What in
the world is going on in college football this year? The Pirates
are leading their division of Conference USA, the ACC title game right
now would feature Wake Forest and Georgia Tech, and Rutgers is a
potential national title contender? Are you kidding me? We
hear all the time about the growing parity in college football, but are
we to expect this to be the norm? Or is it just an anomaly?
Either way, this has to be one of the weirdest seasons on record in
college football.
Just look at the ACC. Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Maryland are
the top three teams. Miami and Florida State, the teams predicted
to win their respective divisions and play one another for the league
championship at season’s end, are a combined 5-9 in league play.
But don’t even get me started about the coach’s predictions. The
coaches in Conference USA, you know, the ones that picked UCF to bring
up the bottom in last year’s pre-season poll, only to see the Golden
Knights win the East division and play in the leagues championship
game, well they’re at it again. The Pirates are of course leading
the East, after being picked to finish sixth out of six by the astute
prognosticators. Marshall was picked fourth and currently sits
third and would have been number one, had they beaten the
Pirates. How about in the West division? Again the team
picked last is making some noise. Rice sits a game and a half out
of the lead in 2nd after knocking off predicted league champ
Tulsa.
I won’t be too hard on the coaches though, it is pretty tough to pick
games these days, and I’m sure they’re all worried about their own
teams more than who to pick first and last.
There are three Big East teams in the BCS top ten, compared to zero for
the ACC. Heck, there are more Big East teams in the top ten than
the SEC, but we could talk all day about this worthless system that
decides who plays for the national title. How can anyone support
a system that basically penalizes teams for playing in the best
conference in college football?
It’s been a crazy season indeed, especially for Pirate fans. ECU
has set new records for attendance this season. After 41,372 (5th
largest) watched ECU beat Marshall last Saturday at Dowdy-Ficklen
Stadium ECU set a record for the most people to watch ECU play at home
in a season, 223,006. 37,168, the average number of fans to
attend each home game this season, is also a record. (both of
these numbers are for 6 home games played at Dowdy-Ficklen).
Congratulations to the entire ECU staff, Skip Holtz, and the Pirates
for a great turnaround. ECU supporters once again have something
to be proud of and they are showing it. Good luck to the Pirates
the rest of the way.
