Summertime is Silly Season

The one thing you can count on this time of year is the fact the media guys (including yours truly) will go to great lengths to try to find something to write (or talk) about. That’s the nature of the best when you cover college sports for a living. We go from football season to recruiting season, to spring practice season to NFL draft season to May evaluation season.

Then comes June and July -- the silly season. That’s when folks from all over the place compete to come up with the silliest things to write about. This year the early leader in the clubhouse is ESPN’s Mark Schlabach. The often interesting commentator reached a new level this week with his summertime predictions for EVERY Bowl matchup this fall.

Schlabach won’t make any friends in Gator Nation with his pick of a BCS Championship Game between Georgia and Ohio State. Not only that, but he put Auburn in the Sugar Bowl and gave the Gators a return date in Orlando, this time to face Illinoize and Ron Zook.

For his part, Schlabach gave Bowl bids to nine SEC schools, leaving Arkansas, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt on the outside looking in. Another interesting matchup would send Miami against South Carolina in the game up in Nashville and FSU against Michigan in the Champs Sports game down in Orlando.

While the entire column is silly, there are some aspects that are sillier than others. None fits that description more than putting Texas Tech into a BCS game. The Red Raiders won nine games last year, but c’mon. No BCS game is going to want the gang from Lubbock unless they have no choice, and there’s little if any chance they will ever be THAT good.

Is it August yet?

Questions or comments? Contact FightinGators.com's Larry Vettel