Undrafted Free Agent
We Don't Need Reasons to Embrace College Football
By Scott Cushing on August 17, 2011 at 1:00 PM
@scottcushing
I enjoy reading Sports Illustrated generally. I also enjoy reading Andy Staples and Stewart Mandel specifically because they write about college football, quite possibly the best sport to experience in all the land. The NFL is possibly better overall–obviously the quality of play & coaching is better–but the in-person experience of a college football game is so clearly superior to attending an NFL game. The only question is which is better to experience on TV and it's 60/40 in favor of the college game for me.
I'm here to talk about SI's "Ten reasons to embrace college football after a year of scandal" article that ran on Tuesday (August 9, 2011).
Here's the paragraph that got my attention:
The first eight months of 2011 have not been pleasant for college football enthusiasts. One of the sport's most accomplished coaches resigned in disgrace. One of the four most prestigious bowl games was embroiled in corporate fraud. NCAA investigations hovered over both schools that participated in last season's BCS championship game and a host of other high-profile programs. At conference media days, commissioners' speeches about full-cost scholarships and stiffer sanctions drowned out the usual anticipatory chatter about the upcoming season.
I know that these guys wrote this article to shift focus away from the off-the-field scandal stuff to focus more on the games and the teams and the on-the-field storylines. But the thing that these guys may not understand is that they are the ones who need to shift their focus, not the fans. Utah fans are excited about their inaugural season in the Pac 12, Houston fans are excited about Case Keenum returning for a sixth year, Vanderbilt fans are excited about new head coach James Franklin, Stanford fans are excited to see if they can carry over last year's success even though they lost Harbaugh and three starters on the offensive line. None of these fans care about what's happening in Columbus, Eugene, or Chapel Hill. That stuff is only meaningful if their team happens to play any of the teams that are dealing with any sort of turmoil.
Their reason for writing this is that they want to impress upon us that there are compelling reasons to be excited for the upcoming college football season. My response to this is: "we know."
Here are my responses to the above unpleasantries:
One of the sport's most accomplished coaches resigned in disgrace.
No one except for Ohio State fans cares about this. Perhaps Michigan does, but I suspect they are more excited about (+) Brady Hoke and (-) Rich Rodriguez.
One of the four most prestigious bowl games was embroiled in corporate fraud.
Add up all of the people who thought "The Smurfs" was a good idea and you have the people who give a flying duck about the Fiesta Bowl corruption. If people cared about this at all it was because this made the BCS look bad, and I suppose we can all get behind that.
NCAA investigations hovered over both schools that participated in last season's BCS championship game and a host of other high-profile programs.
Yawn, yawn, yaaaaawwwwwnnnn. Auburn has issues. Oregon has issues. But it was a great game and hopefully we'll have many others in 2011/2012.
At conference media days, commissioners' speeches about full-cost scholarships and stiffer sanctions drowned out the usual anticipatory chatter about the upcoming season.
Wait, who is drowning out the anticipatory chatter? The media has hit us with unrelenting coverage of the "scandals" in college football. Is it news? Of course, so report it and move on. We don't need endless debates on this. I don't need to know so-and-so's opinion. I know that media companies need to fill air time and lazy columnists need material, but come on. We really don't care. Sure, it's a bummer that Jim Tressel is not what many people thought he was, but he's likely no different than any head coach at any big program in the country. Also, it seems to me that what the NCAA does to its athletes is far more upsetting than what some coach knew or didn't know about a ridiculous tattoo parlor. And if you really want to get down to it, Brian Kelly allowed a kid to film practice in a tower during a ridiculously windy day when they should not have been on the field and that kid died. So what's more important, a kid's death or the sanctity of amateurism?
While the issues plaguing the sport aren't going away, it's worth reminding ourselves that nearly all the recent scandals — the tattoos, the agents, the bowl junkets and the cover-ups — were indictments of the system, not the sport.
Who needs reminding? I'm not exactly sure who "ourselves" are in the above quote, but my suspicion is that they think they are referring to college football fans, when in reality they are being self referential. Fans are not obsessed about the scandals, the media is. Fans (save for the specific programs embroiled in the scandals above) do not care. A Texas Tech fan does not care one bit about Ohio State. You know what they care about? Texas Tech football and anything that affects Texas Tech football. Ohio State simply isn't on the radar. Red Raider fans may be tangentially interested in the blah blah blah about conference expansion (or contraction) and perhaps cares about Texas's Longhorn Network, but I'd wager that level of care hovers around who gives a sh*t.
Even the huge scandal that is going down in Miami registers little more than a shoulder shrug from me. Yahoo! Sports did a helluva job unearthing all of this material, but, truthfully, I couldn't care less about the benefits a booster gives to players. Who are the victims here? (besides the prostitutes, but that's another argument for another day, and another place).
I'm just glad that the season is starting soon because I've been anxious to watch the games, not hear about what's wrong with the game.
Scott Cushing