James Madison University the latest to mistakenly think its football team is a ticket to something greater for the university

Hey, look! James Madison University wants to move its football program up from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision, and certain faculty are bent out of shape about it, for obvious reasons.

First, there's the simple matter that the NCAA exists largely to make money off of grossly underpaid labor, and its history is one of redefining its role as is convenient. That doesn't sit well with some of the JMU profs, for obvious reasons, one of the big ones being that they don't want to be in the "subsidizing athletic endeavors" business, but rather in the "educating young people for the world" business.

There's also the little matter of cost. There's nothing wrong with wanting to pay for something fun and nice, which an FBS football team can be, but let's not dance around the point that JMU (and all schools starting from scratch in this regard) will have to actually pay for it. Playing at that level isn't just an automatic money-maker, and apparently, it appears it's fallen to the profs to point this stuff out and make it explicit.

If you want to see the downside of leveling up, go to Philadelphia and see what's happened to Temple University since it brought its football team to the FCS. Yikes.

Ultimately, the problem is a matter of framing. If we could start over the athletic-industrial complex in the United States today, would we tie big-time athletics to universities? Of course not. We'd set it up like the old minor league baseball days, or like the club soccer system overseas, where independent minor league teams would sign players and develop them either on behalf of major league teams, or on their own behalf before selling their rights to major league organizations. As Tommy Craggs put it a couple years ago (and as should be framed at the entrance of every NCAA basketball and football complex): "You begin from the assumption... that the NCAA is a worthwhile institution with flaws. I begin from the assumption that the NCAA should be dynamited."

Shift the starting point and put it on the NCAA to explain why it should exist, and the pretense falls apart. It's all one unending shell game: Universities exist to provide academic development... Universities make a bunch of money from athletics... The athletes making a bunch of money for the universities, however, have to be seen as being there for their academic development, per the universities' mission, otherwise the academics lose their integrity... Enter the NCAA, which exists, ostensibly, in order to ensure universities' academic integrity by enforcing eligibility requirements based on athletes' maintaining student status... Which is only necessary because universities don't want to be seen as accepting students only because they're athletes; after all, universities exist to provide academic development.

It's not just colleges. High schools suffer from the same bullshit, too. But if JMU (and UNC-Charlotte, and Appalachian State) only want to focus on some grand fantasy of winning a national championship in football someday, instead of focusing on being the best university they can be, while fielding football teams that do well enough in the FCS and already do the job of providing a community rallying point at that level, they're bound for disappointment.

Be happy with having a successful FCS team. Unless you're already there, it's not worth playing FBS (and sometimes, even if you are, it's not).

(Image cc-licensed: "Zane Showker Field" by Taber Andrew Bain)

ESPN is straight-up trolling football fans, now

Chris Mortensen reported that (allegedly) the University of Texas has A LIST of coaches they want to head up their program, and on this list are Chip Kelly, Mike McCarthy, and Pete Carroll. That, in turn, led to reporters asking Kelly if he is a candidate for that job, with zero mention of his still-in-progress show-cause penalty, giving ESPN another story to post.

With those three names, plus Jim Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin, and the previously-rumored Nick Saban -- none of whom will leave their current jobs for the Texas post -- ESPN reveals itself as an idiot-monkey-hype outlet. Yes, an idiot-monkey-hype outlet. The only reason to name those names is to make Texas sound like it's the kind of place those coaches would consider going to coach.

ESPN isn't the only one playing the idiot-monkey-hype game. Check out this jaw-dropping tweet from Bruce Feldman, of CBSSports.com.

Names I think could be in play for #Texas vacancy: Jimbo Fisher, Jim Harbaugh, Jim Mora, James Franklin & Mike Tomlin.
— Bruce Feldman (@BFeldmanCBS) December 15, 2013

The aforementioned Harbaugh and Tomlin! JIMBO FISHER, aka the Dude Who's Coaching Florida State in the National Title Game Less Than A Month From Now! For what it's worth, Mora's unlikely to leave a pretty solid situation at UCLA, and Franklin is absolutely the kind of coach who could jump at the chance to coach UT, but naming the others is nothing short of ludicrous.

Let's all agree: anyone who offers up an established NFL head coach as a possible candidate to jump to Texas without specifying the reason why said NFL head coach would want to flip his life around like that is playing the idiot-monkey-hype game. ESPN doesn't even know how to play this game all that well, it seems, since it doesn't realize that Kelly would require NCAA pre-approval to take the reins at Texas, even if he wanted to leave a promising situation in Philadelphia.

Seriously, if you're going to name Saban and act like he's not just using Texas the way the NFL uses Los Angeles (for contract leverage), or name Jim Freaking Harbaugh, Chip Kelly, and Jimbo Fisher as if it's realistic that they might leave their current positions for the Texas job, then you may as well name every good coach in America. Urban Meyer! Bill Belichick! Brian Kelly! Sean Payton! Kevin Sumlin! Steve Sarkisian! They'd all be FOOLS to turn down the Texas job!

Prediction: Texas will finally settle on a competent coach with a track record of success, but no national championships, and perhaps not even from the top tier of college teams. That is to say the most prominent coaches who could conceivably land the Texas job are Ed Orgeron and Bill O'Brien. After them, we're in James Franklin territory. And after him, we're looking at current NFL assistants, such as Ken Whisenhunt, or promising coaches at non-power-conference schools. David Bailiff, at Rice, would be perfect if he was 10 years younger (he's 55).

