College Football

[darth_vedder]

No thread for this, so here it is.

91 days until the kickoff of the 2013 season. How good / bad do you think your team is gonna be?

[Monkey_Driven]

No thread for this, so here it is.

91 days until the kickoff of the 2013 season. How good / bad do you think your team is gonna be?

It's the longest 3 months of the sports calendar.

Mizzou can't be much worse than last year. Picked a hell of a year to have the worst season since '04. This year I'm thinking 7-5.

[darth_vedder]

It really is the longest stretch. I'm really not much of a sports guy. I basically like two football teams, and that's it. I guess I watch the Nationals some during the summer, but I loosely follow them at best. I can't sit through golf, tennis or nascar at all, and I find myself starting to follow what's up with my 2 teams, and to paraphrase some dude that writes songs, the waiting drives me mad.

[Dr. Van Nostrand]

I wish i was still into college football, its been a while since I've even followed my own teams, just watch the national title game. my teams are mainly Florida but i also still care about Miami since all my family were canes fans when i was growing up, how are they supposed to be this year?

[Green Habit]

It really is the longest stretch. I'm really not much of a sports guy. I basically like two football teams, and that's it. I guess I watch the Nationals some during the summer, but I loosely follow them at best. I can't sit through golf, tennis or nascar at all, and I find myself starting to follow what's up with my 2 teams, and to paraphrase some dude that writes songs, the waiting drives me mad.

I actually like having the dead time for sports I really care about, and especially having it in the summer. I get to enjoy the good weather doing other things.

I wish i was still into college football, its been a while since I've even followed my own teams, just watch the national title game. my teams are mainly Florida but i also still care about Miami since all my family were canes fans when i was growing up, how are they supposed to be this year?

If those are your teams, you must really hate Florida State.

I'd imagine that the Gators should be in the mix for the SEC East title. darth will certainly want them to deliver a hurting to Spurrier. Other than the 'Cocks and UGA I don't know who else would challenge them. I have no idea about the 'Canes but their division looks weak as well, so who knows.

[Dr. Van Nostrand]

Yep, lots of hate for fsu, but I've ended up loving some of their players that have become bucs

[Monkey_Driven]

It really is the longest stretch. I'm really not much of a sports guy. I basically like two football teams, and that's it. I guess I watch the Nationals some during the summer, but I loosely follow them at best. I can't sit through golf, tennis or nascar at all, and I find myself starting to follow what's up with my 2 teams, and to paraphrase some dude that writes songs, the waiting drives me mad.

I actually like having the dead time for sports I really care about, and especially having it in the summer. I get to enjoy the good weather doing other things.

Ain't that the truth. That and the absence of good tv can lead to a lot of productive things getting done. Lots of outside time too.

[Electromatic]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/e--gordon- ... 40039.html

This Dan Wetzel article is a good illustration of Gordon Gee and illustrates why I have felt in particular that he and Graham Spanier among others are the main problem facing collegiate athletics.


The idea that any of this is about academics is the biggest joke of them all. It has always been about money, power and control.

The amount of petty politics and shady dealings on the administrative have never been more evident in college athletics than they have in the past 5 years at both Penn State, Ohio State and the NCAA offices. Not to single out those schools, but it's quite obvious that the NCAA is a house of cards designed to funnel money and exists for no other reason than that purpose.


The GIST below
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The problem is he's spent his career moonlighting as one of the chief busybodies and reformers of the NCAA.

Over the decades Gee has sat in on nearly all of the most powerful boards and executive committees, both in the national office in Indianapolis and through the Big Ten and SEC. He's shaped college sports, pushed its direction, been a part of creating, or not changing, its rules, culture and purpose. This is a guy who went seeking power and influence and then wielded it broadly.

About the only one of his peers more active than Gee was former Penn State president Graham Spanier. Those two were always locked at the philosophical hips, quick to scold everyone else – particularly young athletes – about how to conduct their affairs. (Spanier is currently awaiting trial on charges of perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly report suspected abuse and conspiracy that stem from the Jerry Sandusky sexual molestation scandal.)

These are the people who run the NCAA, not the office workers in Indy or even president Mark Emmert, a former campus leader himself. These are the men and women that are in charge and have been forever. These are the rulers and defenders of the status quo.

[Related: Washing a car with university water can be an NCAA violation]

These are the people who gave you an organization that thinks amateurism is somehow a fair concept, that demands that it and it alone gets all the money, that believes it has the inalienable right to sell a player's likeness for ever and ever, that seemingly reworks its policies on the fly, that writes a rule book that obsesses over things such as cream cheese on bagels, that creates an enforcement system that no one believes is fair, that uses an illusion of a level playing field to dodge taxes and that, in the end, has a weak record of actually educating many of its most high-profile "student-athletes."

