I'm Out on College Football

The title says it all.  I'm done with college football.  

I should qualify that a bit.  I love the sport of football.  I love the Wisconsin Badgers.  I was a student season ticket holder for 2 years.  My wife and I loved attending Badger games while I was in school at Madison.  That being said, I can't tolerate college football as a whole anymore.  

College football is a game where the rich get richer.  Rich schools make more money.  Great teams get the the best players.  There are no "student athletes" at the higher echelons of college football.  Okay, they're there, but they're not the ones who usually dominate the conversation.  At the top level, college sports is really professional sports in disguise.  We all try to pretend it's something different.  What we end up is the worst of the amateur athletics that college football is supposed to be, mixed with the bad parts of professional football.  The greed, money and politics overpower the school pride and love of the game that supposedly makes college football so special.

I'm sick of Alabama.  I'm sick Ohio State.  I'm sick of Nick Saban.  I'm sick of Urban Meyer.  I'm sick of Johnny Football, Reggie Bush, Pete Carroll, Joe Paterno, and all of the jerks who pretend that top level college football is about building character, playing for your school or anything other than making money.

This fall, the attention that I used to pay to non-Badger college football will be focused on the English Premier League.  Sure, the EPL has the same problems that college football.  In FIFA, soccer may have the only governing body more corrupt and hypocritical than the NCAA, but at least professional soccer doesn't pretend to be anything else.

Independence Thoughts

It's the 4th of July, American Independence Day.  Of course, most are in a patriotic mood, and I am no exception.  Apart from fireworks (which do nothing for me) and summer fun, July 4th always prompts me to think about the country that I live in and why we take so much pride in it.

America aspires to greatness.  That greatness is based upon freedom and liberty, ideals which countless Americans have fought and died for over the years.  Brave Americans have been willing to die for these causes since before we knew what kind of country we would have.  Lately, we've become rather prolific at killing for our ideals.  Dying and killing for ideas is easy.  America's greatness is realized when we live up to our ideals.

To be true, the United Stats of America has never even come close to achieving what it is that so many people think we have.  That's okay.  When you aim for the stars, sometimes you make it to the moon.  The problem is that people think we have reached the pinnacle of what we can be.  The illusion that America has no progress to make, nothing to learn from the rest of the world, stunts our growth.  It hinders our ability to realize the full potential that we have as a nation.  It is when you stop trying to move forward that others pass you by.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I couldn't say it any better myself.

Happy birthday, America.  We've got work to do.

Pro-Bowl Solutions

The Pro-Bowl is a joke.  It is a waste of television airwaves and it should not be watched by anybody, football fan or not.  The players don't care about the game, they don't take it seriously and they're only in it for the free trip to Hawaii.

Rather than complain without offering a solution, I am here to offer a legitimate solution that could actually help make the Pro-Bowl into something remotely watchable, while keeping the party/celebration atmosphere that players seem to actually want:  Make it flag football.  That's what people are comparing it to anyway.

Here's the proposal:  a school yard style flag-football tournament.  Four teams, selected by 4 captains, selected from the Pro-Bowl participants.  Players play both sides of the ball, the games take between 15 and 30 minutes of real time, and the entire process, starting with picking teams until the champions are crowned takes the same amount of time as the game does now.

Why is this better?  Most importantly, the non-contact nature of the game means that players shouldn't have the same fear of injury that they do with a supposedly full-contact game.  Players understandably don't want to get hurt in a meaningless game.  Taking the contact out is the most you can do to reduce the injury risk without eliminating the game entirely.

The current game tries to put a legitimate veneer over what is not a legitimate NFL game.  By removing the pretense that the game is anything but grown men at recess, and the added danger that comes from full contact football, both the players and the viewers can appreciate the game for what it is.  No helmets means we can hear and see the players better, which will allow everybody to appreciate the lighthearted nature of the game.  Flag football would also lend itself to the big plays and the displays of athleticism that people want to see from an exhibition game.

I am not sure that the Pro-Bowl can be saved, but I think that there are some things that can be done to give it every chance to succeed.  I would like to see something similar to this implemented    It might actually make the game watchable again, if it ever was.