September Wasteland, Cont.

Pro football fans like to thumb their noses at college football for a number of reasons. But when it comes to mismatches, they do have a point.

Yes, they do play those meaningless exhibition games in the NFL (at most papers, including the ones that I worked for, it's verboten to call them "preseason" games), but once the real deal gets started, it's serious stuff. Every game immediately attains a whole lot of meaning, and you have to take even the Detroit Lions and Oakland Raiders seriously every week.

Not so in college football. Not in September, for the most part, anyway.

College football in September is filled with junk. Championship caliber teams taking on overmatched foes in games that are nothing but glorified scrimmages. The difference, however, is that those games do count in the standings, and just like NFL exhibitions, the money from TV, tickets and concessions is real.

This week, of the top 25 teams in the AP Poll, 23 will be in action. But there is only one matchup pitting ranked teams, ONE - USC at Ohio State. Most of the rest are having more glorified scrimmages - Florida vs. Troy, Alabama vs. Florida International, Cal vs. Eastern Washington (I-AA) and Oklahoma vs. Idaho State (I-AA) - all in the comforts of home.

Some blames the BCS for this, but don't kid yourself, loss-averse is an ancient habit for many football programs. There are just three I-A schools that have never played a I-AA team: USC, UCLA and Notre Dame. This is nothing new.

How do I know this? Let me give you a little anecdotal evidence. I went to Cal State Fullerton, which had a I-A program pretty much in name only. By 1992, the school finally wised up and canned the football team so it could feed all the money to Augie Garrido's baseball squad (which of course was a wise decision).

In my years there, these were the Titans' globe-trotting highlights -

1987 - @ LSU, 56-12; @ Florida, 65-0
1988- @ West Virginia, 45-10 (the real highlight was my buddy FB DeSean Beasley scoring a garbage time touchdown); @ Wyoming, 35-16
1989- @ Colorado State, 42-14; @ San Diego State, 41-41 (a tie is really a W)
1990- @ Auburn, 38-17; @ Mississippi State, 27-13
1991- @ Mississippi State, 47-3; @ Texas Tech, 41-7; @ Georgia, 27-14
1992- @ UCLA, 37-14 (the Titans did break the leg of Bruins QB Wayne Cook, thus ending UCLA's season in the opener); @ Georgia, 56-10

As you can see, Fullerton could've been a member of the SEC. In those six years, the Titans went 0-7 and were outscored, 316-69 (or something like 45-10 on average) by SEC teams, who gave the school around $250,000 each for those Body Bag Games, as was so aptly called by former Fullerton coach Gene Murphy.

Bring Back Titan Football? Please Don't.

There are still plenty of Fullertons in the world of college football, and most of them will never become the next Boise State. They will slog away through all eternity (like San Jose State) or drop down to I-AA (like the Ivy League) or eliminate football altogether (like Boston University, and Fullerton).

And until they get rid of football, they'll continue to be asked to perform human sacrifice at a monstrous gridiron edifice near you. For a few dollars more.


★★★★★ GAME OF THE WEEK: USC at Ohio State, 8 p.m. ET. Despite all their woes against college football's elite teams, give the Buckeyes credit for scheduling these games. They might get beat, but they duck nobody. In the Jim Tressel era, Ohio State has played at least one BCS conference foe every season, and for the most part, in home-and-home series.

The bad news, though, is that Ohio State will be taken to the woodshed. Even with a freshman quarterback, USC will have too much for the Buckeyes to contend with. The Big Ten's flagship programs (at the moment, Ohio State and Penn State) are still not on the same playing field with top BCS teams, not in terms of talent and coaching. Chalk up another one for Troy.

★★★★ FOUR-STAR GAME: Notre Dame at Michigan, 3:30 p.m. ET. Even with their recent troubles, these are still the two winningest programs (by both total victories and percentage) in college football. And this game has the smell of a death match. A victory for Michigan will provide an emphatic statement that Rich Rodriguez has brought the Wolverines all the way back from last year's dismal 3-9 debacle - and silence all the BCS talk about Notre Dame. A win for the Irish puts them on course for a BCS bid and buys Charlie Weis a little more time.

★★★ THREE-STAR GAME: TCU at Virginia, 3:30 p.m. ET. The only reason that this game has any meaning is to further validate the ascendancy of the Mountain West Conference, following BYU's upset win over Oklahoma. But Virginia is terrible, as evidenced by its 26-14 loss to I-AA William and Mary. So TCU had better not lay an egg.

