Make sure you read all the college football previews from this week:
Big Ten / Pac Ten
Big Twelve
ACC
Big East / Mountain West
SEC
NFL previews coming soon.
Plus, I'm sure Josh will say something about the Rutgers opening game as soon as he cleans himself up.
And maybe I'll get around to writing about watching the Cubs in a playoff race.
The Sherman Ave. Block Party - feel the excitement!
Showing posts with label College Football. Show all posts
Showing posts with label College Football. Show all posts
Friday, August 31, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Big East Preview and a brief preview of something called the mountain west
I have been assigned the Big East Conference Preview. The Big East is difficult for me because of my Rutgers bias but I will do my best.
The BIG EAST is special because of its star power. There are 4 legit Heisman candidates and one in waiting. It is probably the most wide open of the BCS but don't mistake that uncertainty for weakness. The BIG EAST boasts three of the top 15 teams in the nation and any of them could be vying for the national title with the right breaks along the way. Don't let the anti-east bias fool you, the BIG EAST has consistently beaten top BCS teams during the season and has a superb bowl record since the exodus of Miami, BC and Va Tech. Commissioner Tranghese and the member ADs should be commended for their deft selections of USF, Cincy, and Louisville. The influx of these schools coupled with the awakening of the sleeping giant known as Rutgers has served to transform an afterthought into a formidable league deserving of its BCS automatic bid.
On to the teams:
The inconsequential
Syracuse - Greg Robinson is on the hot seat at the helm of maybe the worst Syracuse era of my lifetime. The Orange have lost their recruiting base in NJ and seen Orange targets Ray Rice, Courtney Greene and Brian Leonard transform Rutgers into a force to be reckoned with. Robinson will depend on the qb Andrew Robinson to develop quickly otherwise Daryl Gross may not be very patient and change course
UConn - Nothing in sports makes me happier than seeing the Mets lose. Second on that list is seeing the Huskies lose. I can't stand UConn, I hate their campus, I hate their school, I even hate their entire state. Randy Edsall deserves a lot of credit for delivering UConn into 1A football and taking them to a bowl with the likes of Dan Orlofsky. Unfortunately for him, he has not been able to sustain that success and faces The Huskies have a chance to emerge from the doldrums of last season on the back of Donald Brown, a big bruising back from NJ who torched Rutgers and Pittsburgh. UConn has also pinned its hopes to JUCO All American QB Tyler Lorenzen, and to save you a few minutes on Google he is no relation to the hefty lefty and future starter for the NY Giants Jared Lorenzen. UConn has a chance to get rolling opening up with Duke Maine and Temple.
Trap Games
Pittsburgh - Pitt is a tough read. They lose their top offensive player in Tyler Palko and top defensive player in HB Blades as well as top special teams player Darrelle Revis. They also lost their top returning wide receiver Derek Kinder to an injury in camp. These losses will thrust Lesean McCoy a true frosh and former Miami commit at RB into the spotlight. The best receiver they return is Teaneck's own Odderrick Turner, son of former Giant Odessa Turner. Wannestadt has done an excellent job recruiting and will return Pitt to prominence but they are most likely a year away.
Cinncinnati - Rutgers learned last year that Cincy is no push over. With an easy out of conference schedule, a new QB transferred in from Wake and an All Big East Defensive Tackle Terrill Byrd, a mediocre season which can be used by Brian Kelly to jump to the Big Ten is not out of the realm of possibilities. Note that they have both Louisville and WVU at home.
The Comer
South Florida - Don't hold the school's apparent inability to read a map (USF is in Tampa, nowhere near the south of florida) against them. They are for real. Jim Leavitt has built a rock solid program from the ground up and in ten years has his team positioned to enter the top 25 and stay. He boasts a future Heisman candidate at Quarterback Matt Grothe and the best secondary in maybe the nation lead by Trae Williams. This is a team that in the past two years beat Louisville and West Virginia and last year came within a 2 pt conversion of sending the Rutgers game into overtime. This team may suffer from being on everyone's sleeper list, but if they are able to make good on their promise the BIG EAST is solidified as a true power conference. They will be tested early on as they travel to Auburn in week 2.
