Tag Archives: college football

Posted in opinion • Sports

What Happened to College Football?

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by Bob Sparrow

2025 College Football Playoff Bracket

I can appreciate the fact that college-age kids must like what’s currently going on in college football. Recent changes have provided them with more choices as to where to play and, best of all, financial reward for playing. Let’s look at what’s happened over just the last few years . . .

The Portal – In 2018, the portal debuted as a compliance tool to manage college athletes’ transfers more transparently. The portal allowed student-athletes to change schools after playing at one school, but the athlete would have to sit out for a year before becoming eligible to play. In 2021 that rule changed allowing transfers to play immediately, which opened the flood gates. There are a number of examples of players playing for a different team each year of their college career: Eyabi Okie-Anoma played at five different four-year schools – Alabama, Houston, UT Martin, Michigan and Charlotte. Chandler Morris played at four schools – Oklahoma, TCU, North Texas and Virginia, and Robby Ashford played for Oregon, Auburn, South Carolina and Wake Forest.

Curt Cignetti

I’m concerned that the next step might be to give the player more freedom (and money) and allow them to transfer during the season?

How has the portal affected this year’s college teams? Indiana University, this year’s #1 team, had a 3-9 record in 2023, and then hired Curt Cignetti. In his first year, 2024, they went 11-2 and this year they went 13-0. Don’t get me wrong, Cignetti is a great coach, but he knew he needed better players, so last year alone, Indiana added between 20-23 players to their roster through the portal. One of those players was quarterback and this years’ Heisman Trophy winner, Fernando Mendoza, who played two years at Cal, then was given $2.6 million (more on NIL in a moment) to play for Indiana this year. He still has one year of eligibility left, but he’ll be in the pros next year.

How the portal works today has dramatically changed college football . . . it may be better for a few select individuals, but, in my opinion, not for the game – the rich will get richer.

NIL – In 2019 California passed the first state law allowing athletes to get paid by the colleges for the use of their Name, Image and Likeness, now referred to as NIL. A year later, the state of Florida passed a similar bill. In 2021, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court affirmed that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by restricting student-athletes’ compensation for education-related benefits. So, paying a player for his/her NIL became legal, and is now being practiced in every state. Some payments are made all up front, others can be annual installments and still other can be for appearances or wearing certain athletic gear.  

18-Year Old Millionaire, Cooper Flagg

Some of today’s top NIL deals:

  • Cooper Flagg – Duke basketball player, $28 million. He’s 18 years old
  • Arch Manning, Texas quarterback – paid $5.3 million
  • AJ Dybantsa, BYU basketball player – $4-$5 million. He’s 18 years old
  • Jeremiah Smith, Ohio State, wide receiver – $4.2 million
  • Livvy Dunne, LSU, gymnast, $4 million
  • Carson Beck, Miami quarterback – $3.1 million

There are plenty of other young ‘Million Dollar Athletes’ and there are many who are getting a mere $4-$500,000 to play.

Where does all this money come from you ask? It can come from several sources, such as third-party endorsements from apparel companies, social media promotions, appearances, autographs, boosters and businesses – I’m thinking mostly from school boosters/wealthy alumni and local businesses!

Will the ‘Empty Bowl’ turn into the ‘Toilet Bowl’?

The other thing that is happening to college football is the lack of emphasis on bowl games, except for the national championship tournament. The national champion used to be determined by a vote by sports writers and football coaches, so every game was looked at, especially the bowl games where top teams were usually playing against other top teams. This year the national champion will be determined by a 12-team playoff. So a number of teams, who are not in the tournament, have decided not to play in a bowl games. Here’s a few: Notre Dame, Iowa State, Kansas State, Baylor, Auburn, Florida State, UCF, Rutgers, and Temple. Why? Some because it’s not for the national championship, some because their coach has already left for another job, and some because too many players are opting out of the game and/or are looking to go to another school next year.

Even for the teams that are participating in a bowl, many of their 18 – 20-year-olds, who are making millions as a collegiate athlete, are deciding not to participate in a post-season bowl game, unless it’s for a chance to win the national championship. Why? Because the millions they are making as college athletes doesn’t compare to the millions they could make over their lifetime as a professional athlete, so they don’t want to risk an injury in a meaningless bowl game that could jeopardize a lucrative pro career.

The answer to the headline question: It turned pro.