★★ TWO-STAR GAME: Arkansas State at Nebraska, 2 p.m. ET. The Red Wolves will play anybody, and sometime they even manage to beat the big boys, as they did last year in a season-opening 18-14 upset of Texas A&M. Two years ago, they hung tough against Texas before losing 21-13. Nebraska needs to be alert against this very capable foe, who opened the season with a 61-0 wipeout of Mississippi Valley State.

★ ONE-STAR GAME: Fresno State at Wisconsin, Noon ET. Last year, the Badgers eeked out a 13-10 win in San Joaquin Valley. They needed three missed PATs to beat Cal Poly SLO in overtime to get bowl eligible, then they proceeded to get romped by Florida State. Wisconsin's 2009 debut was rather inauspicious, too, a 28-20 squeaker over Northern Illinois. A Fresno victory will give the WAC (and Boise State) more cred and damage the Big Ten's tattered reputation even more.

Revenge of the Body Baggers

The expression is quite expressive, yet so apt.

The Body Bag Games.

That's how it was for Gene Murphy, coach of the woebegone Cal State Fullerton football program until its bitter end in 1992. The Titans were a Division I-A team all right, to this day the proud owner of two NCAA D-IA records: Most fumbles (73) in a single season, and most fumbles lost (41).

I should know because I was part of that traveling circus from 1987-91. We still have bruise marks after receiving beatdowns in places like Gainesville, Auburn, Baton Rouge and Morgantown. And on occasion, the Titans would bus to the Rose Bowl to get a neighborhood spanking.

All for a glorious $250,000 check.

Before Saturday, I was going to eviscerate the continued existence of those Body Bag Games, 15 years after Fullerton's football program joined the dearly departed. I was on a mission to rid this dastardly concoction, a collusion of the Haves' desire to fill up their stadiums by showcasing live tackling dummies and the Have Nots' need for cash flow.

Until this happened: Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32.

If you don't recognize this game as the biggest upset in the history of college football, may I recommend a copy of "Football for Dummies?"

Never mind that the Mountaineers are the two-time defending Division I-AA champion, this is unprecedented. No D-IAA team has ever beaten a ranked D-IA team during the entire existence of the AP poll ... let along one ranked No. 5, with national championship aspirations ... in the biggest stadium in the country ... against the winningest program (in both wins and by percentage) in college football history.

This is Meeeechigan we're talking about.

Now Michigan has big problems. Michigan's defense had no answer for APU's fleet-footed quarterback Armanti Edwards. Michigan's offense had no rhythm and no pause. Michigan's special teams had no organization to keep field goals from being blocked. Michigan's coaches had no clue.

Michigan's administration also didn't do its homework, either. The Wolverines had the pick of the litter for this Body Bag Game, with a $400,000 payout dangling from the gates of the Big House. The Mountaineers practically begged for this game -- that right there should've aroused some suspicion.

Mercifully, this public humiliation was not televised -- not unless you had DirecTV and therefore access to the 3-day-old Big Ten Network. The highlights, which will burn into the minds of the Maize and Blue faithful for eternity, didn't do the game justice, for Appalachian State actually dominated most of the game.

The outcome of this cautionary tale should affect the future of Body Bag Games. Big schools will now more carefully vet out potential Body Bag applicants for fear of another season-killing, reputation-tarnishing loss. Little schools will have a harder time going out of its region in search of a big paycheck. Rest assured, Appalachian State is not coming anywhere near Big Ten country in the next 10 years.

Yep, the repercussions will be most keenly felt by the Big Ten. In many ways, this entire conference needs to get into the 21st century. Bo and Woody have moved on, and so should Big Ten football. There's a reason why that, aside from Ohio State's lone (and fluky) 2002 national title, the Big Ten has not been a factor in the BCS Era.

The Big Ten has fallen far behind the SEC and Pac-10 in terms of coaching and talent development. The staid conservatism that has served the conference well in the past is no longer working when it gets outside of the Midwest. The Big Ten has to improve on its speed, skill, aggression and creativity to stay relevant.

But before we get too much of the big-picture stuff, Saturday's upset for the ages was for the little guys. For all the kids on the wrong side of a 65-0 wipeout. For good ol' Murph and all the coaches who needed the check to fund the next recruiting trip and fix broken shoulder pads.

Hail to the Body Baggers.