Well, we are finishing another season of our favorite professional sport, college football.
I've been using "our favorite professional sport, college football," for a while now because college football was the last rung until a football player made it to the NFL. It is part of my funny-ha-ha man persona to use it as a template because while college football always claimed to be "amatuer" (students), it was actually, "professional" in every sense of the word.
I know a guy who went to a local land-grant university ("Glory, Glory") and saw the star quarterback ("Glory, Glory") driving a new convertible Cadillac down the main drag. This star quarterback was a young man from a modest household, so it was pretty obvious that a "booster" presented this student athlete with this vehicle.
Those days are gone.
The old argument for paying college athletes so that these young, hard-working men could have "pizza money."
Those days are gone, too.
Now, the big-time players make big-time money playing at big-time schools. I'm not sure if they have to go to class.
What this has done is level the playing field. No longer is the Championship Game the domain of the SEC. Nope. The Big Ten is now the Big Conference in college football.
Indiana University will play for the national championship next week. That's like saying I will be selected as People Magazine's Sexiest Man of the Year.
Let's review the College Football Season.
The season started by saying goodbye to one of the legends, Lee Corso.
Corso was part of the ESPN Game Day crew that would analyse the upcoming games. At the end of the broadcast, Corso would put on the "headgear" of the team he picked to win. It was a grand time.
Over the years, Game Day would expand. It would feature special interest stories, sometimes tied to a student-athlete who showed the human condition and how the player overcame the obstacles in his life.
A lot of these stories were about someone in the family was sick with an awful condition. Or a player whose dad was in jail for armed robbery and never saw his son play a down, but this week, he got out early for good behavior, and a booster got him tickets on the 50-yard line.
Corso retired after the first game of the season this year. Game Day continued. They have Pat McAfee now doing the lighter stuff. He has a 30-yard field goal contest, which is fun. He can be a little much.
Nick Saban is on the program, too. Nick knows a lot about football. Not sure how much he knows about being a human being.
Ohio State was number one until they actually played somebody. Peyton Manning's nephew was supposed to be a lock for the Heisman Trophy. But then they played a game.
More proof there is a God: Alabama lost to Florida State in the first game of the season.
At the end of the season, Lane Kiffin was the coach of Ole Miss and LSU, or something like that. ESPN was on Lane Kiffin watch for 1000 hours. "Lane Kiffin still hasn't decided if he is going to coach at LSU. Wait...breaking news...we still don't know if Lane Kiffin is going to coach at LSU. If you hear anything, let us know."
Notre Dame wasn't selected to play in the college playoff, so they pouted and didn't go to a bowl game. Some of the bowl games seem like fun, like The Pop-Tarts Bowl, which wasn't fun for Georgia Tech because they lost it.
Speaking of bowl games, my beloved Kennesaw State Owls won the Conference USA championship after winning only two games the previous season.
The Owls played in the Myrtle Beach Bowl against Western Michigan and lost Twenty Billion to Ten or something like that. No matter. We wanted to play in a bowl game, and now we have!
I was able to go to the Kennesaw State homecoming, and I met Miss Georgia, Audrey Kittila. As you can tell by the picture below, she is a tall drink of water.
I know that's not really football related, but anytime I can get my picture taken with Miss Georgia I am obligated by the Laws of Social Media to tell you about it.