Posted in opinion

DO NOT DISTURB UNTIL JANUARY

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By Suzanne Sparrow Watson

Finally, after the sports wasteland that exists between January and August, college football is returning this week. Earlier this year a friend mentioned how depressed she gets when the holidays are over. I responded that I am usually relieved when the holidays are in the rear-view mirror, but the day after the College Football Championship game? I’m close to slitting my wrists. I’ve been a college football fan since I can remember. Growing up with two brothers who were star football players in high school and college, I think it was probably a sink or swim situation. Dinner table conversations at our house always centered around sports, and never more so than in the fall, when football season was in full swing. I recall once protesting that we should talk about something “girlie”, but that dog just didn’t hunt. So, I learned to love football. I wasn’t immediately attuned to the game, however. I was a cheerleader for our local Pop Warner team and on returning home from a game one afternoon my dad asked how it had gone. I replied, “Great! We had a LOT of 4th downs!” Needless to say, I’ve increased my knowledge of the game considerably since then.

The first slate of games this year occur on Saturday and as typically happens, the games scheduled this early in the season are not really barnburners; Sam Houston vs. Western KY is one of the afternoon games. But whether by luck or good planning, the morning starts with a game between two ranked teams: Iowa State vs Kansas State. I’m not particularly invested in either team, but you can bet that I will be planted in front of my TV watching it. Hopefully eating something entirely fattening and non-nutritious. A chocolate Long John springs to mind. My husband and I used to joke that we loved our “Saturday pants” – sweats with a very forgiving waistband.

Ben Herbstreit

Next Saturday, August 30th, begins the “real” season, if for no other reason than “College Game Day” returns. I think Game Day is one of the most fun ways to start a weekend ever invented. There is humor, knowledgeable discussions, irreverent signs waved by a (mostly) drunk student body, and, maybe best of all, Kirk Herbstreit’s golden retriever service dog. Last year his dog, Ben, was the highlight of every college campus he visited, even receiving field credentials. When Ben died in November, Kirk gave a tribute to him that reflected just how much Ben meant to him, and to the entire college football community. If you can watch the video of that tribute without crying, then you aren’t human. Late last season Herbstreit brought in his second stringer, Peter, who will continue in Ben’s honored position this season.

The 2025 Game Day cast will be without Lee Corso, who announced his retirement earlier this year. Corso has been on the program since its inception in 1987. He is a quirky figure, to say the least, but he has grown on me over the years. Each week he ends the program by selecting the mascot headgear of the team he believes will win the featured game. His antics got more elaborate as the years wore on, but somehow he became more beloved. My husband used to swear that he was biased against USC (a mortal sin in his opinion) but in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Corso has donned the USC headgear 17 times and boasts a flawless 17–0 record when backing the Trojans. Game Day has already announced that the tradition of donning the headgear will retire along with Corso. And if you can’t wait until Saturday for your Game Day fix, on Friday night ESPN is broadcasting a special tribute to Corso called, “Not So Fast, My Friend”, which is one of his signature phrases.

It’s an exciting time and I’m almost (but not quite) as excited about the NFL games. I foresee a fall and early winter that will be chocked full of football from Thursday nights through the following Monday nights. I know that I will have to make time for friends and family and I’ve done so – I’ve penciled in all of my catch-up phone calls for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Depending on the schedule, I’m willing to forfeit an NFL game to chat, but on Saturdays I’ve got the “Do Not Disturb” sign up until the end of January. Unless you’re bleeding out, I’m not available. Fight On!!

Posted in Sports

Our National Pasted Time

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by Bob Sparrow

The World Series is over!  If that’s news to you, you’re not alone.  It concluded last weekend sometime with a team from Texas beating a team from Pennsylvania, taking the series four games to two.  I assume there were lots of home runs, lots of great defensive plays, lots of strikeouts, actually, I heard there was even a no-hitter (although it took four guys to do it.  The only other no-hitter in a World Series was done by one guy, Yankee, Don Larson, pitching the whole game!), but few people watched or cared for that matter.  It didn’t help that there was not a team from the west coast in the series, but regardless of what team is playing, TV viewership has declined significantly over the last several decades.  In the 80s viewership for the World Series was between 55-60 million, compared to the last three-year average of around 10 million.   So, why have people stopped watching America’s national pastime?

I could suggest that the World Series comes at a time when college football, the NFL, the NHL, and the NBA are all in full swing, so there are just too many other sports to watch.  But I recently read an article by Derek Thompson, in The Atlantic that had a different answer to that question, which helped me understand why I didn’t watch any of the World Series games this year. I understand that I run the risk of you not reading any further about the decline of a game that you cared little about in the first place, but it’s a break from the political ads with which you’ve been inundated via mail and TV for the past month.