BCS Worthy
West Virginia - Top 5 Talent and a Top 5 coach. Rich Rodriguez is one of the top coaches in the land and is finally receiving his due after his flirtation with the Crimson Tide. WVU boasts two legitimate Heisman candidates in RB Steve Slaton and QB Pat White. The Mountaineers are buoyed by their spread offense and immense speed. They can run and score with anyone inthe country and have high powered Noel Devine entering the backfield. They lost All American Center Dan Mozes to graduation and the key will be how easily he is replaced and the line is fortified. The key will be how strong the defense is and can they weather a rematch of last years triple overtime game vs. Rutgers in Piscataway.
Louisville - The Ville boast a Heisman caliber quarterback and an arsenal of weapons on both sides of the ball including two huge and talented receivers in Harry Douglas and Marco Urrutia which helped the Ville to a top 5 ranking nationally in several team offensive categories. Bobby Petrino did anything but leave the cupboard bare for Steve Kragthorpe who showed his recruiting skills by getting Matt Simms to keep his commitment and convincing Brian Brohm to stay for one more year. They should coast through an easy first 9 games before going on the road to play WVU and USF then a final matchup at home with Rutgers. .
Rutgers - the Cinderella story, the darlings of the nation, all the sudden NY media's favorite team to cover. This past weekend 3 separate NY stations ran Rutgers preview shows. Rutgers has recently signed a deal with MSG for a plethora of cross promotional activities, a clear sign of how far The State Univ of NJ has come. Now they have to back it up between the lines. Don't be suckered into the theory that last year was a fluke. Schiano has been building to this point for several years. Last year was their second straight bowl appearance and they are in line for a third and a possible BCS bowl bid. last year they were a poor officiating call or an end zone drop or a 53 yd FG away from the BCS and a matchup in Tampa. Were they disappointed? yes but the the squad showed deft maturity in easily dispatching Kansas State in the inaugural Texas Bowl. This year's team returns several all american candidates including DT Eric Foster, K Jeremy Ito, S Courtney Greene (potentially the highest draft pick on the team), 2 NFL Tackles in Jeremy Zuttah and Pedro Sosa and a heisman candidate running back Ray Rice. The maturation of Mike Teel at the end of 2006 is a harbinger of the potential success of the offense this year. Teel will be equipped with significant weapons at the receiver spot to keep defenses honest. Look for a breakout year from Kenny Britt a 6'4" receiver who made noise first vs. Louisville and has shown a penchant for making big catches. He is complemented by 5'9" Tim Brown with blazing 4.3 speed who provides a deep threat just ask WVU and K State. The question marks on this team are Middle Linebacker, Tight End and Secondary depth. Rutgers graduated 2/3 of its linebacking corps. It relies on a defense that is predicated on reads and swarming reaction lead by the Mike linebacker. Rutgers thought it had its man in Ryan D'Imperio but a broken leg will sideline him for at least the first few weeks. With the graduation of its top two TEs, a school who has graduated several to the NFL is now without an experienced TE. It shouldn't effect the passing game but may stifle the run game especially when teams load up in the box to stop Rice. Expect this team to get on a roll but don't overlook games against Maryland and South Florida early in the season. The Maryland game will be a good barometer for the season ahead.
Mountain West - If anyone can post all the teams in the Mountain West I will do a preview. Must do so w/o cheating and looking it up. Briefly, the Air Force and BYU are down this year as BYU graduated its QB and is waiting for the offspring of Jim McMahon, Steve Young or any of the Detmers to be of college age and the Air Force is still adjusting to the post Fisher DeBarry era. On a side note, I wonder if it is harder for the academies to recruit while the war is going on. Everything I have read says take the Horned Frogs of TCU. So I will do that, plus they are the Horned Frogs.
