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Maybe 12-game college football season is not too bad

Submitted by SHNS on Tue, 09/02/2008 - 18:19

With the presidential campaign heating up, we offer our first clarification (or flip-flop, if you prefer) of the college football season.We've long associated the NCAA's recent move to a 12-game regular season as an ill-conceived, senseless cash grab. Sort of like Steven Seagal's acting career, minus the martial arts.So you might think we'd be more than exasperated with an opening weekend that saw 10 of the nation's top-25 teams (and seven of the top 15) play Division I-AA foes. And it is certainly no coincidence that the only compelling games of Week 1 were when BCS teams actually ventured into somewhat unknown waters, that produced a couple of stirring upsets (UCLA over Tennessee and East Carolina over Virginia Tech) as well as No. 5 Missouri's 52-42 win over Illinois, a game that had more fireworks than the Republican and Democratic conventions combined.No, we come to make peace. That's because the coming weeks will offer a glimpse that the 12-game season, for all its problems (another obstacle to a playoff, tired players, re-writing records set in 11-game seasons, etc.) could actually be a boon.Just take a look at the rest of September: Ohio State at USC, Georgia at Arizona State, Kansas at South Florida, Virginia Tech at Nebraska and Wisconsin at Fresno State. October surprises include Auburn at West Virginia, Oregon State at Utah with the nation's oldest intra-sectional classic (Notre Dame at USC) and other instate clashes (Florida at Florida State, South Carolina at Clemson, Georgia Tech at Georgia) ringing out November.Does this make Penn State 66, Coastal Carolina 10 any easier to take? Hardly. But at least some schools are trying to make that 12th game a legitimate -- and sometimes even entertaining -- proposition. And some of these mismatches are needed paydays for I-AA foes in the same state (Youngstown State-Ohio State, Northern Arizona-Arizona State, etc.)Then again, not all teams are buying in. Consider Georgia Tech, which somehow wound up with two I-AA creampuffs (Jacksonville State and Gardner Webb), meaning the Yellow Jackets will have to win seven games to make their 11th straight bowl appearance. Considering coach Paul Johnson's crew already has the aforementioned trip to Georgia along with road jaunts to Boston College, Virginia Tech and Clemson, rolling that seven is no given.But then again, this is the ACC we're talking about. If opening weekend showed one thing, it's basketball season can't get here soon enough for this failed "Super Conference.'' Call it the Curse of Tranghese.You remember Mike Tranghese, the former Big East commissioner who looked so hapless as the ACC plucked Miami, BC and Va. Tech from under his nose four years ago. Some thought the ACC could soon rival the SEC and Big 12 as college football's premiere league while the Big East would wither and die.It hasn't worked that way. ACC wins over top-10 foes from another league are as rare as a brief speech in Denver last week or Minneapolis this week. ACC teams have lost eight straight BCS bowl games and went 2-6 overall in bowls last season. This despite having 35 players drafted by the NFL in April (the same as the SEC).Opening week dealt more of the same including Va. Tech's loss, Clemson's 34-10 debacle against Alabama while USC and South Carolina battered Virginia and N.C. State respectively by a combined 86-7. At No. 20, Wake Forest is the only ACC team in the this week's A.P. top 25.Oh well, at least Maryland beat Delaware, 14-7, and Duke equaled its win total of last year with a 31-7 win over James Madison. Maybe ACC commish John Swofford can use Bill Murray's famous line as Carl Spackler in "Caddyshack'' "So I've got that goin' for me, which is nice.''UPSET PICK: How do you score 76 points in two seasons against a top-10 team like Missouri and you lose both games. Such is life for Ron Zook and Illinois, which dropped us to 0-1. We're digging deep this week. How deep? How about Duke going to 2-0 for the first time since 1998 when last year's only victim, 7-point favorite Northwestern, comes to Durham Saturday night.LINDSAY'S LOSER: When you think football in Idaho, Boise State quickly comes to mind. Unfortunately, there's also the University of Idaho. Maybe the Vandals should reconsider their nickname after Arizona blanked them, 70-0, Saturday night in Tucson, UI's worst loss in 40 years and 17th straight setback to a D-I foe. Idaho and SMU share the nation's longest D-I losing streak at 12 in a row.Coach Rob Akey is now 1-12 in his second season in Moscow. This kind of futility is nothing new for a Vandals coach. There have been three since 2005 and five since the Vandals last had a winning season in 1999.(John Lindsay is sports editor of Scripps Howard News Service. Contact him at lindsayj(at)shns.com or www.scrippsnews.com.)