Posts from the Ncaa Fb Fans Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Be sure to check out the link and see their theme picture: cheeseburger guy. Among the range of topics addressed at the "NCAA Gender Equity and Issues Forum" this week was childhood obesity. How so?

[NCAA] administrators are wondering whether increased obesity rates may have an adverse effect on the quality of prospective student-athletes in years to come.

Somehow I doubt the NCAA needs to worry about this. Youth sports are seemingly endless in number and yearlong in availability. The pool of quality athletes talented enough to compete at an NCAA level is more likely determined by young people's interest in those sports than obesity factors. It's a self-selecting phenomena. Obese kids truly passionate about sports and who have talent should and will generally find a way to be fit and compete.

Plus, at least with football, bigger kids are always in demand. Healthy kids are an important issue, but the NCAA is both over-extending itself considering this topic and is making much ado about nothing as far as future pools of quality athletes. High-level athletics requires fitness, and if kids are truly passionate about competing at the NCAA level, they'll be fit. The NCAA's focus should be on directing passion and energy into these sports which leads to able bodies, not hand-wringing over the larger obesity issue.

Fans for every school occasionally claim that their team is being slighted by a particular announcing team or media talking head. At Nebraska, however, the suspicion runs much deeper. So deep, in fact, that it's become an obsession.

"On occasion, they are critiqued almost as much as the game itself. Once in a rare while, you will hear a sports announcer/analyst receive praise from a fan. But more often they are called terrible or - worse than that - biased: Announcer X hates Nebraska.

Some might call it paranoia. Some are sure of its truth. There are those out there who are quite certain Brent Musburger has it in for Nebraska. Or that Mark May plots out his lines with the intention of making some guy in Omaha shout foul words at his television."

This type of thinking has gone on for as long as I've been a Husker fan, although I've rarely understood it. The claims of bias range from seemingly innocent comments from announcers to the number of College Gameday visits or even the length or number of highlights shown on national media outlets.

For instance:

"Announcers are always against Nebraska," one Big Red fan from Colorado recently opined on the Journal Star blog. "I think it started out as an East Coast bias and blossomed when we kept beating the (tar) out of all their precious East Coast schools."

Quite frankly, Nebraska hasn't been beating the tar out of anybody lately, but that certainly hasn't diminished the banging of the conspiracy drum. Fortunately, not every Husker fan is buying into the sensationalism.

"Parsing each and every word the announcers utter for any hint of bias against Nebraska is an absolute waste of energy," wrote another fan. "Nothing takes the fun out of watching a game like listening to your companions whine incessantly about something that has no bearing whatsoever on the game's outcome."

Ah, common sense, a breath of fresh air.

"Old School" is the College Football FanHouse's irregular look back at the rich history of college football, usually through the medium of embeddable flash video. Check out the Old School archive for more famous plays and infamous hair.

Step back in time with me, college football fans, to an earlier era. Here we have the Seminoles of Florida State taking on the Florida Gators in 1973.



This is pre-Ben Hill Griffin stadium stuff, so that's just Florida Field. Note that the Swamp is highly recognizable. Back then the stadium was painted blue rather than orange but "This is... Gator Country!" is still scribed on those trademark vertical walls rising out of the east and west stands. The press box was a tad smaller back then, too, as you might notice.

Florida's mascot was in a woeful state in those days. "Albert E. Gator" looked like an inflatable green jalapeno with teeth and a tail.

As for the game itself? Florida routed the Seminoles 49-0. For the rivalry, it was an era which favored the Gators, who won 9 straight from 1968-1976. Today, Florida leads the overall series, 30-19-2, but FSU is 17-15-1 against the Gators under Bobby Bowden.

With so many changes afoot in the Tennessee football program, FanHouse decided it was best to go to the horse's mouth of Vol blogdom. We caught up with Joel at RockyTopTalk.com for a few words about the '08 Tennessee Volunteers.

FanHouse: You've got Erik Ainge and others in the NFL draft. How's it looking for those guys?

Joel: Jerod Mayo is most likely the head of the class, with some draft gurus saying he could go as high as 15th overall. He's a prototypical John Chavis linebacker and should do well. David Cutcliffe, the Manning Maker, says that whoever drafts Erik Ainge is going to get a bargain, a statement that essentially acknowledges that he's not going to go as high as he should. It's a shame, because he's very, very good. After that, tight end Brad Cottam seems to be getting the most interest. He was injured most of his senior season, but stellar days at the Senior Bowl and the NFL Combine improved his draft stock significantly.

Very encouraging is the apparent fact that coach Fulmer is indeed letting new offensive coordinator Dave Clawson run his own offense. The simple fact of change is refreshing, and Clawson's insistence on getting the ball to playmakers in space has Vol fans breathing heavy. The spring game proved that he's not only saying the things Tennessee fans want to hear, he's actually doing them. The offense looked shiny and new, and they had a great deal of success last Saturday.

In front of the second-largest crowd of the spring games (78,200 according to the half-time announcement), Alabama threw the ball early and often.

