College Football: No One Has Done a Butler Bulldog Football Preview? They Have Now

College football season is here, and no one around me seems to care.  I suppose that's because this is Indianapolis, where other sports and teams supposedly reign supreme - the Blue Horseshoes, roundball, and the Tape-Delayed 500 Mile Race to name a few.  Some of us, though, moved here from college football country - the Deep South. So I'd like to give some love to the sport I prefer to all of the above, plus offer some exclusive football predictions from the most accurate football game picker I know - my Magic 8 Ball.  No kidding.

Up first for week one, a look at a school whose football team might as well not exist according to every local media source I have searched - the Butler Bulldogs.  The school with the well publicized (and deservedly so) basketball program, also played the very first college football game in the state of Indiana (1884 vs. DePauw, another school that gets zero media love).  The reason is, I believe, two-fold - they play in FCS (the artist formerly known as Division 1-AA) and they play in the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League, arguably the lowest level of FCS.  But they still play the dad gum game (the other accepted moniker for college football), and the Bulldogs open their season Thursday night at Western Illinois, so one would think that an outlet other than official Butlerdom would have said something about the Dawgs' prospects this season.  Nope, unless my Google is broken (let me look down, nope - still there), nada on the Uppercase B's pigskin prowess.  No longer.

From what I can tell, this might not be the best season for Butler, as they lost 15 starters, including a lot of skill-set players, from last year's 5-6 team.  They were picked to finish 7th in the 10-team Pioneer League.  Still, a league such as this is more difficult to peg given that there are no athletic scholarship players on any of the rosters.  Also, Butler has one of the best linebackers in the league in Jordan Ridley returning, so if he stays healthy and the Bulldogs can play defense at all, a winning season should not be out of the question. 

As we learned about a week ago, next year will be a more important season for Butler football as, for the first time, the champion of the Pioneer League will receive an automatic bid to the FCS playoffs, home of the legitimate national championship, unlike that glass thingy the bigger guys with the generally smaller GPA's play for.

Butler's travels to Macomb, (pronounced my COMB - 'cause it's a Dapper Dan city) Illinois to play Western Illinios.  The Leathernecks would like to rebound from a horrendous season, 2-9, especially since they were coming off an 8-5 playoff year.  Plus, the American Academy of Dermatology is really on their case about their mascot, which the academy has deemed offensive.

Western did what most schools do just before firing their head coach after two bad seasons in a row - fire the assistant coaches after one bad season.  They also had a slew of non-sunscreen related injuries last season, and their starting quarterback has returned. 

Conventional wisdom would probably give the Leathernecks the advantage in this one, given that they are opening at home.  But I leave game predictions to one device - the Magic 8 Ball, which if I can ever snag a government grant, I will produce a study that proves it is just as accurate at picking games as Lee Corso, minus the cursing.

So, Magic 8 Ball, will Butler defeat Western Illinois tomorrow night?

The 8-Ball's answer: Definitely! The exclamation point is the 8-Ball's, not mine.

Kids Football Picks results: 8YO goes 3-1

Not a bad week for 8YO, AKA Laughing Witch, as she went 3-1 with her football picks.

She got a scare as Georgia Tech struggled on offense, then allowed a pretty bad Maryland team using a backup quarterback to make it close before finally winning 21-16 to remain unbeaten.

The Georgia Bulldogs, with an assist from The Towel, pulled what some are considering a mild upset in beating Tennessee at Neyland Stadium 20-12.  Then again, when you're running game resembles a prop in an OK-Go video, as Tennessee's does (see below), you aren't going to win very many football games in the SEC.  Well, unless you are playing Kentucky or one of the Mississippi schools.

