As college football bowl season is upon us, I've been thinking about the illegal, irresponsible, and dangerous actions taken by college athletes and administrations every year but are not fully punished. A number of events this season and during the offseason have led me to contemplate the need for stricter guidelines and harsher punishments for offenders. The rules need to be strengthened to teach these young men and women lessons that society doesn't tolerate these actions and our society straightens itself out with future generations.
Academic dishonesty, plagiarism, use/possession of and intent to sell controlled substances, reckless driving, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, operating while intoxicated, theft, assault, and God forbid rape or murder. Not to mention taking impermissible benefits in the form of housing, vehicles, money, and services from boosters and agents. Fights during events between competing athletes happen as well. The greedy, disloyal, conference realignment fiasco that is happening across the collegiate landscape. And finally the administrative cover ups of sexual abuse of children by coaching staffs. Quite the laundry list.
First, the rules need to cover the gamut of these events and punishments need to be evenly and swiftly distributed. A few specific events that I can remember off the top of my head. The Cincinnati/Xavier basketball brawl, the UCLA/Arizona brawl, LSU's QB Jordan Jefferson's assault charges, Nebraska center Mike Caputo's DUI, Ohio State's overall program, and Iowa State's own WR Albert Gary's first-degree robbery charges are perfectly good examples of misconduct or alleged misconduct not being taken seriously enough by the NCAA, school, and team officials.
Second, better screening during admissions of students altogether can help. Criminal backgrounds can be forgiven, but the people attending your university and representing your alumni ought to have close to flawless character backgrounds. If you can't get a good job with these kinds of backgrounds, why should they get the privilege to play college sports and have the opportunity to move on to make millions playing a sports professionally.
The ideals and ethics of American society are beacons throughout the world not to mention to her own people. We pride ourselves in working hard within the rules and law, taking care of our neighbors as much as ourselves through charity, striving for excellence in everything we do. Our society should reward the hardworking, law abiding citizens and not the corrupt and criminal. The corruption that we allow in college athletics is a poor way to show that we won't stand for it in our businesses or government.
Maybe it is my strict upbringing in a Lutheran German-American family on a farm and willingness to accept the harsh realities of military life that makes me shake my head at so much that I see today. I hope I'm not the only one that's tired of seeing governmental organizations, educational institutions, and private businesses that the American people unfortunately rely so much on keep failing us by putting forward criminals/celebrities to be false leaders. All humans are fallible and have original sin as I've been taught and learned in my mere 25 years of life, but I believe we can be so much more.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Another Impossible College Football Theory
You know my penchant for college football realignment. I've come up with a plan to shrink the number of FBS programs while instituting a playoff and avoiding Congress interfering by involving public schools in as many states as possible. Otherwise a lot of these schools would be left on the outside looking in. The only states not represented would be Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Maine, but they don't have a FBS school or plans to move a school up to that level.
All of this came from a crazy idea of putting the FBS private, independent and/or federal schools into one national league. Also any schools below marked with an asterisk will be a member*or recently former member** of the Association of American Universities. Schools with this squiggly mark ~ are federal universities.
100 schools put into five 20 schools regions or leagues, as considering geographic proximity, current and former rivalries, academics, and future potential. There will be no more FCS schools on these programs schedules to get easy wins. Each ten team division will play a nine game round-robin to decide their division champ. Schools will be allowed to schedule one cross division rival for every year then have to play one team from outside their region.
The winner of each division of the leagues will be automatically placed in the postseason 16 team seeded playoff. Since there are five leagues, that gives us 10. A third at-large team is chosen for each league by their standings in the league which puts us at 15. The final at-large slot will be given to a team from any of the five leagues that is highest in the final rankings but not present in the tournament. The rankings will be done each week by a vote of the leagues' directors and schools' athletic directors, coaches and balanced by a statistical computer program that only considers these 100 programs, is openly viewed and vetted by statistical scholars.
Here goes nothing. May I present to you the Oak League. An organization with the number of brilliant, dedicated, ambitious, and honorable minds (not to mention the money) like this could definitely rival the Ivy League. It would be a national brand, like many of these schools that compete to attract the brightest minds in the country to their halls of learning. Many of them are also in major metropolitan areas as well. Some of these schools haven't been relevant in football in years but there is always the potential.
The West Region will be made up of form WAC, MWC, and PAC-12 schools. Keeping some states represented to keep Congress out even though the states are closer to being territories with their population. They are as follows:
All of this came from a crazy idea of putting the FBS private, independent and/or federal schools into one national league. Also any schools below marked with an asterisk will be a member*or recently former member** of the Association of American Universities. Schools with this squiggly mark ~ are federal universities.
