It's a great day for Weber State University football fans. WSU travels to Laramie to kick off the 2009 season at 1:00 p.m. against Wyoming of the Mountain West Conference. The Standard-Examiner provides two pre-game teasers in this morning's Digital Edition:
• Laramie shootout?We've checked the local listings; and it appears today's game won't be available on local TeeVee. An audio version will be broadcast live on KLO radio, of course.
• Bolen a special teams secret
During the 2008 season we were able to embed live Big Sky TV video broadcasts of most of WSU's games. Unfortunately, BSTV won't be broadcasting today's game, so we won't have a live podcast for our readers today. Hard-core WSU fans can catch the live video of the game (on a pay per view basis) via CBS Online Sports, however. (Of course truly hard-core WSU fans are already tailgating in Laramie as we write this.)
We're thrilled to see WSU back on the gridiron; and we'll be closely covering our home town team right here on Weber County Forum through the rest of the season.
Good luck, coach Mac and the WSU squad. A victory over a MWC team would be the ideal way to start off the season.
Update 9/15/09 9:30 p.m.: Final score: Cowboys 29; Wildcats 22. Due to a series of dumb penalties and mental errors, our beloved Wildcats narrowly lost today's game by a score of 29-22.
That doesn't mean we don't still love 'em.
12 comments:
The thought of the subsidy levels that regional college sports programs receive, while the same schools libraries, life-sciences labs, and associate professors go begging, puts me in mind of the widening gap between the rich countries and the poor, the stupid people and the smart, the fans of football and the non-football fans.
Someone really must speak with Mayor Godfrey about this; with his obsession over real estate and his philosophy of strength over common sense, I am guessing he would be big on the pastime of the lurching dullard: modern american football.
If they would remove the sissy pads, slow-child helmets, special slip-proof shoes, and wtf teeth guard, and get rid of the anal-retentive 4 downs with seconds timer and 5000 rules, it might make for an interesting sport.
If they played in loin cloths and barefoot, using the head of the last games opposing coach as a football, I would buy season tickets.
Until then, a football player just looks like some fat guy with an ill-gained Rolex and repeat head injury syndrome to me.
I'm gonna take a wild guess, G'narg, and assume you're not a WSU football season ticket holder.
It seems to me that your passive attitude toward possibly the best sports program which could actually put Ogden City "on the map" is queered by yet another dipshit (your) attitide which still clings to the notion that "Ogden City sucks."
WSU just scored another TD whilst I was posting this, BTW.
Cowboys 26, WSU 16.
WSU scores another TD and scores the point after kick with forty seconds left in the game!
Clock runs out; final score: Cowboys 29; wildcars 22.
Rudi:
G'narg has a point. At the major football factories [WSU is not one], things have gotten completely out of hand. [There's a good book on it, by a fellow named Murray Sperber called Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education. For schools like 'Bama, Oklahoma, LSU, Florida, Ohio State etc. he's not far wrong.]
On the other hand, intercollegiate sports, particularly football, is and has been for a very long time part and parcel of American collegiate [and now general popular] culture. It has even enriched the language giving us new terms like "tailgating." Have to admit, the excitement, crowds, marching bands, color, cheerleaders, mascots --- the sheer pageantry of it all --- on a big game night at a stadium that holds 50 to 100 thousand people and is sold out is... well, it's pure theater, American style. And it can be a lot of fun [provided people remember it's a game, as too often they do not].
So, mostly, it's entertainment.
At WSU college football is entertainment too, and so there's no point to trying to guilt people into going with "Support your home town team!" appeals. If folks think they'll have a good time, for the price [very reasonable by the way], they'll turn out. Trying to guilt them into it isn't going to work. Never has.
Of course, it's a lot easier to have a good time when the team you're thinking of buying tickets to watch wins. A lot.
I bleed PURPLE!
WSU football is a great entertainment bargain, Curm. And whether you like it or not, successful athletics programs put Universities like WSU "on the map" generally, even more than successful academic programs.
Here at Weber County Forum we'll continue to dun our readers to support athletic teams that deliver far more entertainment "bang for the buck" than even two minutes of "free falling" at the Salomon Center.
And if you don't like college football, you always have the alternative of wandering around free events like the Farmer's Market.
Rudi:
You wrote: And whether you like it or not, successful athletics programs put Universities like WSU "on the map" generally, even more than successful academic programs.
Possibly so, Rudi, but if so, it's the wrong map.
I enjoy college sports, Rudi. Make a few basketball and 2 or 3 football games a season [weather permitting: my days of sitting in the rain to watch football ended long long ago], watch a few soccer games. But WSU is an undergraduate institution whose mission is overwhelmingly undergraduate education. What will do this University far more good as a university is undergraduate programs with a good reputation state [and nation] wide, programs that send our graduates into good graduate and law schools and good jobs in good places where they do well.
Successful athletic programs are good to have. Good for the athletes [if well run], good for the alumni, good for fans around town, good for local businesses if the teams start to draw. All that's true. But at a school like WSU, successful athletic programs are not going to "put the place on the map" as an undergraduate teaching-university. Demanding, first-rate educational programs turning out well-educated graduates who succeed uncommonly well in whatever fields they enter will.
In the immortal words of Bear Bryant, "I want this to be a university the football team can be proud of."
George Carlin's take on Football might be appropriate here.
George Carlin Baseball vs Football
It's a classic.
Quad:
Thanks for the link. I haven't seen that in a long time. Enjoyed it.
Smart guy, Mr. Carlin. Much missed.
A great big old YAWN to this silly football craze. If you have seen one football game you have seen every one ever played. The only people that could possibly be entertained by football are those with extremely short attention spans.
Football, like most all team sports, is just stylized mock combat for those who were not fortunate enough to experience the real thing. In other words, a game for pretenders and wannabee's.
And sorry Mr. Curmudgeon, but the word "tailgating" was not invented by some idiotic football fans, it has been used for ages in the worlds oldest profession. I will leave it to your fertile perfessor's imagination to figure out what it really means.
LOL! a mite cranky are we this morning, Ozboy?
;-)
Would Ozboy instead be a fan of soccer(futbal) instead of football. Soccer is the only known sport where getting hit in the head with the ball is considered a good thing. don't tell me how popular it is over the rest of the world. If it is that popular then they can do just fine with American fans.
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