In the wake of Saturday’s brutal murder of the entire Savannah State football team at the hands of notorious serial killer Ted Gundy (Mike Bundy? I don’t know), it’s time for the annual bitchfest from people who are appalled, appalled I say, at the very idea that top-level colleges should sully themselves by scheduling the poors.
Look. I say this with all love and respect, and indeed the match that lit this post’s fuse was wielded by one of my bestest innernet bros. There are a bunch of words I can use to describe that mindset. “Idiotic” is one. “Paternalistic” is another. I might even go with “pompous”, “arrogant”, and/or “smug”. In a certain context, even “imperialistic” works.
I realize that many people with this mindset have legitimate arguments, and aren’t necessarily making the mistake of turning their team into a blithely ignorant and uncaring Mitt Romney (whereas poor West Texas A&M is Bob the electrician, working 40 hours a week to keep a roof over his family’s head and trying to get his kids into a decent college, and Valley City State is that homeless guy on the corner, only able to survive because there’s a free clinic down the street and a soup kitchen on the next block). They want their team to play a strong schedule, they don’t want to watch their team club baby seals to death. Sadly, though, they mostly don’t want to find themselves undefeated and ranked #3 in the BCS poll at the end of the year. It’s really no surprise that the most vocal proponents of this entire idea are SEC fans and fans of other schools which have been left just outside the door for the crime of having played a “soft” schedule.
However, the intersection between FBS and FCS (and between FCS and D-II, and so on) is a vitally important part of the college landscape. There are traditions involved in many cases, and in other cases there is even the force of law (Arizona and Arizona State are required by law to alternate playing Northern Arizona, for example). Cross-divisional play makes it possible for computer formulas to give us guidance as to just how good those lower division schools are compared to the folks above them. And, of course, there’s the most important reason these games need to survive: the survival of football itself at those lower division schools.