100 schools put into five 20 schools regions or leagues, as considering geographic proximity, current and former rivalries, academics, and future potential. There will be no more FCS schools on these programs schedules to get easy wins. Each ten team division will play a nine game round-robin to decide their division champ. Schools will be allowed to schedule one cross division rival for every year then have to play one team from outside their region.
The winner of each division of the leagues will be automatically placed in the postseason 16 team seeded playoff. Since there are five leagues, that gives us 10. A third at-large team is chosen for each league by their standings in the league which puts us at 15. The final at-large slot will be given to a team from any of the five leagues that is highest in the final rankings but not present in the tournament. The rankings will be done each week by a vote of the leagues' directors and schools' athletic directors, coaches and balanced by a statistical computer program that only considers these 100 programs, is openly viewed and vetted by statistical scholars.
Here goes nothing. May I present to you the Oak League. An organization with the number of brilliant, dedicated, ambitious, and honorable minds (not to mention the money) like this could definitely rival the Ivy League. It would be a national brand, like many of these schools that compete to attract the brightest minds in the country to their halls of learning. Many of them are also in major metropolitan areas as well. Some of these schools haven't been relevant in football in years but there is always the potential.
- Southern California (USC)*
- Stanford*
- Brigham Young (BYU)
- Air Force Academy~
- Tulsa
- Southern Methodist (SMU)
- Baylor
- Rice*
- Texas Christian (TCU)
- Tulane*
- Northwestern*
- Notre Dame
- ySyracuse**
- Boston College
- Army~
- Navy~
- Duke*
- Wake Forest
- Vanderbilt*
- Miami (FL)
The West Region will be made up of form WAC, MWC, and PAC-12 schools. Keeping some states represented to keep Congress out even though the states are closer to being territories with their population. They are as follows:
- Washington State
- Washington*
- Oregon*
- Oregon State
- Idaho
- Colorado*
- Colorado State
- Utah
- Utah State
- Wyoming
- Nevada
- UNLV
- New Mexico
- Arizona*
- Arizona State
- Fresno State
- UCLA*
- Cal*
- San Diego State
- Hawaii
The North Region will be made up of former Big XII, B1G, MAC, Big East/ACC schools. I may have a vested interest in seeing this happen. CyclOne Nation would be firing up some border wars on all fronts. Only South Dakota wouldn't be involved. Also 16 out of 20 schools would currently be AAU members. Prestige worldwide. They are:
- Kansas*
- Kansas State
- Missouri*
- Nebraska**
- Iowa State*
- Iowa*
- Minnesota*
- Wisconsin*
- Illinois*
- Northern Illinois
- Purdue*
- Indiana*
- Michigan State*
- Michigan*
- Ohio State*
- Ohio
- Penn State*
- Pittsburgh*
- Buffalo*
- Rutgers*
The South Region will be made up of former Big XII, SEC, Sun Belt, C-USA, and MWC schools. Football powerhouses with a couple basketball national title contenders (Memphis & Kentucky).
- Arkansas State
- Arkansas
- Oklahoma
- Oklahoma State
- Texas Tech
- Texas*
- Texas A&M*
- Houston
- Louisiana State
- Louisiana Tech
- Mississippi State
- Ole Miss
- Tennessee
- Memphis
- Kentucky
- South Carolina
- Florida*
- Alabama
- Auburn
- Georgia
The East Region will be made up of former MAC, Big East, ACC, C-USA, and Sun Belt schools.
- UMass (FBS 2012)
- UConn
- Temple
- Cincinnati
- Maryland*
- West Virginia
- Virginia*
- Virginia Tech
- Louisville
- Marshall
- East Carolina
- North Carolina State
- North Carolina* (UNC)
- Clemson
- Georgia Tech*
- Florida State
- Central Florida
- South Florida
- Florida International
- Florida Atlantic
This setup leaves out the following FBS programs. Dropping their status down to the FCS level would probably be best for them as the number of people they draw to their games (other than Boise State but that will happen eventually) isn't financially stable.
- San Jose State
- Boise State
- New Mexico State
- UT-El Paso
- UT-San Antonio (FBS 2012)
- Texas State-San Marcos (FBS 2012)
- North Texas
- Louisiana Lafayette
- Louisiana Monroe
- Southern Mississippi
- Alabama Birmingham (UAB)
- Troy
- Western Kentucky
- Middle Tennessee
- Akron
- Ball State
- Kent State
- Toledo
- Bowling Green
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)