Athlon U: The College Football Podcast

Are you from VA? In what universe do you think UVA is the lead university in VA? VT is bigger, has more support and has a lopsided W-L record vs UVA going all the way back to when VT was independent, in the Big East and all the way through the ACC era. Yes UVA is an AAU school with a “public Ivy” rep and they are good in Olympic sports but come on man. Yes VT has had a down period since the end of the Beamer era but they are back on the rise. You could say the exact same thing about VT vs UNC. The only reason UVA & UNC are attractive to the B1G or SEC is for their current teams to get an almost guaranteed W, so they don’t all finish 6-6.

My indoctrination into College Football was watching Notre Dame execute a miraculous comeback against Alabama while my Grandmother was babysitting me on New Years Eve 1973. As you might imagine, I’m a bit of a traditionalist. I love “Uniform Games”, like last week’s USC @ UCLA. I despise Black Alternates with every fiber of my soul. I want the PostSeason limited to only those elite teams who at the end of the regular season, are a reasonable answer to the question who is the Best Team in College Football Season. I abhor the participation trophy approach of “they have a Too 10 Win and their two losses were to Really Good Teams!”. Please. Now I realize I’m in the minority here. Most of the TV Executives who now run the sport don’t care what I think - in fact it’s probably a cause for concern when my Demographic is aligned with something they’re proposing. The thing is, I’m not the only fan who has these views - regardless of how much we’re ignored by the power brokers. But I’ll tell you who doesn’t ignore us - Braden and Steven. They embrace the Helmet Games . They anticipate a Memphis-Tulane with excitement as opposed to disregarding it because “neither one of these teams is going win the Title”. They GET College Football. They GET Fans like me. And for that, all Football Fans like me should be grateful to them. I know I am. Happy Thanksgiving.

Their dream road trips are what set them apart. But they love college football like I do.

Shame on me for repeating the same routine three times now. I listened to the Big Ten season preview and rankings and thought I discerned a little bit of maturation of Braden. Whom am I kidding? I went on to a second podcast in my third attempt at trying to stick with this show and had to stop and delete it. As an example, a scandal is a scandal -- it's not something of which to be made fun. The fact that fans of teams that are not directly involved in competition with Michigan, for example, are upset with the lack of consequences is not "funny". It means fans don't like cheating regardless of where it happens. Perhaps it's a older generation thing. And his insistence upon using the term "student-athletes" is laughable on its face these days in college sports. You would need a ginormous magnifying glass to discover the "student" component of that term with most division one football players. Shame on me for repeating the mistake now three times.