I recently shared my plan/hope/desire to follow college football more intensely this season. I shared a list of reasons I had struggled to get that into it before and the reasons I thought I was foolish to succumb to those. Of course, I left one glaring problem off the list…
From ESPN.com:
“Even the biggest — and richest — Oklahoma State fan couldn’t get overly excited about this victory.
Before the 19th-ranked Cowboys kicked off their season with a ridiculous 84-0 victory against Savannah State on Saturday night, billionaire booster Boone Pickens said he wanted to see Oklahoma State put together a tougher nonconference schedule.
…
[Coach Mike] Gundy wanted no part of discussing the pros and cons of choosing to play a team that had gone 4-72 against competition from the Football Championship Subdivision — that’s a level below Oklahoma State’s Football Bowl Subdivision, with fewer scholarships and resources.
Savannah State (0-1) got a $385,000 payout for its first game against an FBS opponent, and coach Steve Davenport wasn’t sure afterward if even that made it worthwhile.
“We’re going to have to readdress that. You get paid for certain things, but I don’t know if at the end of the day, some things are worth the payments you get. But we’ll see. Those are conversations we’ll have.”
This isn’t sport. Paying an inferior opponent to essentially roll over so that one can pad its victory total is sad. It is the opposite of open and fair competition. Savannah State would likely have never agreed to play this game had it not been for the payout. And while it is possible that they will do something meaningful with the money, my hunch is that it will pour into the athletic department’s coffers. Regardless, seeing scores like this run across the bottom line, and learning that the game happened under such circumstances (which are not rare, by the way) makes it that much harder to root for this “sport”.
Every once in a while, Creampuff State gives Powerhouse U. a run for its money and it’s kind of fun. But yeah, these mismatches are a bit off-putting. It ain’t the pros, man.Report
It is one thing if it’s a school like Appalachian State, that is a powerhouse at its level and is trying its hand at the next level up. This team was terrible at its own level (4-72!)… this wasn’t even Creampuff State…
What did either team gain from this game? One got a W, the other got money. Neither team learned anything or came away better for having “competed” in such a farce. This was buying victories, plain and simple.Report
That was the Nebraska MO for all those years they were winning national championships. Others did it as well. The premise is, don’t lose.
But strength of schedule is one reason I thought LSU should have gotten a share of the national championship last year. I silly debate that would be fun to have.Report
Boosters also love lopsided victories. Part of playing cupcakes is to allow the pride aspect and raise lots of money.Report
I wonder about the kind of people who’d take pride in something like this. The word “bully” comes to mind…Report
Probably. Have you met your average booster?Report
I’ve fortunately been insulated from boosters. Going to a small private college with big coffers in an area dominated by pro sports probably makes them fewer and farther between than most schools.Report
I think games against FCS opponents should be banned. Aside from that, though, even Sun Belt teams topple the big boys every now and again.Report
This one is easy to fix. Modify the BCS scoring to be more like chess rankings, where playing a very inferior opponent earns you next to nothing for a win but has a huge cost for a loss.Report
Well, that assumes the BCS actually cares about things like this…Report
This is part of the BCS formula already, in that the W-L record of your opponents is part of the formula used to come up with the rankings. But it could be made stronger and as Kazzy points out, it can’t readily distinguish between an Appalachian State and the Correspondence College of Tampa.Report
I wonder if it works so well at the margins. I don’t know exactly how the BCS formula works (it doesn’t help that they’ve changed in a bajillion times), but I wonder if there is much difference between playing the 100th best school and the 500th best school, when there certainly should be. The 100th best school likely could at least put up a fight. The Savannah States of the world? Not so much.Report
It’s not perfect, but my own little team-ranking computer model approaches this by treating all FCS teams as if they have 0 wins. Beating them is literally worthless (my model assigns no points for beating a team that hasn’t defeated anyone else), losing to them is terrible. It doesn’t admit for shades of gray – i.e., some FCS teams are legitimately better than others – but it does so for a(n admittedly biased) philosophical reason: that I think FBS teams should be prohibited from scheduling FCS teams.Report
You should only do that for homecoming.Report
The Oregon game was kind of like that. They played Arkansas State, which was 10-3 last year, but clearly isn’t going to be anything close to that this year. Seven minutes into the second quarter Oregon’s coach pulled all the starters because the score was 50-3.
