College Sports

I hate to use that overused line, but I can’t seem to help myself. I am so ready for kickoff that I am counting down the seconds at this point.  So many games, so little time!

If you’re like me, it’s hard to keep up with what game is on what channel at what time. I mean, we all can keep up with our favorite teams, but I want to get all the good games (is there any other kind of college football game?).

Anyway, last year I found this website that lists all the games that are going to be televised. College football on TV will kick off this Thursday at 7 pm eastern on ESPN when South Carolina travels to North Carolina State, a little SEC-ACC action to get the season started. But the highlight of Day One of the season will be #14 Oregon vs. #16 Boise State (10:15 pm, ESPN).

Saturday’s action has some games that are guaranteed to kick the season off in high gear.  ABC will televise #13 Georgia at #11 Oklahoma State at 3:30 pm. This may be one of the best matchups of the weekend, and I have no idea what to expect. Georgia has been so Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde over the last few seasons that you just don’t know which Dawgs will show up.

But the game I (and most of the nation) am looking forward to the most is #5 Alabama vs. #7 Virginia Tech in the Chick-Fil-A College Kick-off game in Atlanta (8 pm, ABC). My gut is telling me that Alabama is ready to rock and roll… and my gut rarely lies.

I’ll have my picks of the top games in Thursday’s blog (posted well before kickoff, I promise!).

New Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin has made a point to have his players in full pads for most of the fall workouts. And not just running around in the pads, but full-out hitting. His theory is that only through full contact can the players develop the game skills they need.

Tennessee fans everywhere rejoiced. One of the gripes against the former administration was that Phillip Fulmer tended toward safety and didn’t believe in full out contact on a regular basis.

The results? Tennessee will limp into the season with a ton of injuries.

Now,  I’m not suggesting that these injuries are solely the result of the full contact drills. Wide out Gerald Jones’ sprained ankle could have happened in any non-contact drill. And Kiffin isn’t the first coach to run full contact drills throughout the fall.

But for a team with limited depth, I’m not sure it was the right direction to go. Florida and Southern Cal can have a few good men go down and the next guy in line is ready to step up to the plate. But at UT, the ranks were thin, the talent even more thin, and now things are heading down a slippery slope.

Today’s news was perhaps the biggest hit yet: Center Josh McNeil will have surgery on his knee, and his future is in doubt.

Coaches have acknowledged all fall that they have ridden McNeil hard, and that his knees were in rough shape. Now they are looking at one of the leaders of the line being done for the year. And with the huge (continuing) question mark at quarterback for the Vols, losing an experienced center isn’t a best case scenario.

So the Vols will limp into their opener against Western Kentucky on Sept. 5. The Hilltoppers most likely won’t provide the competition level that will show UT’s weaknesses and holes, but with UCLA the following week, and pre-season #1 Florida after that, well, let’s just say Kiffin may be regretting some of those full speed drills.

I’m a firm believer that pre-season polls are junk. Not even worth the cyberspace they are emailed through. I think this point was driven home at the SEC meetings when Tim Tebow wasn’t a unanimous All-SEC pick. Nope, South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier voted for Jevon Snead of Ole Miss. But Wait! Spurrier didn’t actually vote himself! Nope, he handed that duty off to one of his minions.

And that, my friends, is the dirty little (not so) secret of sports balloting, especially coaches polls. They, for the most part, don’t vote. Nope, they pass off that honor to an administrative assistant, grad student, or the sports information office.

When I worked in sports information, I voted for Top 25’s in virtually every sport, despite the fact I was not particularly well-versed in every team in the nation in, oh, croquet. Since most polls come out on Monday, the scene usually played out like this:

(SUNDAY NIGHT, DINNER TIME. TELEPHONE RINGS)

Me: Hello?

Coach: Hey, lowly SID. I need you to phone in my ballot.

Me: Ok. What’s your top 25.

Coach: Heck, I don’t care. Just make sure you don’t put State U. anywhere in the top 15.

Me: But aren’t they undefeated?

Coach: I don’t care, I have to recruit against them. And I hate their coach’s hair color.

Me: Anything else?

Coach: Naw, just make sure to put us in there somewhere.

Me: But we haven’t won a game!

Coach: Yeah, but if we receive a vote, it gets us in the paper.

I wish I was making this up. Really, I do. But this is how it goes at virtually every school. So excuse me if I don’t really care who is voted where in whatever poll. Frankly, I’ll just let them battle it out on the field and into the playoffs.

(Oh yeah, forgot there is no playoff in D-1A. Guess those SID/administrative assistant/grad student ballots really matter!)