E. Gordon Gee is the NCAA: tone deaf, clumsy, situationally arrogant and obsessed with bringing in more and more money (and making sure Delany, or anyone else, doesn't then get their paws on it).

There is nothing noble or enlightened or moral or dignified about these people. They're just desperate, look-at-me fundraisers who, when not saying or doing ridiculous things, claim they and they alone know what's best for all.

That's always the most offensive part here.

[darth_vedder]

It really is the longest stretch. I'm really not much of a sports guy. I basically like two football teams, and that's it. I guess I watch the Nationals some during the summer, but I loosely follow them at best. I can't sit through golf, tennis or nascar at all, and I find myself starting to follow what's up with my 2 teams, and to paraphrase some dude that writes songs, the waiting drives me mad.

I actually like having the dead time for sports I really care about, and especially having it in the summer. I get to enjoy the good weather doing other things.

Ain't that the truth. That and the absence of good tv can lead to a lot of productive things getting done. Lots of outside time too.

Don't get me wrong, I love summer and the dog days. I love trying new beers, grilling, and getting outside more. But...It's still a long wait. College football basically ends in December, with a bonus game in early January. So it's basically a 9 month wait. July is the absolute longest wait, and those 30 days seem to drag on forever before Fall camps / Pre-Season (NFL) start up. I guess my point was I don't really have another sport to fall back on. I loosely keep up with the MLB, but just barely. I can care less about Golf, Tennis, the NBA, and NASCAR, so it's just one of those "it's close, but still so far away" things for me. This 8 / 9 month football drought is just really long for me, b/c I don't really keep up with other sports.

[Electromatic]

It really is the longest stretch. I'm really not much of a sports guy. I basically like two football teams, and that's it. I guess I watch the Nationals some during the summer, but I loosely follow them at best. I can't sit through golf, tennis or nascar at all, and I find myself starting to follow what's up with my 2 teams, and to paraphrase some dude that writes songs, the waiting drives me mad.

I actually like having the dead time for sports I really care about, and especially having it in the summer. I get to enjoy the good weather doing other things.

Ain't that the truth. That and the absence of good tv can lead to a lot of productive things getting done. Lots of outside time too.

Don't get me wrong, I love summer and the dog days. I love trying new beers, grilling, and getting outside more. But...It's still a long wait. College football basically ends in December, with a bonus game in early January. So it's basically a 9 month wait. July is the absolute longest wait, and those 30 days seem to drag on forever before Fall camps / Pre-Season (NFL) start up. I guess my point was I don't really have another sport to fall back on. I loosely keep up with the MLB, but just barely. I can care less about Golf, Tennis, the NBA, and NASCAR, so it's just one of those "it's close, but still so far away" things for me. This 8 / 9 month football drought is just really long for me, b/c I don't really keep up with other sports.

you do get national signing day and spring practice, but yeah July is generally a terrible sports month even if you do like baseball.

[darth_vedder]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/e--gordon- ... 40039.html

This Dan Wetzel article is a good illustration of Gordon Gee and illustrates why I have felt in particular that he and Graham Spanier among others are the main problem facing collegiate athletics.


The idea that any of this is about academics is the biggest joke of them all. It has always been about money, power and control.

The amount of petty politics and shady dealings on the administrative have never been more evident in college athletics than they have in the past 5 years at both Penn State, Ohio State and the NCAA offices. Not to single out those schools, but it's quite obvious that the NCAA is a house of cards designed to funnel money and exists for no other reason than that purpose.


The GIST below
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The problem is he's spent his career moonlighting as one of the chief busybodies and reformers of the NCAA.

Over the decades Gee has sat in on nearly all of the most powerful boards and executive committees, both in the national office in Indianapolis and through the Big Ten and SEC. He's shaped college sports, pushed its direction, been a part of creating, or not changing, its rules, culture and purpose. This is a guy who went seeking power and influence and then wielded it broadly.

About the only one of his peers more active than Gee was former Penn State president Graham Spanier. Those two were always locked at the philosophical hips, quick to scold everyone else – particularly young athletes – about how to conduct their affairs. (Spanier is currently awaiting trial on charges of perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly report suspected abuse and conspiracy that stem from the Jerry Sandusky sexual molestation scandal.)

These are the people who run the NCAA, not the office workers in Indy or even president Mark Emmert, a former campus leader himself. These are the men and women that are in charge and have been forever. These are the rulers and defenders of the status quo.