There really are a number of disassociated events that helped cause the lack of interest in baseball; first there was:

  • Players cheating:
    • Using steroids and other PEDs (Performance Enhancing Drugs) to hit the ball harder and farther

      Batting helmet with earphones

    • Corking a bat to create a trampoline-effect to hit the ball farther (physics research has shown that it really doesn’t work)
    • Pitchers using ‘foreign substances’ on the ball to make it do funny things on the way to the plate
  • Teams cheating, like the Astros who stole the pitcher-catcher signals and uniquely passed them along to their hitters while at the plate

But Mr. Thompson suggests another reason, simply saying, “You can make a thing so perfect that it’s ruined.”  To him It all started with a term, aptly portrayed in the 2011 baseball movie, Moneyball . . . analytics, defined as ‘the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics.’  Yes, the geeks took over baseball and ruined it by being catastrophically successful.  Through crunching the numbers, they found:

  1. If managers wanted more strikeouts from their pitchers, they needed to cut down on the number of pitches by each pitcher and thus use more pitchers during a game. They found that with fresh pitchers, the average velocity and spin rate per pitch, increased.
  2. Hitters responded by increasing the launch angles of their swings, raising the odds of a home run, but this adjustment also caused more strikeouts, quite a few more. In the 1990s, there were typically 50 percent more hits than strikeouts in each game; today, there are consistently more strikeouts than hits. Singles have swooned to record lows and hits per game have plunged to 1910s levels.

So today, watching a baseball game is akin to watching two guys play catch, while another person swings wildly at some pitches and mostly misses, but occasionally hits one out of the park.

The article I read offered no solutions to the declining popularity of the game, although it mentions a few changes, that have come very slowly, in order to improve the game or the pace of the game.  For example, in an effort to make it more palatable to the consumer, in 1973 the American League installed a ‘designated hitter’, typically for the pitcher. So we wouldn’t have to watch the pitcher strike out every time he got up to bat.  The National League just adopted the rule this year!  The ‘intentional walk’ used to require the pitcher to pitch four straight pitches out of the strike zone before the batter was given first base.  It wasn’t until 2017 that they eliminated pitching and just sent the batter to first base.  But neither of these changes had a dramatic affect of the palatability of a game that needs more hits and more runs, i.e., more action!

So what needs to happen to change the game?  If you ask me, and no one has, or will, I’d say move the pitcher’s mound back about 10 feet or so, maybe back by second base.  Then, teams can use as many pitchers as they want, but the ball is going to be moving much slower when it finally reaches the plate and the batter will have a much longer look at the ball.  Thus more hits, more runs, more fun!

Someone let me know if they ever do something like that; I don’t watch baseball!

 

Posted in travel

How Terribly Strange to Be 70

By Comments:4 Comments

by Bob Sparrow

“How terribly strange to be 70”  Old Friends, Simon & Garfunkel

Steve, Terry, Ken, Kent & Ed using ‘aiming fluid’ at Top Golf

We came in the mid-1960s as young men, boys really, to Westminster College, a Christian college that sits at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains on the East Bench of Salt Lake City, for only one reason . . . football. We just wanted to play the game.  While our destination was the same, our paths were quite diverse.  Some came right out of high school, some came after a year or two of junior college, some came from a Division 1 school where they were never going to play and some came because they knew they were never going to play anywhere else.  And while we all came for the game of football, we left with great friendships, great memories and a college degree that positioned us for success later in life.

The ‘we’ is a group of 11 Westminster graduates, all 70-something, who gathered in Las Vegas two weeks ago for an informal reunion put together by my old college roommate and running back on the football team, Ken Poulsen.  You may think that 11 isn’t very many people to gather for a reunion, well, actually only 9 were football players, but that still represented nearly half of our team!  The non-football players, but still successful graduates of Westminster were Dave Chally, who was a fan and a friends to us all, and John Soltis, our ‘spokesman’ who played basketball for Westminster.

Chally & Hall awaiting instructions from Ken

While Ken had planned a number of activities for us – Top Golf, bowling and attending a comedy club show, most of the entertainment came from the recalling of stories and antics from our college days.  Listening to them would make one wonder if or how this group ever made it through college, much less enjoy any success after it, but indeed this was actually a very accomplished group:

Ken ‘Little Poison’ Poulsen – running back; after graduation joined the Marines, was a Bombardier/Navigator in a A-6 jet during the Viet Nam war.  Earned Master Degree in Education and ultimately became Superintendent of Schools in the Sacramento area, now retired with two homes in Arizona, one in the desert, one in the mountains.