I was sitting in front of my computer screen, reading about the College World Series and getting a little sad that the Championship will end the college sports season until fall. My five year old was upstairs watching cartoons, when she called to me that something had happened to the TV.

Since it has been on the fritz lately, I figured, “Here we go again,” and went upstairs. But the TV was fine. TiVo had just changed the channel to begin recording something, a program it had picked up on from my list of keywords.

And that’s when I knew that college sports never really ends, it just goes into reruns.

Because there, in front of my eyes, was Peyton Manning, University of Tennessee, getting ready to take on Alabama, circa 1996.

Yes, CSTV and Tivo to the rescue!

CSTV (College Sports Television) runs old football games year round, but is starting to ramp it up to get us through the long, hot summer. And I say, Bring it on! And part of the fun of the old games on CSTV is that it is the entire original broadcast, complete with updates on scores from games that same day. OK, the commercials are current, but that is small potatoes.

Who needs to worry about the future, when you (with a little help from CSTV) can live in the past!

Here’s an interesting item. Duke University just won a lawsuit against Louisville by claiming they suck at football.

They really do suck at football, too. They have a mark of 6-45 over the past five years, and are 13-90 since 1999. That is really, truly bad.

The lawsuit stems from a four game series that Duke and Louisville were set to play. The first game, played in Louisville in 2002, was won by the Cardinals by a score of 40-3.

Duke yelled “no mas” and opted out of the final three games of the contract, set to be played in 2007, 2008, and 2009. The contract called for a “good faith effort” on the part of Louisville to replace Duke if they opted out of the series, and if they couldn’t replace the game with a team of similar stature, Duke would pay a $150,000 penalty for each game.

Duke’s argument is that they are so pathetic at football, the bar is set so low when it comes to replacing them, that any team would suffice.

According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, Judge Phillip J. Shepherd (Franklin County, Kent., Circuit Court) agreed.
“At oral argument, Duke [with a candor perhaps more attributable to good legal strategy than to institutional modesty] persuasively asserted that this is a threshold that could not be any lower,” Shepherd wrote in a summary judgment issued Thursday, according to the paper. “Duke’s argument on this point cannot be reasonably disputed by Louisville.”

So now, not only does Duke claim they suck in football, but the courts have verified it.

Bet new coach David Cutcliffe is thrilled with this ruling. I can see it now… he enters the living room of a recruit. “That’s right, superstar, come to Duke. We stink it up on the football field, so it can’t get any worse!”

Louisville is looking over the case and will decide whether or not to appeal.

Can’t wait to see Duke’s next defense.

Is there anything more worthless than a commitment in June from a rising senior?

Here’s the scenario: Star athlete attends summer football camp at Hot Diggity Dog U. He is given the royal (NCAA approved) treatment. “Ooh, look at our stadium.” “Goodness, we just happen to have a jersey in your size.” “Come hang out with the head coach, he’s just a regular guy!”

By the end of the third day of camp, Star Athlete is proclaiming to the local media (who are given access to the campers), “Hot Diggity Dog U. is just what I have been looking for in a school. I feel so welcome, like one of the team already. I think we can win a national title. I am going to sign with Hot Diggity Dog U. and become a HDDU Wiener!”

Yeah, right.

Not one official campus visit has been taken, and Mr. Star Athlete is ready to sign on the dotted line?

But the alums start burning up the message boards. “Welcome, Mr. Star Athlete! We are glad you are coming to HDDU! Can’t wait to watch you burn up the turf.”

First of all, the odds that Mr. Star Athlete ever reads the message boards is, well, non-existent. Secondly, the odds that he ever actually signs is only marginally higher.

Mr. Star Athlete is going to get back home, start getting letters from all over, take a few visits, and then pick. Summer camp will be a distant memory.

Oh, and lest you feel sorry for the poor school that will have offered a scholy, been led to the altar and then jilted, don’t. If Mr. Star Athlete becomes Mr. Can’t Hold On To The Football during his senior season, Hot Diggity Dog U’s scholarship will be pulled faster than the blink of an eye.

So watch them dance the dance this summer, the mating ritual of recruiting. Just don’t get your hopes up.

Bill Curry, former head coach at Georgia Tech, Alabama, and Kentucky, has accepted the head coaching job at Georgia State. He has a career mark of 83-105-4 in 17 years as a head coach.

The 65 year old Curry has spent the last 11 years as a TV analyst for college football. He has agreed to a five year contract with Georgia State.

The Panthers will be fielding their first football team in 2010. The time-line currently calls for the first class to be signed in 2009, with the first spring practice later in 2009 and the first games in 2010. GSU is a member of the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA), which includes Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., which will also be starting a football program with play to begin in 2009.