On a final note Andy Pettitte is a straight up MENSCH, I hope he gets the recognition he deserves. Not sure if the Yanks make the postseason but Brian Cashman deserves a tremendous amount of credit. Here is a guy whose job is clearly on the line and he has still endeavored to take the best long term approach for his team rather than gambling everything on this year. He can run my team anytime.
If you haven't, go see the new Bourne movie, its the best of the action sequels of the summer and may be the best movie I've seen this summer.
A quick Mike Vick note
Here is the thing with Vick. I did not buy his apology at all. My major qualm was his use of the word immature. He did not condemn his acts as vile, despicable, grotesque but claimed they were immature. The use of the word immature leads you to believe that its just a phase he will grow out of. I would have liked to see him apologize to all of the animals he destroyed and maimed and all of the ones who will be euthanized due to his behavior. While both crimes, I think the comparisons to Leonard Little are clearly off base. What Leonard Little did was clearly more morally reprehensible, however, it was not a carefully crafted plan executed to perfection. Little made a mistake, paid his debt to society and the NFL. Vick planned to establish a dog fighting kennel, established a dog fighting kennel and performed horrific acts upon the dogs for years, not one night. Maybe Little should have or should still receive a harsher punishment than he has, but that does not mean Vick should be treated with more leniency.
The BIG EAST is special because of its star power. There are 4 legit Heisman candidates and one in waiting. It is probably the most wide open of the BCS but don't mistake that uncertainty for weakness. The BIG EAST boasts three of the top 15 teams in the nation and any of them could be vying for the national title with the right breaks along the way. Don't let the anti-east bias fool you, the BIG EAST has consistently beaten top BCS teams during the season and has a superb bowl record since the exodus of Miami, BC and Va Tech. Commissioner Tranghese and the member ADs should be commended for their deft selections of USF, Cincy, and Louisville. The influx of these schools coupled with the awakening of the sleeping giant known as Rutgers has served to transform an afterthought into a formidable league deserving of its BCS automatic bid.
On to the teams:
The inconsequential
Syracuse - Greg Robinson is on the hot seat at the helm of maybe the worst Syracuse era of my lifetime. The Orange have lost their recruiting base in NJ and seen Orange targets Ray Rice, Courtney Greene and Brian Leonard transform Rutgers into a force to be reckoned with. Robinson will depend on the qb Andrew Robinson to develop quickly otherwise Daryl Gross may not be very patient and change course
UConn - Nothing in sports makes me happier than seeing the Mets lose. Second on that list is seeing the Huskies lose. I can't stand UConn, I hate their campus, I hate their school, I even hate their entire state. Randy Edsall deserves a lot of credit for delivering UConn into 1A football and taking them to a bowl with the likes of Dan Orlofsky. Unfortunately for him, he has not been able to sustain that success and faces The Huskies have a chance to emerge from the doldrums of last season on the back of Donald Brown, a big bruising back from NJ who torched Rutgers and Pittsburgh. UConn has also pinned its hopes to JUCO All American QB Tyler Lorenzen, and to save you a few minutes on Google he is no relation to the hefty lefty and future starter for the NY Giants Jared Lorenzen. UConn has a chance to get rolling opening up with Duke Maine and Temple.
Trap Games
Pittsburgh - Pitt is a tough read. They lose their top offensive player in Tyler Palko and top defensive player in HB Blades as well as top special teams player Darrelle Revis. They also lost their top returning wide receiver Derek Kinder to an injury in camp. These losses will thrust Lesean McCoy a true frosh and former Miami commit at RB into the spotlight. The best receiver they return is Teaneck's own Odderrick Turner, son of former Giant Odessa Turner. Wannestadt has done an excellent job recruiting and will return Pitt to prominence but they are most likely a year away.
