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Buzz Bissinger: Why College Football Should Be Banned

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by LongTimeListener, May 6, 2012.

  1. Bamadog

    Bamadog Well-Known Member

    This discussion is all good and nice, but let's face facts:
    • The money in college sports makes it too big to fail.
    • Sure, big-time college football is nothing more than a minor league system for the NFL. This isn't new. TV money has made it this way.
    • Most of these kids, through admission gymnastics I can't even fathom, are not capable of college work and are shuffled into useless, easy majors that aren't going to help them get a real job. There are exceptions, of course.
    • It's a feast or famine proposition. For every Alabama, Florida or Texas, there's a UAB or a MAC school. Football money at the bigger schools pays for the rest of the athletic department at places like Alabama.
    I hate that it has come to this, but all of the academic reforms and scholarship limitations aren't going to change the structure of the game. Remember the end of partial qualifiers and higher standards? We thought that was armageddon and coaches found ways around it. They're clever and they'll find ways and ruses around new rules. They always do.

    I think most people who read our newspapers for every scrap of information about their favorite teams and breathless follow the team paysites realize that State U. is nothing more than a football factory whose program has about as much to do with the academic mission as the Department of Education has to do with NASA. But they accept it for what it is. I do.

    We can either do that, which doesn't mean we're putting our heads in the sand, or take up an issue (banning college football) that will have as much traction as the rear wheels of a Dodge Viper in quicksand.
     
  2. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Oh I agree. Football and men's basketball are just too big to fail, nor do most fans want it to.

    I do think we'll see some major changes, such as athletes getting stipends (It's inevitable now that the NCAA passed it, even though it got reversed. The NCAA is getting embarrassed by the amount of money being thrown around now), and perhaps, if one or two more UConns get banned from the NCAA tourney, academic standards will be adhered to (although I'll admit, I was surprised the NCAA upheld the ban, showing the rule isn't just for the Cleveland States).
     
  3. joe king

    joe king Active Member

    If the government bans college football, the South might secede again.
     
  4. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Now there's a win-win.
     
  5. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Oooh, I don't agree with this. I am pretty sure that 90 percent of college football players look at it as, first and foremost, a path to the NFL. The other 10 percent make that Reason 1(a) for playing.
     
  6. jambalaya

    jambalaya Member

    Exactly. Anyone here who covers college football could tell you. Pretty much every player, a least those in Division I, holds the hope/dream/delusion that maybe, just maybe, they will good enough to play in the NFL one day.
     
  7. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    We love you, too.
     
  8. lcjjdnh

    lcjjdnh Well-Known Member

    Sixteen percent of the audience supported a ban on college football before the debate. Fifty-three percent did after.
     
  9. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    after seeing them on morning joe I'm surprised it didn't go higher.
     
  10. lcjjdnh

    lcjjdnh Well-Known Member

    Debate for anyone that wants to watch:
    http://fora.tv/2012/05/08/Ban_College_Football
     
  11. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Bissinger and Gladwell mopped the floor with Whitlock and Green.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/intelligence_squared/2012/05/ban_college_football_how_buzz_bissinger_and_malcolm_gladwell_won_the_slate_intelligence_squared_debate_on_may_8_.html
     
  12. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    Bring back the flying wedge!!!!!!!!
     
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