Cleaning out the Inbox
Friday, October 20, 2006 at 07:20AM 1)BCS Guru
So a new website has launched called BCSGuru.com. Sounds like someone may be entering Jerry Palm's territory here, but as a public service, there's the link.
2)Whit Freakin' Watson
If you're not reading Whit Watson, you're kinda missing out.
He's a broadcaster for Sun Sports, a TV network which ably covers all the Florida football programs. Here's his writeup on the Miami/FIU fiasco, with a lot of good points made about proportionality of coverage (All Miami all the time).
Those who don't live and work in Florida have a hard time understanding the cultural gap that exists between South Florida and the rest of the state. I think I stayed away from the brawl because, though I am a native Floridian, I did not grow up in South Florida, and therefore cannot appreciate the intensity of, well, everything. As Larry Coker pointed out in the aftermath of the fight, the majority of the athletes on the Florida International University football roster are kids who weren't good enough to play at Miami. FIU's roster is filled almost exclusively with Florida kids, the overwhelming majority of whom come from Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. The kids who play for Miami and FIU today have known each other, and played football with each other, since they were children. This sibling rivalry bubbled before the game, when the trash-talk began in earnest (we've got the videotape). It boiled over with the brawl.
Whit sounds like he's excuse-making here, but I think he's simply trying to explain why the fight happened and wasn't all that surprising. And he certainly doesn't excuse it. That said his classroom analogy a little further down in the article doesn't fly with me.
But back to the point about this... friction between the two programs. Anytime you have this one city, big power vs. inferior team, an unhealthy power dynamic emerges. Look no further than USC/UCLA, what I consider the nation's most unhealthy rivalry.
Read these guys for a week and see if you can get past all the simmering resentment and animosity. Bottle that up and put the emotions on the football field and crazy things can happen sometimes.
Anyway, there's plenty more goodness from Watson. He runs some numbers on Florida/Auburn from last week and correctly surmised it would be a tossup despite all the sunshine pumped about the Gators from here and elsewhere. Oh, and he also pre-emptively hinted at the budding rivalry between Miami and FIU, and noted that Miami DC Randy Shannon's son Xavier was on the FIU football team.
And finally there's this interesting entry about Florida State and its use (or lack thereof) of tight ends. He also inadvertently catches several errors in the FSU Media Guide and Game Notes.
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Reader Comments (3)
Do you think the rivalry has only been unhealthy beginning with the Pete Carroll era, or do you include the streak of 8 straight UCLA wins?
UCLA's not as chippy as say, Fresno State, because they land some well-regarded kids who USC does pay attention to, but the mentality is there, particularly among the fan base.
There hasn't been a brawl nor do I expect a brawl between USC and UCLA because both schools have been doing this for so long and manage the tensions well (see both schools protecting their on-campus statues), unlike FIU which is a young school.
FIU's self-worth is somewhat knotted up in measuring themselves up against Miami, same as UCLA measures themselves up against USC (Ex: 9 games/Beat USC) whereas the bigger school keeps up its air of superiority which only further infuriates the little guy.
The other factor in the Bruins self-esteem problems is that they used to be able to point to the school's academic reputation as a salve against their inferior football team. But for the last several years USC has attracted students with higher SAT/ACT scores than the incoming students at UCLA.