Cinncinnati - Rutgers learned last year that Cincy is no push over. With an easy out of conference schedule, a new QB transferred in from Wake and an All Big East Defensive Tackle Terrill Byrd, a mediocre season which can be used by Brian Kelly to jump to the Big Ten is not out of the realm of possibilities. Note that they have both Louisville and WVU at home.
The Comer
South Florida - Don't hold the school's apparent inability to read a map (USF is in Tampa, nowhere near the south of florida) against them. They are for real. Jim Leavitt has built a rock solid program from the ground up and in ten years has his team positioned to enter the top 25 and stay. He boasts a future Heisman candidate at Quarterback Matt Grothe and the best secondary in maybe the nation lead by Trae Williams. This is a team that in the past two years beat Louisville and West Virginia and last year came within a 2 pt conversion of sending the Rutgers game into overtime. This team may suffer from being on everyone's sleeper list, but if they are able to make good on their promise the BIG EAST is solidified as a true power conference. They will be tested early on as they travel to Auburn in week 2.
BCS Worthy
West Virginia - Top 5 Talent and a Top 5 coach. Rich Rodriguez is one of the top coaches in the land and is finally receiving his due after his flirtation with the Crimson Tide. WVU boasts two legitimate Heisman candidates in RB Steve Slaton and QB Pat White. The Mountaineers are buoyed by their spread offense and immense speed. They can run and score with anyone inthe country and have high powered Noel Devine entering the backfield. They lost All American Center Dan Mozes to graduation and the key will be how easily he is replaced and the line is fortified. The key will be how strong the defense is and can they weather a rematch of last years triple overtime game vs. Rutgers in Piscataway.
Louisville - The Ville boast a Heisman caliber quarterback and an arsenal of weapons on both sides of the ball including two huge and talented receivers in Harry Douglas and Marco Urrutia which helped the Ville to a top 5 ranking nationally in several team offensive categories. Bobby Petrino did anything but leave the cupboard bare for Steve Kragthorpe who showed his recruiting skills by getting Matt Simms to keep his commitment and convincing Brian Brohm to stay for one more year. They should coast through an easy first 9 games before going on the road to play WVU and USF then a final matchup at home with Rutgers. .
Rutgers - the Cinderella story, the darlings of the nation, all the sudden NY media's favorite team to cover. This past weekend 3 separate NY stations ran Rutgers preview shows. Rutgers has recently signed a deal with MSG for a plethora of cross promotional activities, a clear sign of how far The State Univ of NJ has come. Now they have to back it up between the lines. Don't be suckered into the theory that last year was a fluke. Schiano has been building to this point for several years. Last year was their second straight bowl appearance and they are in line for a third and a possible BCS bowl bid. last year they were a poor officiating call or an end zone drop or a 53 yd FG away from the BCS and a matchup in Tampa. Were they disappointed? yes but the the squad showed deft maturity in easily dispatching Kansas State in the inaugural Texas Bowl. This year's team returns several all american candidates including DT Eric Foster, K Jeremy Ito, S Courtney Greene (potentially the highest draft pick on the team), 2 NFL Tackles in Jeremy Zuttah and Pedro Sosa and a heisman candidate running back Ray Rice. The maturation of Mike Teel at the end of 2006 is a harbinger of the potential success of the offense this year. Teel will be equipped with significant weapons at the receiver spot to keep defenses honest. Look for a breakout year from Kenny Britt a 6'4" receiver who made noise first vs. Louisville and has shown a penchant for making big catches. He is complemented by 5'9" Tim Brown with blazing 4.3 speed who provides a deep threat just ask WVU and K State. The question marks on this team are Middle Linebacker, Tight End and Secondary depth. Rutgers graduated 2/3 of its linebacking corps. It relies on a defense that is predicated on reads and swarming reaction lead by the Mike linebacker. Rutgers thought it had its man in Ryan D'Imperio but a broken leg will sideline him for at least the first few weeks. With the graduation of its top two TEs, a school who has graduated several to the NFL is now without an experienced TE. It shouldn't effect the passing game but may stifle the run game especially when teams load up in the box to stop Rice. Expect this team to get on a roll but don't overlook games against Maryland and South Florida early in the season. The Maryland game will be a good barometer for the season ahead.