It was like watching someone play Madden, which – turns out – isn’t really that much fun to watch.Report
LSU did the same thing. They played a small college and the game, while not extremely lopsided, was never in doubt. Living near Baton Rouge and thus required to hate Saban, I have to say he did play a potential equal.Report
College football strikes me as one of those passions that doesn’t lend itself to being argued for. You either see the quaint charm (in which case the defects just make the idea of being a follower that much more charming)… or you don’t, and you entirely rationally find the pastime garish and hypocritical (or you’re just indifferent). I happen to be of the former category, but entirely respect those of the other(s). What’s curious to me is being on the outside of devotee-status looking in, and actually wanting to find your way in there.
I hope your investment of time and emotional energy end up paying off, Kazzy. This devotee offers you no guarantees.Report
College football is the absolutely best sport to drink to: half as intellectual as the NFL and twice as tribal. Sort of like cricket in the Caribbean: the game’s OK, but add in rum and reggae and you’ve really got something there.Report
MD-
That probably sums it up well, both college football (and likely any sport or hobby) and my approach to this “experiment”.
“What’s curious to me is being on the outside of devotee-status looking in, and actually wanting to find your way in there.”
With regards to this, what I think makes it different than most instances of someone being on the outside-looking-in is that college football seems to lack both snobbery and evangelicalism. I’m not being told by those on the inside, “Oh, only REAL fans who liked college football before it went mainstream,” -OR- “Dude, you totally have to watch college football all the time every time. It’s like ‘The Wire’ with Lucky Charms-style marshmallows.” Its adherents seem entirely devoted of their own volition and too busy and interested to both with what outsiders think. They’re playing hard to get!Report
I’d be interested to know in comparison to what sport spectating culture(s) you find college football fandom to lack those qualities…Report
I think most sports spectating cultures lack those qualities. Soccer might be the only one where I’ve experienced snobbery, where I’ve gotten push back from fans who think I’m jumping on the bandwagon when I expressed a newfound interest in the game. Pretty much all other sports fans are all too happy to share their love of the game without being obnoxious and pushy about it. Do your experiences indicate something different?Report
Why worry about the fans, isn’t the point to enjoy the sport itself?
Also, you don’t live in SEC country, the evangelism and snobbery happens pretty well down this way when it comes to college football. Fans in the rest of the country have other sports to divide their attention, down here the FBS dominates.Report
And the thing is…
What amounts to match fixing is probably the least egregious part of the college football business model.
I love the pageantry but I can no longer be morally complicit in what is essentially indentured servitude of college aged athletes for the purpose of filling a giant institution’s coffers. If they start getting paid, I might go back to it, but until then…meh.Report
The pro league’s complicity in this is also an issue. How convenient that the NBA instituted a minimum age at the exact same time the NCAA was complaining about missing out on so many preps-to-pros talents.Report
Yeah, it’s essentially cartel behavior that allows this to happen.
European soccer leagues for all their faults have a paying, equitable developmental system that starts at youth leagues. American sports need to start competing for amateur talent.Report
I’m tempted to be even more disgusted than someone like Missy Franklin has to forego her winnings and endorsement opportunities in order to continue competing at the high school and eventual college level. Seriously? She’s got a limited window during which she can capitalize financially on her skills and she has to limit it further? F that.Report
Sports in the US is a deeply rotten and deeply disgusting business.Report
When you look at the role that the government plays in basically denying athletes’ right, it gets even worse.Report
If we’d just remove all the antitrust exemptions maybe things might work better.Report
What is the the justification for the exemption anyway, I mean the “Baptist” reason rather than the “Bootlegger” one?Report
I think there’s just “bootlegger” reasons.Report
Right, both the NFL and the NBA have no incentive to circumvent what amounts to a free farm/minor league system for them.
I think football is the worst, in terms of the way it treats student athletes, though. PBS aired a documentary on this a few years ago that was heartbreaking. The kid from Tennessee (I think) who had surgery for an on-the-field injury, and couldn’t go to class because he was recovering (including taking pain medication that would have made going to class pointless anyway), and ended up with eligibility issues as a result. Or the kids from several schools who didn’t even know what their majors were (they might have known the name, but they had no idea what it referred to), because they’d just been told “This is your major. Take these courses. Stay eligible.” Nothing about the system seemed kosher.
Young basketball players have a new option, though: Europe, which has increasingly competitive basketball leagues that are more than happy to take young American talent for a couple years. If sports agents were smart, they’d be whispering in recruits ears, “Europe. Europe. Eeeuuuurope.”Report