This is how it is at every school, and how it will be at Texas. I have zero inside information. But I can smell bullshit when it's presented to me. Don't play the idiot-hype-monkey game.

(Image cc-licensed: "Texas Longhorns" by Katie Haugland)

The 9 greatest endings to football games in the past 31 years, ranked off the top of my head, with videos of each play

9 -- The Trinity Play


8 -- Young to Owens (The Catch II)


7 -- Dyson Comes Up Short


6 -- Plano East vs. Tyler ("I Wanna Throw Up")


5 -- App State


4 -- The Music City Miracle


3 -- The Return


2 -- Boise's Statue of Liberty


1 -- The Play


Honorable Mention: The Last Boy Scout
Honorable Mention: The Flea Kicker
Honorable Mention: The Bush Push
Honorable Mention: DeSean's Return, aka Dodge's Demise
Honorable Mention: Carney Misses the PAT

Charlotte's stadium follies: public money for ego and circuses

Somehow, I missed this detail about the University of North Carolina-Charlotte’s football stadium, now named after Jerry Richardson:

The school had discussed seeking $5 million for temporary naming rights, with an eye toward renewing or signing another agreement after 15 years. Instead, Richardson came along with the $10 million offer and the stadium name was set in perpetuity.

Note: This was after Richardson asked local governments for money to help fund a remodel of the Carolina Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium, and eventually landed some $87 million. So, for $5 million, UNCC sold out its football stadium’s name in perpetuity rather than wait another few years to rinse and repeat. Awesome!

You know what else is awesome? The UNCC football stadium is nice, but didn’t have to be built. By its own calculation, the university borrowed about $40 million and raised the rest through other means, but what about the other options? What about BB&T Park, the new facility being built for the Class-AAA minor league baseball Charlotte Knights in uptown Charlotte?

Obviously, it wouldn’t work to put UNCC’s football team in BofA Stadium for most games right away, as they might only draw 20,000 people (the new stadium holds about 16,000, with plans to expand to about 40,000), but the university could have put money toward building BB&T in such a way that about 15,000 people could watch football there, and then once (if) UNCC gets popular enough, they could move to BofA Stadium.

It’s true that playing baseball in football stadiums is a terrible idea, but playing football in baseball stadiums has a long and proud tradition, and baseball stadiums tend to be far more pleasant places for spectators than football-only facilities. For example, see how AT&T Park, in San Francisco, has been arranged for college football games.

With minimal, if any, changes, BB&T Park could be set up in a similar way, with the football field running from the first base foul territory out into left field, and temporary stands erected in right field. Ideally, the field would be all artificial turf (the good stuff that acts, more or less, like grass; not the carpet, of course), as many minor league parks and football facilities use. But if you want to insist on a grass field, guess what? The minor league baseball schedule ends at the start of September, so there’s virtually no overlap!

I get it: the school wanted a nice shiny toy for itself on campus. However, as a public institution spending public money, it ought to have told Richardson (a.k.a. the dude that had just played hardball with the state for access to the public teat) to go jump in a lake.

And the school really ought to have considered subsidizing the Charlotte Knights’ stadium in exchange for a few tenant perks since, as the Knights point out on their own web site, the land for their new stadium is valued at around $24 million and is being leased for $1 per year. It would have been a win-win for everyone. (Except Jerry Richardson, as it should have been.)

It’s not necessarily easy to make money on college football, especially as part of a non-BCS conference, and this was an opportunity to try something truly revolutionary for a mid-sized city: Leverage one entity’s inability to go anywhere to help entice another entity to stay, while still giving the people the college football team that they appear willing the bankrupt themselves in order to get.

(Image cc-licensed: "DSC_6420" by DigiDreamGrafix.com)

(Image cc-licensed: "UNR @ AT&T Park" by Zack Sheppard)

Manti Te'o, Lennay Kekua, and the politics of reporting inconvenient untruths

Here we are. A Heisman Trophy finalist, a player who led Notre Dame to the BCS championship game, and supposedly did it all while dealing with the grief of having his girlfriend die during the season, was at best a victim of a bizarre and inexplicable hoax, and at worst spun a vast and multifaceted web of lies to uncertain and improbable ends.

Things that drive me crazy: college football edition

In the just-released AP NCAA football poll, South Carolina is ahead of USC, which is ahead of Florida State, which is ahead of Clemson. See, SC lost to LSU, which was ranked 9th last week, in Baton Rouge, and it was a close game, so that means they shouldn’t drop that far from their No. 3 perch, right?

And USC has lost exactly once, to Stanford, in Palo Alto, when Stanford was ranked No. 21. Stanford has subsequently lost at Washington and then “lost” at then-No. 7 Notre Dame. So maybe USC’s spot at No. 11 makes sense, right?

Are we all just “playing school” so Urban Meyer can live like some sort of absurdist sports sultan? Are my blood, sweat and tears first and foremost a means to pay for the fuel for my coach’s private plane?

Dave Zirin, urging “student-athletes”* to question the premises of the NCAA.

*The scare quotes are intentional.