Mountain West - If anyone can post all the teams in the Mountain West I will do a preview. Must do so w/o cheating and looking it up. Briefly, the Air Force and BYU are down this year as BYU graduated its QB and is waiting for the offspring of Jim McMahon, Steve Young or any of the Detmers to be of college age and the Air Force is still adjusting to the post Fisher DeBarry era. On a side note, I wonder if it is harder for the academies to recruit while the war is going on. Everything I have read says take the Horned Frogs of TCU. So I will do that, plus they are the Horned Frogs.
On a final note Andy Pettitte is a straight up MENSCH, I hope he gets the recognition he deserves. Not sure if the Yanks make the postseason but Brian Cashman deserves a tremendous amount of credit. Here is a guy whose job is clearly on the line and he has still endeavored to take the best long term approach for his team rather than gambling everything on this year. He can run my team anytime.
If you haven't, go see the new Bourne movie, its the best of the action sequels of the summer and may be the best movie I've seen this summer.
A quick Mike Vick note
Here is the thing with Vick. I did not buy his apology at all. My major qualm was his use of the word immature. He did not condemn his acts as vile, despicable, grotesque but claimed they were immature. The use of the word immature leads you to believe that its just a phase he will grow out of. I would have liked to see him apologize to all of the animals he destroyed and maimed and all of the ones who will be euthanized due to his behavior. While both crimes, I think the comparisons to Leonard Little are clearly off base. What Leonard Little did was clearly more morally reprehensible, however, it was not a carefully crafted plan executed to perfection. Little made a mistake, paid his debt to society and the NFL. Vick planned to establish a dog fighting kennel, established a dog fighting kennel and performed horrific acts upon the dogs for years, not one night. Maybe Little should have or should still receive a harsher punishment than he has, but that does not mean Vick should be treated with more leniency.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
College Football Preview, Part 1
Welcome to the Sherman Avenue Block Party college football preview! We’ll be covering most of the major conferences, and you can expect in depth analysis, informed insight, and highly opinionated opinions.
Well, you can expect all that when Kris, aka The Innovator, posts about college football. Not so much from me.
I’m the least likely candidate to kick off the Sherman Avenue Block Party college football previews. My relationship to college football is as a casual fan. Let me briefly explain how I got there:
1) Nature
Like all the writers here, I grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York City area. Teaneck is not a college football town, and New York is not a college football city. There are no local colleges that play high-level football. Teaneck High School was much more of a basketball school than a football school (no offense if you’re reading this, Mssrs. Elegbe and Wellington) so we did not have a natural allegiance to a college where our town-mates went to play.
2) Nurture
My parents did not go to colleges with big college football traditions. Nor are my parents sports fans. So there was no college team I was raised to root for.
3) Personal Experience
I went to Indiana University. Not a football school in the slightest – Indiana earns its reputation as a basketball state. It also isn’t much fun rooting for a team that routinely got beat handily and embarrassingly by other Big Ten schools; so most IU students simply didn’t pay attention.
4) More Personal Experience.
During my sophomore year at Indiana, I worked for a catering company that provided dinner for the football team in a room under the stadium Monday through Thursday nights. I had to set the room up, then work behind a buffet line serving, then do some dishes. They got this dinner service the whole year, not just during the season.
It was quite the crap job, but it was solid money for only three or four hours a night, close to where I lived (my apartment was only a couple blocks from the stadium), and the lady that ran the room let us take all kinds of free food home, so my grocery bills were minimal.
