Thoughts from Week 1

Week 1 of college football is in the books, and we definitely had a little bit of the good, the bad, and the ugly. It was kind of a down week for me. My interest in college football is starting to take a decline which is a sad thing since I used to be so passionate about it. There are a lot of things that have contributed to it. One being the rise of the 49ers has finally made me more interested in the NFL again, but there are other reasons that have contributed to it. My disinterest in college football is the theme of week 1.

Preseason Rankings are a joke:

I have not been more against preseason rankings than I have in the past two years. I have come to realize how bogus and inaccurate they are. The most frustrating part is that these rankings (which are based off of last year’s performance and the amount of returning starters) shape the college football landscape for the remaining year.  They are so inaccurate sometimes that it overhypes certain games as well. There were several teams this week that did not play up to their ranking: South Carolina, Oklahoma, Stanford, Georgia, and Michigan are just a few schools that relate. The Michigan vs. Alabama game was so overhyped that it made me grateful I didn’t waste my time watching it when I heard that Alabama completely dismantled the Wolverines. Every year, whether it’s Michigan or Notre Dame, there are a handful of teams that are overrated based on their status as a once-powerhouse, and it’s just hilarious to see them get destroyed at the beginning of the season.

Another problem with preseason rankings is that it either makes or breaks a non-BCS school’s chance of busting the BCS. Take Boise State for example. First off, Boise State at times did not play like they were the 24^th best team in the nation. But what if Michigan State ends up going undefeated and goes to the national championship, and Boise State also runs the table the rest of the way? Boise State could still get left out of the BCS (even though their one loss was to an undefeated national championship contender.) The reason why is because Boise State will have started and fell too far down the polls after the first week that they couldn’t get back into the top 12.

I guess I just don’t see why we can’t just wait to rank teams until the BCS formulas come out. When we rank them beforehand it causes a lot of pollsters to stick with those rankings and only adjust teams if one team loses or wins a close one against a crappy opponent. This way it would give everyone six solid weeks to analyze each team and then rank them on how they’ve performed thus far.

I’m so sick of cupcake games:

The biggest reason why I didn’t care to watch too much football this weekend was because the majority of the games were blowouts. At least some of the powerful conferences are scheduling other FBS opponents, but how can you really determine how good a team is when they beat up on the bottom dwellers of the FBS or an FCS school. Even the games that were relatively close were boring to watch, because I just became disgusted with how overrated a certain team was. Even though Bowling Green came close to beating Florida you knew that Florida was eventually going to wake up and decide to play football. I am glad that we are going to a playoff soon, because that “should” help reward those teams who take the initiative and play outside of their comfort zone. Until then the games won’t be interesting until the middle of the regular season.

The miracle season for Boise State was ended soon this year:

It’s been kind of a weird feeling for me the past week or so. The past couple of years have stressed me out, because of the high expectations I had for this team. Every game got me nervous, and every play I was on the edge of my seat. It was almost unhealthy. Then when they would lose it was as if all happiness had evaporated from me for a couple days, because they were not able to live up to their potential.

That changed this year. This season I feel like I had reasonable expectations for this team. I was wishing and hoping that they would be able to upset Michigan State, but for some reason I had already accepted the fact that there was a good chance they were going to lose that game. It kind of sucks, because they had numerous times to win the game, but couldn’t close it out. There are still many positives that can be taken from the game. The defense played a lot better than I expected them to, and forced numerous turnovers. With as many returning starters (or lack thereof) they had I would have to say I think it’s pretty awesome that this team can lose so much talent and still only lose by 4 points to the “13^th” best team in the nation at their place. (I put 13 in quotations because of my argument about preseason rankings) The spread projected Boise to lose by 7 so the fact that they beat the spread also says something.

Boise State will lose some bandwagon fans after this loss, but it’s almost kind of relieving, because now I can just sit back and watch this team grow. If they lose another game along the way that’s completely fine. We’ve been quite spoiled as fans to have as much success as this team has had the past four years so I think we can all just be patient and let this team grow and improve.

 

The reason I’m starting to like the NFL more than college is its solid structure in standings and the playoff system that is put in. While we all love the drama of college football, I feel there is a lot of unnecessary controversy that encircles it that causes me to lose interest in it. Hopefully one day these issues will no longer bug me, but it probably won’t matter anyway. Football is in my blood, and although there are several things that frustrate me, I won’t be able to stay away for too long.