I love college football. I love college football to a degree many reasonable people would consider unhealthy.
When I turn on the television on a Tuesday night and discover that there is a game pitting a pair of Conference USA also-rans on ESPN2, my mood is improved. Not only am I genuinely looking forward to Friday night's showdown between South Florida and West Virginia, I will be rooting as vigorously for the Bulls as Sunday Morning Quarterback will be rooting against them. (In my defense, I am the son-in-law of two U.S.F. alumni, so my loyalty to the Bulls is born of kinship, albeit by marriage rather than through descent. I remain, as always, Bulldog born and Bulldog bred by blood, which continues to run red and black.)
I love my wife and I hate Auburn, so you can imagine how pleased I was when the student-athletes from the university my wife's parents attended defeated the student-athletes [sic.] from the Alabama Polytechnic Institute.
Each week, however, there is one game for which even I cannot come up with a plausible rooting interest; this is a game so inconsequential that I simply will not be bothered to feign sufficient concern to choose up sides. This is the national game of disinterest.
This week, the national game of disinterest is . . .
Northwestern State at Texas Tech
I am, to put it mildly, not a fan of the Red Raiders, whose scheduling practices have become so pathetic that Texas Tech has replaced Kansas State as the perennial owner of the Big 12's most shameful slate.
Yes, Georgia once scheduled Northwestern State, after Tulane backed out on a contract to play the Red and Black, leaving the Bulldogs in the lurch and scrambling to find an opponent. The 'Dawgs arranged a game with the Demons in the heat of the moment; the Red Raiders' scheduling of them was premeditated.
Texas Tech's scheduling practices even became the subject of a groundbreaking "non-fiction novel."
If Texas Tech wants to play a lower-tier team from the Pelican State, the Red Raiders need to arrange a date with Louisiana Tech; heck, Mike Leach acts like he thinks he's coaching in the W.A.C., anyway.
A school with two directional indicators and the word "State" in its nomenclature, though? That ought to be beneath even the team that hung 80 points on Sam Houston State a couple of years ago as a transparent substitute for visiting a qualified psychotherapist in order to work on its inferiority complex.
I'll tell Texas Tech what I told the Red Raiders' kindred spirits in Honolulu: pick on someone your own size. Until you do, I'm not picking you or ranking you; I'm just embarrassed for you.
Go 'Dawgs!