A Travesty of a Sham in College Football that Must Stop

72-0.  77-7.  56-0.  70-7.  76-0.  59-13.  54-6.   What’s this?  A secret code for getting into that new brothel down the street?  No.  It’s just SOME of yesterday’s college football scores.  The combined score for ranked teams against unranked teams yesterday was 273-13. Here we are in week 4 of NCAA football, and there are still super tiny schools getting mauled by gigantic football machine schools.  Why?  While watching the ESPN wrap-up yesterday, I noticed the talking head spout the usual reasoning that it’s a way for the little schools to make money for their football programs by traveling to the big school where the crowd will be huge and there is a big payday.

Interesting, but I don’t recall this carrying into week 4 of the schedule ever before.  So what is this?  An NCAA charity event masquerading as football for which fans have paid good money to see a ‘contest’??   Apparently.  Here at the Doormat Division, where we celebrate the worst teams in the NFL, you’d think maybe we’d appreciate these comical beatdowns every stinking fool week of the first third of the NCAA football schedule.

Well, we don’t.  All I want is for one of these Oliver Twists that gets invited to sit at the banquet table (but dont' ask for seconds) to come out and kick the crap out of one of these entitled over-fed over-trained and over-payed (except not the players themselves, gosh that would be unethical) ‘college’ teams. Yesterday UCONN almost pulled it off against Michigan, going down 24-21 in the 4^th quarter.  Holy cow, did I ever want them to win.  GRRR. 

So far, only Eastern Washington pulled it off-  an upset over 26-point favorite Oregon St., 49-26 two weeks ago.  It turns out Oregon St. is having trouble beating their mascot, but I’m still counting it.

We are, in fact, all about the underdog here, and I’m beginning to hate this trend.  It’s completely out of control and embarrassing.  It’s like having the Yankees play their single-A farm teams and having it count.   Maybe some high school teams can get in on the gravy train.  They could use some money for their programs.  I mean, why not?  Maybe I'll whip together a team and get a payday.

Let’s face it, the reason these lower funded second-tier football programs even HAVE to do this is due to the fact that lavish piles of money are now invested in the major school’s football programs.  Guess who the highest paid public employee is in nearly every state in the union- that’s right, a FOOTBALL COACH.  These football teams have go get trampled 2-3 times at the beginning of their seasons (I bet they have a term for this now in the locker room- the ‘money schedule’ or something) in order to afford a football program at their university that has even a ghost of a chance of enticing some athletic kids to put on a helmet and play some football for them.  IT’S NUTS.   The gulf between schools that play football has never been wider and the willingness to schedule teams that have no business playing each other has never been like this.  56-0 in week four?  Really??

If things are this absurd, and, guess what, they are, then why doesn’t the NCAA start a much bigger sharing of the pool of money?  Otherwise, it’s like watching the super-rich trample their future employees, which is a sort of sport in the USA these days, but perhaps it would be best not to have this on display on Saturday afternoons at an ‘innocent’ football game. It’s an almost disturbing display of the haves and have-nots.  Anything to stop these lambs-to-the-slaughter death marches masquerading as a sporting contest that purportedly are entertaining to attend would be welcome.  What must these hideous beat-downs do for the morale of the Nicholls States of the world early in their season?  It’s an embarrassment, is what it is.  And humiliating.

The only other possibility is that the NCAA is hoping someone will top the biggest beat-down in history, Georgia Tech 222,  Cumberland Gap 0, played in 1916.   Highest total this season- that I’ve seen- was 77-7.   I’d like to see one of these ‘patsies’ just start punting on first down, like Cumberland Gap wisely did (so nobody’d get hurt).  That would be an interesting commentary.

Here at the Doormat Division, we hope this travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of two travesties on top of a sham stops soon, and the NCAA comes up with a better way to share the money.  Until then,

C’mon,  CUMBERLAND GAP!!!!!

-wacko