I have to preface this by saying that I have been kind out of the loop for the last month, however, I still have one question. What the hell happened to college football??? After hearing the news from my cohorts that the Big Ten might decide to trudge on with football after all, one thing has stood out considerably to my tiny little pea brain. College football has been swallowed whole by the much bigger realm of “political football” being played by lawmakers in Washington and governors around this great country of ours. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a serious and dangerous way of life. However, I am having issues with on how it is predominately ok for the Southeastern portion of our country to allow the game to play while the balance of the country basically has shut it down. Particularly west of Utah (BYU is playing) there is no college football in sight. Well, I am going to try and make some lemonade out of the rotten lemons our “beloved” elected officials have given us.
My first thought is, at least “The Left Coast” does not have to worry about the East Coast bias this year. In years past, how many times has there been a Pac-12 school or a Boise State (one of my favorites) that have been left out of the now defunct BCS (got plenty of names for that anagram) or the College Football Playoff picture? That is because the archaic, opinionated East Coast writers cannot stay up past 10 o'clock to catch USC and Oregon or maybe a Boise State and Fresno State. The only problem is that these writers might get so much rest, they might hang on to torment us again. Also, no worries about Heisman bias either. With the current slate of teams, it is almost a lock that the Heisman will stay in the SEC, which will allow it to remain the most dominant conference in the nation (yawn).
In addition, I look at it as a win for myself in terms of sleep on a Saturday night. Instead of coming home after a broadcast on a Saturday Night and watching a five-overtime Mountain West thriller between San Diego State and Nevada that trickles into Sunday morning, I can get plenty of rest to watch my Chicago Bears play in front of an empty stadium with artificial crowd noise pumped in. Parents of kids on the West Coast will not have to worry about their young adult scholars attending those annoying pre-game tailgates or post-game fraternity parties following home games and their students will actually have to ***GULP*** study. No more excuses now, kids.
Finally, I have a Hodge Podge of questions that need answers: How exciting is it really going to be with teams playing only divisional schedules? Will Notre Dame roll through the inferior ACC, apart from Clemson? Is it possible that every SEC team could be ranked in the Top 25? Who is going to play in the Tropical Smoothie Café Frisco Bowl (that’s a real bowl game, look it up)? Will there even be bowl games? If not, what am I going to do from December 16th through January 12th? How is this going to affect the NFL Draft with the entire Western part of the nation not playing? Who am I going to root for with my four favorite schools gone (Northern Illinois, Boise State, Northwestern & Oregon)? Will there be anything to bet on when I visit Vegas in late October and December? How come the lowest ticket price is $50 for a game between the University of Louisiana Monroe and Liberty? When and where will the Big Ten play? These are just a few of the questions that I need answers to.
When it all comes down to it, I will be glad when college football kicks off, although I do not really have a dog in the hunt (Haven’t really since 1992 when Cal State Fullerton’s program was burned to the ground and left for dead). It will be good for some sense of normalcy. Professional sports in terms of baseball, basketball and hockey have made it work. Let’s hope for the sake of the student-athletes (and not the politicians) that this works as well.
Chuck Lejsek
CIH Media Contributor
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