GP1

I like this.

It's not really anything new. Lots of opportunities for improvement in the admissions process at many schools. Schools can let in anyone they want. The ncaa sets standards for eligibility. The problem is what goes on between when a kid gets in school and becomes eligible...lots can happen between those two points.

The Browns should have Nick Swisher meet with prospective candidates.

Good article. Thanks for posting. The news isn't a group of college athletes can't read, because that is news like finding out athlete students at OK State smoke weed and have sex (the same as non athlete students) like we learned last year in Sports Illustrated. The news is nobody has measured it until now. I don't know how many of you know this, but before getting a job with the NCAA or one of its member institutions, there is a test to see how fast the interviewee can bury their head in a pile of sand. If you exceed the requirement, you are disqualified for the position.

If the problem is too many teams competing in D1A, then solve the problem by eliminating some of the teams in D1A. The better system is to have fewer teams and better competition throughout the season, not more teams and less competition between teams.

They play fewer games throughout the season (10) and don't have conference championships. They also aren't subjected to the same level of physicality as they D1 players are. I'd be OK if a fan just said they could care less about the well being of the players and whether or not they graduate. In the end, I think most fans could really care less about the well being of the players and graduation rates. The honesty would be a breath of fresh air.

IN AN AUCTIONEERS VOICE...."Can I get a 10?" My question is this. Why are more teams always the answer? Why couldn't we have a four team system that, every year, refines the way it selects teams so it becomes more perfected the next year? The quest for perfection should outweigh the quest for "more". Everyone should keep in mind that a tournament does not always crown the best team. The NCAA basketball tournament rarely crowns the best team on college basketball. A tournament sets up brackets to get a group of games down to two teams and then crown the winner of the tournament. The NFL is not in a "playoff" right now, it is in a tournament. So, let's not pretend that more teams makes a tournament better. It just makes it more of the same.

There is no retreat in college athletics. Once they start down a path, they continue until things "grow" out of control and into total idiocy. I'm in favor of the four team playoff as well; however, I know they won't stop there and sooner rather than later it will be a 16 team playoff. One year from today, there will be talking heads on TV discussing expanding the playoff to two "wild card teams" and giving a bye to two teams...mark my words. Teams making it deep into the playoffs will have to play 15 to 16 games and no college kid is going to be able to handle the punishment against high level competition. Not that ADs and fans will care, but there will be a large number of injuries to kids playing far into the playoffs...If there is money to be made, what do they care if a cripple is created here or there? There is a reason the NFL doesn't want kids showing up at 19 years old to play in the NFL. It's not just that they see college as a minor league, which it isn't in every sense, but anyhow. They know their bodies cannot handle the punishment so they want them to stay in school until their bodies develop.

Wouldn't it be even better if you could get the actual people to stand on your sideline and raise their hands when it was time to do so? Now that would be great TV.

Agreed. If you think it is flawed now, wait until in the next 10 years it turns into a 16 team playoff. A 19-20 year old is not built to play that many games against that high level of competition and by the time the teams get to the final game, only half of their starters will be on the field because the rest will be injured. The playoff next year isn't the end, it is the beginning of something really stupid. Wait and see...

Be careful of what you wish for. The BCS worked perfectly this season. Not only were the two best teams matched up, but for the most part the BCS games were great.

Just a quick clarification and I hate to defend the NCAA, but.... It is true that the NCAA can dish out a punishment saying a team cannot participate in a bowl. The bowls get to decide who they invite to play. Same as the BCS. The BCS Championship is just that, a championship that the BCS, an outside organization of the NCAA, organizes. Ever notice, they give out a crystal ball in lieu of the standard NCAA wooden trophy?