During my sophomore year, the football team was beyond awful. They were losing by huge margins, and I’m pretty sure they lost the homecoming game to Michigan 38-0. Yet a lot of these guys were beyond assholes, walking around super-fucking-cocky like they were somebody. Not all of them, mind you, but a majority of them. In my mind, shouldn’t they have been apologetic, humbled by their inarguable failure and with their status as embarrassments to the student body? In their minds, no, I guess not.
The coach was fired after the dismal season. The new coach they brought in to bring some degree of glory to the program was a man named Cam Cameron.
Just looking at him, you could tell that Cam Cameron was a smug, arrogant motherfucker. He looked like the kind of guy that doesn’t tip the valet after parking his Jag for him. The kind of guy that wouldn’t look out of place at some WASP-y yacht club wearing topsiders and a blue blazer. The kind of guy that probably drinks vinegar and water he’s such a douche.
One day, as I’m standing on the buffet line serving food, just doing my job, Cameron comes up to one of the linebackers that I’m serving. Here’s the exchange:
COACH CAMERON
You going to be going to class, Jabar?
LINEBACKER
Oh, yeah, coach. You know me.
COACH CAMERON
Because if you don’t, you know, we’ll have you working back there.
He said that like I wasn’t standing right there.
But I was in fact standing right there. And I didn’t take kindly to the insinuation that only dumb non-class-going people would end up working in food service.
I mean, the nerve of this guy, insulting my intelligence to my face? Like I wasn’t obviously a student who wasn’t lucky enough to have the thing I was good at warrant a free admission to college, so I had to work to help pay my bills. Like I wasn’t vastly more likely to succeed at the thing I was at college for than this group of guys who wouldn’t even sniff the CFL once their eligibility was up.
So later on I complained to the lady that ran the room. She was cool, though she was one of those kind of crazy white trash ladies that if I saw her on Springer it wouldn’t have shocked me. She complained loudly, and it ended with Cameron writing us an apology letter.
But fuck an apology letter. And fuck him. I carry grudges.
(And by the way, it pleases me to no end that he is now the coach of my most hated NFL team, the Miami Dolphins. It’s like a two-for-one sale at the Hate Store. After he got booed for drafting Ted Ginn, Jr. I smiled for a week.)
My point is, I am not deeply invested in college football. And without that level of investment, I can’t bring myself to follow it too closely. Plus I find the quality of play inferior to that of the NFL.
Not to say that I ignore college football. I do look at the scores for the top 25. I do watch some games when I’m home on Saturdays. I try to catch the big exciting match-ups, your Texas-Ohio States, your USC-Notre Dames, and so on. SEC football intrigues me because of the insanely passionate fan bases. The atmosphere at college games can be really exhilarating, even watching on TV. The history and long-standing rivalries also are fun to follow – watching season-long storylines develop and unfold, weaving intricate narratives and causing such emotional response from so many people.
So there it is. I pay attention, but not that closely. I’m a causal college football fan. And here is a casual college football fan’s preview of the Big Ten and Pac Ten conferences.
BIG TEN
Michigan and Ohio State will most likely be the best teams in the conference, and be vying for a national championship. That’s how it pretty much always is.
Penn State might be okay, depending on how senile Joe Paterno really is. But they typically field a good team. Though if their running back is good, it’s probably best not to draft him into the NFL, as he will suck (look under Enis, Curtis and Thomas, Blair.)
Wisconsin will probably have a really good offensive line, and win a bunch of games early on, then they will lose a game they shouldn’t have lost, because they almost always seem to do that. All of their games will be unwatchable, as all sports programs at the University of Wisconsin are boring yet effective.
Iowa and Michigan State might be pretty good or might suck horribly, sometimes in the same game.
No one cares about football at Purdue, Illinois, Minnesota, or Northwestern, unless you go/went there, and even then, maybe.
Fuck Indiana football.
You want a prediction? Hold on, let me get a coin. (flips coin) Michigan wins the Big Ten. Why not?