I made my way down to Tuscaloosa for A-Day this year, and what I saw didn't surprise me in the least. The traffic to Tuscaloosa and around town was not quite as bad as a typical game day. The "Kick-off on the Quad" was scaled back, but still well attended, and the campus was swarming with crimson and white, with nary a sign of another teams fans to be found. It was a thing of beauty, really.

Inside the stadium, Alabama looked like a young team with a lot of talent, exactly what everyone expected. John Parker Wilson seemed to have improved in the off-season and Leigh Tiffin split the uprights from 44 yards out (both things fans should be relieved to hear).

Coach Nick Saban, who spent most of the scrimmage standing behind the offense, managed to get in the way of one play (pictured at right) as John Parker Wilson scrambled from pressure. He didn't go down, but it was certainly a funny situation nonetheless..

It was Thomas Tusser, of course, who once said, "A fool and his money are soon parted." Perhaps never has this been more true the case of Nebraska fans and the upcoming spring game. The glorified practice recently sold out, which has produced an outrageous market for the now hard-come-by tickets. An AP wire story opens with the following anecdote:

The week of the sold-out Bruce Springsteen concert in Omaha last month, you could call a local ticket broker and pay $39 for a seat.

For Saturday's sold-out Nebraska spring football game, that broker is getting $95 a ticket.

"I'm not going to be one to judge the craziness of Nebraska football fans," Ticket Express owner Chad Carr said. "The weird thing about this game, I can't keep tickets in stock."

When I last checked on the national ticket site StubHub, prices for Nebraska's spring game were ranging from $44-$148. Face value for the tickets was $10 for reserved seating and $8 for general admission. That's quite the markup. And let's keep in mind this is for a practice game, and one that won't even feature a match-up between the top offensive and defensive units.

It was under Bill Callahan's regime that spring game attendance at Nebraska first took off. The previous attendance record occurred in 2005 when 63,416 fans showed up. Given the disastrous season a year ago, fans are apparently anxious to see what the Bo Pelini era will bring.

We didn't have to do a whole lot of marketing or advertising. It pretty much sold itself," said Nebraska athletic marketing director Corrie Sears. "It's our fans being excited about the new era with Tom Osborne back (as athletic director) and Bo Pelini."

"What we have here is very special," Sears said, "and what we have are very passionate fans. The spring game is becoming more of an event, and we're treating it more like a real game for our fans."

Well, given that it's already surpassed a concert by "The Boss," the spring game has definitely become an event in Nebraska.

When you're the president of a university that has controversially lost the best coach in its history, then hired a very nice man who won one game and saw that decision publicly lambasted by big-time boosters, maybe you should watch your meaningless public utterances about said coach.

Like, say, you're West Virginia president Mike Garrison. When a twelve-year-old mails you an application, don't say this...

Garrison responded by sending the boy a letter that thanks him and tells him the position has been filled by an "equally qualified candidate."

...because then people will make fun of you. Like this person. In an admittedly meta fashion, yes.

Other items with qualifications on par with Bill Stewart's to run a major college program:

• Rich Rodriguez's pinky
• dead gopher
• two flash cards that read "zone read left" and "zone read right"
  
• Bill Callahan

Well, maybe not that last one.

Many people look upon Alabama's NCAA-record 92,000 attendance at last year's spring game in horror. Me? I beam with pride.

College football fans are rabid, their taste for the game insatiable. Meaningless spring exhibitions can be cause for 2% of the state population to show up and watch red-on-red violence.

Anyway, the school is going all-in this year, extending the festivities another day with an Alan Jackson warm-up concert and pep rally the night before. Here's guessing 'Tide coach Nick Saban's had more than his share of "5-o-clock somewhere" moments the past year (mostly self-inflicted). Should be a hell of a two-day party, all the more meaningful so many months before the season begins in earnest and well before the recruits have even hit campus.

College football, gotta love it.

(H/T: The Wizard of Odds)

In 1995, when Kellen Winslow Sr. delivered his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech, he used it as an opportunity to denounce the NFL's abysmal record of minority hiring. His voice has been an important one, but in a sick irony, a con-man has started impersonating Winslow and sucking African-American coaches into a money-wiring scheme.

From conversations I've had with coaches who say they were bilked, these seem to be low-risk, small payout operations built around a smooth-talking con artist. The plan had to be swiftly executed: find an eager assistant coach looking for that one big break, hook the assistant in emotionally, hastily schedule an interview, get the money, then disappear.

One small-school assistant coach offered details to FanHouse on how the scam was perpetrated on him. "When you're a young unknown coach and Kellen Winslow, Hall of Famer, calls you, you don't ask a lot of questions," said the coach, who asked that his name not be used for this story. "You don't want to blow an opportunity."

Lost in all the kerfuffle about lengthy games and how evil the BCS supposedly is, college football continues to grow.

Last year in this space we reported that college football had become America's #3 sport. Well, it's a year later and another new piece of data has grabbed our attention:

The percentage of games that were televised jumped to 79% in 2007, up from 72.4% in 2006 and 72.5% in 2005.

Not bad for a sport with 119 teams, about half of which play in smaller conferences. Obviously a market is there for most college football games, however obscure.

Here's guessing all that controversy has actually broadened the game's appeal.