DOE ANYONE REALLY CARE ABOUT COLLEGE FOOTBALL AMYMORE?

Monday, August 5^th, 2024

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

DOE ANYONE REALLY CARE ABOUT COLLEGE FOOTBALL AMYMORE?

 

Football for the college ranks is a matter of a few weeks away.  Are you fired up?   Can you hardly wait?  (Yawn….).   So what will we soon have?  A bunch of kids who are hired guns who come from other states, do not know anything about the Bayou state, and are coming to LSU and other SEC schools for one thing and one thing alone.  The money.

 

Liza Minnelli summed it up well in the Broadway show Cabaret. “Money makes the world go around. It makes the world go around.” And that’s what college football has come down to.  Who pays out the most money to a kid who is barely out of high school.  At least in pro football, a player has to live by his contract that locks him in to just one team for several years, and builds in incentives that the player has to meet.  Not in college anymore.  It’s Katy bar the door and any kid can change schools at will.

 

That’s not how it used to be. The older system was not perfect, but college players, for the most part, would pick a school, generally stand behind older starters for a year or two, and work their way up to the first team.  The recruitment of a player would often take several years. Assistant coaches would profile young players, keep an eye on them, start courting them in their senior year, and if they qualified, offer them a scholarship.

 

Former Alabama football coach Nick Saban summed it up well in a recent interview where he explained how he invited a potential recruit along with the player’s family to the university where they would often spend a weekend. He would invite them out to his house for lunch, and talk to their parents about the kind of education they would be getting.  He told them that the team was a family, and he would build a good a moral fiber into his players. 

 

But not anymore.  Sabin said that when all major colleges meet a player, the first, no just about the only thing theses kids want to know is how much they will be paid. And if the player is not satisfied at the school where they initially agree to play, they can just jump to another school.  What kind of team comradery is that? What sort of school spirit and pride in the university is built on such a foundation?

 

Whatever happened to so many LSU all Americans who played with pride at LSU, then went on to pro football, but then came back to Louisiana to live and work right here in the Bayou state. They took and received a good education, then they stayed in Louisiana and gave back.

 

LSU’s first all American was Abe Mickal, an outstanding running back, who became a doctor and went on to practice medicine for the rest of his life in New Orleans. He was one of us. He gave back. The same for Billy Cannon, who had his problems after graduation, but still had the support as everybody’s all American, and went on to practice dentistry in the state for the rest of his life. Again, he was one of us and he gave back.

 

Who could forget three time LSU all American Tommy Casanova, who went on to play for the Cincinnati Bengals and still practices as an orthodontist in Crowley. All American quarterback Burt Jones still works in Ruston Louisiana in the family logging business after playing pro football for nine seasons at Baltimore.  The list to go on and on. And they were all one of us. They all gave back to the state of Louisiana.

 

Oh, I’ll probably sit in front of the couch with friends and watch some of the games. Kind of like I watched fencing or badminton at the Olympics. You see, there once was great pride in the state for our college football teams. And we all used to love cheering for the Tigers.  But college football has become a pro sport now. It’s all about the money. And that’s a crying shame.

 

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.