[Related: Washing a car with university water can be an NCAA violation]

These are the people who gave you an organization that thinks amateurism is somehow a fair concept, that demands that it and it alone gets all the money, that believes it has the inalienable right to sell a player's likeness for ever and ever, that seemingly reworks its policies on the fly, that writes a rule book that obsesses over things such as cream cheese on bagels, that creates an enforcement system that no one believes is fair, that uses an illusion of a level playing field to dodge taxes and that, in the end, has a weak record of actually educating many of its most high-profile "student-athletes."

E. Gordon Gee is the NCAA: tone deaf, clumsy, situationally arrogant and obsessed with bringing in more and more money (and making sure Delany, or anyone else, doesn't then get their paws on it).

There is nothing noble or enlightened or moral or dignified about these people. They're just desperate, look-at-me fundraisers who, when not saying or doing ridiculous things, claim they and they alone know what's best for all.

That's always the most offensive part here.

I wish some major player schools would opt-out of the NCAA (if that is even possible), and just start a new association. It would have to be big players like a few from each major conference getting on board with this. I also wish all the current conferences would blowup, and new 10 to 12 team regional conferences would emerge. I don't like all of this Maryland in the BIG stuff, or the idea of 16 team "power" conferences.

Man, the powers that be sure can fuck up the best sport in America. It's not even hard to fix...Teams in conferences that make sense (all within like 8 hours of one another, or somewhat regional, i.e. "west coast" teams), and have an 8 team playoff. Keep the other bowl games so some crappy 7-5 team can play in late December vs. some other crappy 7-5 team.

[Green Habit]

I wish some major player schools would opt-out of the NCAA (if that is even possible), and just start a new association. It would have to be big players like a few from each major conference getting on board with this. I also wish all the current conferences would blowup, and new 10 to 12 team regional conferences would emerge. I don't like all of this Maryland in the BIG stuff, or the idea of 16 team "power" conferences.

Man, the powers that be sure can fuck up the best sport in America. It's not even hard to fix...Teams in conferences that make sense (all within like 8 hours of one another, or somewhat regional, i.e. "west coast" teams), and have an 8 team playoff. Keep the other bowl games so some crappy 7-5 team can play in late December vs. some other crappy 7-5 team.

This probably belongs in the realignment thread, but if the big schools were to say "fuck you" to the NCAA (and I am hating that institution more and more every day), I have found a near-perfect way of getting the four major conferences in football (and five in basketball) aligned in an even way that doesn't disturb too much as to what's already happened.

Your four major conferences each have 18 teams, and each break into two divisions of 9. Everyone plays a round robin of eight games in their division, and then they can schedule the other four games with whoever else they want (even teams in the same conference but the opposite division). After the regular season, you have conference championship weekend, and then take a week off for finals. After that, you have a 12-team playoff, with the four division champions all getting byes.

PAC

Code: Select all

East Division			West Division
------------			-------------
Arizona				Boise State
Arizona State			California
BYU					Oregon
Colorado				Oregon State
Oklahoma				Stanford
Oklahoma State			UCLA
Texas					USC
Texas Tech				Washington
Utah					Washington State

ACC

Code: Select all

North Division			South Division
------------			-------------
Boston College			Clemson
Cincinnati				Duke
Connecticut			Florida State
Louisville				Georgia Tech
Notre Dame				Memphis
Pittsburgh				Miami
Syracuse				North Carolina
Virginia				North Carolina State
Virginia Tech			Wake Forest

Big Ten

Code: Select all

East Division			West Division
------------			-------------
Indiana				Illinois
Maryland				Iowa
Michigan				Iowa State
Michigan State			Kansas
Northwestern			Kansas State
Ohio State				Minnesota
Penn State				Missouri
Purdue				Nebraska
Rutgers				Wisconsin

SEC

Code: Select all

East Division			West Division
------------			-------------
Baylor				Alabama
Florida				Arkansas
Georgia				Auburn
Kentucky				Houston
South Carolina			LSU
Tennessee				Mississippi
TCU					Mississippi State
Vanderbilt				SMU
West Virginia			Texas A&M

The trick here is to convince the SEC that they've got such a good thing going with A&M right now that they should get as much as of their state as they can get. I split up the four new Texas schools evenly just so every school would get a fair share, and as to not disrupt the current divisions.

[Monkey_Driven]

I wish some major player schools would opt-out of the NCAA (if that is even possible), and just start a new association. It would have to be big players like a few from each major conference getting on board with this. I also wish all the current conferences would blowup, and new 10 to 12 team regional conferences would emerge. I don't like all of this Maryland in the BIG stuff, or the idea of 16 team "power" conferences.

