Bad Times For College Football Fans

On a personal level, this college football season opened with as much hope and as great an expectation of success and great competition as any in recent memory. I bleed Old Gold and Blue, the colors of West Virginia University. I do so more as a matter of upbringing, though, because I didn't attend WVU. And I don't live in West Virginia anymore. Still, the Mountaineers are my team and I support them through thick and thin.

Maybe my current distaste for the game of college football was a latent one that I ignored so that I could root for my team to obtain a BCS bid. Indeed, at half time of the WVU/Boston College game, I wondered why I stood by the assertion that I make year after year that the college game is better than the professional one.

And now, as I watch ESPNews' coverage of the first firing in the history of Notre Dame football, my bitterness toward the current state of college football leaves an actual taste in my mouth, and that taste is not a good one. Let's consider, on the whole, what has gone wrong with the game of college football.

1. National champions ruin the game overall.

Sometime in the last 10 or maybe 15 years, it became important to someone that a crowned national champion be determined on the field. It's not exactly clear why this became an issue of import, at least not to me. I'm intractable on this, I should just point out. I have no desire to see a college football playoff. None. It's never been that important to me who the national champion was.

I suppose it has something to do with the fact that my team has, only once in my lifetime -- actually, only once in the life of my grandfather who's been gone now for 10 years -- been in a legitimate competition for a national title. I spent most of my college football days thinking most of the teams designated national champions by the Associated Press and the United Press International or ESPN/USA Today were overrated anyway.

To me, the game of college football is one of intraregional competition. Sure, the occasional non-conference game might take an Eastern independent all the way to Norman, okay, or the best team on the West Coast to the Bayou, but most of those types of matchups are best-suited for the bowl season. Win on your block. Doesn't matter what's going on in the next block down. That's my take. It is not negotiable.

2. Win or be fired attitude ruins the game overall.

In the last seven years or so, coaches are no longer permitted to build their programs. See Frank Solich in '03: fired from his post at the University of Nebraska after a 9-3 season. Sure, Nebraska didn't appear to be as dominant as in the past. But, he wasn't given an opportunity to turn around a dip in recruiting. He wasn't given the chance to come off a successful season and turn that into greater success. Instead, the win or die attitude cost him his job, and Nebraska is sitting out this postseason for the first time in 37 years. Foolishness.

Ron Zook showed some incredible ability to recruit, but struggled with the in-game situations from time to time, and lost some games that they shouldn't have. Still, he won eight games a season in his three years, and was dismissed midway through this year. He changed his offensive coordinator each year. He tried to do the right things. To no avail. The boosters at the University of Florida saw enough after the remarkable and embarrassing loss to Mississippi State. It's not enough just to win. It apparently matters how you win and over whom.

And, just to make Florida look the worse for the dismissal, Zook accomplished a feat that "Ol' Ball Coach" Steve Spurrier never did: he went to Florida State and won.

And, as I write this, Notre Dame, who has never fired a coach mid-contract, announced that they have fired Tyrone Willingham. Sure, Willingham wasn't winning at the clip that the Irish would have liked, but he wasn't Gerry Faust, either.

I can't help but hate the mentality pervading the game. This is college football. It's about men developing programs and players. It's about winning the big games, and it's about doing well while also recruiting and essentially raising boys and turning them into men who will do the most with their college experience that they can. But, somewhere along the way, the soul of the game, the student-athlete and his stability, has been sacrificed for the won-lost record.

3. Billions of dollars, television contracts, and ESPN ruin the game overall.

Maybe this sounds dumb, but, in my opinion, there is just too much money involved in a game that is supposed to be an amateur venture. Colleges have joined with one another in conferences, mega-conferences in some cases, and signed contracts with bowl game commissions and television networks to guarantee floods of cash to wash through their athletic departments.

With the infusion of cash, comes the desire for more and more cash, obtained only by winning more and more often, which requires that the "student" part of the student-athlete gets short-shrift. The "athlete" gets more importance than the student, in as much as universities recruit kids that don't fit the academic standard of the university with the intent of bringing wins, which ultimately brings in more money.

And from whence comes that money? Television contracts with ESPN, ABC, and in one solitary case, NBC. Reduce the value of those television contracts, reduce the value of winning big, remove the incentive to sacrifice standards and return to the game a semblance of its former self.

I hear you asking the question: Was the game better twenty years ago than it is now? Was it any cleaner? Was it any less bothered by the vagaries of money and ego and individual ambition? No. Probably not.

It was a little over 20 years ago that the conferences and individual universities won the right to sign their own contracts, bypassing the governance and fiscal intervention of the National College Athletics Association, or NCAA. But, 20 years ago, we didn't have 28 flipping bowl games. Going to a bowl game meant that your team was one of the top 30 programs in the nation that season.

Sure, historical reputation won some teams a pass (a 6-5 Notre Dame would get a better bowl bid than, for instance, an 8-3 WVU) and ability to fill seats weighed even more heavily (a 7-4 WVU was a better draw than a 9-2 Miami, unless the game was being played in the state of Florida, and even then, it's a close call) than it does today. But, at least that made sense. At least we didn't have to suffer miserable bowl matchups like New Mexico/Navy (this year's Emerald Bowl, whatever that is.)

Who televises all these bowls? In the not too distant past, it was split up between ESPN, Turner, USA Network, the broadcast networks, and a couple bowls that didn't even warrant a national audience. Now? Just to show that they can and will go the extra mile to ruin anything they touch, ESPN televises every bowl game that is played prior to December 31. In fact, of the 28 bowl games, a total of three are put on by networks outside of the Disney family of channels. In a system devoid of any soul, of anything remotely considering the protection of its product, the ownership of the broadcast rights to the entire college bowl system by Disney might be considered monopolistic.

But with the economic and political situations what they are throughout the game, I have to admit I'm strongly considering a boycott on what I generally consider my favorite time of year.

Oh, and as I wrap this up, I read that four-year BYU coach Gary Crowton is likely to be fired and that the AP sports writers saw fit to declare Colorado's head coach, Gary Barnett, the Big 12 Coach of the Year. Nevermind that he made his own bed by running a program without appropriate controls. Nevermind that he had staff that condoned the use of sex and alcohol in recruiting. Nevermind that the offseason problems his team had to overcome were his own making. What a farce.

This sport is quickly -- or I'm just opening my eyes -- becoming a complete sham.