Silver Bullet Points: “I told you so” Edition

Like I needed an excuse to post Carrie Underwood:

Those of you who’ve been with us since we were over at that other network may remember my little attempt at fixing the college football landscape with a playoff system.

I suggested at the time that conference realignment was a crucial step (Check. I don’t think we’re done), and pointed to a couple of other things that needed t be changed or kept in perspective.

First, I agreed with Rob that we needed to do away with the pre-season polls, holding that all they do was over inflate a team’s ranking for voters who were a) drawn to “name brands” and b) hadn’t actually seen 40 or so teams play this season.

Wouldn’t you know it? We may have been onto something, according to the Tacoma News Tribune’s John McGrath. He correctly points out that the AP poll’s preseason number one hasn’t held that position at the end of the year since 2004 (and even that may not stand up in the long run). Before that was 1999’s FSU team, and 1993’s FSU team prior to that.  In the 60 years since the AP’s been doing the pre-season poll, it’s been right at predicting the best team in the land nine times. Just something to keep in mind in the coming weeks full of hype and expectation.

Second, we talked about how the current bowl system is about money and not “champions”, and that the money more often than does not fall into the hands of athlete departments, in spite of what some people believe. UConn is seeing this up close and personal- they moved from 1-AA to Division 1 and joined the Big lEast in order to expand their footprint and revenue stream. Now, according the the Hartford Courier, that decision is being second guessed, as the Huskies are only one of five BCS programs to lose money in 08-09.  In a climate where more and more institutions are questioning athletic spending, and the rates of subsidy for sports at non-major schools is increasing, don’t be surprised if this doesn’t have larger repercussions for the state of college football.

Which is why I’m convinced we’re not done with expansion- from a market perspective, it only makes sense for institutions to look for more and more ways to fund the endeavors of their student athletes.