Less than a year after one of the greatest games in the history of college football, and one of the most interesting seasons, we're mired in the midst of what is the least fan-friendly seasons I can remember.
There aren't any really great story lines about teams rising to success. Ohio State is number one and offers very little in the way of interest. No one really cares about Kansas, and Hawaii hasn't played anyone to write home about. The most interesting stories are negative: the collapse of Nebraska and imminent departure of coach Bill Callahan, the greed of Texas A&M coach Dennis Franchione that will finally bring a downfall that will cause no one to shed tears, the defending national champion has three losses, and teams such as LSU, USC and Cal have not played to the level of their hype.
My biggest complaint: television coverage. I traditionally enjoy opening the Friday sports section of the newspaper to get the TV listings of the next day's college football games. I've lovingly followed this sport for decades and thoroughly enjoy catching the variety of games on the tube. This year has been without a doubt the absolute worst for TV watching.
Probably the biggest example is two weeks ago when Oregon hosted USC in what was to that point the biggest game of the year on the West Coast. It was televised on something called Fox Sports Prime Ticket which, I believe, is only available in Los Angeles. This was a game that should have been on ABC in prime time, or at least on all the Fox Sports affiliates out west. But no. We got Arizona vs. Washington -- of course that did feature a 99-yard TD pass.
That big game we've been waiting for out this way, USC at Cal, is on ABC's prime time coverage tonight. Oh boy! The winner goes to the Sun Bowl.
In a year without much interest, it would be nice for the TV people to be a little more flexible in their scheduling.
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Hey, give some credit where it's due, to the Bush diplomacy regarding Pakistan and Turkey.
In Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf has -- albeit slowly -- started to back away from his state of emergency and promised elections before Feb. 15, and has ended a blockade around the home of Benazir Bhutto. He has arrested thousands of opposition political activists, so the next step will be seeing how long it takes to get those people freed.
Musharraf's steps are just the first. There needs to be a lot more. But at least they're in the right direction.
Turkey has so far not attacked Iraq in force, and the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, Turkey's prime target, now says it's open to talks and could be willing to lay down its arms.
Me, I try to find some sort of at-least temporary peace between the Kurds and Turks, and aim the Kurds toward Iran, where there is also a substantial Kurdish population yearning for freedom.
