College Football

[Quillback]

Looks like maybe they are. Anyone else seen the Yahoo report on that? Looks pretty bad for Alabama and could potentially result in them losing their titles/wins.

Haven't seen it yet, maybe I'll check it out in a day or two, so much sports news, so little time.

I'm hoping that someday we can go for a few years without either the Heisman winner or the National champ getting accused of something. It's getting tiresome.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I think the BCS should take the lead and require a compliance officer in every program. The school would pay the salary and the officer could not have had any relationship with the school or the conference. The officer would only stay at one school 5 years or something like that. It would be a great position for ex players not able to move to the NFL.

They have to do something to overcome the distrust fans have in the enforcement of rules.

[Guest]

This is the last year for the BCS.

The agents should be held accountable

[Feathers and Fins]

Wayne, most the "fans" I have spoke to think its time to get the NCAA/Roosevelt Administration out of sports period. There needs to be a set of rules and I agree to it but the schools and nation have come a long way since the formation of the NCAA. Players should be making money and though the "education" could be argued to be payment it sure is not the "MILLIONS" of dollars schools make from sports.

I believe the rules and regulations need to be geared toward safety and education and nothing more. If athletes can make money so be it but the grades must be maintained and safety must be enforced. I understand fully this will possibly destroy smaller schools programs but if you really look at it honestly how many schools really belong in D1 play?

Collegiate sports is BIG BUSINESS and there is no way anyone can say its not and be honest. Especially when you are talking about football where the NFL has rules basically forcing people ( students ) to play in college ball.

Also the NCAA needs to be a blind enforcement and compliance organization where each penalty is sanctioned/fined the same way and that way should be toward the player who did it and the staff member involved.

For instance you find player (a) was involved in use of performance enhancing drugs then that player should be automatically removed from the team and expelled from the school. If a coach was involved he to is terminated. ( Example only ) But the enforcement needs to be uniform no acceptation's if one school is penalized 1 way all are.

[Wayne SW/MO]

Naw. I love my college football and i don't want money making it dirty. There hundreds of kids who get a college education free of charge who never go to the NFL. What you're suggesting is a minor league where possible will be moved in and out of the minors.

The NCAA needs to be revamped to be level in their enforcement and not just bounce around like they do now in a hit and miss.

The only changes I want to see are more even enforcement and the big bowl games fought between teams who have been really tested through the season. No one big game Cinderellas.

[ozark trout fisher]

Wayne, most the "fans" I have spoke to think its time to get the NCAA/Roosevelt Administration out of sports period. There needs to be a set of rules and I agree to it but the schools and nation have come a long way since the formation of the NCAA. Players should be making money and though the "education" could be argued to be payment it sure is not the "MILLIONS" of dollars schools make from sports.

I believe the rules and regulations need to be geared toward safety and education and nothing more. If athletes can make money so be it but the grades must be maintained and safety must be enforced. I understand fully this will possibly destroy smaller schools programs but if you really look at it honestly how many schools really belong in D1 play?

Collegiate sports is BIG BUSINESS and there is no way anyone can say its not and be honest. Especially when you are talking about football where the NFL has rules basically forcing people ( students ) to play in college ball.

Also the NCAA needs to be a blind enforcement and compliance organization where each penalty is sanctioned/fined the same way and that way should be toward the player who did it and the staff member involved.

For instance you find player (a) was involved in use of performance enhancing drugs then that player should be automatically removed from the team and expelled from the school. If a coach was involved he to is terminated. ( Example only ) But the enforcement needs to be uniform no acceptation's if one school is penalized 1 way all are.

This. My thoughts exactly. They are making a ton of money for the schools and they ought to get some of it.

[Feathers and Fins]

Wayne I am with you on the love of college ball, and certainly with you on teams should earn the appearance not just get it because of one big game or my pet peeve the light schedule.

Problem with that is if the NCAA / BCS was to go off strength of schedule it would be the SEC in every bowl and someone to beat! I know how SEC HOMER that sounds but look at the bowls already that pretty much the way it is. There are only so many talented players out there and SEC teams are a vacuum cleaner for them.

