'Tis the season. Kicking off by seeing Syracuse (with which I have some tangency) beat Miami Hurricanes. 'Canes are ranked 6 7 or 8, but this year Orangemen are not in anyones' top 25. So polls are not predictive for individual games, and my friends now shoveling snow in Syracuse are smiling while doing that.
Boston College is one of the schools performing well in football and academics. I'll get to that later
benched their qb a few games ago and he quit the team. he is in the portal now, and the back up is doing pretty well.
This past week, an 8 overtime game. And then today, a 99 yard run back of an interception for a touchdown followed immediately with one for 100 by the same team. OTOH, both teams star running backs out in the first half. Football is a brutal game.
Our 1-ranked heroes Oregon Ducks seem comfy against not in 25 ranked Washington, 49-14 with 4 minutes to go. Their playoff against Penn State ranked 4 will be Dec 8.
Colleges ought to be education first and sports second. According to me. One way to rank college football performance is Bowl appearances conveniently summarized by https://www.winsipedia.com/ranking/bowl-games One way to rank college academics is summarized by https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/best-universities-united-states I combined those and learned from it. The college with most bowl appearances (77), Alabama, is not among top 100 US colleges in academic ranking. Nor are Oklahoma, LSU, Clemson, Auburn, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Texas Tech, BYU and West Virginia. All of which have had 40 or more bowl appearances. Not saying that they are poor academic propositions, but they do appear to favor football. One can certainly get educated at any of them, but there are also alternatives. Also with 40 or more bowl appearances are 15 other colleges that are in top 100 academic ranking. Happy to name those if anyone finds this post too short. If one goes to college hoping for an NFL future, top-100 academic ranking would not be a deciding factor. Other students might seek academic excellence AND ALSO seek a strong football team to cheer for. That combination is available many places. At more places than I presumed before this analysis, I freely admit. Fully half of colleges with top-100 bowl appearance records are also top-100 in academic ranking. Gosh the system often works! This combo is best at a few colleges and I would not conceal those. But ya gotta ask for it == This year’s current top football-ranked is the University of Oregon. Even if they lose to Penn State next week, they will get into a consolation bowl. They have 37 previous bowl appearances and their academic rank is 84.
Evidently....there are people who think that there is 'education' in sports. In my own extended family there's at least one doctor who got a 'full ride' based on a soccer scholarship. I'm not not even all that ashamed to admit it in public. I don't mind minor tweaks but BEWARE!!! There's a baby in that tub of water!! For every Shedeur Sanders and Livvy Dunne there are 10,000 college athletes that REALLY ARE cashing in - meaning that they are the first in their family to hang a sheep skin on their "I love me" wall..... ....or is THAT REALLY what the academicians are afraid of??? Think about it in light of the 'legacy' admissions... Football needs to rein in the lightning somewhat on NIL and the dreaded portal, but I see this as a 'flattening out' of the brighter lit portions of college athletics that will ultimately result in more and more NEW 'top ten' schools tapping into the money flow. After all..... Sports is a fairly good measure of merit. As much as people like me fuss about strength of schedule and playoff bias? A dubbaya is still a dubbaya. The conferences DO need to institute a zero-tolerance policy on....um.....'unsportsmanship conduct' BOTH on and off the field - but this is a minor tweak.
I had deleted my post earlier but since the discussion has drifted where I was going - I'm going to repost my thoughts. Speaking only for myself - College Football has "Jumped the Shark" for me. NIL Payments - players jumping ship each year for another ship - no thank you. I think some coaches (Coach Nick Saban from Alabama) feel the same way. Earlier in the year our State College Coach (Kentucky) told the fans if they wanted a competitive Team we need to "pay up". Taking a hard pass on College Football. Used to be a big fan - not any more. Again speaking only for myself here and only posted again because I felt the conversation drifting this way.
