What on earth is happening to college sports? Teams in Los Angeles and New Jersey are in the Big Ten? There is even talk of the Atlantic Coast Conference adding Stanford and my beloved California Golden Bears. Let me look at the map. California is on the Atlantic Coast? If so, Halifax County is in Sweden!
And all of those long flights. Will UCLA’s archery and water polo teams scrunch in the middle seats on commercial airlines to play at the University of Maryland? What about the marching bands and the cheerleaders? Planes are a good place to study, I guess. Professors who don’t forgive hangovers might give a break to a jet-lagged athlete.
So much change. When I started watching football, players on offense also had to play defense. Substitutions were limited. Most teams just ran the ball in T formation. Some were so conservative, they punted on third down.
Now players can receive cash gifts and get paid for endorsements. After a year or two, they can easily slip off to a bigger football power or the pros.
In the early 1950s there were only eight bowl games. Now you have 32, including the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, the Pop Tart Bowl, the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, the Cheez-It Bowl, the Lending Tree Bowl, the Gasparilla Bowl and the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl. Hey, let’s hold the Cantaloupe Bowl with a big parade down Main Street on New Year’s Day!
There used to be nine or ten games a season, ending in mid-November. Now there are 12 or more, stretching into December. And of course with an eight-team playoff, they figure a warming planet will let them play well into January.
I guess I would prefer the system used in the Ivy League, which provides no sports scholarships. You are a student first, an athlete second. Most of their low-key games are within 360 miles of each other. These schools don’t need a football team to build a name for themselves.
Of course I might be more rah-rah if my alma mater had a winning team. The last time Cal went to the Rose Bowl was in 1959, after I hawked ice cream at regular season games as a high school senior. But the Golden Bears can’t scale back—they owe a lot of money on their stad
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