Bingo! Just a few of the reasons I've lost interest in college football.
Some will and have been here saying BS, look at the horseshoe, look at ND, look at Alabama, it's huge, everyone wants to see the Big Programs, reform is marxist, blah blah. No. It's dying on the vine in many places, especially ours. You don't have to be guaranteed to win but you need to have a place in the hunt.
The system is rigged now, especially when seeing a big program that commits mass rape, has coaches beating their spouses and covering it up, and committing widespread academic fraud for the benefit of athletics (UNC) aren't even pretended to pay a consequence. Well, at least the ncaa did pretend with PSU but immediately backed off. Nobody even suggests the lack of discipline isn't for any other reason than stature of the program and money.
But forget the discipline, the NE Patriots scandals proved there will always be ways to cheat or otherwise "behave badly" that sports teams will seek and be willing to scheme for. At least the Patriots were dealt a semblance of penalty.
The dwindling competitiveness is the real issue. As the thread last week patiently but irrefutably proved, a system were the best get rewarded with the best will eventually implode on itself. Where top players are increasingly willing to go and likely sit on their asses for 4 or maybe even 5 years vs. willing to sign up with a wider variety of programs, means bad things, no matter who wants to implant a US flag in the dung heap.
The selfishness of the few might be "American" in this case but it's killing the goose for the model as it is now. Maybe they're great with that, eventually they can just forget the pretense all together and form the Elite College Football league that it basically already is now. But that means the end for the likes ofour program ... maybe for the best in our case, we really don't give a squat ... but hurtful and harmful for many other midlevel universities.
Anyway, the ability for a Penn State or other such programs to unilaterally end a rivalry (or frankly just unilaterally being able to manipulate its schedule to pad victories period) is an extension of the reform badly needed.
Don't point to ASu talking them to OT as a justification to keep things the same; the fact PSU ultimately won the game is justification for the reform. They were poorly prepared and coached for that game and SHOULD have been punished with a loss for it; against a legit opponent they would have. Against a cupcake they still were given a win.
