Early Season Games

Nearly everyone complains about the NFL preseason. At least the NFL calls these early season games exactly what they are. Practice games. College football has long had practice games too. They just call them regular season games. Some of the early season games in college football are just ridiculous. The last few seasons have been a little rough for Cal. Those struggles resulted in a coaching change two years ago and further struggles through the transition. The cure. Schedule FCS Grambling St Tigers to open the 2015 season. The result. A 73-14 demolition. Everyone in Berkeley is happy for the 2015 version of the Golden Bears. Head coach Sonny Dykes is the best. It's easy to get happy when you're team destroys a team that they are supposed to destroy. Games such as these are good for teams such as Grambling. It's a real nice payday. It's also a great test. Teams learn far more from playing up in competition than teams that are playing down in competition. It's a very good bet that the Grambling coaches learned more about their team than the Cal coaches learned about theirs. Cal coaches probably learned more from the practices before and since their players took apart the Tigers. Grambling may or may not have left Berkeley with a moral victory but they definitely left with a wad of cash. Cal came away with a win and nearly every player that wore a uniform took part in it.

I suppose that the teams that play down in competition do take a risk. Ask Michigan about Appalachian State. Ask Stanford about Davis. Michigan and Stanford will never live down those traumatic losses. That defeat of Stanford plays on a loop in the UC Davis bookstore. These upsets can happen. They just don't happen often. And Michigan and Stanford were Michigan and Stanford in name only those years. Appalachian St. and Davis were just the first to expose them as such. 

There really is no solution to these early season jokes posing as college football games. Teams need to get ready for a season. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks for a team to get their proper footing. Practices can only do so much. Practices can't properly duplicate the emotions and intensity of lining up against a player in a uniform that's not yours. It would be nice to see FBS schools not schedule FCS schools. The lower division teams simply don't have the depth to compete with the big boys. Let alone the talent. No matter how feisty the little guys are to start the game there comes a point where they just can no longer hold back the inevitable. You just feel bad for them. Where's the fun in that? FBS schools should fill their schedule with FBS schools. College football teams should step on a level playing field. Comparable number of scholarship players. Comparable depth. It's possible to schedule "warm-up" games that are more competitive. Schedule games with local connections. I'd love to see Michigan or Michigan St. playing the directional Michigan schools. Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Central Michigan. There would be years in which the big boys in Michigan would be taking a great risk with those talented teams but the games would be great. Local rivalries are great. I loved it when Cal-San Jose State seemed to be an early season staple. 

It's possible to schedule early season games that are more competitive than the jokes that we so often see. Just be bold. 

I'd much rather see:

Oregon State at Michigan

than:

Indiana State at Purdue

I'd much rather see:

Utah State at Utah

than:

Sacramento State at Washington

Jacksonville State at Auburn

Why watch those likely laughers when we have Oregon at Michigan State. 

Be bold, Be daring. There's no preseason in college football. Every game counts.