2024 American college football

You're right.
I fumbled that snap.
I should have said THE 100 instead of YOUR top 100.

Um....
OK.

We agree.
The top colleges with a focus on biogeochemistry may be somewhat 'underrepresented' in this year's college football rankings.

 

Wasn't salting the crops an early military application?

 

They salted the earth at Carthage, IIFC but I wasn't going to get into all of that.
Engineering
Biology
Physics
Electronics

War is hell - but it's also pretty dang good for higher education.
This is why the service academies actually educate their students AND compete fairly effectively in collegiate athletics - without very many red-shirt freshmen.
In fact, there's been a little bit of a back and forth about academy graduates being able to play professional sports despite their obligations by getting a 'free' one million dollar education jammed up their backsides one nickel at a time.
Sadly - my midshipmen will face a pretty talented 10-1 Army team next week that some wags would have put 'on the bubble' for a playoff slot.

Anyway.....that's an aside.

Right now there is wailing and gnashing of teeth over what REALLY MATTERS in college, at least over the holidays......

 

I'll have to catch the highlights reel tomorrow!

GO Rebs!!

 

Some of us read, but here on the "Left Coast" find ourselves at loose ends to put it mildly after the destruction of 100 years + PAC12.

Basically due to greed. Even a fair number of folks scattered across the globe were upset about how the Arizona teams, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford, Oregon and Washington, Colorado and Utah deserted the PAC.

Breaking up the West league. Well.
kris

 

Was it greed, mismanagement, or just plain old market forces?

Or maybe a little of each?

There is MONEY in college sports - and this is not a 'new thing!'
There ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

It's NOT "If you build it they will come."
It's "If you'll come they will build it!'
The 14 largest sports stadiums by ticket buyer capacity in the US are all college football parks, according to the Wikis and look at their build dates!
MOST of them were already built before FDR's New Deal programmes.

SEC fans might be surprised by the fact that none of the three largest stadiums in the nation are operated by their conference (Michigan, Penn, Ohio.)
I was not the least bit surprised since I grew up in Indiana.
Let's face it.
There's just not much to do in the frozen wastelands of America north of I-20 in the winter months EXCEPT watch sports on TV.
You have to go allllll the way down to #11 to find a west coast team (UCLA.)
That's still larger than ANY NFL park.

That's one metric.

TV revenue is another, and the former PAC-12 was only able to draw a fraction of the audience of the other conferences.
If we're talking about greed, tuition might be another - since college football is a 'college' thing, and college athletics is scholarship driven.

I lean away from money being the root cause.
There's money and a fan base out on the left Coast for sports.
Heck, they burn cars and break windows for three square blocks whenever one of their pro teams win a championship!!

In the southeast they just steal the goalposts.

 

Concur.

B.S. did prevail yesterday but my sleep schedule and the fact that I'm a cord cutter prevented me from watching.
Ahmy also prevailed against the Greens - naturally.
Maybe they should have taken the cadets out to the quarter before the game - or perhaps West Point discipline is....a thing.

Then again....it might be worth a few punishment tours to sneak out for a few hurricanes or at least a cafe au lait and some beignets!!

 

If I had fingernails, watching Oregon & Penn would have caused me to have chewed them off. As it was, I was getting strange flashes in my left eye during the last two minutes....amazing.

The flashes ended when the final whistle blew.
GO DUCKS!
kris