Dan Wetzel's College Football Podcast: Social media, old school insistent on taking fun out of game
Clay Travis of Fox Sports 1 and OutKickTheCoverage.com returns to the Dan Wetzel College Football Podcast this week in the wake of one of the most exciting, raucous and unpredictable weeks ever. So much for a playoff rendering the regular season meaningless.
The start of the discussion, however, centers on Katy Perry's appearance on GameDay. The highlights included acting wild, ripping a mascot head off Lee Corso, begging Oklahoma quarterback Trevor Knight to call her and later chugging beers and diving off an Oxford, Miss., bar.
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There were a lot of complaints and handwringing on Twitter when it was announced Perry would appear on GameDay because she is a pop star with nebulous ties to football or Ole Miss. Her presence, however, continued to signal a slow but long overdue change in the way the sport of college football is "covered" in the media. (She also went 6-1 in her picks).
This is supposed to be fun, right? Can't this be fun? Isn't attending college football about far, far more than defensive adjustments and winning the turnover battle … you know like the food, drinks, games, people, laughs, outfits and general absurdities?
This comes after Oregon's season was shaken up, in part, by a terrible unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Tony Washington that helped cost it the Arizona game. It was only a penalty, however, because the conservative nature of the sport tries to enforce behavior that might offend someone (anyone) as being unsportsmanlike even if the majority of fans wouldn't categorize it as such.
What Washington did wasn't taunting. It wasn't unsportsmanlike conduct. It was celebrating. It was exciting. It was entertaining.
Can't this be fun? Or is our culture, particularly with social media mobs, too eager to be offended to allow the gap between old and new schools (for a lack of better terminology) to coexist?
This isn't as deep as it sounds. It includes a breakdown of whether Knight should call Perry. And whether life is better as an NBA point guard in the worst NBA city or the college point guard in the biggest college hoops market.
As for football, topics include:
• Whether the Mississippi teams can stand up.
• The impressive play of Auburn.
• Can Notre Dame run the table and has Jameis Winston done the impossible and made it so everyone will root for the Irish when they meet the Seminoles in a couple weeks?
Game predictions include: Texas vs. Oklahoma, TCU at Baylor, Auburn at Mississippi State, Ole Miss at Texas A&M, USC at Arizona and Oregon at UCLA.
Check it out here or on iTunes. As always, it's free.
