Is It Time for College Football to Go on a Diet?

After eight freaking months of waiting, College Football Nation will be treated to the best college football teams in the nation playing these teams in the first week:

Coastal Carolina, Youngstown State, Maine, Eastern Illinois, Southern Illinois, Northern Colorado, Chattanooga, Eastern Washington, South Dakota State, Delaware, McNeese State, Charleston Southern, Jacksonville State, James Madison, Northern Arizona, Villanova, Tenn.-Martin, Eastern Kentucky, Hofstra, Georgia Southern, Appalachian State, and Western Illinois.

Now you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that these teams are all cupcakes.

After all, if the directional words "Northern," "Southern," "Eastern," or "Western" are part of the school's name (emphasis on the "ern", it's usually a cupcake.

If it's named after a president or has multiple consecutive vowels/consonants and six syllables, it's usually a cupcake.

If it has a hyphenated name, it's always a cupcake.

If it's named after a mountain range, river or has an foreign-sounding name, it's a cupcake.

And heavens to Betsy, if it has a pretty adjective in its name—i.e. "Coastal"—it's a Little Debbie snack cake.

Are we supposed to be impressed with these games?  Are they worth the 40-plus dollars per ticket?  Does anyone really thump their chests after beating Western Carolina 62-0?

The BCS could start a bakery with all these cream puffs—yet no one complains.

Could it be that money has caused BCS teams to schedule these sugary confections to beef up their win totals and land a bowl?  Of course!

Win all three cupcakes, plus four conference games, and your team could be rewarded for its "winning" season.  Congratulations BCS—you have officially wimped out college football.

Of course, scheduling one cupcake isn't good enough for the ACC.

Clemson, Florida State, and Va. Tech (includes probie Western Kentucky) have decided to pig out and feast on two cupcakes.  And they wonder why pundits have called their conference "watered down."

Isn't it demeaning to schedule games out of your division?  Isn't that the equivalent of the Red Sox playing the Little League champs?

Is it really that impressive when you give Mary Poppins State a beatdown of such epic proportions that ESPN will barely mention the game on their College GameDay Show?  What in the name of William and Mary is going on?

The NCAA needs to stop this farce immediately.  Division I-A football is the best collection of football teams in the country, yet some teams are afraid to play all 12, sometimes 13, games against their own peers.

The fact of the matter is that only five schools have not scheduled FCS schools since at least the '70s: Notre Dame, Michigan State, USC, UCLA, and Washington.  Give them a hand—all five of those schools have won at least one National Championship.

They succeeded without benefit of the cupcake.  The cupcake indeed has changed the way football teams operate and destroyed some football fans' logical thought process.

When a team suspends a player for the first game due to a rule infraction, the punishment isn't even felt by the player or team.  Do you really need your first string tackle playing against Chattahoochee State?  Maybe the suspended player should miss the final game of the season instead of the first.  That might get the players' attention and halt this current boys-gone-wild trend in Division I-A football.

Fans of the cupcake-scheduling teams have claimed that the only reason why their school schedules these fat pills is because their program is on a skid, and they need a boost in morale.  That's right: It's an attempt to make the players feel better about themselves when they lose too much.  Political correctness has infiltrated college football.

Why can't fans just realize that the reason why their team schedules cupcakes is because they want an easy layup?  Enough with the BS excuses of, "Well, we already have a tough conference schedule."

Guess what?  Chances are 20 years ago your conference wasn't that tough, and you still were scheduling these cupcakes.

And please spare us the "our state makes us schedule the local state schools to give them more exposure and money" excuse.  That's an urban myth started by an embarrassed fan after he saw his team's schedule.  Schools have no obligation to schedule other public schools, simply because a school has to pay money to a lower-division school to come and play them at home.  The state can't force schools to pay for play.

And just what kind of "good exposure" comes from a 60-point beating?  Yep, lil' Johnny will for sure go to Hofstra after they got walloped by UConn.

Use your brains, people.

There's a reason why FBS teams have to pay these cream puffs serious money to come into their stadiums.  It's called blood money.  Pay them 250K, and they will be more than willing to play the Christians vs. the Lions from the Roman Empire days.

If a team can't cut it playing all FBS schools, then they don't belong in the FBS in the first place.

Any coach worth a damn will tell you that the key to becoming a better team or player is to play above your level.  You always want to play teams better than your own.

For some reason, that has now been thrown to the wayside.  The lure of big BCS money has caused the bakery wagon to troll through the waters of Division I-A football and cause havoc.

How do you rank a team's opponent when they aren't playing in the same division?  Even Vegas doesn't post a spread on FBS vs. FCS schools—it's too confusing.

The BCS has started to address the cupcake syndrome by only allowing one FCS team win to count in a team's schedule.  Florida State and Clemson will suffer the consequences of playing two cupcakes: The computers will only recognize one of those presumable wins.

Is that enough?  Perhaps the BCS should only count a win over an FCS school as a half-win.  This would make more sense, since the FCS talent on the field is half of what the FBS talent is.  Maybe the BCS should add points to teams who have all FBS schools on their schedules.

To be sure, an FCS team will pull an upset every 10 years or so, but the quality of the games being played is so obviously lacking on the field, it becomes an embarrassment whether it's a win or loss for the FBS team.

Sure, Northern Iowa beat Iowa State last year, but is that a good sign for division I-A football when lower division teams are beating you?  Do you really want to showcase that?

The best way to address this cupcake phenom is for teams to go on a diet.  Eliminate the sugar in five years (since some schedules are complete up to that point), don't have schools pay a cancellation fee after that five-year period if a cupcake has been scheduled that far ahead, and only schedule FBS teams.

If you are elite enough to play for a I-A school, then play I-A schools—not cupcakes.

(One more day!)