Does Anyone? Football Thoughts....

Well, another week of college football is under our belts, and I've reached another pinnacle of honesty in my blog.

I don't understand everything about football. I just pretend.

The key is, I think almost everyone is in the same boat as me, but very few people will admit it. After all, refs often go to the sideline and explain the call to coaches. Many times we have to have the NCAA rep come in to the TV coverage to explain some of the more obscure rules. Plus, I'm not sure all the challenges of calls by teams are because they think the call was really wrong -- sometimes I think its because they know no one completely understands the rules anyway.

For example:

1. Does anyone really understand which calls are reviewable and which ones aren't?

2. Does anyone really understand the Kicked Ball rule?

3. Does any one whatsoever understand the logic behind the NFL and the NCAA broadcasting football games opposite each other during this season? They share a large chunk of their audience! Sure, let's take the football season and confuse it all together by having the two kinds of games play at the exact same time and make the limited audience choose. This is not increased competition (the competition is between the players, ha, ha. No, seriously, the economic competition is between football and anything else that is on already....) To me, this decision is like releasing two Tom Cruise movies at the same time and telling people they can only pay to see one of them. Nobody wins! If you hate Tom Cruise, there is still twice as much of him out there. If you love him, you only see half as much as you want to. (Please ... keep your minds out of the gutter here.) If you are his agent, you've lost half your revenue. If you are Tom, your church is ... well, let's not get mean. Tom might start yelling at me in the media and make me as famous as Oprah Winfrey, and who wants that?

Back to football.

4. Does anyone really understand what the term, "Unabated to the quarterback" means?

Now let's get one thing straight. Of course, with a little bit of time and a little bit of thought, I could figure out the answer to most of these. (Well, maybe not number 3.) Google is a great tool, and there are plenty of sports websites for us to peruse these days. But the point is that no one does this. We all just act like we know whenever it comes time to yell at the refs. The really ironic thing is that we all moan and groan in unison in the stadium on a few key plays where it looks like some funky business was happening while the ball was in the air. If a whole stadium immediately erupts in protest at the end of a play, does that say something about the play, even if there is no technical rule violation? Hmmm. Maybe. It means we are loyal fans, I suppose. It also means that we all have the same apparent misunderstanding of the rules, too. Isn't that weird?

What are those college chants?

A rope, a tree...

Nuts and bolts, nuts and bolts ....

Something like that. Happy Football. See ya next Wednesday.