what conference they will play against. Making everything open to everyone. If the Cotton Bowl wants to offer West Virginia a spot in its bowl, more power to them. The whole purpose of the bowl season is to see good match-ups and to see REALLY how each conference stacks up with the others. The Big East playing the Big XII, twice against the ACC, C-USA and the MAC don’t tell me anything. So open up the bowl season, it allows fans to go to different bowls, it allows players to go to different bowls and it allows match-ups that would attract a better viewing audience. I think that last part may have just awoken some NCAA guys who still don’t think they make enough money throughout this whole process yet.

My final solution for fixing the bowls is simple, PAY THESE KIDS!!!!! The schools, coaches, television station, and the NCAA make so much money off these kids can’t we give them a little something. And I don’t want to hear the fact that they go to school for free, GREAT, so does Betty Sue in the Engineering program, but you don’t see her making the school millions of dollars on a weekly basis. I’m not saying pay them some absurd amount, but how about 1% of the schools profit from their bowl game goes to the players. Something! Anything! Honestly what I would love to see is the NCAA student athlete board decide to boycott bowls until this happened. Do you realize how fast they schools would listen then? These athletes make so much money for each university, they deserve a little in return.

CONTRACTS

The NCAA needs to do something NOW about all these lying, sneaky coaches and schools. If a coach is under contract, he is untouchable. If that coach wants out of his contract to go to another school a punishment needs to be put in place. A strict punishment, and I’m not talking about money, because as I’ve mentioned that is one this that all these schools already have too much of, I mean scholarships. You break a contract by going to another school; you get hit hard on the recruiting trail. My suggestion would be simple, and it would last two years. Year 1, lose ½ of your scholarships (NCAA limits 25 given annually), so you have 13 scholarships instead of 25, and the head coach cannot leave campus to recruit. Year 2, you lose 20% (5) scholarships, and the coach is allowed to recruit. This would do some damage to the product on the field, and that would hit the school in the pocket book, and honestly that is the only thing they care about.

That is all for this lengthy rant, I’ll be back soon with another, basketball talk next time perhaps!!!