College Football Nation: The Vote and Penn State is Breaking Bad

Jeff Hostetler FishWrap, FishWrap Archive

 

When all you have to talk about from the past week of action is people arguing over uniforms, coaches trolling schools, and players apologizing for trash talk … then it’s a slow week.  We did have one big thing, though, with Northwestern’s football players taking a private vote about whether or not to unionize.  That story will be the main talking point for most college football fans as this off season drags on.

1)  It looks like this issue won’t going to go away anytime soon.  You have players wanting one thing and the coaches in charge of them, wanting another.  Mixed signals are being sent back and forth to the eligible players voting, about the pros and cons of a union.

In my years of working, unions are bad news.  Players unionizing will change everything in college athletics.  The focus is still turned to just the Northwestern football team, but everyone should know this will go global to all athletes at that school and change athletics as we know it.  At least they are getting unlimited meals now.

2)  Change is good right?  Unless you are Penn State.  Changing the uniforms seems to be a heated debate among players and fans of the Penn State program.  We all know Penn State to be the simple uniform combinations.  Nothing more, nothing less.  If the players wanted more “style” in their uniforms, then Penn State is not the place for them.  If this is the only problem your program is facing during the off season, then things are going pretty well.

3)  Who would not love Steve Spurrier as their coach?  He is the guy who gets the results, on the field and off.  The biggest things Florida fans enjoyed while he was their coach, was the way he would poke at rival schools such as Tennessee or make funny comments about star players at the school such as Peyton Manning.  The way he “trolled” Tennessee and Alabama … classic Spurrier.  More coaches need to be like him, as it would certainly liven up the message boards.

As the off season progresses, we can get started talking about the upcoming games to start off Week 1.  Maybe give some predictions and see how far off I am.  If anything, just keep a microphone near Spurrier and we’ll get some more media gold.

Until then, we can focus on the Northwestern players and how they might destroy college sports.  Let’s hope the union gets shot down, but the NCAA can wake up and do better to help the players making the $millions for their schools.

NATIONAL NEWS:

1. Kiffin wins title

2. Texas is sorry

3.  Duke finds a new home

4.  Joe Pa back at Penn State

5. Texas not playing for title

 

New 2024 FishDuck Publishing Schedule….

During the off-season the FishDuck.com publishing schedule will consist of articles on Mondays and Tuesdays. Do keep checking as new articles could be published during the week when a writer has something to say.

In mid-August of 2024, we will go back to the seven-days-a-week of articles during the football season as we did in the football season of 2023.

The Our Beloved Ducks Forum (OBD) is where we we discuss the article above and many more topics, as it is so much easier in a message board format over there.  At the free OBD forum we will be posting Oregon Sports article links, the daily Press Releases from the Athletic Department and the news coming out every day.

Our 33 rules at the free OBD Forum can be summarized to this: 1) be polite and respectful, 2) do not tell anyone what to think, feel or write, and 3) no reference of any kind to politics. Easy-peasy!

OBD Forum members….we got your back.  No Trolls Allowed!