The towel, you ask?  I'm surprised no one else seems to be talking about this, but Georgia's coaches were hiding their play calling from the eyes of ESPN's cameras by holding a white towel in front of whichever coach was sending in plays at the time. I sure hope it wasn't a used towel.  The towel ostensibly will keep future Bulldogs opponents from hiring Heather Whitestone-McCallum or some other lip reading expert to steal the team's signals by reviewing video of prior games.  If I were Georgia-Pacific, I'd be peeved.  The Dawgs could be showing state pride by using a roll of GP paper towels.  It's a ready made commercial - Sparkle, they're cheap, but strong enough to protect the secrets of your Bulldogs, at least the on-field secrets. Made just down the road from me in Rincon, too!

8YO correctly picked both her NFL games, as the Bengals beat the Los Angeles Jaguars in Jacksonville 23-20 with help from a botched Jaguars snap that prompted a mighty groan from the Jaguars fan in attendance.  The Packers then remained unbeaten with a 25-14 whipping of the Falcons at the Georgia Dome as the Falcons pulled the "I'm going to run out to a lead, then blow it" card again.

As promised, OK-Go.

The Kids' Football Picks

well, better late than never...

Mr. Steele was wrong about Savannah State football

Whoops.  Well, here's my comeuppance.  Please don't hurt me, Opio!  Not mentioned in the video, because I didn't know it at the time, is that Pro Football Hall of Famer (and former Tiger) Shannon Sharpe will be in town for Savannah State's home opener this Saturday, Oct. 1st, kickoff at 7:00pm.  Sweet!

Savannah State should drop back or drop kick football

Imagine for a moment if Congress only accomplished 15-percent of what was best for the country. Okay, bad example. We seem to send most of those jokers back to Washington repeatedly regardless of what they do. Let's instead say that your daughter came home from school to tell you she had only answered 15 questions correctly on a 100 question English exam. You would tell her, naturally, that you can't accomplish much in the world if you have a success rate of 15-percent. Someone desperately needs to deliver that message to Savannah State University when it comes to its football program.

Robby Wells resigned this week after just two years at the helm of the Tigers. His win-loss record: 7-15, good for a winning percentage of .318. How sad it is that winning 32-percent of the time, something that is only acceptable to a major league baseball hitter, was considered wildly successful at Savannah State. This is a program, after all, that hasn't had a winning season since 1998. SSU was a Division Two school back then, and judging by its lack of success since moving up to Division 1-AA (now known as FCS), it should either drop back down a division or perhaps just save the money and not play football at all.

Since becoming a full-fledged member of 1-AA in 2002, Savannah State's record on the gridiron is 13-73, good (good?) for a .151 winning percentage, almost as low as John Edwards's latest approval rating. The Tigers won only six games in six years before Wells was hired prior to the 2008 season. Why the lack of success after the change in divisions? At this point, who cares. The bottom line is that the record shows eight years of failure, with very little if any chance for improvement, and the only place where someone would tell you to keep doing the same thing after eight years of failure is Washington D.C.

Some will say that other schools have gone through similar football swoons and have emerged successfully. You would, however, be hard pressed to name one such school with the athletic budget and ability to tap alumni for donations, or lack thereof, such as Savannah State. Also, with one of the most successful FCS programs in the country in Georgia Southern just up the road, it is clear there is not enough talent available for the Tigers to be competitive. Drop down to Division Two, and that changes. Indeed, the Tigers' only football playoff appearance in the school's history came as a D-II school in 1992 (full disclosure, SSU was blown out in the first round by Jacksonville State, and the author was a student at JSU at the time).

Sadly, since it is 2010 and we should have moved on by now, one can't help but wonder if skin color played a role in Wells's tenure. You may recall that there were some not-so-subtle protestations from some alumni when SSU hired its first white football coach and, five months later, its first white athletics director in Bart Bellairs. Some believed that the historically black school had betrayed its heritage. Both Bellairs and Wells are now gone; Bellairs resigned in November just 18 months after he was hired. While they both officially left SSU on good terms, only those behind the scenes know the true story. The timing, though, is fishy considering that most thought the football program was still making progress under Wells despite going 2-8 last season.

