Some College Football Stuff – At This Time Of Year?

I am not a big fan of most sports in the Winter Olympics, but I watched some of the skiing and some of the luge runs over the last couple of days.  In the course of that viewing, my mind somehow flashed back to football games and one of the announcing idioms that I find “less than informative”; I thought to myself that any football color analyst who says that a running back “runs downhill” should be banned from NFL games and forced to do announcing for ski runs or luge events.  Now that is what one means when talking about “running downhill”.

Moving on …  I saw an announcement yesterday that Sacramento State will join the MAC – – the Mid-American Conference – – as a “football only member”.  There is no reason to point out the geographical contradiction created there; after all, the Atlantic Coast Conference now embraces Stanford and Cal as bona fide conference members.  However, that union of Sacramento State and the MAC does make me wonder about something else.

Let me be polite and say that MAC football is a lower-echelon entity in the cosmos of college football.  Late in the season, MAC games move to weeknights to provide programming filler for ESPN; and if bother to tune in to one of those broadcasts, you will often see a game where every crowd shot – – and there are few of them to be sure – – reveals that virtually no one is there watching the game live.  There are no home fans to speak of, and you can probably count the number of visiting fans without exhausting the double digits.

Now, into that cauldron of nonchalance, Sacramento State and the MAC will create a situation where:

• Every conference game for Sac State will require a flight of more than 2000 miles for one team.
• When Sac State and UMass play, the flight will be more than 2500 miles.

So, why might this happen?  Well, the MAC is losing a football member starting next year when Northern Illinois joins the Mountain West Conference.  [Aside: Yes, I know; another example of the lack of geographical awareness at the college level in the US.].  And Sacramento State is moving up from Division 1-AA to Division 1-A in football and needs a conference to join.  Given this decision to hook up with the MAC, I can only assume that the newly reconstituted PAC-12 and/or the Mountain West politely told Sac State to take their business elsewhere.

Another football program moving up to Division 1-A football next season will be North Dakota St.  The Bison have been a powerhouse at the Division 1-AA level for at least the last decade and have been the Division 1-AA national champions ten times with the last title coming in 2024.   North Dakota St. will join the Mountain West conference which needs new blood because several of its teams are leaving to join the reincarnated PAC-12.  Last year, Delaware and Missouri St. jumped up to Division 1-A and both had winning seasons and a bowl appearance after a season of C-USA football.  The Mountain West is probably a tad stronger than C-USA, and it will be interesting to see how North Dakota St fares at that level.

One of the big rivalries in Division 1-AA football has been North Dakota St versus South Dakota State – – the Bison versus the Jackrabbits.  I have not been able to find a link to the schedule for either school this morning; so, I don’t know if that rivalry will be discontinued based on the Bison leveling up to the Mountain West.  In many of the conference realignment situations over the past 5 years or so, lots of schools have found ways to carry on their big rivalry games; however, not many of them involved an opponent down at the Division 1-AA level.  We shall see …

And speaking of college football for next season, let me comment on reports related to a Texas high school QB named Miles Teodecki.  He was on a State high school championship team in 2024 and was recruited by teams including K-State, BYU, James Madison and USF.  According to a report in The Athletic last week, Miles Teodecki chose to go to the University of Pennsylvania.  For the record, that is NOT Penn St.; the University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League school not a Division 1-A Power 5 Conference.  I am sure that Miles Teodecki is not the first high school football player to choose the Ivy League over a Power 5 school, but I do suspect that if such players held a reunion, they would not need to rent out Madison Square Garden for the event.

Finally, this from Dorothy Parker:

“I don’t know much about being a millionaire, but I’ll bet I’d be darling at it.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………