It's Saturday, so start with the return of Mike Jensen's College Football Report. As always, it includes the Top 10 Topics and the Games of the Week. This week's edition includes the Games of the Season as well.
Kevin Tatum and Mike Kern recap the Temple-Navy game. I'll have some thoughts of my own to share shortly, but there was definite proof last night that the Owls have no intention of being tossed around anymore like they've always been.
Villanova goes down to College Park, Md., today to play the Terrapins. Maryland hasn't always done what it's supposed to do against Division I-AA teams, so this one might at least be entertaining for a bit longer than it should be.
Meanwhile, Florida International goes to Penn State today trying to reverse the image created from last year's 0-12 season and brawl at Miami. I somehow doubt the folks in Happy Valley will be all that accomodating.
Clearly, though, the biggest game of the day -- and yes, the Spectacle of the Week, winning the contest by (and with) one vote -- is East Carolina at Virginia Tech.
A few weeks back, Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post wrote something on his blog that I found to be quite salient.
Why do we have to wring some sort of grandiose tales of societal healing out of sporting events? In what way does football provide comfort to the people who actually need to be comforted; say, the victims' parents? If any of my relations were ever struck by tragedy, how exactly would a four-yard run up the middle on second-and-eight make me feel better?
I get as sick as anyone of the overhyping of not just college sports, but sports as a whole. I find it particularly aggravating when a media outlet -- and ESPN is first in line with this -- takes a storyline and sticks to it the entire way through, even when what is going on in front of our eyes is something different. Perhaps even the opposite thing entirely, or at least something that proves the Chosen Storyline to be false in some form.
But there has never been any doubt to me that there is no other thing on a college campus that brings people together better than sports. I would be perfectly happy if some famous professor did it, or the medical research facilities, or an orchestra, or anything else. For better or worse, though, sports is the thing that gets it done.
What happened at Virginia Tech is of a completely different scale than anything we've seen in a long time. But be honest with yourself:
Does anything bring the St. Joe's and Villanova campuses together like basketball (especially when they're playing each other)?
Is there any other thing besides sports that Temple University does at any point during the year that would put 25,000 of its students, staff, faculty, alumni and anyone else with a connection to the institution in the same place at the same time for three and a half hours?
I would love to hear an answer proving that something else can do so. I genuinely mean that. But I doubt it will happen.
So I find Mark Schlabach's column on ESPN.com today to be particularly worth reading. The players at Virginia Tech genuinely understand just what it is they are doing by playing football as I write this post.
"People can say the Yankees and Saints are on a much larger scale than ya'll," Hokies quarterback Sean Glennon says in the story. "But in the town of Blacksburg, I think we're on the radar as much as the Yankees are in New York and the Saints are in New Orleans. The people in this community really love Virginia Tech and they love the Hokies."
Do you honestly want to not believe him? Do you think he wasn't being genuine? As cynical as this sports summer has been, I want to think that this game today really does matter, and that the people of Blacksburg really have been waiting all summer for this day, and that it really does mean something to them.
If that's not so, I'll stand up and say I was as much a victim of the media hype as anyone else. But I rather doubt it.
What about you?