Good post Balsy. The one thing about many MAC fans is they are never happy because most don't understand their market. I'm cool with that because sports can be a form of fantasy for people and there is nothing wrong with a little fantasy. The problem is when they start to live outside of their means in order to become part of a market they cannot ever realistically participate. Long ago, I came to grips with what Akron can and can't do. Would it be great to play in the D1A national championship game? Of course. Is that realistic? Of course not. We can't manage our athletic department to make the national championship game. We can manage it to compete well in the MAC, win more than we lose, make the MACC once every four years minimum and win half the bowl games we play in. It's no national championship, but it can be a pretty fun ride. It's also a better ride than many BCS level teams take.

All good questions. I'd like to focus on this one though because all of the other questions lead to this one. WARNING: THE REMAINDER OF THIS POST MAY CONTAIN SOME OPINION THAT OTHERS FIND OFFENSIVE. The basic theme of this post is, there is a difference between quality football and top notch D1A talent...then I'll drift off to other things like I always do. Quality football is an opinion. I think MAC football was quality this year, but that doesn't make me right. Top notch talent can be viewed, measured and put to use better to win games easier than teams lacking talent. First, for all of us there are millions of things we don't know. One of those things for me is the nature of what a Top 25 team is. Since there are so many D1A teams and most never come close to playing each other, we don't really know what it means to be a Top 25 team. All any of us are left with is to gauge our opinions based upon what we see. When we go to a game, what do we see?...Running, jumping, catching, throwing, blocking, tackling, play calling and player size/physical conditioning to name a few. Much of this visible ability is dependent upon who they are running, jumping, catching, throwing, blocking,tackling, etc. against. As I see it, there aren't enough kids being produced in the midwest to impact the running, jumping, etc. part of what we see to put the MAC schools in a favorable position against some of the mid level BCS schools. Schools can pay coaches more, scheme better, etc., but that is all secondary to the base athletic ability necessary to play the game and there aren't enough kids good enough at football being produced in MAC states to move the league up, or even a team up. For crying out loud, many Big Ten teams are going fishing for the leftovers from the south and still aren't worth a crap. tosu was much less talented than Clemson and over the course of the game it showed. Clemson didn't even make their conference championship game. The difference between the base athletic ability of Pitt vs BG was not overwhelming, but it was just enough at every position, especially at WR, that it made Pitt better than BG over 60 minutes. Talent wins games and makes conferences great. Michigan State had better talent than Stanford/tosu and they won. Go down the list of bowl games and almost every time, the team with the better talent wins. Take the names off of their jerseys, UCF had better talent than Baylor. MAC states aren't producing enough talent for their teams to win these types of games. Spare me the scouts.com rankings, I know what I see and what I see is a lack of talent when they get to the college level and actually on a college field. "For the altering eye alters all." - William Blake. How many people watch a team like tosu play and over the course of a 12 game season convince themselves they are a national championship contender because they see them dominate the teams they play? One could say the same thing about Baylor. If a fan only goes to MAC games and watches tosu on TV, they see everything else through that prism. Even when they watch better teams play, they can rationalize what they are seeing to fit what they are used to seeing. People can create their own reality about certain things. All of the sudden, a team like tosu is on the field with a Clemson and their players are bigger and more physically developed and the tosu fans are shocked to see it. It was there all along, they just didn't want to see it. There was nothing different about tosu Friday as there was in October. They just were playing against better players. William Blake's saying could also apply to MAC fans. How many MAC fans watched Lynch play and said, "That gritty qb could make that team win against any Top 25 team." Probably a lot. At the end of the day, BG had better talent than NIU. Also, NIU played a more talented team in their bowl game. One last thing. Time make us remember things differently. Miami and Marshall were great MAC teams, but did either of them ever beat a BCS level team with Roethlisberger, Pennington or Leftwich? I'm too lazy to look, but I don't think they did. I think in a few years, we will look back at NIU in the same manner as we did those Miami and Marshall teams. Lynch was a great MAC QB, but did it differently and in a way that won't land him in the NFL.

