The myths of college football

This past week was brutally boring in the world of sports. Summer is slow enough as it is, but with Major League Baseball enjoying its All-Star break, there were literally no games being played and very little action to report.

The headline story throughout the week was SEC Media Days, which are not much more than an opportunity for the conference’s coaches to gloat, boast and stretch the truth about their teams’ chances in the upcoming season.

SEC coaches are the best in the world at doing that. They are some of the most interesting people in the world.

It’s also a chance for ESPN media types to ascend to Birmingham, slap on their best Sunday attire and spew nonsense to the audience about what we might expect to happen in the fall.

Mainstream national sports reporting is a joke. ESPN is a farce. It has been for about a decade now. Fox Sports isn’t far behind. No longer is sports media a game of reporting facts. It’s instead a game of saying inflammatory things to spark debate and get Internet clicks. It’s not about being fair. It’s about irritating a segment of the audience to the point of anger, because that anger will lead to conversations, which promotes the brand. All publicity is good for the bottom line, right? Even bad publicity.

It’s the same thing every year. Talking heads spewing myths to the gullible audience – half truths or downright inaccuracies about the headline story of the day. Some fans accept it as fact and believe it. Others call them out for their stupidity, which is where the anger comes in.

The angry mob (fan is short for fanatical, of course) hollers at the top of their lungs and clicks, shares and retweets the story as many times as humanly possible to make sure the injustice is brought to light.

All the while, the suits at ESPN laugh their way to the bank because the more clicks they get, the higher price they can charge their advertisers for web-generated ads.

Cha-ching!

Indeed, this week has been one of many myths, and I found myself too often looking at my TV in disgust – complete disbelief in what I was seeing on my screen.

Here are some of these myths and half-truths.

I know you guys agree with me. I know I’m just preaching to the choir.

But with no sports going on this week, there’s never been a more perfect time than this week to write this column.

THE MYTHS OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL:

Myth No. 1: The Pac 12 is ‘overtaking’ the SEC as the best conference in college football

There has never been a bigger inaccuracy in the history of sports journalism. In fact, I will go so far as to say that national media heads know it, too. But because they have TV contracts with Pac 12 football, they pump up the product to draw ratings.

Again we say it. Cha-ching.

The Pac 12 has done NOTHING to generate the hype it receives every, single year. The league hasn’t won a national championship on the field since 2004 when USC walloped Oklahoma to win that year’s BCS National Championship. But guess what? That title doesn’t even count because the Trojans bought off Reggie Bush, which forced the trophy to be vacated. So if we don’t count that 2004 Championship, we’re stuck looking through many pages of the history book to find the conference’s next moment in the sun – a split title won by Washington in 1991.

One title in 24 years. Oh, my wow! That Pac 12 is so, so dominant.

In that same stretch, the SEC has won 12 National Championships, spread out among five teams.

Just sayin’.

Myth No. 2: Alabama is the outright favorite to win the SEC in 2015

More clickbait used because of how polarizing the Crimson Tide is around SEC fans.

But here are a few facts to throw ice on the stupidity fire.

Alabama won the SEC Title last year. But they lost almost all of its star players from that team. The Tide has virtually no one back on offense and just a handful back on defense. They are a shell of their former selves – at least on paper.

Combine that with a schedule that’s been rated as the hardest in the country, and it’s completely nonsensical that Alabama is being given the golden ticket to the SEC Championship Game.

Want a stat to use in a debate? The SEC hasn’t had a back-to-back champion since 1998.

My math says that makes it highly unlikely the Tide wins it again this go-round.

If that’s the case, I’m sure that every, single LSU fan in the country will rejoice and enjoy Alabama’s failures.

Myth No. 3: LSU cannot win without an elite quarterback

This is, of course, yet another myth.

LSU has won the SEC three times since 2003. Know what they’ve never had in any of those runs? You guessed it – that’d be an elite quarterback.

There’s no doubt that the one-two punch of Brandon Harris and Anthony Jennings need to be better in 2015 than the mess they were last season.

But neither has to be dominant for LSU to thrive. In 2011, the Tigers had the most dominant regular season in the history of the SEC. They did it with a duct tape quarterback duo of Jordan Jefferson and Jarrett Lee. Neither were very good. Neither played in the NFL.

Myth No. 4: A defensive player can win the Heisman Trophy

History does show that if every, single ball bounces the right way, a defensive player can win the Heisman Trophy. But in modern college football, it’s highly, highly unlikely.

National media types are lazy. They don’t take the time to watch all of the games anymore. Because of that laziness and overall ineptitude, the award for the best college football player has become one that simply crowns the sport’s best quarterback. There hasn’t been a non-quarterback Heisman winner since 2009. If we don’t count Reggie Bush’s vacated title in 2004, we see that there’s also only been one non-quarterback chosen since 2000, as well. Only one defensive player has won the honor since the 1960s, and it isn’t happening again anytime soon.

Myth No. 5: Preseason polls matter

They don’t – at all. Win ‘em all, and it doesn’t matter where you’re ranked in the preseason. The preseason polls are just in place to generate headlines and content during the boring summer months.

They are harmless. Completely irrelevant.

AKA to get clicks.

Cha-ching!