The true story should be that Savannah State has nowhere to go but up. But unless SSU has it's own version of T. Boone Pickens ready to properly fund a Division One football program, it's record on the field has shown that it has no business trying to compete in that division. There is no shame in competing in Division Two; ask Armstrong Atlantic State if it hurts them. But if Savannah State is more ashamed of dropping down a division than of a 15-percent success rate, the school would set a much better example for its students by spending its money on them rather than football.

If Richt keeps Garner as D. Coordinator, Richt will be fired 11 months from now

"I think we probably need to start out by saying what a fantastic job our defensive coaches did," coach Mark Richt said after Georgia's 44-20 blowout of a middling (at best) Big 12 team in the Jacked Up Energy Drink Used By Michael W. Smith Independence Bowl Tuesday night. It should have been obvious that Michael W. needed to be jacked to get through an entire show of his schmaltz, but that's another story. Georgia's much maligned defense was the story in Shreveport, but Richt would be a fool to let last night's game govern his decision on who becomes Georgia's next defensive coordinator.

This is not meant to take anything away from the job Rodney Garner and a collection of duct-taped pieces of fiber board did in getting the Bulldogs' defense ready. Within the context of the turmoil of the last month, that performance was remarkable. But the Georgia fan who is now clamoring for Garner to be named head of the defense going in to next season should keep two things in mind, the team that Georgia beat last night and the legacy of Dennis Felton.

Texas A&M proved last night just how much quality the Big 12 doesn't have. That was the same inept Aggies offense that scored 39 points on what supposedly is the number two team in the nation one month ago. That was the same vaunted "12th Man" special teams unit that gave up a kickoff return touchdown to the astonishing Brandon Boykin, and the Aggies sported a punting team that resembled our pathetic winless intramural team during this column's days at Jacksonville State. Sure, a win is a win, and it was great to see a Georgia team that has had so many problems this year actually produce eight victories. But this win does not tell us anything about whether a Rodney Garner-coached defense could begin to compete against the middle of the pack in the SEC, much less the conference's elite.

You may remember that two years ago, Georgia was set to fire basketball coach Dennis Felton, whose program had become a joke. Georgia decided to wait until the 2007-08 season ended, which probably wouldn't have happened in football because SEC schools care about football and, other than Kentucky, aren't sure why anyone would want to fool with a ball that is not oblong. You know the rest of the story. Felton's team got lucky and won a few games in a row, as happens in hoops sometimes. Those few games just happened to be in the SEC tounament, and Georgia athletic director Damon Evans didn't have the courage to do the right thing and say "damn the Big Dance. We're still a joke. You're still fired." The Bulldogs were pathetic last season, and the rebuilding of the program that should have started in 2008 instead began one year later.

Richt knows it doesn't matter that he has averaged almost ten wins per season in his nine years in Athens. If he doesn't compete with Florida for the division title next year, he is toast. Richt may in fact be under more pressure to win the division thanks to Urban Meyer's apparent use of a 'Magic 8 Ball' to decide his future with Florida. To win in 2010, Richt knows that Georgia needs a defensive coordinator whose resume includes more than a single victory against a middle-of-the-pack team from a less-than-stellar conference.

Fearless Freep football prediction

The question before the committee (that would be your correspondent); whom to pick in tomorrow's SEC Championship game. Number one Florida versus Number Two Alabama, with the winner to play for the fake 'national championship' of college sheetbay. 'Sheetbay' was my word for football during the toddler years. No one knows why, but it's probably for the same reason that mashed potatoes were 'week-weets', local newspaper the Dade County Sentinel was (and remains) the "weekly wipe", and brussel sprouts were "stinking, steaming pieces of monkey dookie." One cannot predict the outcome of a game of this magnitude without considering all the proper intangibles.

Much space could be wasted analyzing the offenses and defenses of the Tuscaloosa Packaderms and the Steve Irwin (RIP) Back Riders from the Everglades. Much has also been made of the two head coaches, Urban Meyer (henceforth referred to as Notre Dame's Next Head Coach, or NDNHC) and Nick Saban (henceforth referred to as Gawd). But those analyses would cause the oversight of the two factors that will decide tomorrow's game; books and Tim Tebow's private life.