PAC TEN
I defy any casual college football fan to name all the schools in the Pac Ten without consulting the Internets.
USC is in the Pac Ten. They’ll probably be good again, though one day someone will have to explain to this Jets fan how Pete Carroll can be a genius head coach
UCLA is in the Pac Ten. Sometimes they are okay at football for a basketball school – every once in a while they get a great QB they ride for a while. This year? I don’t know.
Cal is in the Pac Ten. People usually predict Cal will be better than everyone thinks. Then they aren’t.
Then there’s a whole bunch of other Pac Ten teams that can be okay occasionally, like Oregon, or Washington, or Arizona State, or Oregon State. Arizona usually isn’t much of a football school (and you know it, Matt.) Neither is Stanford or Washington State. At most, maybe two of these teams will be worth watching for more than a minute or two.
If there are any other schools in the Pac Ten, I don’t care about them. Are they even on TV ever?
USC most likely wins the conference, unless this is the year Cal decides that exceeding expectations is much more fun than not meeting them.
And there you have it, the casual fan’s preview of the Big Ten and Pac Ten conferences.
We’ll be posting college football previews this week, and NFL previews next week. So look out for it!
Well, you can expect all that when Kris, aka The Innovator, posts about college football. Not so much from me.
I’m the least likely candidate to kick off the Sherman Avenue Block Party college football previews. My relationship to college football is as a casual fan. Let me briefly explain how I got there:
1) Nature
Like all the writers here, I grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York City area. Teaneck is not a college football town, and New York is not a college football city. There are no local colleges that play high-level football. Teaneck High School was much more of a basketball school than a football school (no offense if you’re reading this, Mssrs. Elegbe and Wellington) so we did not have a natural allegiance to a college where our town-mates went to play.
2) Nurture
My parents did not go to colleges with big college football traditions. Nor are my parents sports fans. So there was no college team I was raised to root for.
3) Personal Experience
I went to Indiana University. Not a football school in the slightest – Indiana earns its reputation as a basketball state. It also isn’t much fun rooting for a team that routinely got beat handily and embarrassingly by other Big Ten schools; so most IU students simply didn’t pay attention.
4) More Personal Experience.
During my sophomore year at Indiana, I worked for a catering company that provided dinner for the football team in a room under the stadium Monday through Thursday nights. I had to set the room up, then work behind a buffet line serving, then do some dishes. They got this dinner service the whole year, not just during the season.
It was quite the crap job, but it was solid money for only three or four hours a night, close to where I lived (my apartment was only a couple blocks from the stadium), and the lady that ran the room let us take all kinds of free food home, so my grocery bills were minimal.
During my sophomore year, the football team was beyond awful. They were losing by huge margins, and I’m pretty sure they lost the homecoming game to Michigan 38-0. Yet a lot of these guys were beyond assholes, walking around super-fucking-cocky like they were somebody. Not all of them, mind you, but a majority of them. In my mind, shouldn’t they have been apologetic, humbled by their inarguable failure and with their status as embarrassments to the student body? In their minds, no, I guess not.
The coach was fired after the dismal season. The new coach they brought in to bring some degree of glory to the program was a man named Cam Cameron.
Just looking at him, you could tell that Cam Cameron was a smug, arrogant motherfucker. He looked like the kind of guy that doesn’t tip the valet after parking his Jag for him. The kind of guy that wouldn’t look out of place at some WASP-y yacht club wearing topsiders and a blue blazer. The kind of guy that probably drinks vinegar and water he’s such a douche.
One day, as I’m standing on the buffet line serving food, just doing my job, Cameron comes up to one of the linebackers that I’m serving. Here’s the exchange:
COACH CAMERON
You going to be going to class, Jabar?
LINEBACKER
Oh, yeah, coach. You know me.
COACH CAMERON
Because if you don’t, you know, we’ll have you working back there.
He said that like I wasn’t standing right there.
