College football is such a great sport. It is the number one thing that gets me past summer ending. I arrange our Saturdays around all the big games each week. Heck, I will eat something I don’t even want just so I don’t have to leave the house in the middle of a big game. 


The pomp and circumstance makes college football the fantastic event that it is.


Yet, for the last 30 years the powers that be, in the interest of money grab after money grab, have tried to ruin the sport.


Let me focus on the past year to make several points to make my argument.

  • Recruiting has become a total joke. Players wear one school’s colors and say they are 100% locked in on a Friday night at their high school game and by Tuesday of the next week are changing their commitment to another school. Why? The rival school offered a bigger bag of money. What used to be illegal is now encouraged and required. It is an auction house on steroids. And, it is completely out of control. Nobody thought to have some regulations in place. A stern scolding isn’t going to prevent Phil Knight or Luther Campbell from writing checks.

  • Already bloated conferences were made even larger. The four power conferences now have 16, 17, 16, and 18 teams respectively. Gone are the regionalized compact conferences where travel was reasonable and natural rivalries ruled the day. Now we have USC, Oregon, and Washington being forced to travel 2 or 3 time zones in a 6 week period. Cal and Stanford get to come East a couple times a year.

  • Because of the gigantic conferences, schedules will never be balanced. Even if the SEC comes of their Greg Sankey trained high horse and plays 9 conference games, the balance and fairness is forever gone. It is already unpredictable in terms of which teams will be good in a given year. Mix that altogether and you have Georgia playing a ridiculously difficult schedule. Meanwhile, Texas gets a walk in the park. Ohio State plays Oregon, Penn State, and Indiana while Penn State and Indiana only play the Buckeyes. And Notre Dame’s schedule is both easy and without the chance of a conference championship game. These inequitable schedules leave the playoff committee in a quandary. Are two or even three loss teams with a tough schedule more deserving than a one loss team with a cakewalk schedule?

  • They want to keep their money driven conference championship games, but they are of no benefit to most teams that will play in them. As a matter of fact, the loser of the SEC Championship Game may end up with a third loss. Oregon could go from the one seed and a bye to the five or six seed and a first round matchup. Neither of those scenarios is fair to those teams.

  • The TV situation is an abomination. Grabbing every dollar possible has resulted in Big Ten teams s-ending their season in the noon window on Saturdays. The Big Ten, ACC, and Big 12 have games on so many networks it is hard to keep track of all of them. All big games should be in the 3:30 or 7:30 window on the main network for each conference.

  • The playoffs. 12 teams instead of 4(or the 8 that makes the most sense). They have already screwed this new system up. The Big 12, ACC, and Group of 5 lottery winner should be at the bottom end of the 12 team field. Instead, two of those teams will get the third and fourth seed. This will bounce teams out of the bye positions that actually deserve them. Consequently teams will desperately want to get the five and six seeds. This will result in a home playoff game that will bring in a ton of extra revenue —revenue the 1-4 seeds won’t get— and then if they win it will secure a quarterfinal game against an inferior opponent.


Proverbs 15:27 states, “The greedy bring ruin to their household.”


Well, the college football power brokers are doing their best to bring ruin to all of our Saturday households. Too much. Too often. Too oblivious. The college football we grew up with and love like our own child is betraying us. Oh, it isn’t the band or cheerleaders or even Lee Corso’s fault. The money hungry suits have turned our favorite sport into a circus.


Give me the 70’s when we voted for a champ, but bowl games mattered, rivalries mattered, every game wasn’t televised, cheating had to be hidden, and fight songs seemed more pure.


Oh, I will still be watching, but I don’t have to like it.


Two Cent Takes

College Football
~Every year there is a team just outside the playoff mix that nobody wants to play. I would offer up South Carolina this year.

~Coach Prime is cooking in Boulder. Turns out it takes a minute to turn a moribund program around. Deion is tough not to like. Here he is talking up his players again.


~How odd will it be if Colorado and Arizona State meet in the Big 12 Championship? The PAC-12 lives on.


~Curt Cignetti didn’t need more than one year to turn Indiana around. It is put up or shut up this Saturday in Columbus.

MLB

~Paul Skenes ran away with the Rookie of the Year award in the National League. He will be top three in the Cy Young voting. The Pirates probably won’t even consider trying to lock him up for extra years now. It just isn’t how they roll. Clearly his girlfriend is more excited about the news than he is.

~A group of fans have started putting up “Sell the Team” billboards around Pittsburgh. Good luck to them, but I don’t think Bob Nutting cares what the fans think.

College Football

~Penn State scored 100 in their first two games, beat Virginia Tech handily, and had the 19th ranked recruiting class for 2025. I would say Mike Rhodes has things trending in the right direction.


 ~USC lost to Cal Sunday night. The Trojans are proof that having an entirely new roster compiled through the portal will take some time to gel. LA isn’t the kind of city to wait and see. Look for a very empty Galen Center for awhile.


 ~Great early games and now we have holiday tournaments to look forward to.


 ~Robby Hummel is the best analyst on any network. Should be a bidding war for his services.

 NFL

~Aaron Rodgers is the worst Jets quarterback in the last decade. Let that sink in for a minute.


 ~I think the Bengals may pack it in for the season. They just haven’t been able to get over the hump.


 ~The Giants are benching Daniel Jones. I am sure that will fix everything.


 ~I think I am finally out on the 49ers. I really thought they would right the ship, but I have lost faith in that occurring.


 ~Good thing the Falcons paid Kirk Cousins all that money. Maybe we will see Michael Pennix before we thought.

The Weekly Shiny Penny

How about a heartwarming Shiny Penny this week?

 A Penny For My Final Thought…

They might not win the division.

They might not win a playoff game.


 They could still flame out.


 Still, the Pittsburgh Steelers are Super Bowl contenders.


 If Pittsburgh loses in Cleveland Thursday night, which they have been prone to do lately, then people can continue to have doubts. I’m not sure that is going to happen.


 This team has a different feel.


 The vibe I get watching this team is all positive. Well, unless they are in the red zone. I feel like their is a high level of confidence that I have not seen from them in quite some time. Maybe it is  TJ Watt. Maybe it is Russell Wilson. More likely it is Mike Tomlin.


Tomlin has never lacked confidence, and this year he seems to have the right mix of players that are feeding off of that confidence. Having an actual quarterback gives the entire team more confidence. Knowing all is not lost if the defense gives up a score or two certainly adds a dimension the Steelers have lacked for years.


 

Having a lights out defense is still the Steelers calling card. They now have more than TJ Watt. Nick Herbig, Payton Wilson, and Joey Porter are all young studs. Patrick Queen I’d finding himself in this defense lately. Cam Heyward is old, but he is still a rock. People claimed you couldn’t win Tomlin’s defense first way. Maybe in the end that will be proven true. But you should be amazed by this statistic.

Tomlin’s stubbornness can be infuriating at times, but his stubbornness to stay the course until a competent quarterback was unearthed is finally paying dividends.


 

They even got wacky this past week and gave former starting quarterback Justin Fields a package of plays.


 

What’s next?


 

Scoring a touchdown in the red zone?


 

We can dream.


 

For now it is nice to see the Steelers not blinking, defending every blade of grass, and having no fears.


 

Hey Coach, you’ve got yourself a Super Bowl contender.

Just my two cents…