The NCAA football coaches have made a decision about their situation vis-a-vis the BCS national championship game. To wit, they have decided that all the coaches polls at the end of the season will be secret again. They used to be secret and then they decided they wanted to be more open again. And now it will be secret again because the coaches dislike the bad publicity they got in the first few days after the poll was taken. Lots of coaches, however, came out against this decision, because they like the accountability it puts forward and that it keeps everyone honest as much as possible. In other words, not only will some invisible hand decide who plays in the championship, but no one can be held accountable. What about the bad publicity that the secrecy brings forward?

There’s a little controversy brewing about the testimony earlier this month of Derrick Fox, who claimed that the bowl system of college football that you have now is better because “almost all of the bowl games are put on by charitable groups” and “local charities receive tens of millions of dollars in donations every year.” 10 of the bowl games are owned and run by multinational corporations. The others are run by tax exempt organizations. Combined, these bowls give 3.2 million dollars from their total $186 million revenue. Congress seems to think that this doesn’t add up to “tens of millions”. Fox wants them to think of the multinational corporations as charitable, because they donate to charities. Anyway, whatever it is at this point, it looks like Congress will still be talking about it for awhile.

The NCAA Football world is very quiet right now and everyone is really happy about that. There has been much controversy. There is one interesting thing going on. Greg Paulus, a former basketball player for Duke has another year of college sports eligibility and he’s decided to go back to his previous work as a football quarterback. And he’s decided to transfer to Syracuse in order to do that. He’s a good strong player and there will be a lot of different people working to get him the starter position there. Against the current one Nassib, he has a chance, but he might not just get it. We’ll have to see.

The NCAA football world always has a bit of trouble this time of year. It’s not because their players are bad or anything. But they’re college students and I guess they get into trouble like the usual college students. You can’t expect that they’ll be angels just because they are football players. Nevertheless, the fight that University of Illinois reserve player Mike Garrity got into at a bar near campus recently is a bit too far. Apparently he got into a fight and ended up fracturing the other man’s skull. He remains in the hospital and Garrity has been charged with aggravated battery. He’s been suspended from the team for now, even though he hasn’t played so far anyway. Hopefully it’ll get fixed up well enough.

Temple University football was granted a waiver from all NCAA penalties this year. They were due to have penalties even longer because of poor academic performance. This would have taken away from their scholarship potential and away from some of their practice time. They might have lost as much as four hours a week of practice time. But the university pulled their score back up and they were able to take themselves back into a normal situation. They will be able to play all they want and practice as they normally would. Congrats to them!

It’s been a typical saw for college football that the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are too young for the team to properly flourish right now. They aren’t bad, but they haven’t been able to dominate the way that they did in the 1990s. But they are a good team now. Their QB needs to find a way to really play. He tends to mess up his own plays and then it gets to be tough for the team to really put up the numbers that they need to against the Big 10 and other groups. But next season, the team that was able to put together good games last season will have a distinct advantage when they come in and really give strong play. They are more experienced now and have already seen what it takes to be good. They will be able to do this again next year against a relatively light schedule. Maybe they could get back to a bowl somewhere along the line.

A former Nebraska QB by the name of Keller has sued EA Sports and the NCAA for their game “NCAA Football”. What’s the problem with it? It depicts many actual college players in the game, who have not been paid for their images. The NCAA rule says that the players aren’t allowed to profit from their images while they’re playing, but that doesn’t appear to stop the league from doing whenever they want. I don’t think they players are identified by name in the games, but their images and teams are fairly clear. This lawsuit is less about Keller, apparently, than it is about all college players, mainly basketball and football, who have been depicted in these games. We’ll have to keep an eye on this story.

When the NFL drafted a lot of different college players, a lot of Universities had to give up several of their best players. This is no less true for Florida, the NCAA champion, who lost Percy Harvin, their fastest player, to the NFL. According to Bleacher Report, it will be hard for any other player to fill his shoes. He’s a player that people will see line up anywhere in the offensive formation and give the same level of concern. There aren’t many of those players out there, who can do the catching or the running and make really big plays. Meanwhile, they do have a talented team, but they also have a lot of injuries at the moment, so it’s a little bit of a problem for them. They are going to move forward to defend their championship, but they will look quite a bit different than they have the last few years.

The same debate is raging in the halls of Congress these days about just how just the BCS system is for the determination of a NCAA football national champion. This is a little bit outrageous, according to some, because this is not usually the purview of the national government. Usually they don’t get to govern certain sports as well. They are starting hearings in the government to try to change this system. With a problematic economy and other such things, it may be one of those things that the government best leaves out. Besides, the college teams involved have implicitly agree to this particular system and it seems to be working ok for now.