College football: bulletproof

A caveat to Bama-Texas: it was close somehow, but watching Garrett Gilbert look like a junior high quarterback was not entertaining at all.

 

I get that and I have definitely gotten over the moralizing and into just watching the game and assuming that if a program appears to be cheating, they are. But it does seem there have been more big-time scandals lately (probably due to the existence of the Yahoo Sports investigative team more than any other factor), as well as more calls for reform.

 

I think it just seems that way.

 

You want to think it seems that way.

 

When I was a kid, the five Jan. 1 bowls (Rose, Orange, Cotton, Sugar and Fiesta) were the big deal, and when teams made those bowls, that was a big deal. And for those teams that didn't make them, they had the Dec. 31 bowls, and so on.

Now, with all these bowls, and the major ones spread out over a week, it's not a big deal to make the Jan. bowls. Heck, there are bowls that didn't exist 10 years ago that are played in January (I'm looking at you, International Bowl, and whatever other minor bowl there is).

 

Hart Lee Dykes got four programs (Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and Illinois) put on probation, and that was almost 25 years ago.

 

He cost a few folks in the Patriots' front office their jobs, too. Quite a record the guy piled up.

 

1932.

 

An extremely temporary phenomenon.

Universities are squeezing their alums for every last donation dollar to pay ridiculous salaries, to keep up with the Joneses facility-wise, etc.

I have Purdue in mind and the Matt Painter situation. Before he decided to come back, the coordinator of their booster club was apoplectic that alums weren't giving more to feed the beast. This is at a Big Ten school that has the good fortune to have Big Ten Network money rolling in.

As budgets get tighter and tighter on the academic side for public schools, athletic departments are going to come under increasing political scrutiny too. It's already happening at some schools.

Its not a sustainable model for success. It will collapse on itself in some form. Some will be hit worse than others, but it will happen.

 

I stopped watching college football years ago, with the exception of when I'm doing the college football page at work.

Its insistence on keeping the ridiculous bowl/BCS system over the far more logical playoff concept did me in awhile back.

 

Haven't watched an uninterrupted quarter of the trash since last covering it in 2004.

"It's a moral imperative."

 

Hey, hey, hey...easy on the MAC. Some of us make our living off the MAC.