Season starts today..anyone into the College stuff or is it all NFL..
Just watching a belting start to Notre Dame and Michigan.....
14-0 up...looks to be a load left in it to be honest......
anyway hopefully we'll see some contributions to this thread as there are so many great teams (whether or not they win) playing in front of 70-110 K folks......some excellent conferences too.......
ND 21 Michigan 10
Michigan usually is and has a great defence...but so far ND is taking them to the wood shed (our American posters will know this expression.....)
Watched a few minutes here and there.. There was mostly the first week OOC mismatches. Watched a little of the UW v Auburn game, a few minutes of the Bama mauling of Louisville and the Domers v Wolverines. It doesn't get that interesting for me until the leaves start turning. Then it feels like football season.
Yeah, first couple of weeks are usually a powder puff schedule, but to be fair this was a decent match up..
ND looked pretty damn good..........
Auburn Washington was a pretty big match up, Penn State got a scare judging by the result !!.
The Texas coach will be on the hot seat already....
Good game today and another tomorrow too ...
I love college football................I honestly love the pros better but the atmosphere at the college games takes some beating...especially the Saturday night games...
but you can talk about games in progress or upcoming....and conferences and big match ups..
tonight my time is Miami/LSU - that should be a oretty decent game as Miami are on the rebound and LSU are usually a decent team..of course the bigger colleges lose loads of players in the draft and it sometimes makes the following season tough to be competitive in......
this really isn't specifically for upcoming draft picks - although I would like to think that we will progress that way because it's impossible to watch all of the games that are shown..
if we get a fair cross section of people posting on here, they can point out some good players and I would certainly watch a game that I perhaps might not have ,should I get the nod on here about a quality player/players that would make the game more exciting...
that's one point about starting this...I usually watch the usual suspects, but listen to radio and pick up a game I might not after someone giving the nod to watch a specific kid..
also it makes the next draft watching more about who my Texans might draft based on what I might have seen..
(I might also send them an email to give them a nudge in the right direction occasionally)
Miami is rated #8 and LSU #25 which must be the lowest LSU has been ranked in the past few years...I think they won a National Championship with Nick Saban...then he went (I think to the NFL) and then off to Alabama.....where of course he probably makes about 8M per year.....(plus plus plus plus).....
Game turned out to be a lemon. LSU has superior talent all over the field. The U finished poorly last season and really didn't deserve the top ten ranking to begin with. And LSU ranked low because the experts assumed that the program would suffer after they ditched Les Miles. Ogeron not a genius coach but players have always played hard for him everywhere he's coached.
re: college football atmosphere, there was an article in the NYT sports section either today or yesterday about the huge attendances problem across the NCAA D1. Supposedly only 70% or so of the reported attendance at ncaa games actually show up and those numbers keep increasing every year. It's a made for tv sport so it would figure now that tv's are so great and huuge that people will stay home and watch the games on tv instead.
we can agree or disagree on anything, it's what forum's are for...you disagree and put up a good point of view..
same on here...
we might or might not think such and such is a great coach or not, which conferences are better etc.
that's great....
right now it's hard not to go with the usual suspects I would imagine.......the things that top college coaches get away with Pete, might also be turning people off the college game, which is unfortunate I would guess for the loads and loads of colleges that run "decent" programmes. (If you're not cheating you aren't trying).
I don't follow college to the nth degree, morel like enjoying the great rivalries and big games and I DO think the atmosphere makes it more enjoyable than the usual sterile NFL games.
I didn't see who LSU had lost last year, but didn't see them down at 25 to be honest...I know it was only pre season polls however.............most everyone in the meedja and ex players want "The U" to be great and they show glimpses but invariably fall to the wayside........don't they still play in a shyte facility in a shyte part of Miami ???
LSU do travel well thought fan wise....although Dallas isn't that far from Baton Rouge, they do have a good following......
Heard one of our radio commentators on local 'ouston radio which I listen to online describe the stadium as "The Jerry Jones Ego Stadium in Dallas..." which isn't too far from the truth....
might be a good game tonight.....VT against Florida State.....
SoCal/Stanford Sat night U.S. time..7:30 Central....come home from the pub, get some carry out, stock the fridge with some nice I.P.A.'s, get some lads over....
struggle for me here, MMA fights from Dallas, but hopefully the game will be coming to a close for the main ticket event !!!
oh well, roll on the weekend - no West Ham or PL or La Liga games so I can watch the NCAA football games if any look good enough during the day....
It was actually a very watchable game I thought. VTech's defense was scary good but even with a blocked punt for a TD they couldn't take control of the game late. Florida State hung in there until late and at home I wouldn't have been shocked to see them come up with a couple late scores. College football has way more emotional momentum swings than the pros.
