Blowouts, College Colors Day, two-point conversion and Jay Mariotti's opinion - Aug 29, 2008
posted by: Howard Smith
- The Division I college football season is now officially underway after a handful of games took place last night. While the start of the season is exciting for everyone, there seemed to be an unfortunate theme yesterday - blowout games. In the 14 games last night that featured at least one Division I FBS school, the average margin of victory was over 28 points. The Oregon State-Stanford game was the only contest that ended in a single-digit margin and contained any late-game drama - the Cardinal held onto an eight-point win when Oregon State's Darrell Catchings fumbled the ball into the endzone for a touchback in a last minute drive. Are you still able to get fired up for these early season games even though many of them end up being mismatches?
- Today is the fourth annual College Colors Day, which celebrates the tradition of college athletics. People around the country are encouraged to wear the colors of their alma mater or favorite school, and it's a great way to kick off the school year.
- The 50th anniversary of the two-point conversion in college football was yesterday. The NCAA News' Greg Johnson looked back on the origination of the idea and how it has had a role in many of college football's most famous moments. Do you like the two-point conversion in college football?
- Have you ever heard of a college president going back to school as an undergraduate student? Well, Randolph-Macon president Roger Martin did just that when he enrolled for a semester at St. John's (Maryland). To get the full student-athlete experience, the 61-year-old even joined the crew team. Martin claims that he learned a great deal about students since he was able to assimilate with them from a much different perspective than he usually does as a president. He has since written a book about his experiences: "Racing Odysseus: A College President Becomes a Freshman Again."
- Controversial Chicago Sun-Times writer Jay Mariotti quit his job this week after returning home from the Olympics in Beijing. No matter how you feel about him, his comments about the newspaper industry to CBS 2 in Chicago were quite interesting: "It's been a tremendous experience, but I'm going to be honest with you, the profession is dying. I don't think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive. To showcase your work ... you need a stellar Web site and if a newspaper doesn't have that, you can't be stuck in the 20th century with your old newspaper.'' Do you agree with Mariotti's opinion?
- A couple of days ago we discussed the LPGA's new controversial policy that will require all of its foreign-born golfers to learn English. While it seems that the reaction to this rule is mixed among female golfers on tour, some of the PGA players are speaking up with harsher criticism of the policy. "You don't have to speak English to play golf," said Argentinean Angel Cabrera, the 2007 U.S. Open champion. By the way, he made these comments through an interpreter since he doesn't speak any English. What do you think of this new rule?