But I was in fact standing right there. And I didn’t take kindly to the insinuation that only dumb non-class-going people would end up working in food service.
I mean, the nerve of this guy, insulting my intelligence to my face? Like I wasn’t obviously a student who wasn’t lucky enough to have the thing I was good at warrant a free admission to college, so I had to work to help pay my bills. Like I wasn’t vastly more likely to succeed at the thing I was at college for than this group of guys who wouldn’t even sniff the CFL once their eligibility was up.
So later on I complained to the lady that ran the room. She was cool, though she was one of those kind of crazy white trash ladies that if I saw her on Springer it wouldn’t have shocked me. She complained loudly, and it ended with Cameron writing us an apology letter.
But fuck an apology letter. And fuck him. I carry grudges.
(And by the way, it pleases me to no end that he is now the coach of my most hated NFL team, the Miami Dolphins. It’s like a two-for-one sale at the Hate Store. After he got booed for drafting Ted Ginn, Jr. I smiled for a week.)
My point is, I am not deeply invested in college football. And without that level of investment, I can’t bring myself to follow it too closely. Plus I find the quality of play inferior to that of the NFL.
Not to say that I ignore college football. I do look at the scores for the top 25. I do watch some games when I’m home on Saturdays. I try to catch the big exciting match-ups, your Texas-Ohio States, your USC-Notre Dames, and so on. SEC football intrigues me because of the insanely passionate fan bases. The atmosphere at college games can be really exhilarating, even watching on TV. The history and long-standing rivalries also are fun to follow – watching season-long storylines develop and unfold, weaving intricate narratives and causing such emotional response from so many people.
So there it is. I pay attention, but not that closely. I’m a causal college football fan. And here is a casual college football fan’s preview of the Big Ten and Pac Ten conferences.
BIG TEN
Michigan and Ohio State will most likely be the best teams in the conference, and be vying for a national championship. That’s how it pretty much always is.
Penn State might be okay, depending on how senile Joe Paterno really is. But they typically field a good team. Though if their running back is good, it’s probably best not to draft him into the NFL, as he will suck (look under Enis, Curtis and Thomas, Blair.)
Wisconsin will probably have a really good offensive line, and win a bunch of games early on, then they will lose a game they shouldn’t have lost, because they almost always seem to do that. All of their games will be unwatchable, as all sports programs at the University of Wisconsin are boring yet effective.
Iowa and Michigan State might be pretty good or might suck horribly, sometimes in the same game.
No one cares about football at Purdue, Illinois, Minnesota, or Northwestern, unless you go/went there, and even then, maybe.
Fuck Indiana football.
You want a prediction? Hold on, let me get a coin. (flips coin) Michigan wins the Big Ten. Why not?
PAC TEN
I defy any casual college football fan to name all the schools in the Pac Ten without consulting the Internets.
USC is in the Pac Ten. They’ll probably be good again, though one day someone will have to explain to this Jets fan how Pete Carroll can be a genius head coach
UCLA is in the Pac Ten. Sometimes they are okay at football for a basketball school – every once in a while they get a great QB they ride for a while. This year? I don’t know.
Cal is in the Pac Ten. People usually predict Cal will be better than everyone thinks. Then they aren’t.
Then there’s a whole bunch of other Pac Ten teams that can be okay occasionally, like Oregon, or Washington, or Arizona State, or Oregon State. Arizona usually isn’t much of a football school (and you know it, Matt.) Neither is Stanford or Washington State. At most, maybe two of these teams will be worth watching for more than a minute or two.
If there are any other schools in the Pac Ten, I don’t care about them. Are they even on TV ever?
USC most likely wins the conference, unless this is the year Cal decides that exceeding expectations is much more fun than not meeting them.
And there you have it, the casual fan’s preview of the Big Ten and Pac Ten conferences.
We’ll be posting college football previews this week, and NFL previews next week. So look out for it!
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