Can you believe it's almost November? What happened to October? It's the World Series, the NFL is at the halfway point, and the crappiest college football season of my lifetime is now past the halfway point. Not much to say about the World Series because really, what can you say? I'd like to think last night's blowout was just a result of Colorado being rusty after more than a week off (To all the people that are complaining about the Rockies getting too many days off between series- um, what else was MLB supposed to do? The ALCS went 7 games, and then gave the Sox a couple of days off. What were the alternatives to this? Have the Rockies play exhibition games in Japan, or see if the D-Backs or Cubbies wanted to play a few more just for fun? If you're going to whine about something, for the love, at least have a viable solution.), but unfortunately I think it's indicitive of how much better Boston is than Colorado. Some other day we can discuss whether postseason "experience" really matters, because there's a very intelligent group of new school baseball stat-heads who say it doesn't. After the Sox blow through Colorado in this series, they might have to rethink that a bit. Or the American League is just that much better than the crappy AAAA baseball they play in the National League.
Speaking of crappy, I can't wait to see which mediocre team "upsets" another mediocre ranked team and we can all scream joyously about how much fun upsets are and how great it is everybody has a chance now in college football! Hell, let's all hold hands and sing koombayah! We're all winners here, and it's just so darn swell that everybody's equal and nobody's better than anybody else, so let's just give everyone a trophy for showing up and forget all this silly competition. Nobody's feelings get hurt and nobody has to experience losing and everybody can feel like a winner, no matter how cheap the cost! Hooray parity! Hooray equality! Hooray level playing field!
Ok ok ok I'll stop. Is this season the beginning of the end for college football, or just one random season of crap? I really truly believe it's the latter. After two of the best years of college football in memory, the game has lost a lot of talent to graduation or the draft. Scholarship restrictions definitely hurt the Big Boys ability to reload as quickly, but this is just one of those years where there just aren't many big names who are ready to step in and fill the shoes of past greats.
Why are all the Big Boys losing? Look at the rosters. Tell me who the offensive stars are this year. USC, LSU, Texas, Ohio State, Tennessee, and more have no real offensive stars. They all have serviceable players manning the skill positions, but nobody I'm glued to the TV to see. Tim Tebow at Florida is the one exception. The guy will be a mega star before he's done in Gainesville, and because the Gators have lost twice, he's just not receiving enough attention. If you haven't seen Florida play yet, you NEED to see Tebow.
My buddy Ben and I watched the Florida/Kentucky game last week, and the best play we saw Tebow make was a 2 yard run near the goal line where he didn't score. He lined up in the shotgun, ran right, broke the first tackle, then was quite literally dragging the next 2 guys towards the end zone. Only because a third, fourth, and fifth defender piled on and knocked him back was he kept out of the end zone. The fact he's a quarterback and was DRAGGING a linebacker and safety was just freaking amazing. Tebow's a great quarterback who quite literally runs like a power back, and has become must-see TV for me. Teams now have so much respect for him as a runner, that Florida's started running a play where Tebow takes two steps towards the line of scrimmage, dips his shoulder like he's going to plow through the line, and then takes two steps back and fires a bomb downfield. They ran it twice against Kentucky and ended up with two long completions, one of them for a touchdown. Both times the safeties were absolutely lost.
It's so much fun and such a disadvantage for teams playing the Gators, I'm sure the NCAA will put a stop to it ASAP. So catch Tebow and Florida while you can, because if we're not careful, Florida could actually be dominant AND fun to watch, and apparently nobody wants that. Well nobody except me.
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2 comments:
It's like I've always said: Life is all about marketing. In this case, agents, whose job it is to market players. And the sudden parity in college football is no different.
Here's what happened. Somewhere along the way people figured out that athletes are worth a crap-load of money, so they start treating them like a commodity with a shelf-life. Next thing you know college football isn't a 5 year commitment anymore cause these kids gotta get to the "show" before they blow out a knee. College is now a 3 year blip on the radar to a youngster who is trying to get his "bling-bling" on. Now, since a player is only going to be in college for 3 years, immediate playing time is incredibly important. So a kid can either go to USC, sit the bench for 3 years and then start for two, like normal football players used to do. Or, he can go to, say, Kentucky, Rutgers or Boston College and play right away and get noticed. Look at Mark Sanchez, he gets two games to shine while John David BOOTY is injured... do you think in the back of his head he might be thinking "I could be a starter almost ANYWHERE else in the country"?
Schools like Kentucky, Rutgers, BC, heck, MINNESOTA, are looking for players who can help them win RIGHT NOW, and they SELL that in recruiting. These kids aren't worried about building a program, or learning to play the game, they could give a flying crap about an education, and I might even go as far as to say that these kids don't care about winning championships either. They care about getting to the NFL, they care about getting on TV on Sundays, they care about the almighty dollar. It's all about marketing.
Jer, are you in sales, by chance?
I agree that this is a big reason why there's more parity in college football, but I still believe this is just one of those years where there's a down year in junior and senior talent across the country.
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