College Football Preseason Report: A Wild Offseason

This offseason in college football has created so many ironies...

To wit...

The Big Ten now has 12 teams. The Big 12 now has 10 teams. The Pac-10 now has 12 teams. And all of that is not going to happen until 2011 at the earliest.

With all of the changes that college football has seen, one thing is still the same: the SEC is still the best conference in college football.

Their run of national champs will come to an end this season. Ohio State will beat Alabama in the BCS Title Game to stop the SEC run at four straight years.

What a run it has been. Florida dominated the Buckeyes. A two-loss LSU team dominated the, um, Buckeyes. Florida won another one against Oklahoma, when they should have been playing Texas. Alabama won one over Texas in a strange game where Longhorn quarterback Colt McCoy was hurt and the Tide almost gave it away.

It is akin to the run that Nebraska has been through. They were an annual participant in the Orange Bowl when they dominated the Big 8. They had some lean years as they lost their identity in the Big 12. Now their future is going to be in the Big 10.

I look forward to the Big 10 going to two divisions and seeing the Cornhuskers form new rivalries.

My BCS Report was very popular last year as I picked it apart for the flawed system that it is. All of the expansion talk over the summer really excited me. There were a few weeks there when it looked as if the Big 12 was about to be ripped apart, which would have been catastrophic to the BCS.

It looks like everyone is sick of the BCS as a two-team playoff, which leaves a lot to be desired.

BCS honks are making so much money that they are afraid of taking a pay cut by allowing their precious system to expand to four teams. Fans say that would create two more games, and that would create more revenue. The BCS honks must have crunched the numbers and determined that the cash that ESPN paid them to televise the BCS bowls is more than a new system would yield.

It seems that the BCS is the one entity that has not been effected by the busted economy of America, as the ironies just don't stop.

To wit...

The busted BCS system has not been affected by the busted US economy whilst every other form of revenue making endeavors has been. Is the lesson here that potential business owners should take heed that putting out a flawed system is one way to find the cash at the end of the rainbow?

Nah, as William Shatner said in Airplane II: The Sequel ...

"Irony is pretty ironic."

The nation was so close to seeing a playoff system arise from the ashes of this wild offseason, but alas it was money that saved the BCS.

To wit...

Texas would have taken a pay cut to join the Pac-10 or SEC, so they stayed in the Big 12 and saved that conference from annihilation.

The super conference is still looming in the future as the BCS discontent continues to mount. The ACC is going to be saved by, ironically, the North Carolina football team this year, but the SEC will one day take the four best football teams from there to get to the magical 16 teams needed for admission into the super conference club.

That domino will lead the ACC and Big East to band together. Boston College better be one of the top four ACC teams or else they might be left out as the Big East probably didn't forget that B.C. left their conference.

The Pac-10 might get a good TV contract someday and try to entice the Texas schools back. The Big Ten will poach from here and there to fill their four open slots.

The Mountain West should be a BCS conference as it has been better than the ACC and Big East for a few years now.

Yep, the BCS and Notre Dame better find a place to land soon because the times are a changing in college football.

Of course, the pimps, er, agents that Nick Saban spoke of at the SEC media days are a growing concern as well. Especially if all of the good players are ineligible after going to awesome parties in their wild offseasons.

The future for college football is rather murky but we should expect no less from a system that has such a murky past and present. The BCS will get lucky this year as both Ohio State and Alabama will go undefeated. The BCS will be pulling for a Boise State loss as well and it would give the BCS some credibility if the Mountain West had a down year.

Jim Tressel will get his second BCS Title. Terrelle Pryor and Mark Ingram will be the Heisman winners on the field and the Big Ten will welcome Nebraska as the conference with the defending national champ.

This is the best time of the year because once the season starts, it comes to an end so quickly.