DDT

Below are some older posts:

Savannah State died for West Virginia’s sins

We knew it would be ugly. A wheelchair bullfighter without a cape might have had a better chance. Florida State was favored by 70 over Savannah State who filled a hole in the Seminoles schedule when West Virginia moved to the Big 12 and canceled their game with the ‘Noles.

Florida State scored four touchdowns on its first 13 plays and was up by 48 at the half. Coach Jimbo Fisher mercifully pulled his starters after the first quarter, then, after a weather delay in the third quarter, the game was called with the score standing at FlaState 55, SavState 0. Punters who didn’t have a chance to beat the spread were allegedly given their money back.

SavState gets the coming weekend off, then starts conference play at NCCentral in two weeks. Will getting blown out by a total score of 139-0 by DivOne powers in two games strengthen them or are they emasculated? Time will tell.


Injuries becoming chronic
It seems like in every college game, now, that there is at least one, sometimes more than one, play where a player goes down with a severe head or neck injury and has to be backboarded and removed from the field on a stretcher. Scary. We saw two such incidents in the Arkansas/ULM game. A Tulane player broke his neck in the Tulsa game.

When that happens, the game ends for a lot of people, especially for teammates of the injured player. How can you regenerate your enthusiasm for a game when you imagine that the next time you see a teammate who was just carried off the field that he may be in a wheelchair.

DDT has, in the past, advocated caps: Budget caps for programs, salary caps for coaches, weight caps for players. The human frame is not geared to transport 300-pounds-plus at a high rate of speed and collide with another, sometimes much smaller, frame.

Some injuries are inevitable but game has become more dangerous and more and more evidence of long-term complications is coming out.

Players should be smaller. Equipment must be better. Rules must be changed. It’s only football. It’s not worth dying for or becoming a paraplegic.


Big bucks in the Big 12
The Big 12 Conference just cut a football/basketball deal that grants broadcast rights to ESPN, Fox and ABC over the next 13 years and will pay member schools upwards of $20 mil per annum per school.

“The stability of the Big 12 Conference is cemented,” Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in a press release. “We are positioned with one of the best media rights arrangements in collegiate sports, providing the Conference and its members unprecedented revenue growth, and sports programming ... ”

As the arms race continues, the Big 12 is on a par with all the other majors in terms of TV revenue. The SEC may or may not come up with a better deal for member schools over the next decade but for the time being Texas A&M and Missouri might have been just as well served by staying put in the Big 12—that is, if money is the only consideration. Forget about rivalry and tradition.

Conference hippety-hop for dough
Most ridiculous conference hops in the last year were Boise State and San Diego State to the “Big” East (“Big” in quotation marks suggesting that there’s very little that’s big in the conference when it comes to football.). Two of the most westernmost schools in the country, SDState and Boise, will now fly east several times a year to play tackle football. Lot of travel expense.

In 2013, the Big East will gain mid-majors Boise State, Houston, Memphis, San Diego State, SMU, Navy and UCF. Current members Cincinnati, Louisville, Rutgers, UConn, USF and Temple will stay in the conference. Pitt and Syracuse will leave for the ACC.

With all those mids joining up and with only one Big East squad in the current Top 25 (Louisville), that sort of makes the conference a mid-major. And with six members in big cities, others located from Florida to Connecticut, from West Coast to East Coast and points in between, the conference needs a new name. 

How about just the American Conference.