Tebow, as you may know, makes Dale Murphy look like Michael Vick. But sources tell me that the ghost of legendary Bama booster Logan Young is stalking Tebow in Atlanta as we speak, armed with copious amouts of (alleged) Spanish Fly. A few spikes of Tebow's pomegranate juice cocktail (hold the pomegranate) and Mr. Heisman promise ring will spend the wee hours of Big Game Eve at the Gold Club shouting "Praise Gawd!" ("Did someone call me?" asked Saban.) While Tebow on 37 minutes of sleep will still be better than Rex Grossman and Danny Wuerffel combined, it will slow him down. That alone, however, won't give The Guys With the Big Trunks the victory. The win will come because of Bama's talent with the written word.

My sources tell me that Bama has secretly acquired NDNHC's playbook, and that players have used their scholarship money to purchase copies for the entire team, along with 53-percent of the Alabama student body, at Buffalo Phil's Pub and Used Bookstore. As Jesse "The Body" Ventura used to say, "cheaters always win and winners always cheat", or as Saban said, "The strong survive, but sometimes, the strong cheat their @$&* off." The adept fingering of the UF playbook will lead to seven Leigh Tiffin field goals (since Bama still won't be able to get in the end zone.) Final score: Dumbo 21, Wally Gator 14.

Immediately after the game, NDNHC will become NDHC approximately 14 minutes after denying that ND even exists except in the 5th Dimension of the McCoo Galaxy. Gawd will be sent to South Korea and cloned. The clone will be cryogenically frozen, placed in the HealthSouth Memorial tank, and buried at Elmwood next to the plaid-hatted 'Daddy Of Gawd', ensuring fake national titles for Tusky in perpetuity. That is at least until there is a playoff and real national titles to win.

You Need Quotas? I Gots Quotas!

"A new study finds a lack of diversity in the key leadership positions at Football Bowl Subdivision schools and conferences", reports the Associated Press:

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida released the report Tuesday. It found that for the 362 campus leadership positions studied, more than 91 percent of the officials were white.

The report examined positions such as conference commissioners, school presidents, athletic directors, faculty athletics representatives and head football coaches. It found that white men made up 77.5 percent of presidents and 82.5 percent of athletic directors.

Institute director Richard Lapchick says "the numbers simply do not reflect the diversity of our student-athletes.

So as not to be accused of complaining about something without offering a solution, I now offer my remedy for what clearly is a serious problem of Caucasian overrun. My guess is that Dick Lapchick would agree with me that the only way to tackle this is to institute strict hiring quotas for athletic directors, college presidents, head football coaches, etc. After all, it is absolutely vital that the folks in charge of our students and student-athletes should reflect, in Mr. Lapchick's words, "the diversity of our student-athletes." To accomplish this, my quota system would ensure that a certain percentage of many important groups of student-athletes would be hired for all college coaching and athletic administrative positions:

36% Functional illiterates

10% Cum Laude graduates or higher

77.3% Users of Performance Enhancing Drugs

15% Armed Robbers

4.8% Samoan warriors

18.9% Like butter and salt on their grits (92.3% for hires in the S.E.C.)

7.6% Foreign-born tennis and soccer players who don't speak English

22% Those who fathered a child before college

4.7% Rapists

1.2% Virgin Quarterbacks

9% Lied on a resume (like Central Florida coach George O'Leary)

5.5% Have been arrested for getting nekkid and showering in a car wash

0.5% Defecate in closets of female students after breaking into their dorm

In the haste to publish, I probably missed a few important groups, and for that I apologize. However, this plan should be implemented immediately to start us on the path to a much happier, much more fair and most importantly, a more diverse world of college presidents, coaches, and athletic directors. Sure, the universities may look a little more like "Animal House", but who better to handle the football player who rapes another student than an athletic director who is a fellow rapist, someone who can properly "feel their pain"? In the name of diversity, we must......act.......now.