DDT

Dark clouds hang over storied programs
at Miami, North Carolina, Ohio State and
Oregon as the season begins.
Will we see another death penalty?
Some say, "Yes !"

Pigskin Ramadan
Now begins the sacred season in which thousands upon thousands of hopeful pilgrims will return to the campuses of their graduation, not to mention the scenes of youthful bacchanalias, whilst millions of others will prostrate themselves in front of a flickering tube at least five times a day to check scores and highlights and watch hormonally induced young men scrum in one of America’s most highly rated forms of entertainment—college football. In the latter case, the supplicants won’t bow head down before their electronic altar, they’ll stretch out feet first in a recliner and sup the communion of beer and brats as they observe the annual fall festivals.

But the 2011 college football season begins with more dark clouds hanging over it than, possibly, at any other time in the history of the game: investigations, the possibility of another death penalty, player delinquency and arrests, member unrest stirred by a new independent network which, in the latter case, has led to more talk of conference realignments.

The Big 12 is under fire again with talk about Texas A&M jumping to the SEC. DDT, first against the move, has changed positions. If the Ags are naïve enough to think they’ll accomplish anything by heading east, let them—but with the caveat that the Texas rivalry is canceled.

Go east, you farmers and cadets, go east. Let the state of Texas be your Egypt. Flee and wander the swamps of the southeast in search of your promised land, but like Moses and the children of Israel get ready for a long and tortured trek.

Texas’ new network has caused no end of controversy.* Does Texas need a network? DDT is in favor of a Big 12 Conference network to keep the playing field level and to keep everybody together. Add SMU, Houston and maybe Tulane to round out the league. Rumor mongers have the conference talking to BYU, Louisville and even Notre Dame about joining. The latter three make good slow-news-day stories but have little chance of becoming reality. The former three would work, especially by including a resurgent SMU that has JerryWorld and the Cotton Bowl to play in.

Independent networks are another consequence  of 

Texas, the new anti-Christ,
 striking fear into the hearts of
Corn Fairies in Nebraska
and Aggies in Texas.

the arms race in collegiate athletics that is leading to a form of natural selection—in this case unnatural selection—which allows the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer. The lesser endowed major programs in DivOne, evidently Texas A&M feels like they’re one of them, and the mid majors seem to think they’re falling behind.

And where is the NCAA in all this? Nowhere!

The current generation of chancellors, regents, university presidents and athletic directors are determined to put their stamp on the game, one that will be remembered like the mark of Cain.

Ridiculous shifts in conferences memberships (TCU to the Big East), the failure to police members who can’t police their own programs (Ohio State, North Carolina, Miami, Oregon, USC), and the failure to work out an arrangement with the NFL to prevent agents from corrupting players have revealed the NCAA to be an administrative machine whose wheels have come off. The game that tied generations together is no longer about tradition. It’s about money.

DDT sez CAP IT! Budget caps on programs, salary caps on coaches. Put a ceiling on spending so that nobody can go beyond a certain point in spending. After that, if the other programs can’t keep up, let them join DivTwo—which, as DDT has postulated many times, would be a good alternative for any number of mid majors and maybe even the military academies.

College football is a game soiled by greed and mismanagement but is still a game we follow on the field, so now that the off-season and preseason antics are behind us, let’s fire up the grill, barbecue some burgers and brats, slug down a few cervez’, get ready to tee ‘er up and dream the dreams of autumn days when the game connected us to our fathers and grandfathers, days when tradition counted for something.