WHAAA?! You mean the small market teams in the NFL are at a disadvantage against the larger market teams?!?!?! SAY IT ISN'T SO!!!! So what's the difference between college football and the NFL - other than 'some folks' NOT in one of the service academies having to maintain the fiction of carrying a 'full college load' while devoting 100 hours a week to the NFL farm system??? I actually LOVE the portal system, and NIL has been a 'thing' for a while now. As I said before, it's going to flatten out the talent pool so that LSU's second string players can become Mizzou's new star player. It's already happening, if you care to look at this last season's upsets. Nick Saban used to be the highest paid government employee in the US - because Bama is a PUBLIC school! He also used to have a deeeeep bench because of the talent pooling caused by big name teams. You see the same thing with round ball up North. NOW there is a FOR-REAL college playoff generating a tidal wave of money that the actual players can tap into (openly now instead of the way it was) without having to marry a coach for a year or two at a time. MORE players will be getting more snaps, and coaches will have to COACH. Not saying this was the reason Coach Nick hung up the cleats. He might have wanted to retire at 73 while he was at the top of his career instead of Bidening out - or maybe the AFLAC money is enough to keep him eating and sleeping indoors. If colleges start maintaining scholastic and behavior norms then maybe it will also improve the NFL, although I do not hold out any hope for that - and if you want to go back to the 1950's then you can always start following the Austin Peay Governors......
"is THAT REALLY what the academicians are afraid of?" If you tell me what you imagine academicians are afraid of, I may be able to speak for them as a group in response.
I posed it as a question because I cannot otherwise fathom a world where colleges would be so vocally opposed to collegiate athletics and the cash that they pour into colleges - even the 'deplorable ones' - especially in 2024. None of this is new. While I was watching the (unranked) Oakies kick the stuffing out of the Pachyderms of Alabama I was thinking - dang! that's a big old stadium!!! As it turns out - I was right on both counts. Gaylord Family (Oklahoma Memorial) Stadium dates back to the roaring 20s. It's the largest sports venue in the state. It's the 15th largest college stadium in the US - and they sell....every seat - every year (even in today's economy!) ....OU has sold out every regular season home game since the start of the 1999 season. SO.... They only rank number nine in the SEC for seating capacity. That means what it means. NIL and the portal isn't ruining college football, it's SAVING it.
"I cannot otherwise fathom a world where colleges would be so vocally opposed to collegiate athletics and the cash that they pour into colleges ..." . If colleges are vocally opposed to collegiate athletics and the cash, I am unaware and could learn. Half of top 50 ranked both ways do both academics and football. I only leaned that by looking. Other half seem to choose on or the other. Their decisions. A few colleges are in top half in both rankings, which seems impressive. I will surely get to that if any get through the pre-bowls and do well later. Spoiler, Univ Oregon is not among them. The Ducks are simply having a year worthy of note. == College OUGHT to be hard, academically and to the extent that athletics are involved. Forging the steel and what not. Not here I'd muse about countries where college is EASY
I think one of them is to discuss the current year and was probably lofted without regard to the Groundhog Day nature of college football postseason banter. It's like Taco Bell. Same stuff in every bag with some of the ingredients mixed differently.
Football is fairly close to a meritocracy - and even THEN there are BITTER debates about their rankings, and it would seems that even THEN you get lots of upsets - so I beg your leave to excuse me if I'm unimpressed by academic rankings. At least with sports there is the fiction of an unbiased air gap between the teams and the folks with the yardsticks. I may not 'like' the fact that the Ducks waddled through the 2024 season without a loss and question the path taken(**) BUT there is absolutely NO question about their place in the rankings. My own beloved home state of Indiana will be represented by a one-loss team but I would not put money down that they could beat some of the also-rans. (**actually I kinda LIKE it and wish them well, but let's not tell anyone - eh?)
"I beg your leave to excuse me if I'm unimpressed by academic rankings." Times Higher Ed ranks as they do and not necessarily transparently. I don't think this is simple. Colleges may aim either at teaching or research, or something in between. There are some setting aside sports. There are others where academics are or seem secondary. Sports in contrast are simpler to account; three cheers for that!
