2011 Week 5
October 5, 2011
October has finally arrived and, with it, the real beginnings of conference play.
One of the biggest games of the day was Alabama's big SEC blowout over the Florida Gators. It was nice to see former USC running back and Notre Dame head coach Charles White on the sidelines for the Gators calling in his special "quarterback drop back and get sacked" plays.
Wisconsin welcomed the Nebraska Cornholio to the newly expanded Big Ten with a 48-17 thumping. Elsewhere in Big Ten action, Illinois nipped Northwestern, the Michigan State Fighting Chippewas tamed the Buckeyes, and Texas bombed Iowa State.
Tennessee destroyed Buffalo in a new league apparently called the "American Football Conference", I'm curious to see who else will be in this AFC.
In the Southwest Conference SMU upended TCU in overtime and R Kansas beat the Texas A&M Longhorns in the Cotton Bowel.
My good friend Chris Berman called me late Saturday to tell me that Beth Cook had scored first on Miami. Now I know my daughter and she scores in a lot of cities. Then they score on her and it ends up a big mess. That's what happened in Miami, Beth scored, then was all tied up, then got scored on.
One of the more disturbing college football trends in recent years has been all these alternate uniforms. Instead of going out there in a classic simple home or away uniform like Penn State or Western Virginia, teams have new jerseys for almost every week of the season.
This was brought home during the Notre Dame vs. Michigan game. Both teams claimed to be wearing throwbacks, uniforms from a past era. But the Irish helmet did not have the Prohibition era drunken leprechaun logo. And the blue Michigan helmet had some hideous looking yellow stripes.
The most recent idea has been outfitting teams in camouflage uniforms. This does convey an advantage because the teams tend to blend in with the surroundings, especially at a beautiful tree-lined stadium like North Carolina's.
It was, however, quite disturbing last Saturday to see Auburn face off against a USC team that had outsourced its sports uniforms to the military, especially because those Trojan uniforms looked a lot like Italian Marine uniforms. USC was about as successful as our European allies, dropping a 16-13 decision. Which reminds me of an old joke I heard during WW I: Why does the new Italian Navy have glass at the bottom of their boats? Because they didn't know what a latrine was until I showed them!
This outsourcing has become too prevalent in college sports. You have foreign armies sponsoring American football teams. USC, as I pointed out, is probably the worst offender. The wonderful tradition of the Song Girls has been taken over by Vegas bordellos, who now market their own girls in those magnificent white sweaters. Tommy Trojan is actually sponsored by an S&M outlet store in West Hollywood. And the magnificent white USC horse, Mr Ed, now sports an Elmer's Glue logo on his hiney.
I can't wait until we get away from this commercialization of football. We need to go back to the way more traditional schools approach things, like Oregon.