College Football Trumps Soccer

Look, I love college football. Most of you do too. And I appreciate soccer and the World Cup and root for the U.S. plus Italy as I am Italian-American (I root for the U.S. if those two teams meet). But yesterday's bogus call in Brazil's tainted win over Croatia was the latest reason to prefer college football over soccer. Sure, we have plenty of cheating. God knows there is cheating going on in college football, from recruiting to giving advantages to chosen programs. I understand that and if someone proved that football officials were helping to throw games I would not be that surprised. But, the b.s. call in yesterday's match went a long way to deciding the match as it immediately led to the go-ahead score in a tight match during the second half. At the time that tainted goal was 33% of the game's scoring. There is nothing comparable in football and even the worst call you can think of, even those at game's end with the score close do not compare as the victims of the bad call had numerous opportunities to score throughout the game. Croatia had a handful. Giving a freebie to Brazil is similar to awarding a free touchdown to Alabama in a tied game with Vanderbilt in the fourth quarter and then allowing Vandy only one more drive. And remember that at least of third of Vandy's players would have to be defensive players. And that Bama would be allowed to keep scoring themselves. Etc, etc. It was a joke and allows the entire world to question the legitimacy of the sport and its finest showcase.

Pete Carroll Should Keep his Mouth Shut

There was not much gray area when discussing the sanctions that hit USC a few years ago. Most people either felt that they were justified as USC had lost some control over a program that had a number of transgressions or that the NCAA had hit the program too hard as some of the mistakes were committed by individual players and not the program as a whole. One thing both sides agreed on was that coach Pete Carroll knew the sanctions were coming and jumped on the Seattle Seahawks offer in 2010 to escape them. Being that he took the pro job only a few months before the NCAA made its announcement lent a lot of credence to that notion, shared by people on both sides of the debate. It really would be impossible for Carroll to prove otherwise. Yet there he was in a recent interview claiming that he did not jump ship. He left solely because of a wonderful offer and he claimed that he did not know when, or even if, sanctions were coming. He even said that if he had known of the sanctions and their severity he would have stayed to help the program get through troubled times. Please. How could anyone believe him? Why would anyone bother? Leaving to re-prove yourself in the pros is fine but saying you would stay to help clean up your own mess is disingenuous. And USC's hiring Kiffin made the situation even worse, but that is a different story.