Andy Young: The Extinction Bowl

By Andy Young

The College Football Playoff (CFP), a 12-team tournament that will ultimately determine this season’s national collegiate championship, begins this weekend with four games. The winners will move on to play higher-seeded teams, with the 11-game single-elimination tournament concluding with the Jan. 20 national championship game.

Truthfully though, it doesn’t matter which group of youthful mercenaries ultimately triumph. Each represents a multi-million-dollar corporation that, for the sake of convenience, has nominally attached itself to an institution of higher learning. This year’s field includes Texas, Georgia, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and eight similar athletic factories.

Regardless of which squad wins, every team involved in this year’s CFP will be back in the hunt in 2025 with revamped squads, augmented with the largest and quickest gladiators-for-hire money and similar inducements can buy. And while the contributions of influential alums will help pay for renting next season’s athletic soldiers of fortune, the bulk of the costs will be borne, largely through the courtesy of compliant lawmakers, by ordinary citizens who pay taxes and/or tuition.

I believe something of tangible value ought to be at stake in any meaningful post-season football playoff. That’s why America (and specifically ESPN’s programming department) needs the Football Elimination Tournament (FET), featuring the nation’s 12 least-successful Division I programs. This year’s lineup of gridiron sad sacks is clear-cut, since exactly 12 major college teams won fewer than two of the dozen games on their schedule. In the FET, the four worst squads would get byes through the opening round, just as the nominal top four get free passes through the initial round of the CFP.

The FET’s first quartet of games would feature eight one-win, eleven-loss teams. This year’s opening round would pit Dixie State (which, inexplicably, is located in Utah) against Delaware State, with Charleston Southern opposing Purdue, North Carolina A&T taking on Southern Mississippi, and Virginia Military Institute squaring off against Mississippi Valley State. However, unlike the overhyped, over-subsidized CFP, a win in an FET playoff game would entitle the victors to conclude their dreadful season, while the teams they beat would be forced to play on.

In the second round, the four Round One “losers” would play, in order, Kent State, Northwestern State (which, improbably, lies in the not-so-northwestern state of Louisiana), Northern Colorado, and Murray State. Kent State and Northwestern State would merit their pass through the first round by having lost all 12 of their games in 2024. The other two would get first-round byes thanks to having, among the ten teams that finished 1-11, the two worst point differentials. Northern Colorado scored 317 fewer points than their opponents, while Murray State registered an even more abysmal minus 341.

Assuming the higher remaining seeds play their way out of the FET by winning their second-round games, and that Murray State and Northern Colorado subsequently (and mercifully) end their horrible seasons by winning in the semi-finals, it would set up a loser-take-all showdown between the tournament’s last two remaining teams. But why would anyone care about the outcome of a game between two winless squads? Because of the stakes: the loser of the Extinction Bowl, Kent State or Northwestern State, would be required to drop their football program for at least five years!

Many of America’s major-college football programs (which most likely includes every team in the mythical FET) that aren’t affiliated with a major conference annually operate in the red, costing their schools obscene amounts of money. That established, the chance to rid one’s university, at least temporarily, of the fiscal sinkhole intercollegiate football has become would be a prize well worth competing for. <

Andy Young: College football: To play or not to play?

By Andy Young

Columnist

I’m fascinated by the subject of subliminal messaging. In fact, I’m going to try utilizing it in an essay sometime soon. But that’s for another day. Now let’s get to today’s topic: sports and the ongoing pandemic.

Last month University of Maine president Joan Ferrini-Mundy announced that after consulting with the Colonial Athletic Association, the football conference to which the Black Bears belong, the university had made “…the difficult but necessary decision to postpone participation in the fall 2020 sports season.” That means no football, field hockey, soccer or cross-country in Orono this fall.

While the athletes involved, many of whom have spent a significant portion of their young lives preparing to compete in their chosen sport at the collegiate level, are no doubt disappointed, most understand the need for caution.

UMaine is not alone regarding its decision to postpone athletics this fall. The New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which includes Bowdoin, Bates, and Colby Colleges, had reached a similar conclusion a week earlier, one that foreshadowed similar resolutions from nearly every Division III (small college) athletic conference in the country. In the weeks that followed, still more universities and athletic conferences made identical choices, opting to prioritize the health of student-athletes, coaches and athletic support staff ahead of any competitive and/or economic concerns.

The wave of postponements or cancellations of fall sports is unfortunate but justifiable, given the unprecedented circumstances that necessitated them. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), through Aug. 23 the coronavirus had infected over 5.6 million people in the United States, and 175,651 American lives have been lost in the ongoing pandemic.

There are, however, additional considerations involved with cancelling one particular fall sport. For many schools, college football is a ca$h cow that allows them to fund every other intercollegiate athletic team they field. A football-less autumn means taking a major economic hit for many university athletic departments, yet many of them have, after careful analysis, opted to take that step.

On Aug. 5, the University of Connecticut became the first Division I (major college) institution to cancel its 2020 football season. Less than a week later the Mountain West Conference and the Mid-American Conference, two smaller Division I leagues, did likewise, as did several independent Division I schools. Days later two of the five largest collegiate athletic conferences in the country, the Big Ten and the Pac 12, announced they too would forego football this fall.

But not every school is prioritizing the health of their athletic personnel.

The member schools of the $outheastern, Atlantic Coast, and Big 12 Conferences are, at this writing, still planning on fielding college football teams this fall, and on playing full schedules.

The powers that be at these institutes of higher learning, which are located primarily in the south and southeast, have access to the same data the rest of the country does. Suggesting these athletic factories, which, unlike National Football League teams, don’t have to pay their hired gladiators, are motivated by lust for profits would be unseemly. But football involves heavy breathing in close quarters, with body contact and violent collisions on every play. Would any responsible educator risk the health and well-being of some young athletes merely to generate million$ of dollar$ in profit$ for collegiate athletic departments and television network$?

Yet after carefully assessing many factors, the lords of the $EC, ACC, and Big 12 Conferences decided to go ahead with intercollegiate football this fall.

Gee, I wonder which factor$ tho$e people con$idered? Which one$ mattered mo$t? And what po$$e$$ed them to make the deci$ion they ultimately did? <