The Penn State Football Show

I'm sure when you read the title of this post you immediately had visions of Ryan Reynolds, Juan Guzman, and some of the ridiculous malformations you can sculpt out of certain parts of the male anatomy! But, since this is a football blog, I will save my Roger Ebert skills for another time.

Instead, I am concerned with the amount of time between the last Penn State regular season game and the upcoming Bowl game. I must admit, I am excited for the LSU-PSU matchup. An SEC opponent in a rather meaningful bowl game will give Penn State, and the Big Ten, a chance to see where they stand in relation to the almighty SEC. But, like a 6-year-old counting down the days on his advent calendar, I am really getting sick of waiting for Jan. 1.

Apparently, the NCAA and the Big Ten feel preparation for a bowl game deserves more practice time than preparation for the season opener. Penn State will have had more "official" practice time to prepare for LSU than they did for Akron, in terms of days. Either way, the time off between the end of the Big Ten regular season and the Bowl games is absolutely atrocious (Penn State will have 33 days off between games and this year the waiting time is relatively short). This is entirely too long to go without playing a football game. It's like starting over again. Teams lose their rhythm, players lose their competitiveness, and we have nothing to blog about! As a result, many of the teams have sluggish first quarters in the bowl games because the players are still waking up to game-type action. Two, maybe three weeks is PLENTY. Any coach or sportswriter who tells you that this is not a problem nor a disadvantage is simply giving the PC response...a response which is also BS! I have a feeling that this lay-off has been the reason Big Ten teams have underperformed in recent bowl games.

I am not positive about this, but I think much of this malarkey in scheduling revolves around the Ohio State-Michigan game (a game that nobody outside of Ohio or Michigan really cares about...but fans of the respective schools will tell you different). This game is always the last weekend of the Big Ten season and Jim Tressel does not want to play this game the weekend of Thanksgiving because it will interfere with Thanksgiving break for his players and his fans. Tressel wants this game played before Thanksgiving so his players can "go home for the Thanksgiving break." Tressel has also denied the long lay-off as being detrimental when it came to getting whacked in the '06 and '07 Title games. Why Jim Delany and staff entertain this idea, I dont know. And, if this game is such a huge rivalry like they claim, why isnt it played on the final college football "rivalry" weekend?

A few suggestions for the future...

• Push the start of the season back a week or two into September. Do we really need to be playing football in August, sometimes before school is even in session? As a result, the season would extend well into December.
• Build a bye week into the Big Ten schedule. We don't need 12 games squeezed into 12 weeks. Give everyone involved (players, coaches, media, fans) a breather half way through!
• All non-conference games must be played BEFORE Big Ten games start. That mid-season Eastern Illinois game was flat out stupid.
• Develop a Big Ten Championship game. Whether its 11 or 12 teams, lets determine the champion on the field like everyone else does. Enough of this co-champ nonsense. The Big Ten falls off the map in December while everyone else is playing Championship games.

I still think the whole college football season could be one week longer and extend into mid-December. I hear there is talk about making changes to the Big Ten schedule. Feel free to share some insight...