Well, the first games were only played last night.

Inca, what is it with ESPN and USC. They give up 36 points to a Hawaii team that had a losing record last year and are praised to the skies and featured on SportsCenter. Are they the Duke of college football?

I'm sure that Bruno is thrilled that OSU football is back to fill all of the waking hours of his townsmen.

If Cal somehow manage to lose to Davis on Saturday, I'm going to hear about it from my sister-in-law for the rest of my life.

USC's defense was atrocious last night. If Hawaii had a halfway decent defense, and had some breaks go their way, the game could have been close. USC's next games are against Virginia, Minnesota, and Wazzu. They'll probably go 4-0 and the media will start humping them as always, then they'll be exposed when they play Washington.

Yes they'll struggle in a conference loaded with solid QBs, I'd say they'll go 6-3 (that is struggling by Carroll-era standards...)

I think Cal is going to have a very solid season despite being totally out of the preseason radar, 9-3/6-3, with the Rose Bowl possibly coming down to the game vs Oregon on Nov 13. We could have a logjam of teams tied for 1st at 6-3 in the pac-10 this year, you'd have to go back to around 2002 to see this much parity in the conference.


Renart wrote:
Well, he was a professor at and then dean of the UT Law School for years, but you'd think his current position would compel him to sit on the UCLA side.

It would be interesting if Texas played Cal, since UT's current president is a UC Berkeley graduate.

Cal's previous chancellor was Robert Berdahl, whose previous position was the president at UT. One of the things he looked forward while coming to Berkeley was the proper emphasis (or should I say de-emphasis) on football. Interestingly enough, you could almost single-handedly credit him for the revival of football at Berkeley, his outside-the-box appointment of Steve Gladstone (who had been a legendary crew coach at Cal) started out the chain of events that led to Tedford being hired.

Yes they'll struggle in a conference loaded with solid QBs, I'd say they'll go 6-3 (that is struggling by Carroll-era standards...)

Actually, "Carroll-era standards" are now officially 0-12.

Hey-o!

The major theme in the Pac-9 this year is unpredictability. I saw a few different preseason polls, and none of them were consistent in any way at the top. Most predict Wazzu at the bottom, and UCLA near there as well. UCLA has a tough schedule this year: start off tomorrow with a game against Kansas State in Manhattan, then the first home game is against Stanford (can't remember the last time we had a conference game in only the second week of the schedule). Then it's high-scoring Houston at the Rose Bowl, then on the road to Texas. We can be 1-3 before our first "easy" game, against WSU at the Rose Bowl.

Right now Kevin Prince is still returning from an injury, so we might go into the first game with our backup. Our OL has been decimated by injuries and Mormon missions (really, I've gotten to the point where I don't want us to recruit any more Mormon players). We also have a new offense, the so-called "revolver" offense (like Nevada's pistol offense), which has the quarterback in the shotgun, and a running back behind him, and also using a F-back that can be used for blocking in the backfield, but also as a receiver.

Sorry about your Bruins Inca - my dad is from Manhattan and is a K-State alum so I was pulling for the Wildcats. KSU is pretty damned one-sided w/ #8 Thomas at tailback and that's about it.

Ugly game for both sides. Prince showed some talent and should get better as he gets healthier.

Even more incredible is 4 pages in and nary a word on the SEC. Great job, er' one !

And LSU scores 23 pernts (New Orleanian for points: Ersters for Oysters, Terlet for Toilet, Berled for Boiled...thus LSU scored 23 pernets while I was eatin berled ersters on the terlet) in 5 and a half minutes to deliver death to UNC in the Valley.

I'm also watching UNK - University of Nebraska-Kearney vs UNO - University of Nebraska Omaha, on adthe.net. Just because I can.

Geez - OU 31 - USU 24. Landry Jones very inconsistent, defense is not too impressive. Does not bode well for Soonerland. FSU is next week, then Air Force and Cincinnati before we start the final Big-12 season. 4-0 seems to be wishful thinking.

