New School Politics

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It might be somewhat anti-climactic for my debut article to be about sports on the night after the New Hampshire primary, but seeing as how my background on the political landscape up until this point is somewhat lacking, whereas I have been religiously following college football, it only seems appropriate. As we complete the bowl season, we look back on the most in the history of Division I-A college football. A question that I found myself wondering week after week was how there is so much disparity this year.

South Florida was #2 in only their fifth year as a D1A team, and the top two teams in the country, Missouri and West Virginia, were knocked off in the final game of the regular season. This speaks nothing of the David/Goliath story of Appalachian State knocking off Michigan in the cream puff season opener. As all these number one seeds were getting knocked off, I was also wondering why I can’t get into college.

As top twenty teams were dropping like flies, so were the Greenwich High School applicants applying early to colleges. Correlation? I think so. With a greater number of athletes going to college, we cannot expect the national powerhouses to grab up all of the top prospects as they had been able to in the past.Less than a week ago, Kansas, dished out a lickin’ to Virginia Tech, a well established football school. A big reason for Kansas’ success has been their 5′10 quarterback Todd Reesing, a Texas quarterback who fell through the cracks of the Texas/Oklahoma recruiting sphere all the way down to Kansas. This is a perfect example of a kid who would have been picked up by the local powerhouse school going unnoticed due to the amount of players and talent in high school right now. Players grow in college, coaches find a niche at less prominent schools, and these intangibles are going to be magnified by the greater number of kids going off to college.

So, what does this mean for your betting? Basically, take every opportunity to go against the odds because in all of college athletics we will see more and more upsets. We can see it even now in basketball, with Gardner-Webb knocking off Kentucky.

As for college football next year, USC is going to be the clear favorite at the start of the season followed up by Florida with both teams sporting young talent this year that is returning. Also, look out for Georgia, West Virginia, and South Carolina, who reached a school high of sixth in the country this year. Steve Spurrier is going to have a strong recruiting year in a state where high school football is of top national caliber. Illinios is going to be a strong program under Ron Zook who has already taken a weak to a national level (even though they got raped by USC). Look for Illinois to contend for the Big Ten against an Ohio State that is going to get drilled in the Super Dome against LSU.

And most importantly: Go Vandi! (I promise, I’ll stick to politics next time.)

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