Summer Fun In College Football

Summertime, summertime, sum, sum, summertime. Summertime. A time when we can look forward to the end of the NBA season. More good news: the NHL season ended last week, if you didn’t know. If you saw the highlights, several players did not know it was over either. Anyway, the Chicago Blackhawks are Your Stanley Cup Champions. A grateful nation says: Yay.

All of this cannot take away from the non-stop action of The Fifa-Long John Silver’s-NAPA Auto Parts World Cup, played in South Africa, home of the non-stop horn blowing. Soccer is the world’s sport and the world can have it as far as I’m concern.

However, the biggest sports news of the past few weeks, besides an umpire missing a call Stevie Wonder could have made, is from our favorite professional sport: College Football.

One, the University of Southern California was put on double secret probation by the NCAA for what it did in 2004. The NCAA may be slow, seeing that it is now six years later, but they finally got USC for numerous infractions involving Reggie Bush, who apparently needed living quarters for his parents while he was in college. Strange, I have a college student son, and no one has ever offered me any living arrangements.

I knew something bad was going to happen when Pete Carroll bolted for the NFL. USC went right out and hired Lane Kiffin, professional hygiene product, as their new head coach. Although it is not fair that Kiffin will have to work with a program on a two year probation from bowl games and the loss of 30 scholarships, I think I can sum up the reaction of the sports following public when I say: Ha, Ha.

The other really big news was that Texas decided not to join the Pac-10.

That may not strike you as big news, seeing that Texas does not border the Pacific Ocean, but for a while it seemed like Texas, and their Sooner cousins were going to pull up stakes in the Big 12 Conference and move over to the Pac-10. That would have been huge because Texas would have to travel to Pullman, Washington instead of going to Waco, Texas to kill another team.

But Texas stayed put (as did Oklahoma) in the Big 12 which is now the Big 10 because Colorado left for the Pac 10 and Nebraska left for the Big 10 which is now the Big 12. Got that? Not sure if I could explain that again.

It is a win-win for Texas. Texas was given some big TV network to showcase their games. Since now there are only 10 teams in their conference, they don’t have to have a Conference championship game, which face it, only the fans like.
Texas can beat OU in late September and then cruise to a BCS bowl game without having to schlep up to Kansas City in December.

Although Texas stayed in the Big 12 soon 10 for Texas reasons, I like it. I like the idea of conferences, sis-boom-bah and I like the idea of universities pretending they see the football players as students. It helps me to sleep at night.