The Problems With College Football

Well, sports fans, it is that time of year again: time to begin thinking about college football, our favorite professional sport.

During the summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about college football and have concluded that it has three major problems. They are: The fans, the players, and the coaches.

The latest college football horror story deals with the University of Miami (FL) – not Miami University (OH). In this story, a rich jock sniffing “booster” provided Miami players with extra benefits that are not included in The Pell Grant. The benefits included money (of course, for “pizza”), prostitutes, and abortions. The article in Yahoo Sports which has caused the NCAA to investigate Miami-again-makes no mention of extra money for things like text books, which if you have any college students in your family, you know can cost anywhere from $100.00 for a paperback of Animal Farm to $200,000.00 for a lab manual to Analytical Biological Accounting.

Here’s the first problem: the fans. A lot of college football fans are clinically insane, while some are just plain strange. Others are just weird. They are people who tattoo their bodies with likeness of dead coaches. They are people who weigh maybe a buck fifty going on for hours about blocking schemes. There is a small minority that believes if you lose a game to your biggest rival you have the right to kill a tree and brag about it on a sports radio talk show.If they were fans of Star Trek, we would point and laugh at them and hope that they would not mate. No, but when they are fans of a college football team, somehow we think that it is normal. Even, as in a lot of cases, the fan never took one class at the college he/she is so madly loves.

This leads us to our second problem in college football: the players.

Can we admit one thing? Most big time college football players have zero interest in actually “going” to college in the traditional sense (attending classes and trying to pass a course). Most big time college football players are just passing time so they can play in the NFL. The NCAA will never “reform” college football as long as they have this paradigm that the players are like Jack Armstrong, All American Boy from the 1930’s: taking a full load, working two jobs, and playing every Saturday.

Most college football players remind me of a line Steve Harvey used on a heckler in “The Kings of Comedy”. This person, “Boogie” told Harvey that he went to “computer school”. Harvey said, “Boogie, nothing about you says computer or school.” You look at some of the “student athletes” and they look like “athletes”, they just aren’t students and nothing about them says that they are.

The third problem in college football is the Head Coach, who as a general rule, put the ‘A’ in amoral. The only thing most of them are concerned about are wins. Maybe if his wife went into labor, he might shut down the film room to drop by the hospital to tell her that she needs to focus completely on the mission at hand. Asking a group like this monitor “rules” which if they follow might mean they might “lose” a game and would ultimately lead to losing the coaching position and the lease to a Ford F-150 is like asking Charlie Sheen to watch the liquor cabinet.

Oh, there are other problems with college football. Too many E.D. pill commercials (man and wife buy pills that apparently come with twin bathtubs that you can put in the back yard. “Look at Mr. and Mrs Manis, out in the back yard again. Must have gone to the drug store”.). Bowl games in December just to have a bowl game (“Welcome to the Kennesaw Bowl where Upper Sorta Middle Tennessee State College at 5-6 will play Lower West Louisiana A & M,who is 3-8 will face off at Cobb Energy Scott Jones Field Stadium..”). Lou Holtz trying to speak the English language (“Markfff, Ifff knowfff, youff,thankfff thafff I’m oldff butfff Ifff knowfff a thingfff or twofff aboutfff this gamefff…”).

Just for the record, there are good fans; there are good players; there are good coaches. It just looks like the problems are getting much worse.