Man, the powers that be sure can fuck up the best sport in America. It's not even hard to fix...Teams in conferences that make sense (all within like 8 hours of one another, or somewhat regional, i.e. "west coast" teams), and have an 8 team playoff. Keep the other bowl games so some crappy 7-5 team can play in late December vs. some other crappy 7-5 team.

This probably belongs in the realignment thread, but if the big schools were to say "fuck you" to the NCAA (and I am hating that institution more and more every day), I have found a near-perfect way of getting the four major conferences in football (and five in basketball) aligned in an even way that doesn't disturb too much as to what's already happened.

Your four major conferences each have 18 teams, and each break into two divisions of 9. Everyone plays a round robin of eight games in their division, and then they can schedule the other four games with whoever else they want (even teams in the same conference but the opposite division). After the regular season, you have conference championship weekend, and then take a week off for finals. After that, you have a 12-team playoff, with the four division champions all getting byes.

PAC

Code: Select all

East Division			West Division
------------			-------------
Arizona				Boise State
Arizona State			California
BYU					Oregon
Colorado				Oregon State
Oklahoma				Stanford
Oklahoma State			UCLA
Texas					USC
Texas Tech				Washington
Utah					Washington State

ACC

Code: Select all

North Division			South Division
------------			-------------
Boston College			Clemson
Cincinnati				Duke
Connecticut			Florida State
Louisville				Georgia Tech
Notre Dame				Memphis
Pittsburgh				Miami
Syracuse				North Carolina
Virginia				North Carolina State
Virginia Tech			Wake Forest

Big Ten

Code: Select all

East Division			West Division
------------			-------------
Indiana				Illinois
Maryland				Iowa
Michigan				Iowa State
Michigan State			Kansas
Northwestern			Kansas State
Ohio State				Minnesota
Penn State				Missouri
Purdue				Nebraska
Rutgers				Wisconsin

SEC

Code: Select all

East Division			West Division
------------			-------------
Baylor				Alabama
Florida				Arkansas
Georgia				Auburn
Kentucky				Houston
South Carolina			LSU
Tennessee				Mississippi
TCU					Mississippi State
Vanderbilt				SMU
West Virginia			Texas A&M

The trick here is to convince the SEC that they've got such a good thing going with A&M right now that they should get as much as of their state as they can get. I split up the four new Texas schools evenly just so every school would get a fair share, and as to not disrupt the current divisions.

This makes too much sense to ever happen.

[darth_vedder]

I hope at some point before I'm too fucking old or dead that the greedy fucks get college football right.

For the conferences, if I had my way, I'd blow them all up. From the ashes, I'd like to see the SCC (Southern Coastal Conference) with:

Clemson
UGA
GA Tech
N. Carolina
S. Carolina
Florida
Fl. State
Miami
NC State
VA Tech
Duke
Virginia

Something like that, maybe a few other teams if things had to be at 16. Maybe expand to the Gulf Coast and get LSU, Bama, Auburn, and Ole Miss too.

[Green Habit]

I hope at some point before I'm too fucking old or dead that the greedy fucks get college football right.

For the conferences, if I had my way, I'd blow them all up. From the ashes, I'd like to see the SCC (Southern Coastal Conference) with:

Clemson
UGA
GA Tech
N. Carolina
S. Carolina
Florida
Fl. State
Miami
NC State
VA Tech
Duke
Virginia

Something like that, maybe a few other teams if things had to be at 16. Maybe expand to the Gulf Coast and get LSU, Bama, Auburn, and Ole Miss too.

I like how you get all the in-state rivals together. That's one thing that I think recent realignment has ruined--several great rivalries have vanished.

[Electromatic]

I hope at some point before I'm too fucking old or dead that the greedy fucks get college football right.

For the conferences, if I had my way, I'd blow them all up. From the ashes, I'd like to see the SCC (Southern Coastal Conference) with:

Clemson
UGA
GA Tech
N. Carolina
S. Carolina
Florida
Fl. State
Miami
NC State
VA Tech
Duke
Virginia

Something like that, maybe a few other teams if things had to be at 16. Maybe expand to the Gulf Coast and get LSU, Bama, Auburn, and Ole Miss too.

I'd Add LSU, Bama, Auburn and Tennessee to start with. I like that, regional, close enough to drive and contrary to some nationally held beliefs, everyone hates each other.

[darth_vedder]

I guess I should have taken this talk to the realignment thread. Sorry GH.

[Green Habit]

I guess I should have taken this talk to the realignment thread. Sorry GH.

Nah, that's fine, I'm the one that started it anyway. Besides, as you mentioned, there's not a lot of actual football to talk about now.

[darth_vedder]

So, 81 days until this:

[Green Habit]

So, 81 days until this:

Minus a piece of it.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr- ... 01835.html