It's kind of weird, but the weather turned on a dime just as the real (ie, first saturday) season started; it was muggy 33C (almost 90F) yesterday night but this morning it was a crisp Fall-like 20C.

The first week has become more or less a preseason week, with most teams scheduling creampuffs. I was pulling for UCLA, UW and OSU but no luck there.

LSU lets UNC make it interesting, but two very good looks in the end zone at the end and they couldn't get a TD. No way LSU should have let the game get that close.

Tough game for UCLA. Our D looked ragged at the end from K State's unstopping running attack. Some stupid mistakes also hurt us--a few false starts, and most importantly, a goalline stop on defense on 4th down that was wiped out because of 12 men on the field, then K State scored their opening touchdown. Prince and our receivers also weren't in sync--dropped passes, passes thrown behind, etc. It was always going to be a tough game on the road with a QB that barely had one whole week of practices for the whole summer.

I just wish that we could schedule some easy games early on in the season. Something like going and playing against Ole Miss on the road.

Not having really paid attention to college football beyond Cal's results for more than a decade (and never having been a diehard), I find it remarkable that a win over Virginia Tech is being treated as assuring Boise State's entry to the Big Time.

And yes, I know the Hokies were ranked 3 going in, but still.

You mean the Hokies were #10, and Boise State is #3.

The Big Lead had a good point today: Boise State making the BCS championship game would be a good thing for trying to weaken the BCS and the power of the big conferences, but that would happen only because of another problem in the BCS and college football: the importance of preseason polls.

Like I said, I haven't been paying close attention . . .

Will Boise State's rise really change the system, though? Isn't it as least as likely that they will just start acting like the others and join a mega-conference?

Possibly. I could see a Boise State BCS championship playing out like this: the BCS says "see, small conference schools can be rewarded in the system," while a few voices the big conferences cry foul and demand a playoff, thinking that having the Boise States of the college football world play against the tougher teams at the end of the season would of course see them defeated and then everything would be right again.

ursus arctos wrote:
Like I said, I haven't been paying close attention . . .

Will Boise State's rise really change the system, though? Isn't it as least as likely that they will just start acting like the others and join a mega-conference?

I think the reason it is a big deal is that their first game was probably their most difficult of the season. Expectation prior was that if they won that, they were nailed on for a Bowl. Potentially a big enough bowl that they could piss off everyone in the BCS.

I see Inca thinks it is positive. I reckon it will be pretty destructive. All kinds of crazy things are going on this season. Like Notre Dame being unbeaten after their first game.

I sometimes wonder if I'm alone in not really caring whether we have a system to determine who the "national champion" is every year. For me, the enjoyment of college football comes from old rivalries, which is why the reshuffling of conferences always feels wrong. (I still think in terms of the Southwest Conference, and now we've even moved on from the Big 12.)

I enjoyed Texas beating USC in 2006 as much as anybody (other than USC and possibly OU and A&M fans), but I think I would have enjoyed it just as much if it had "only" been the Rose Bowl rather than the National Championship. If we must crown a number one, the best system I can think of (and which has been suggested by others, too) is something along the lines of the Champions League, where last year's conference and/or bowl winners play a knockout tournament that's integrated with the regular schedule, maybe by doing away with the "cupcake" games big schools always play.

I think destructive events are positive in the framework that we have now. I like Wetzel's plan.

Wetzel's plan seems like a good one.

I still can't believe the BCS hired Ari Fleischer to do their PR. Was "Baghdad Bob" unavailable?

Here's my one and only rant of the year:


I can't recall a college football season I've looked forward to less, despite this being my first one back in State College, which sort of revolves around it in the fall.

