we:Freshmen

Now as a college sports fan and athlete, you have to understand that I have mad love and support for all college athletes around the country.  I know how much work they put in and that they have to make incredible sacrifices to do what they do at a high level.  I was at home this holiday season and wanted to tune into some of the early bowl games just for fun.  I turned on the 2009 Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, live from fabulous Detroit, Michigan.  There are thirty two bowl games, which obviously mean 64 teams make bowl games.  There are 120 division 1a football teams in college football.  I don’t have to do the math for you. Now, I know that I am spoiled being from the west coast and enjoying the Pac 10’s schedule and bowl games.  Most of which are in California, Texas, Arizona or Nevada.  All of which are credible, beautiful, fun, resort type locations for the family and friends of the players to come for vacation.  There are bowl games in cities like, Mobile, Toronto, Peachtree City, and others.  The Little Caesars Pizza Bowl involved Ohio of the MAC conference and Marshall of Conference USA.  Have we reached the point where we have too many bowl games.  I mean in a season like this should a team like UCLA or Notre Dame even have the opportunity to go to bowl games.  They were two of the worst teams that the major conferences got to play against all year.  Then again, I have to look at this from a business perspective as well.  The bowls produce money for these schools and for some of the schools, they only get to go to one bowl every so often.  Going to a bowl game is huge for them, recruiting wise, money wise and is great for their seniors.  I just think at a point, giving half of the students a gold star diminishes the value of that accomplishment.  I hope the bowl system is looked at again, because I would rather take off about 10 of these lower bowl games and create a playoff system for the top teams.  I don’t know if that will ever happen, but I think it should be something people continue to talk about.  I’ll try to enjoy the rest of the bowl games this season, but really can’t wait until the big boys start going at it.

It certainly has been a while and I apologize for the holiday break that we took.  There are plenty of hot topics out there to catch up on.  Last weekend on Sunday night, we witnessed something that we don’t traditionally see from professional athletes and coaches on live television.  We saw a dispute between the star of the team and the coach of the team.  This dispute came about because the star (Brett Favre) and the coach (Josh Childress), didn’t quite see eye to eye on the importance of the playing time for that individual star.  In case you’ve been living under a rock or don’t pay attention to the NFL, the Indianapolis Colts were 14-0 going into this past week’s game at home against the Jets.  The Jets are a strong team, but most football fans felt the Colts should handle them relatively easily.  We saw the score tightening up in the 3rd quarter and Jim Caldwell did what fantasy football owners of Peyton dreaded.  He pulled the star players toward the end of the game.  This put the hopes for an undefeated season in the hands of the backups.  The Colts would go onto lose the game by 14 points and helps the Jets control their own destiny now in the playoff picture.  The logical sports fan in me tells me that this was the right move and that winning the super bowl is ultimately the main goal and that the other stuff in the regular season are overhyped by dumb fans and the media.  Jim Caldwell certainly believes that and as a first year head coach, I would expect him to certainly go for the super bowl before any type of undefeated season.  But the crazy fun fan in me wants to always go for the history books.  I want to be remembered as the only team to go undefeated in a full 16 game season.  I want a chance to shut up Mercury Morris and the rest of the ’72 dolphins.  Caldwell did what he thought was right.  Winning a super bowl for him is more important.  Getting Peyton his second is more important.  The only way this is even close to being worth it is if they win the super bowl.  Only then will we be able to wait 20 years and ask the Colts organization and players if losing the 15th game of the season was worth it.

Most of us think we know our public figures from what we see on television, hear from others or read about online.  Tiger Woods showed us that we really don’t know what we think we know.  Early on Friday morning, we found out on ESPN and CNN that Tiger got in a car accident and injured himself.   Many questions arose because, Tiger’s air bags didn’t open.  This would mean that Tiger couldn’t have been driving over 33 mph.  If that was the case it is extremely strange that he had such extreme injuries and became unconscious.  Tiger and his wife refused to talk to police over the weekend and even up until now.  Tiger’s wife reportedly used a golf club to bash in the back window and get Tiger out of the car.  There is a lot of suspicion because of the cuts and bruises, his wife’s reaction and several issues from several days ago.  Several days ago on the internet it was reported that Tiger was possibly having an affair with a night club hostess from New York.  Tiger has said that these are absolutely untrue and so did the woman in question.  All of this is extremely strange and the public wants answers.  The police have issued out a search warrant for Tiger’s hospital records from that day.  This will help determine if the injuries that Tiger got from the accident were from an auto accident or domestic violence.  We will find out in the next several days and weeks more information but the only people who will really know what happened are Tiger and his wife Elin Woods.