Can't disagree. I don't put a lot of weight in bowl results for the most part, but a conference can't get skunked. That's the bad news.... ....the good news is outside of the teams playing in these games, nobody really cares and the results won't impact the MAC one way or another. Next year, the MAC will have five bowl teams regardless of the outcomes this year. As MAC fans, we shouldn't let the results of five games detract too much from what was a good season of quality football for the conference. The MAC has a lot of quality teams right now that can compete well and are entertaining. The Zips have reached that point and showed it in their win over Toledo. I would go as far as to say a Bowden lead Zips team in the MACC/going to a bowl next year might be one of the more interesting story lines going into 2014. The leadership of the Conference would be smart to do everything in their power to help that along.

Article

This is highly debatable.

They are a good team that is completely overrated. Pointing this out is not bashing. It is pointing out the truth. They have become what Va Tech used to be. America is sick of looking at them lose one big game after another and wishes they and their obnoxious fans would go away.

Nobody cared about it then other than Big Ten ADs who promoted it like it actually means something. Big Ten fans are so desperate for any relevance, they will grasp at any straw. If throwing $100 bills at teams would win games, the Big Ten would have an advantage. If using talent to beat another team wins, the Big Ten has a problem.

I thought the exact same thing while watching the game. I'm not sure where they are, but they aren't on the field. My guess is all of the recruiting sites people obsess over don't actually know what they heck they are talking about. I've always thought that. tosu has a glaring talent problem. The defensive coordinator is going to take the fall, but they have too many guys who aren't good enough to compete against the highest level of college football, or a high level ACC school for that matter. The talent problem they have isn't going to be resolved by another one of their "top five" recruiting classes. However, as unworthy as they are for serious consideration, guess who will be in the Top 5 preseason polls next year? It's lazy journalists and coaches who vote in the polls that put them there. tosu should never be rated higher than 10th going into any season and moving forward should have to go undefeated through the Big Ten championship to be considered to play in the 4 team playoff moving forward.

You could replace the word Akron with any other city and you would have the modern American view of government spending.

Isn't tosu always "a year away"? Remember when the talk was of Missouri joining the Big Ten. Good thing for tosu and the other old guard in the Big Ten they didn't or the Big Ten would have actually added a good football team to their mix.

I don't know what breakout means. However, I do know that after injuries heal and more off season development takes place, players improve...or at least should improve. Pohl will improve between now and next season. Staying injury free is always the wild card for any athlete.

Respectfully disagree. College football players are extremely competitive. One doesn't make it to that level without having the desire to compete at a high level. Further, nobody wants to get embarrassed on national TV, on New Years Day, in front of the entire country with only the Rose Bowl on TV. Back then, there were very few television stations and the Rose Bowl was basically the only thing to watch. Heck, there weren't even nearly as many bowls back then as there are today so making one was a big deal. Today, it's an excuse for most teams to extend spring practice into the fall and winter. Lots of bowls are taken lightly, but some are highly important to schools and conferences so they have to be taken extremely seriously. The Rose Bowl is/was one of those bowls. I don't see how a kid from Washington/Oregon/Arizona takes a few days in LA more seriously than a kid from Ohio/Michigan/Wisconsin.

Interesting stats. Let's look at the two that really matter though because it isn't about how many you catch, but what you do with your catches. Leading the league in catches is like leading the league in rushing attempts. If you rush the ball for 300 times and only get 600 yards, then what was the point in carrying the ball? Receiving yards by WR in order are Gordon (Baylor), Brown (Central Michigan), Johnson (Ga. Tech), Thomas (Ga Tech) and Green (Georgia). The one that really matters...TDs by WR: Thomas (GA Tech), Bryant (Ok State not sure if cold weather or warm weather, but certainly warmer weather for most of the year than the mid west), Marshall (Central Florida) and Eric Decker (Minnesota). I believe the TE for New Orleans from Univ. of Miami (fl) lead the league in receptions for TD, but TE isn't always considered a skill position like WR is even though it should at this point.