What We're Talkin' About...is Football
If you get the Andy Griffith reference in the title of this column, then my condolences. You're at least as old as me, and that's not a good thing.
If you only know Andy Griffith from Nick reruns of he and Ope, Barney, and Aint Bee, then congratulations. You're an astute student of pop culture but have enough years left in you to accomplish something.
If you now think of Andy primarily as Matlock, then you're my mom, and will get no value from this column, not even pride of kinship.
Anyway, I'm talkin' about football, specifically college football. The NFL is only for degenerate gamblers and people in Wisconsin with nothing else to do. (Hey, I'm from the Upper Midwest, I know these things.)
College football has been inexorably grinding to total professionalism since at least 1968. That was the year that this country changed, and not only politically. It was the year that OJ won the Heisman Trophy and immediately started hawking Chevys in print and on TV. Big business had co-opted the college game.
Fast forward to today, and you can see all the changes. An increasing concentration of financial rewards to the very top programs. (Ironically fueled by a decrease in the number of allowable scholarships, which has enabled dozens of programs to become more competitive since the 1980s. The Big 10 is now the Big Ten-Plus-One rather than the Big Two. The SEC has two divisions, both of which are competitive in some years. The Pac-10 really does extend beyond USC, although this year isn't the year to discuss that.)
Anyway, as I was saying, there's been an increasing concentration of financial rewards to the very top programs. Ever bigger and faster players. Vastly more sophisticated weight- and drug-training regimens and creation of an entirely separate world for the players. Players leaving college early to join the pros. Tolerance of rape cultures and other nasty business within any number of programs.
And most recently, the dreaded BCS. I have not been a fan of a playoff bowl system, even though at least one local radio personality would deem my viewpoint too stupid for consideration. The lack of a grinding series of playoff games
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