Even in the best of times with Penn State, I sort of dread the season because, thanks to having grown up with it almost literally in my backyard with Joepa as my neighbor and all of that, I care way, way, way too much about the results, even though I try hard not to. And for a team like Penn State, disappointment is almost assured. We're good enough that every few years we can win the Big Ten, but it's not likely that we're going to win a national title again soon. The quality of talent in California and the South and is just better than what we can get here. Since winning two titles in the 1980s and going undefeated-unrewarded in 1994, even a good season of one or two losses feels like a bit of a letdown. It's just sad and pathetic and sick, but there it is.

And that's in the good times. This is not a good time for Penn State football. This years team has some good young players, but this is going to be a bad year. Judging by what I saw against Youngstown State - yes Youngstown State - I think we could easily lose 60-0 against Alabama. We've got a true freshman at quarterback. He looks very good and I'm glad he's starting, but he'll struggle. Our O-line doesn't look good which is just maddening. It used to be a stalwart of this program and now we haven't had a good one in 15 fucking years. Our defense is supposed to be good, but they didn't look very impressive againt YSU. No turnovers. Just one or two sacks. Gave up two touchdowns including one ridiculous total meltdown in the first quarter.

Hopefully we can at least manage 6 wins this year so Joepa will have 400 for his career.

There's a lot of talk that this is, finally, Joe's last year. I've heard that each of the last 30 years, but it sounds a bit more credible now. He's been ill and didn't look good this summer, although he looks good now.

Our recruiting has been going poorly. Pitt is getting guys that we should be getting. Part of that is because we never seem to recruit well in years when we don't have a lot of slots to offer, but a lot of it is that Joe hasn't been able to make any in-person visits. This is why, I believe, it's time for him to hang it up. He already delegates most of the X's and O's stuff to assistants - which is fine - but if he can't do the recruiting, then he's leaving it to rival coaches to use his age against him.

There's just a whole lot of unrest about his status. His retirement/death has become the Sword of Damocles hanging over the entire university. Everyone knows it's coming fairly soon and we know it's going to be a tough transition, so we'd like to get on with it.

The consensus seems to be that he's earned the right to go out on his own terms, but everyone seems to really want him to decide to go out soon so we can move on as gracefully as possible. There's a growing sense that University President Graham Spanier - who have done more to expand and improve the university than any president since, I suppose, Eric Walker oversaw the massive postwar expansion in the 1960s - has the clout with the big donors to be the one to tell Joe it's time. Joe always says that when the President and AD tell him it's time to go, he will, but they tried to talk him into it a few years ago and he talked them out of it. We've won two BigTen championships since then, so I guess Joe was right then, but if he can't do the recruiting, then he's more of liability than an asset.

Of course, we need to be aware of the grass-is-greener pitfall. As Nebraska and Michigan have recently illustrated, getting rid of a coach because he can only get you to 9-3 can sometimes lead you to 3-9. I think we're very much in that situation. There are some definite flaws with the way this program operates - offensive line development, special teams, some of the recruiting things, some thuggish behavior by a few players over the past few years, but there's a lot more good than bad. Most importantly, it's still a very clean program in how it handles recruiting and academics. Their graduation rate blows away that of just about every other public D-IA team. I fear that once Joe is gone, we're just going to be another money-grubbing, out of control college football monstrosity. A lot of Penn State fans care about this legacy, but I'm afraid all to many don't and just want to win. We'll see. An advantage Joe has always had is that Pennsylvania has two very popular NFL teams, so historically, at least, the fans have understood that there is an appropriate distinction between what college football is supposed to be about versus pro football, but I'm afraid we don't have enough of those fans and so when things go into the toilet again, as they probably will at some point, there may be pressure to hire a Lane Kiffen type. If that happens, then PSU football doesn't stand for anything and becomes pointless.