That leads me to the money aspect, there is no way to keep its ugly head out of it, Seriously do you if you are mildly talented want to go to a mediocre D1 or do you want to go to a SEC school or USC or Oregon where you get more air time on Saturday and high profile teams where Pro-scouts really watch you? Would Johnny Football have won the H last year had he been with say Texas Tech or Arkansas State, I seriously doubt it.

I know and said it but paying players needs to happen as all their thoughts are on the game and that dream of pro-ball and the money that goes with it. I also know it will destroy college ball as we know it today seriously shrinking the D1 to possibly a Farm1 or whatever. I can really only think of about 24 teams anyway that year in year out should be going to bowls or playing for them. Why not go to a 16 game season then playoffs to determine who plays in the NC.

Last years NC was a joke, ND really had no competition and Bama destroyed them, Oregon had a harder schedule and could have been a good match or OU, K-state even, I would have loved to have even seen ATM v Bama. There are to many Cinderella chances in the current D1 lets get real and get earned match-ups.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I'm not as enamored with the SEC as you are. They have always been an above average conference and had some top 10 teams, but so have others. They've had a run lately and by shear numbers should have more than most conferences. There is and always will be an ebb and flow in the rankings and some will always have a contender or two.

The problem with the BCS was two fold in my opinion, one was allowing any conference an automatic bid because that insured that some team would taint the quality. The second thing was the voting by humans. It's not hard to question the sports writers, but it's insane to allow the coaches to vote. Allowing them to vote insured two things, that they would vote up their schedule and that you would have guess vote. Does anyone really think a coach has time to study the other teams all across the country during the season? You can be sure that Bob Stoops, for example, knows very little about Florida or Miami and therefore doesn't know if Florida is weak this year or Miami strong, or anything else about them. You can bet he knows a lot about Notre Dame.

I think the BCS would be fine with some changes, first no conference shoo ins, computer ranking strictly from match up stats and 1 plays 3, 2 plays 4 to settle the top 4 teams. Winners meet.

just for the record, OU is about 2-1 against the SEC. Not that I want to deflate anything here.

[Al Agnew]

Nope, even with all its warts, you just can't change college football very much without ruining it. You can't make it an overt NFL farm system. You can't preclude the cinderella possibilities. You can't pay the players like professionals. Even though it's partly a myth, the whole student-athlete thing makes for far more interest by the fans and student body than would a more loosely connected professional team that just happened to be sponsored by the college.

Yes, it sucks that there's so much money floating around and the players can't legally cash in on it. On the other hand, you don't hear much from the players that didn't end up going to the NFL and instead actually got an education, doing a lot of complaining about it. The ones complaining seem to be the stars that do go to the NFL, so they cash in eventually anyway.

You can definitely improve the legitimacy of the national championship by a play-off system and a more objective way of ranking during the season. That should be a no-brainer. But I don't think you want to change the whole bowl system too much.

I agree that while the SEC has been the best conference for quite a while, it's not THAT much better than some of the other conferences. You have 2-4 teams in the SEC that will usually be in the top 10 or 15 teams in the country, but the mid-tier and lower tier SEC teams are not much better than the mid- to low-tier teams in several other conferences.

[ozark trout fisher]

The whole "amateur system" is a fraud, in my opinion. We all know that college football is a professional sport. It's just that the coaches, schools, and NCAA are making all the money off of it.

When you do the math, in most cases it is not practical for a school to pay its players a significant salary without dipping into funds that are used for a variety of other sports. Also for a variety of legal reasons it's practically impossible. So to me, the way to handle it is to let players get any sponsorships they can on their own and keep all the money from that. If people want to pay for autographs, let them and let the player take the money. The school doesn't lose out on any of the funds that way and it's purely beneficial.

I understand the charade of amateurism makes college football more special to some. But it's just a charade and nothing more, because the only amateurs are the ones doing all of the hard work. It's not worth preserving something that isn't real anyway at the expense of those that are out there risking their health every day for months at a time.