Terry ‘TC’ Callahan – tight end; after graduation he was drafted into the Army and became a combat medic seeing lots of action in Viet Nam.  After the service he earned a Masters Degree and worked as a Probation Officer and did background investigations for the Department of Defense. Retired, he now has two homes in Utah, one just south of Salt Lake City, the other in St. George.

John Soltis addressing us at our ‘Awards Banquet’

Joel ‘Herbie’ Hall – running back; joined the Marines after graduation and flew helicopters  (Huey gun ships) in Viet Nam receiving 28 air medals.  He then had a 32-year career with the 3M company.  Now retired in the Atlanta area and has a second home in Jensen Beach, Florida.

(Editors note: I wrote a previous blog on the above three guy after we all met in Vegas in 2017 – here’s the link in case you want to read more.  https://fromabirdeyeview/?p=6648)

John ‘Tiger’ Horan – wide receiver; after graduation became a Navy officer and was a Bombardier/Navigator in an A-6 jet and remained in the Navy retiring after 23 years as a Lieutenant Commander.  John is retired and living in Kanab, Utah and teaching a high school aviation technology class.

Mickey ‘Mick’ McBride – lineman; received Masters Degree in Educational Administration, was a teacher and coach and ultimately retired as high school principal

Steve ‘Hands’ Harmon – wide receiver; Steve transferred to Cal State Hayward where he earned a Ph D in Public Health and now teaches at the University of Utah and works for the Veterans Health Care Administration in Salt Lake City.

Ken, Duffy, Horan & Mick ‘telling lies’

Ed ‘Coop’ Cooper – running back; graduated with a business degree and went on to earn a Masters Degree from the University of Utah.  Ed  worked for Martin Marietta for 38 years, the last 25 has a Regional Sales Manager.  He is now retired in Salt Lake City.

Kent ‘Kicking Lawyer’ Holland – lineman; after graduation became a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army, then attended law school at the University of Pacific and continues to practice law in Salt Lake City.

Dave ‘Electric’ Chally – friend & fan; after graduation he worked for NECA (National Electric Contractors Association) in northern California, where he grew up, then moved with the company to Spokane where he became Executive Director for the Pacific Northwest for NECA; he is still working for them in Spokane.

John ‘Duffy’ Soltis – basketball player and orator; graduated with a degree in Sociology, which he didn’t know what to do with so ended up going to law school in San Diego and returned to Utah with his law degree and worked in various positions with the Salk Lake County District Attorney’s office.

A pretty impressive group if you ask me!  And that doesn’t include some Westminster ex-players who didn’t attend the reunion, like:

Parsons at the ‘First Supper’

Craig ‘Doc’ Wilkinson – receiver; graduated with mathematics major and minor in physics and chemistry, joined Army Reserves with the 328th General Hospital Unit, went on to earn medical doctor’s degree from University of Utah and has practiced general and vascular surgery in Salt Lake City for 35 years.

Steve ‘Sugar Bear’ Kazor – lineman; BS degree from Westminster and a Masters Degree from Kansas State.  Coach in the NFL for the  1985 Super Bowl Chicago Bears and continues to work in the NFL in player personnel.

Scott ‘The I’ Iverson – basketball player; served in the Marine Corp prior to coming to Westminster, where he earned a BS degree and then a Masters Degree from BYU.  He taught and coached high school in Utah and Arizona.  He is now retired in Utah

I’m holding my Worst Bowler ‘Stay with Football’ Award’!

But the three nights in Vegas weren’t about accomplishments, it was about hilarious stories and the rekindling of old friendships that could never die.  I came away with pride of being a member of this group and with a big smile on my face thinking of the stories about our days as the fighting Westminster Parsons.

Not so terrible to be in your 70s!

 

 

Posted in News

Dick Time

By Comments:

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

With Rice and Powell firmly under the bus

Chaney’s new book has caused quite a fuss.

If you read In My Time I think you would find

That it should have been called, In My Own Mind.

–

The car-sharing Zipcar is making a deal

With Ford and their Focus, the high-tech mobile.

If it works it will help college kids get around,

If not, they’ll be caught with their zipper down.

–

When Hurricanes are mentioned, you think of Irene,

But the Hurricanes of Miami, though not as obscene,

Have put college football in water that’s hot;

We think that the Cheetah should be their mascot.

–

Movies this summer they say were a snooze;

With Conan and Aliens, that isn’t big news.

Kids must have been facebooking or tweeting for fun;

Even Captain America couldn’t hit a home run.

—

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