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By George M. Thomas
Beacon Journal sports writer
Published on Tuesday, Aug 26, 2008
With the start of the college football season, which thankfully begins Thursday, and preseason polls (you know, the ones that mean little to nothing), a familiar refrain has started to play: The Southeastern Conference is better than the Big Ten.
Yada, yada, yada.
Georgia sits atop the USA Today/Coaches Poll (OSU is No. 3), USC leads the AP poll and, naturally, the debate rages on.
ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit, a former Ohio State Buckeyes quarterback, is willing to concede a point or two when it comes to this never-ending story. In a recent teleconference, he said the conferences are much closer than they have appeared since the 2006 season, when some things began to unravel during the great debate over which team — Michigan or Florida — should play in the BCS National Championship Game against the Buckeyes.
''The reality is from the '06 season and beyond, in my opinion, the Big Ten has never hit such an identity crisis as they're hitting right now,'' he said, ''and I think it has everything to do with the debate at the end of the '06 season.''
While Herbstreit doesn't accuse SEC fans of arrogance, he does believe recent history has given them a false impression.
''The perception at this point is the champion from the Big Ten is the sixth- or seventh-best team in the SEC. That perception has become reality at this point for many college football fans around the country,'' he said. ''In my opinion, the reality is that I think it's cyclical. I do think that the Big Ten is a better conference than most people have as a knee-jerk reaction.''
It's not a debate that will end unless Ohio State and Georgia meet in this year's BCS title game in Miami. Unfortunately, not many college football fans believe it's a debate worth having any longer.
SEC-ESPN in megadeal
The Southeastern Conference on Monday signed a 15-year deal with ESPN reportedly worth more than $2 billion to televise sporting events.
The agreement announced Monday is the longest ESPN has ever signed and matches the length of the powerhouse league's deal with CBS earlier in August. The deal begins with the 2009-10 season and ends the league's look into starting a network to carry its sporting events.
ESPN will have rights to every SEC home football game not on the network package, and all league matchups will be shown on some outlet, including at least 20 a year on ESPN or ESPN2. That includes two Thursday night matchups and Saturday night games.
Olympics wrap
The 2008 Beijing Olympics were the most watched in history. So say the numbers and NBC Universal.
More than 211 million people gathered around televisions over the course of 16 days during one of the warmest months in North America to watch the Olympics, beating the 1996 games in Atlanta. Another 86 million people tuned to the games through NBC Universal's assorted cable networks.
It would be interesting to measure what the ''Michael Phelps effect'' was worth to NBC. With the men's basketball competition buried at odd hours, the record-breaking swimmer offered the best drama in prime time.
Almost every time the men's basketball team hit the court, people were doing other things like, oh, earning a living. With the gold-medal game tipping off about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, most people in this area were sleeping or hung over after watching the Browns-Lions preseason game.
I suspect that if you subtract the lofty numbers Phelps' chase of history delivered, the Olympics ratings would have proved to be a little lackluster.
More on the Olympics
A story to watch will be the next round of Olympics rights bidding. ESPN is interested in trying to bring the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2016 Summer Olympics to the worldwide leader, according to reports.
It makes sense given ESPN is sister network to ABC, which provided many Olympics memories in the 1970s.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. George M. Thomas can be reached at sportswriterabj@sbcglobal.net. Read his blog at http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/sportsblitz/.
With the start of the college football season, which thankfully begins Thursday, and preseason polls (you know, the ones that mean little to nothing), a familiar refrain has started to play: The Southeastern Conference is better than the Big Ten.
Get the full article here.
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