Getting Rather Tired of the Swipes at Condoleezza Rice

Perhaps it's confined to my "hometown" newspaper, but I'm getting pretty worn out with the continuing jibes at Condoleezza Rice. Here are just a couple of recent vintage:

From Gil Lebreton:

From Mac Engel:

Am I totally off-base in sniffing the stench of sexism in these jabs?

 

Yes and no. They have a problem with Condi Rice for other reasons. Some people do, however, think a woman doesn't know anything about college football. Just my opinion.

 

Yes, it is sexist.

Girls aren't supposed to know about the football. Much like the priesthood, football is a boys-only club.

Unless she's making them cookies. If she's making them cookies, then it is cool.

Also, the TCU-types are going to have their heads explode if they get passed over by a team that beat them, Baylor, for a playoff spot.

My guess is that the Fort Worth columnists are getting their readers ready for that and it is all because Condi Rice don't know nothing about football.

 

100 percent sexism.

 

As a follow-up ... have any of y'all observed any such with your local college football columnists (or columnists who happen to be writing about football)?

 

Nope. You're right on base. They're dumb.

I suspect she's as good in that room as anyone.

 

Not yet. Piggie State U will be lucky to make a bowl and there's a big local connection to the committee, so my best guess is that Condi won't come up much.

 

Some of it, though, may be because she doesn't look like she had much experience in college sports, her six-year stint as provost of Stanford, where she oversaw the athletic program among her other duties.

Compare that with the others, who have played, coached, administered, or written about college sports for decades. Writers aren't going to criticize Tom Osborne or Archie Manning, and nobody outside Colorado has heard of Mike Gould.

 

Completely sexist with perhaps a dose of political. Anybody who knows her background knows that she is not just a casual fan but one who understands the game. Her father was a football coach and she took a great interest in learning the X's and O's.

I would be willing to be that she is one of the better prepared committee members in the room each week and had diligently taken the time to watch each and every team.

I bet Archie Manning is really glad that he got laid up with his back back and had to leave the committee.

 

I like that they'll be rotating people in and out of the committee beginning in 2016.

 

If TCU was No. 1 with a bullet, the Star-Telegram would be falling over itself fawning over Condi Rice. Rightly or wrongly, she's an easy target for a number of reasons.

She's just one member of a larger committee, but a lot of people resent the re-introduction of the "beauty contest" aspect of the selection process that the old BCS, flawed as it was, took out of the mix. She's a lightning rod, and her political past has a lot to do with that. So criticism of the CFP will tend to focus on her.

 

She's as good as anyone in that room, which means she's also as dumb as the others in that room.

If you take a shot at her, fine, but you better be taking the same shots at the other members of the committee.