College Football Begins

I was pleased to find the CU v. CSU game on FSN out here. Having busied myself with other things for most of the day it is awesome to sit down to the TV and see that CSU has come back from their 17-14 halftime deficit. They are up now 28-25. I am not a CU fan. I am always happy to see them lose to CSU. Watching it here, now, in Wisconsin, is a good taste of home, but it’s not nearly as good as watching from Invesco last year. The game has now gone into overtime and the Buffs won with a field goal. That’s alright, they need to get the victory every once in a while to justify their arrogance for another few years.

Usually there aren’t touching moments in college football. It’s almost always about winning, hitting people, and tearing down the goal posts, but today there was actually a touching moment in this testosterone soap opera. The pre-game honoring of the Virginia Tech students was the best way Blacksburg, VA and the VT community could honor the victims. Football is known to bring people together, but I am pretty sure it has never meant so much to Virginia Tech as it did today.

A trademark of the early college football season is the games that athletic departments schedule to meet their athletic budget. If they don’t schedule one for that reason, then they schedule one to feel good about themselves.

This is what happens.

Virginia is playing Wyoming today in Laramie. Virginia probably paid Wyoming a huge sum of money to play them. We are talking at times upwards of $2 million. The smaller school, in this case Wyoming, loves the money and playing a big time program will also draw a bigger crowd, hence today’s sellout. The big program, in this case Virginia, will pay a big amount of money to play a small program that they could possibly wipe out 45-0. It is a bit of a gamble, but usually it pays off pretty well for both teams. Wyoming may get abused today, but they’ll play hard in front of a big crowd. It’ll be fun. Virginia will win and get a nice kick start to their season. That is the idea. At times, the plan goes to crap for the big program and they lose. In this case it becomes a win-win situation for the smaller program. They get the money and the W. As I write this, Wyoming is up 13-3.

Also on TV today, some of the Track and Field World Championships. I love when the winner of an event wraps themselves in their country’s flag and does a victory lap. The crowds cheer and the victor is at the top of their game. You are happy for them, usually. I just had to feel a little bad for the winner of the pole vault today. I have nothing against the event. It looks impossible to me, but it doesn’t hold the attention of the crowd like the 100-meter or 200-meter sprints. So this dude was taking his victory lap and it just looked like no one was paying any attention to him, like they didn’t even know the pole vault just ended. Poor chap.