What makes college football unique?

ESPN's Chris Low has a short piece in today's ESPN.com opinion page that reminds us what a great game the college version of American football continues to be, and names ten things that make college football unique, which he hopes never change.

No such list is comprehensive, of course, and his inclusion of (for example) OU and Texas at the Cotton Bowl demands by inference that we also include the World's Largest Cocktail Party (Georgia/Florida), the Alabama/Auburn game, and for that matter on-campus rivalries that were in peril during the realignment rage: OSU/Michigan, Cal/Stanford, Harvard/Yale, the Apple Cup, the Civil War, the Border War, USC/UCLA, and so on and so forth.

His inclusion of the Rose Bowl view implies the other iconic stadia - the large (Michigan's "Big House", Notre Dame and Touchdown Jesus, etc.) and the small (even seen BSU's blue turf at a game? There's no bigger home field advantage in the game). 

His inclusion of marching bands - a personal favorite of mine, having taught them for thirty years - should also include the cheerleaders and yell leaders; the pre-game ceremonies that are unique to each team (running through the tunnel of fans or band members or whomever); the stadium announcers who never saw a penalty against the home team they agreed with in their lives, and so forth!

The live mascots are a blast! But what about the Sooner Schooner racing across the field? The Nebraska bouncing Husker Boy? Stanford's living tree-with-sunglasses? Too many cool ones to mention them all!

And, of course, by invoking Clemson's touching of the rock, you implicitly name every such team tradition of 253 division 1 schools and the other 500 or so lower division programs across the country. Everyone has them - no matter your team, you can name one or two, I'm sure. You don't think there's such things in the NFL, do you? In the cookie-cutter stadiums of old, in the PC entertainment packages and sideline showgirls and non-existent team traditions because they all work for Roger Goodell in the end? When we root for an NFL team, too often we're really rooting for laundry these days...but we're all loyal to our alma mater college (and high school, for that matter!), and so are the players. 

It's not concussions, but head injuries are still potentially lethal...

We've talked a lot about the potential for repeated head injuries to cause one of two fatal downfalls to football as played in North America: (1) the long-term brain poundings football players get lead to dementia and its related issues for the players down the road, which we can already see leading current players away from the sport, and (2) the financial cost for leagues and institutions hosting football teams when lawsuits are brought to court and won against them for physical and mental damage to the players.

Here's a new case out of Iowa, where a high school athlete was "allowed" to continue practicing and playing after what seems to have been a severe head trauma that bled. In this case, it was the head coach and the school nurse who were held particularly culpable.

If you're the administration or school board of that school, and you just got hit with a million dollar bill because of your football program...what do you do?

It's National Signing Day!

Yippee.

I'll confess that, even as a football junkie, 'guru', fanatic, whatever, the process of recruiting and signing 17 and 18 year old boys to letters of intent to attend and perform athletically at the university of their choice holds little or no interest for me.

I don't know these youngsters.

I have no insight into any of the specifics of any school's recruiting process.

I have heard the horror stories.

And I'm a very PollyAnna-ish person when it comes to football in particular. I'm intentionally and blatantly naive about the underbelly of college football because I know that if I weren't, I'd have turned it off my radar long ago. There are members of the fifth estate who spend enough time digging for the dirt on these situations, and I have faith that they will uncover anything particularly egregious. 

But more than anything, I just don't have any interest in what goes on off the field. When those kids get to game number one and they're on the field, then I'll talk about them...

When should high school athlete signing day be?

The first Wednesday in February has been the major signing day for most sports, including football athletes, for many years now, but there's been rumblings for quite a while regarding moving that date earlier in the school year, to take the pressure off kids and programs. (We think it just shifts the pressure earlier, to when kids haven't matured as much and before they have their seventh semester done, but nobody's asking us, I guess...)

