Ponderables

Here, for all who care to read (that includes both of you) are my current college football thoughts on the verge of a new season.

• With expansion to twelve regular season games and potentially one bowl game and one conference championship game, isn’t the yardstick of the “Ten-Win Season” getting a little watered down?  Since everyone is playing their version of a MAC school for that extra game, we’ve moved the marker that used to be a nine-win season to a ten-win season.  This is like gradeflation.  I’m now calling it “recordflation.”
• With all the resources available at newspapers, why can’t they afford to have a beat-writer and an analyst (who actually analyzes interesting things?)  Blogs have taken on many topics & issues that are pretty interesting, done some really good work.  This blog especially.  But a newspaper would have the resources to do it in a more rigorous and comprehensive fashion.  How often has a blogger given up going further than 2001 because “data isn’t readily available”?  This is in no way a knock on bloggers, they do great work with the tools they have, but mere confusion on my part at more traditional media outlets. 
• Then again, they employ people like Drew Sharp, which is equally baffling.  (Yes, that was a cheap shot.  No, I’m not above a cheap shot.)
• Why do we, the fans, allow the farce that is the Coach’s poll?  Here’s a guy who has a laser-like focus on the next opponent.  He’s obsessive-compulsive to begin with, already likely skimps on time with his family.  Sometimes sleeps in the filmroom… and we expect him to keep track of 25-30 games, arrange the teams in a sensible/rational order, not be political, file it Saturday or Sunday, *after* he’s just coached a game, possibly a night game, taped a coach’s show, and travelled?  In reality, this gets handed off to a flunky with some macro-direction, and we should end the charade.
• What exactly would a modern athlete have to do to get his jersey retired?  Look at Charles Woodson.  Dominant, key to a National Championship, never lost to OSU, the first ever to win the Heisman as a primarily defensive player.  His resume is impeccable, except that he didn’t stay for a fourth year.  Almost any player even approaching that level as a junior would leave for the NFL.  So what would a jersey-retiring resume look like?  Are we just done retiring numbers?
• What will constitute basic success or failure for this upcoming season?  Some years, this is a lot like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography… “I can’t define it but I know it when I see it.”  This season I think it’s pretty clear-cut.  No bowl is a failure.  Squeaking into a bowl game is par.  Success is a bowl game plus anything extra: ND beatdown part IV, making Dantonio slap himself, JoePa flat-out retiring right after losing to us for the umpteenth time in a row, or a bowl win.  Extreme success is me not dropping my newborn son as I use him for a prop describing how we gave OSU a freakin red-a$$ beatdown.