College Football Offseason and Spring Camps
There isn't much to report yet for the 2011 NCAA college football season
yet. I never have been one to keep track of college football between the
months of January after the national championship game and mid-August when
the Hall of Fame game is played to kick off the season.
I did find one cool
NCAA sports blog that did a review and prediction of
every college bowl game last season. A lot of the bowl
game reviews that have YouTube highlights from the bowl
game in previous seasons.
There was also another webpage that I found that listed
all of the
college bowl pickem contests that are available online
each year.
I have never been one to get into the recruiting side of college football.
I've seen way to many top prospects and top recruiting teams end up
failing, with the key exceptions of teams like Florida and Texas. There
just isn't enough known about these kids before hand because they are
playing against high school level talent. I don't know if you remember
seeing high school football often, but it doesn't look like a majority of
the kids have the speed, tackling ability, etc to know whether or not the
recruit will make the jump into college.
2010
College Football News
The one thing that I have kept my eye on, because this will be very
important to the landscape of the game in general, is the continued talk
of expansion from the Big 10 and Pac 10 conferences. On the one hand, you
have to say "It's about time" because neither league has a championship
game.
On the other hand, with the automatic playoff births that these two
conference get they are likely to rob some of the lesser conferences of
their elite teams. The Big 10 already has 11 teams, but they may not just
stop at acquiring one team to make an even 12 like the Big 12 has got.
They may end up taking as many as 3 teams from other conferences.
The Pac 10 would need at least two teams in order to get enough teams to
make to divisions within the conference and get there championship game.
So what you are looking at overall are teams like Boise State, TCU,
Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, BYU, Utah or Lousville leaving their current
conferences and lowering that conference's overall standing.
The Big East, Mountain West and WAC are the conferences that stand the
most to lose. But even a team like Missouri may be lured away from the Big
12 causing them to have to scramble to acquire another good team.
Of course, the most interesting team that will come into play will be
Notre Dame. They already play a third of their games against Big 10
schools. There will be increased pressure if they are not able to turn
things around quickly with their new coach. If they cannot regain their
way to national prominence, they may have no other choice but to join up
with a conference.
Notre Dame is watching the conference expansion plans and have acknowledged the fact that their hand may be forced and they may have to join a conference before the dust has settled.
Notre Dame leaves no doubt that they would rather remain independent. The most obvious reasons are because they have a national TV deal with NBC and the fact that they don't have to split any money won for going to a bowl game with all the teams in a conference.
This only works when they are making bowl games though. Notre Dame makes $0 when they don't make a bowl game, unlike any team in a conference. If they can't turn the corner and do it quickly, they may not have any other choice.
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