Ok so I know it’s still football season and hoop season is just gettin underway.  I know that most of us don’t have the luxury of having NBA League Pass and the games we generally watch are ESPN or TNT games.  I don’t know if you guys have noticed but the NBA attendance has been pretty bad for some arenas around the league.  Just looking at the percentages earlier today, I saw some teams at the bottom of the list that I expected such as Memphis, New Jersey, Sacramento, and Charlotte.  Most of these cities are pretty large, but the teams aren’t that good and don’t have star power.  Some of the other ones at the bottom include Philadelphia, Milwaukee and the Los Angeles Clippers.  Philadelphia and Memphis have an abysmal 56% and 64% attendance rating AT HOME.  Two of America’s great cities aren’t coming out to support their pro basketball teams.  It is early in the season but it is interesting to me that ESPN hasn’t reported anything about this.

Watching some of these teams play, you wonder, “Where are all the hoop fans at? And why aren’t they coming to these games? Ticket prices? Weather? Other options?”  I hope something is done about this soon because it is embarrassing as a basketball fan to see these empty arenas.  Mr. Stern better have some answers for this.  Part of the problem might be the crazy difference between the 8 good teams in the NBA and the 22 bad ones.  That’s just my opinion though.

In case you missed it, this past weekend was packed with great NFL match ups.  One wouldn’t necessarily consider the Bills and Titans one of those great match ups.  Tell that to Titans Owner Bud Adams, who was fined $250,000 for flipping off the fans at the stadium on Sunday on several occasions.  Bud Adams is 86 years old and apologized for his actions.  Ralph Wilson, the owner of the Bills and Adams are two of the original owners from the American Football League.  The game was special because it was a dedication to two great owners and even included throwback jerseys to honor the history of the two teams.  The Titans players loved it saying he was just having  a good time out there supporting his team.  The NFL didn’t think so.

Wow.  Three freshmen on the Tennessee Volunteers football team have been charged with attempted armed robbery last week.  These guys are 18 years old and important parts to the Vol’s football squad.  These guys came around to a parked car with their faces covered up at 2 AM, one holding a gun and saying, “Give me everything you got.”   The guys were carrying a pellet gun and were taken away in a get away car.  Seriously, what kind of parents did these kids have growing up.  College scholarship athletes have very few problems as it is, and even if they did, this is one of the dumbest things you can do.  Two of the three have been kicked off the team and the third is waiting until the judicial process goes through.  Wefreshmen don’t necessarily love Lane Kiffin, but we do appreciate the fact that he put his foot down in this situation even with some of his top freshmen players.  I hope these kids realize that their college and possible NFL careers might have been ruined because of some dumb incident.

Five Arkansas Razorbacks players are suspended from the basketball team. Several of them are suspended indefinitely for violating team rules. In August an 18 year old freshmen female accused several of the Arkansas basketball players of raping her at a fraternity party. Players were cleared of any wrongdoing but suspensions were placed on the players anyway. I along with most of society tend to side with the women in these types of situations, especially the way the media portrays the situation and the fact that the players are suspended. That tells me that these guys must have done something wrong, otherwise the coach wouldn’t have suspended them,  right?

With all of that said, what I am about to say is probably going to be seen as pretty controversial and many of you won’t agree with me. I understand that and am willing to take the messages from those who disagree. Sometimes, athletes are in the wrong in situations like these. Rape is always wrong, so if it is true that an athlete or group of athletes raped this woman, then they are wrong. The thing is, I am a college male athlete. I know that most of us are really good guys who enjoy our sport, going to school and college life. We attend parties just like everyone else.  Some would say, “well thats the problem.  you guys shouldn’t be at parties with everyone else if you’re going to get in situations like this.”  I am not even going to respond to those of you who truly feel that way.

Many times at these parties we can be seen as targets by guys and girls, but for right now I will talk about the girls. Women at these college parties normally get free alcohol, like to drink a lot and love the attention of being around or with a college athlete. Wefreshmen are certainly not saying that girls are lying but it seems to us that sometimes, girls lust after high profile people and if something doesn’t work out, they can say whatever they want and the public tends to agree with them. One might say, “well it does happen sometimes.”  The problem with that because so many women have said it when it hasn’t been true, the power of their statements and allegations have dipped in recent times.

Again, let me make this 100000% clear. I am not saying that all girls lie, I am not saying that athletes don’t abuse their power over women and I am definitely not saying that the actions by certain athletes aren’t wrong in many ways. I am simply saying that at times we have to look at the situation from the other persons stance. Young college age women are interested in a lot of the same things that guys are interested in when they go out to parties. They want easy, cheap alcohol, music, and people of the opposite sex to spend time with. It is important that when you read or watch any story that you are able to think about it from both sides. I think athletes are put under such a microscope that every single little thing we do is wrong and the good people involved rarely ever get recognition. I am not saying that we deserve any type of recognition, but we also don’t always deserve the criticism either.