The cost is a real problem now. After not raising prices much in the last 10 years, starting next year, the price of football tickets is going way, way, way up. Except they're not actually raising the face value of the ticket (already $55-65). In order to facilitate a tax dodge, they're requiring a massive donation to the Nittany Lion Club (which supports all of the sports). The cheapest tickets require $100 per seat per year plus the cost of tickets. Many people who have been paying no extra fee for good seats for $50 years are now being required to cough up $400 per seat per year or move to the $100 area or give up altogether. (This doesn't impact student tickets. They're actually going to expand those). So this, needless to say, has pissed a lot of people off and brought all kinds of charges of GREED and what not, even though for the most part, even with these added fees, the tickets for the more popular games are still below what the open market will bear. Such is the popularity of college football. Lots of old-timers say they're giving up their seats, but there will likely be people to take their place. But does that mean that the crowds become more and more like NFL crowds - rich people - and not the cross-section of Pennsylvanians that we've always had? This pricing-out is already happening with PSU's tuition. The state gives them very little money so tuition is ridiculously high for a supposedly state institution. Is it going to happen to football too? Where does it end and what does it mean to a land grant school that has historically been such a great pathway for so many working-class people?

The idea is that PSU wants its entire athletics program to be self-sufficient - which is a good idea - but only football and to a much lesser exent, men's basketball actually turn a profit and they want to support like 27 different sports (hopefully 29 with the addition of hockey soon). They want all of those sports to compete effectively in the BigTen. That does not come cheap because it requires not only scholarships but facilities so that they can outrecruit Pitt and Ohio State and what not. Yes, it's complete fucking madness, but it's one of those kinds of madness that has grown gradually over the past 100 years and now that the donors expect it, it's very hard for the administration to pull back.

If it were up to me, I'd say that Penn State should consider cutting sports programs that draw few fans, because if they aren't drawing fans, then they aren't really doing much for the university community or to generate the warm fuzzy feelings among alumni that lead to donations. They're just serving the kids on the team. I think hockey can be defended because that will draw a lot of interest, get on tv, and be something to do in the middle of winter other than watch the basketball team lose. But for example, Penn State's pool is antiquated by BigTen standards so they're going to build a new one soon. Does that make sense? I don't think so. Nobody except the actual swimmers gives a shit about swimming. So they're going to raise money from big hitters or worse, jacking football prices to raise the money, to build a pool so 50 kids from the Main Line and Upper St. Clair, etc can get scholarships to swim and maybe beat Michigan or Minnesota someday. Really? Is that worth it?

Tennis is another one like that, but they have a nice facility now, so I guess it stays even though it has no fan support. Why couldn't they have convinced whoever paid for that beautiful clubhouse to instead pay for scholarships so more disadvantaged kids can study there?

And, if it were up to me, Penn State would have dropped basketball years ago, but thanks to the BigTen and ESPN, that actually makes money, so I guess it has to stay. And a fair number of students and alums actually care about it for some reason.



So I was hoping that since Penn State is going to have what can be charitably described as a transition year that I could focus on my alma mater, William and Mary, which was preseason ranked #1 in some polls and #4 in the main poll with a definite chance to go back to the playoffs and, if it can upset Villanova, win the D1-AA title. That would be awesome. So what happens? They lose their first game to fucking UMass. So they're already behind the eight-ball.


I can't really be bothered with college football as a whole. If I didn't have a deeply ingrained rooting interest, I wouldn't care at all. Multiple friends asked me if I wanted VT or Boise State to win and I had to reply that I don't give a shit. At all. I'm just soooo over all of the hype and bullshit and endless fucking commercials during the broadcasts and endless pointless ignorant analysis. I'll probably watch less than 20 minutes of non-Penn State/ non-William and Mary football this year. I'm not even looking forward to the NFL this year. I know I'll watch it, because it's just such a comfortable habit, but my heart isn't in it.


Like I said on that other thread, I'm much more looking forward to attending the "lesser sports" at Penn State. They've got two men's soccer matches this weekend and I'm psyched. Looks like they've got a good team. Granted, it's college soccer which probably wouldn't even be as good as non-league soccer in England and Penn State is only ranked #10, but I don't care. It will be nice to see a game on a beautiful pitch and only pay a few dollars to get in and not really care if they win or lose too much. It's like eating a nice salad after days of nothing but cheeseburgers.