So, what do you think about the hire (other than, who cares?). I can see GSU’s reasons for hiring Curry. First, you grab the attention of the media for what would otherwise be a story buried on the back page, if printed at all. Second, you can be pretty sure that Curry, at age 65, will be at GSU for the duration, rather than jumping ship the first time a top-tier team comes sniffing around. And he is a native of Atlanta, who played at Georgia Tech.

But 11 years out of the business is a long, long time. The athletes are different now. And Curry was not even the first choice of Georgia State. Dan Reeves, former Atlanta Falcons coach, was the top choice, but felt the job should go to someone with college coaching experience.

I wish him well. But I think he has an uphill road this time.

Louisiana State University has made a bold claim. The athletic department says that 5′6″ junior wide receiver Trindon Holliday is the fastest college football player ever. Not just this season… ever.

The reserve player from the Tigers National Championship team ran a 10.02 in the 100 meters at last year’s NCAA Track and Field Championships. Only 69 athletes have ever run it faster, and none played college football.

Holliday is fast, so fast that he hopes to make the U.S. Olympic team at the Track and Field trials next month. And he probably has a good shot, too.

But fastest college football player ever? Maybe, maybe not.

I don’t doubt his speed. It’s documented that he is faster than prior players who played football and ran track (including the late Bob Hayes of Florida A&M who ran a 10.06 in 1964, and Willie Gault of Tennessee, who ran a 10.10 in 1982).

But there are an awful lot of football players who never ran track. So how can you make the comparison? How can you compare Holliday’s time in the 100m to someone who never ran the 100m?

And that is where the press releases are flawed. You can’t compare, so at the end of the day it is just another press release written to tout a player or school, with some justification but no “hard science.”

That said, I’ll be cheering for Holliday to make the Olympic team. He is as passionate about track as he is about football, and the opportunity to compete in the Olympics is special.

And it doesn’t take a press release to get me to cheer for him.

Joe Paterno is ticked off. The 81 year old Penn State coach calls the reasons given for not moving into a playoff system for Division I-A bogus (oops, excuse me, I mean the Football Bowl Subdivision).

JoePa has a point. Get the reasons given by the conferences that are against a playoff (including PSU’s Big 10):

• The “sanctity” of the regular season
• Players would be forced to miss too much class
• Season could extend into a second semester.

OK, “sanctity” is a pretty strong word. I love football as much as the next guy, but I’m not sure I would call the college football regular season “holy,” “saintly,” or “godly.” (definitions courtesy of dictionary.com)

As for the rest of the argument, Joey P. points out what all of us can see (all of us except the powers that be of the Big 10, Pac 10, Big 12, Big East, et. al. — the only conferences that support the move are the SEC and ACC).

Missing classes? Hey, check out hoops teams and how much school those guys miss… mid-week games starting in November, going through March. Hey, that takes out another argument, about extending into a second semester.

Face it, football players miss less class than most sports because they compete only on weekends (with the exception of ESPN big $$$ games on other nights… ah, the power of the dollar… wonder why the NCAA doesn’t jump on that one!).

The truth is, the powers that be in college football don’t want to tick off the powers that be in the bowls; in other words, the money guys. Tickets sold to bowl games don’t pay the rent, the sponsorships do, the television rights do. And if that were to be watered down, if the “WeHaveAlotOfMoneyToThrowAround.com Bowl” matchup between the Anteaters of Michigan Technological State University of Agriculture-Germfask Campus vs. the California State Liberal Arts College of Music and Dance Tip-Toers, well, sponsors would fall like rain in April.

Only that wouldn’t happen. You know it and I know it. So what are they afraid of. Frankly, who cares if the Rose Bowl features a Big 10 and Pac 10 matchup each year? If they are so blooming into tradition, they shouldn’t allow the newbies in each conference to compete; go with the leagues as they were in the good old days (you know, Pac 8 vs. Big 10… before it was really the Big 11).

Face it, tradition is only important to these guys if it helps them win their point. If they wanted a playoff system, we would be hearing about how we have to modernize, change with the times. New is good, Old is bad.

Oh, and get this little gem that I had never heard of, but Paterno has brought to light. The Coaches Poll isn’t so much a poll as a forced vote. Coaches are required to vote for the team that wins the BCS title game. Paterno has not voted since 2004, when he wanted to vote for undefeated Auburn, but was not allowed to. He was told to vote for USC, or he couldn’t participate… so he chose the latter.

What’s the point of taking a poll if you are telling the voters how to vote?

Duh.

So the old guy at Penn State has it right. Too bad money talks louder than common sense.