Now, a report has come out that the NCAA is going to recommend a three-day window in December to allow early signers the chance to "get it out of the way". Sam Cooper of Yahoo Sports lays out the timeline and the options available for consideration. Personally, the idea of having a signing day before you've even started your senior year is ludicrous, but I'm sure that's easier for many involved...

How endangered is our sport of choice?

This survey indicates what many others have as well - concussions are a significant to the potential livelihood of every young man wanting to grow up to play gridiron football when they grow up. Forty percent of parents would move to prevent their sons from playing football because of the health threat it poses, primarily through brain injuries caused by concussions and other head trauma. 

Concussions may be the death knell of American Football.

In a sobering harbinger of possible things to come, a former Illinois high school quarterback is filing a class action lawsuit against the Illinois HS Association, saying they did not and are still not doing enough to prevent their athletes from getting life-altering brain injuries playing high school football.

It is not going to be a fall in popularity that kills off football in America.
It is not going to be the scandal-after-scandal atmosphere of the NFL and schools like Florida State.
It is not, in fact, going to be anything directly related to the behavior or performance of the NFL at all.

           It will be the refusal of the high school and non-scholastic "Pop Warner"-style youth leagues to open themselves up to litigation for the concussion-like symptoms that are inherent in modern American football.

We at "Following Football" make this declaration now: within twenty years, at least one third of high schools who currently sponsor football will no longer do so.

And that will be a tragedy.

The dangers of concussions, part zillion

The worst fears have been realized for Ohio St faithful.

Defensive lineman Kosta Karageorge was found dead of an apparent suicide last night, after having disappeared with a suicidal text to his mother on Wednesday. The apparent source of Karageorge's distress was the confusion, pain, and many other issues caused by the many concussions he suffered playing football and wrestling.

Many of the usual expressions of disbelief followed, and he was due to be recognized at senior day before the OSU/Michigan game yesterday.

What are the ramifications of concussions? Nobody knows, completely. But only someone with their head in the sand can possibly believe that the frequency of concussions in the NFL, and college football, and high school football, won't have ANY effect on the future of "American football". 

Will the sport still be popular...heck, will it even exist in twenty years? Consider: if high schools are fearful of lawsuits because of possible concussions - and they can't claim they don't have any evidence that it might happen, or what it might do to the victim - why would they keep promoting the sport? For that matter, why would parents allow their sons to play the sport that could destroy their brains?

And if high schools don't keep sending players to the college programs... and if the colleges stop supplying the NFL with victims players, the sport will die. Like other very dangerous sports, it'll disappear. 

Or be marginalized. Think boxing.

Moral: Just because the clock runs out...

...doesn't mean that the play is over! Watch the ending of this Utah high school game between Spanish Fork and Maple Mountain  (greater Salt Lake City area, south of town). MMHS is down three, Spanish Fork has the ball, and with three seconds left, the quarterback just has to run out the clock. And...

M...

Campus rivalries abound, of course, and once in a while one of the pranks makes news. Here's a story about the Michigan St / Michigan conflagration coming up this Saturday (the story also includes a few other recent tales, such as Alabama/Tennessee. 

It reminds me (this is Gordon speaking) of our pipe dream when I taught high school marching band. We often went to march at our opposing school's field when we played them in football, and quite often I would write the marching drill to include our initial in the field patterns (if our school's name started with K, we'd make a "K" on the field; same with "P" or "J", covering the four schools I spent time at).

Our devious plan (which we never carried out) was to stand in that formation on the enemy's field, and drop a handful of rye seed onto the grass. Ideally, the seed embeds itself, germinates, and in the spring the school is amazed to find a large letter celebrating their rival school growing on their football field! The lawsuits and punishments from our own school always dissuaded me, but man! Talk about a prank to live through the ages!

Here's an onside kick you've probably never seen before!

Hebron HS (TX) pulls the hidden eleventh man version of an onside kick against Allen HS... Brilliant!

Hebron onside kick (courtesy of Bleacher Report)