I'm looking forward to Mississippi State @ Kansas State. A little obscure, but I like the KState program and it's always interesting, albeit rare, to see SEC teams go on the road out of conference.
good pay day for most "smaller" programmes against the big boys, but to me, these early doors powder puff games should been done away with.........all it does is pad their statistics and although strength of schedule is taken into account, invariably a 12-0 team will get the nod over a 9-3 team even if those 3 losses are against decent/to top quality..........SEC is a b*stard of a conference normally.......
like a high school team playing in some games.......
Cuenca 'ammer wrote:good pay day for most "smaller" programmes against the big boys, but to me, these early doors powder puff games should been done away with.........all it does is pad their statistics and although strength of schedule is taken into account, invariably a 12-0 team will get the nod over a 9-3 team even if those 3 losses are against decent/to top quality..........SEC is a b*stard of a conference normally.......
like a high school team playing in some games.......
No doubt many of these contests are an embarrassment. Non-competitive games where they run up the score. Unfortunately, like many aspects of college football, it is so ingrained in the system that there's no way around it. The NCAA is a joke of an organization. And Nike's involvement in a lot of these programs bears some investigation. Actually, if you think about anything beyond the games themselves, it's hard to justify watching the sport (although I do regularly)
yeah, the basketball programmes don't come out of it much cleaner though do they ?
Who was the coach who was getting almost ALL of the Nike/Adidas money from endorsement rather than the programme but it was written into his contract...?? Pitino....
Its across the board and I agree with you that the NCAA is a completely useless bunch of bureaucrats...
Bit like FIFA, EUFA and the Olympic Committee..
still I do think that the game day experience is much better than the NFL...wonder how many kids will keel on the sidelines this year ???? (Or do they play the national anthem at college games ?)
The game day experience varies between the pros and college. In the pros it is a more recent phenomenon, one where the NFL agreed to be paid for by the DoD to do this as a recruiting tool. And there have been instances in college where there has been kneeling and other silent protest, and repercussions for doing so. But I don't want to get into it on this thread.
College football has been a corrupt enterprise since it's beginnings, even before the Marx Brothers made "Horse Feathers"! Two things have taken it to a new level in my lifetime. First is the influx of money from Nike and other sponsors. The idea of trademarks appearing on the uniforms of Notre Dame or Penn State would have been unthinkable in the 1970's. The second is the influx of money from the proliferation of televised games. In the olden days, there was only one or two nationally televised games weekly, and maybe another one or two regionally. Notre Dame was the first to go it alone, then the conferences all went there own way, starting with the Big 10. Now with basic cable it's easily over 20 games a week nationally. That giant sucking sound is the various athletic departments inhaling all that TV money, much to the delight of college presidents everywhere. It's why you have MAAC games on Tuesday nights, because that conference has found it expedient to take ESPN's money to fill an otherwise moribund time slot on 2 of their networks. And that's just the legitimate money.
Anyway......the more I think about it the more of a headache I get. The parallels with FIFA et al are definitely there.
Some other games I'll be keeping an eye on:
UCLA at Oklahoma (Chip Kelly already under pressure going to Norman)
Iowa St. at Iowa (In state rivals, Big 12 vs. Big 10)
Penn St. at Pittsburgh (in state rivals, Big 10 vs. ACC)
USC at Stanford (early season PAC 10 showdown)
of course gambling has also a HUGE effect on televised games too..........
if you want to bet on games, it makes it SO much more enjoyable if you can see where your money is going.
not a gambler but had a great friend who used to go to Vegas a couple of times a year courtesy of a high roller.
I gave him I think maybe 50 bucks or that, to bet on 4 or 5 games that weekend.
watched them on the tube and it was unbelievable the different experience I got out of watching my silly 10 dlrs go back and forth with a touchdown or interception. I think the most he gave me back was 100 dlrs.
go visit a "sports bar" on a Saturday (I know you have) and watch alumni watching their alma mater with like minded people from a "big" college....the atmosphere is unbelievable.........
but the gambling aspect of it cannot be ignored...same as the NFL - isn't this the first year that the NFL has actually recognised the gambling side of it ? putting hockey and football teams in Vegas isn't going to hurt either....basketball going anytime soon ?
early doors yet Ron and they are still in the "pre season" mode when there are not a lot of great match ups. When they start playing their "divisional" games (conference schedules) there should be some good games.
Not much during the day, but if you see a college you like try the usual streaming sites..
I will no doubt be looking at the
USC vs. Stanford match up
because it looks like the only game between ranked teams and is usually a good "local" rivalry - bit it's a late start for you as it's WC time. The radio stations in Houston are making a big deal about the Clemson A & M Texas Aggies game but on paper that shouldn't even be close. Aggies have a new high profile head coach, Clemson are ranked #2 and the Aggies not ranked. It's about 90 miles from Houston and the highest profile team in the State and with a new high profile coach think an upset is in the making.
This sounds very much to me like us playing Liverpool this season
Been reading a lot about serious declines in attendance. Big schools having up to 30% empty seats these days, even for bigger games. I suppose with the size and quality of tv's these days and the cost of tickets, it's not a huge surprise. I won't go t football games anymore. Too much sitting around during breaks and there are a lot of breaks.
