re: Am I alone?

Nice post, OP. I agree with you.

You are not alone. It will also be interesting to see what happens when these various sports bubbles begin to pop.

And Ole Miss has lost more than any other team because of the PC crowd.

I absolutely love Ole Miss playing Dixie and the pageantry that went around it. Ole Miss has lost not only to the move toward NFL-like game atmospheres, but the people who are butthurt by everything even though it doesn't affect them.

Give me this all day.

That evokes a sense of oppression and racism to many reasonable people even where such sentiments aren't intended. I think Ole miss should have moved away from that a little quicker.

Yeah, except I don't think...hey...slavery when I see the eagle at Auburn.

ETA: There are times when people are too sensitive. I just don't think that is one of those times.

I will say this: The A&M student body has done a damn admirable job of keeping our "pageantry" and traditions alive over the decades--despite the naysayers at other schools who think said activities should die.

The ads have certainly increased; but I'm a capitalist to the bone, so I can live with em (and actually embrace em). They're a sign of commerce/money flowing--something I'd much rather see than some God-forsaken tax.

"Not paid by the state"

While I think anc makes some good points, I don't know why so many people fail to grasp this about college football/basketball coaching salaries. It is amazing to me how college coaches overall and specifically the highest paid college football coaches in particular get singled out for their compensation. MLB and NBA players can sign 200 million dollar + guaranteed contracts and no one bats an eye but let a college football coach make over 5 million to coach a 100+ million dollar football program and people act outraged. Do people not understand that the public "salary" portion of these college football coaching compensation packages make up about 10% of the entire package. About 90% of Saban's (and other college football and basketball coaches) overall compensation comes from endorsements from sources outside the universities themselves?

The only thing that has changed is technology, and that has benefits as well as detriments. The fact that the dissemination of information has vastly increased is so axiomatic as to be not even worth bringing up in its own thread. We know all this. When a college player gets rape-y or cheats on a test or whatever, it's no different than it used to...except now he is vastly more likely to be held accountable because sweeping it under the rug or keeping things quiet is far less of an option. These doom-and-gloom responses are actually responses to being informed rather than remaining in ignorance. 20 years ago, those academic issues wouldn't have been full-blown scandals...in all likelihood, they wouldn't have ever seen the light of day.

The college debt issue has multiple factors, but one of them is simply that the demand for college is greater than it ever has been, thus more and more people are attending. Naturally, people are going to go into debt, especially in a more egalitarian age when college isn't considered something primarily intended for well-off kids from good backgrounds should do. The scholarship complaint befuddles me, though. You do realize that, before scholarship limits, there were far more kids sitting on the bench their entire careers, right?

All in all, your misty-eyed look at the good ol' days strikes me as silly. Yeah, coaches get paid more. Tickets cost more. TV shows games and teams have nicer venues. Most people who think things used to be "better" rarely make a convincing argument. Do I hate the fact that I can see instant replays on a giant screen? Am I pissed that seating is more comfortable and that I can follow what's happening on the field in detail even if I'm stuck in the nosebleeds? Do I miss inconvenient set-ups, poorly managed crowd control, and lack of decent facilities? Sorry, no, I actually think these changes are improvements. The only thing I'd miss about the good ol' days is the two gallon Ultra-Huge tap beer cups for a nickel, with the three pound bars of penny chocolate. Those existed, right?

quote:

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Is the college game losing its luster with the thuggery, the academic fraud, and the NFL-like game day atmosphere?

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Do you mean the "good old days" when college football was white's only? Or maybe you mean the days of SMU football or perhaps when Sandusky's little fetish was protected by the coaches and the administration at PSU.

I knew a scholarship player and years later found out that he and a buddy of his had quite a criminal operation going back in our college days. He should not have been in jail, he should have been in F-ing prison. The bastard is still honored at his high school during homecoming. God Damn the son of a bitch.

Perhaps the past is not what you think it was. Today it's more difficult to sweep the shite under the rug. If a player is taking money, chances are he's going to get caught. If BS is going on inside a program, everyone is sniffing around. Reporters, social media,... you're far more likely to get caught today than you were in the good old days.

As we sit here getting excited about the upcoming season, these players are busting their asses in the weight room and running captains drills, getting ready for fall practice. It's almost a 365 day a year job for these athletes and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with education.

The game is changing and that's our requirements.