My wife- a big football fan- often remarks that football is a dumb man's game. Most smart folks wouldn't subject themselves to teh abuse. It also explains why players rough the quarterback on 3rd and 27. They are, at the end of the day, dumb.
Which explains ISU's improvement on the football field over the last few years. McCarney's staff has learned one lesson over all others: to win, you must recruit dumber players.
We at CSJ aren't surprised. Our casual observation is that winning football requires a higher concentration of knuckleheads than exist in the general population. It's a cost of doing business.
But if McCarney insists on suspending guys who get in trouble, he is unilaterally disarming. There are two choices in "Big Tiime Football": Recruit the academically inept and those who have goonish tendencies, and win; or, bring in well-scrubbed smart kids who still know how to put on a theigh pad, and lose. Florida or Vandy. You can't go half way. It doesn't work. ISU is trying that, and it's ultimately doomed to failure.
Which means we at CSJ have a constant love/hate relationship with "Big Tiime Football". We are the first to admit it is corrupt to the stinking core, yet we want to win at it as much as the next guy. We cherish the "Honor Before Victory" ideal more than the casual fan. But we are also realists: we know that "Homor Before Victory" ultimately equals "Bad Football" and "Fired Coaches".
It all would have been easier had the CSJ staff attended a DIII school, where articipation is still the most important factor in athletics, mostly.
So we ponder what the fall will hold for Cylone fan, and whether every player talented enough to play winning football will have let his dumb nature ruin his opportunities, and whether McCarney's unilateral disarmament will get him fired. Both will be unfortunate.
Peterclone
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