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NCAA Division I Football, 2011 AP Top Ten

‘BCS national championship game: Alabama Crimson Tide stifles LSU Tigers‘, (washingtonpost.com)

‘The Associated Press Top 25 Poll‘, (sportsillustrated.cnn.com).
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Photo credits -
Alabama/Bryant-Denny Stadium… http://www.rmbama.com/alabama.html.
LSU/Tiger stadium…http://www.collegecharlie.com/stadiums.html.
Oklahoma State/Boone Pickens Stadium…collegegridirons.com.
Oregon/Autzen Stadium…http://tom.nosleep.net/flying.html.
Arkansas/Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium, football.ballparks.com / War Memorial Stadium (Little Rock)…bing.com/maps.
USC/Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum…usctraditions.com/Images/Carousel
Stanford/Stanford Stadium….Skyscrapercity.com/thread ‘USA – College Football Stadiums’, submitted by westsidebomber here.
Boise State/Bronco Stadium…BroncoSports.com, here.
South Carolina/Williams-Brice Stadium… gamecocksonline.com; thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com.
Wisconsin/Camp Randall Stadium…bing.com/maps.

Thanks to MGhelmets.com, for the helmet illustrations.

NCAA Division I Football, AP Poll – Final poll for 2010 season, Top Ten map

‘The Associated Press Top 25 Poll [Final Poll/January 11, 2011]‘ (SI.com).

If you think all the other Division I college football teams that make it to the plethora of Bowl games actually benefit from the pointless Bowl system, then why is it a fact that most Division I college football programs these days end up losing money when they go to Bowl games? Because schools are forced to buy huge blocks of tickets (like 17,000 tickets)…that no one ends up wanting or buying. That is why many of these tickets go on re-sale for next to nothing. Last season, in December, 2009, tickets for the Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl game were on sale at Stub Hub.com (to see Kentucky v. Clemson in Nashville, TN) for 19 cents per ticket. And you know, Lexington, KY and Clemson, SC are both relatively near to Nashville, TN, but still there was so little demand for tickets that you could buy one for less than a quarter.

From Sports Illustrated, by Austin Murphy and Dan Wetzel, from November 15, 2010, ‘Does It Matter?‘
[Note: the Sports Illustrated article linked to above has 5 pages. The part about what I just mentioned is on page 3/ Paragraphs 6,7,and 8 - here...

Excerpt from Sportsillustrated.cnn.com, 'Does It Matter?', by Austin Murphy and Dan Wetzel,
"...Very few bowls do, in fact, sell out. Aware of this, their directors require a ticket commitment, which obligates the purchase of thousands of tickets at face value. Schools must then resell those tickets or risk losses that can run into seven figures. Before Internet ticket sites democratized the market, the deal made sense to the participating schools. Now, for all but the biggest games, fans can avoid paying full price—as they must when they go through the school's ticket office. Tickets to the 2009 Music City Bowl were available on StubHub for 19 cents.

The commitment guarantees only one thing: the fattening of the bowls' profit margins. For their appearance in the 2009 Orange Bowl, Virginia Tech and the ACC agreed to purchase 17,500 tickets at $125 per seat, but they could sell only 3,342, according to university documents. The result: a $1.77 million bath for the school, not the bowl.

Ohio State ate $1.01 million in unsold tickets at the 2009 Fiesta Bowl. Smaller bowls do similar damage to schools thrilled by a mere invitation. The euphoria of playing in the postseason quickly wore off for Western Michigan two years ago when the Broncos' athletic department was able to unload only 548 of the 11,000 tickets it was required to purchase by the good folks at the Texas Bowl. Western Michigan's loss of $462,535 (before adding in travel and lodging costs) probably hurt more than its subsequent 38--14 defeat at the hands of Rice." -{end of except}
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The only parties benefitting from the Bowl system are the Bowl Committees themselves. And no one cares about dead-end Bowl games involving teams with more than a couple losses, let alone Bowl games involving teams with .500 records or even losing records.

Meanwhile, if you are a Division I team and you go undefeated, and you are not in the SEC, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the PAC-10, the ACC, or the Big East, your shot at a universally-recognized national title is at the mercy of entrenched interests. And they will freeze you out. Utah (a Mountain West team) was frozen out in 2008, when they went 13-0. Boise State (a WAC team) was frozen out when they went 14-0 in 2009. And TCU (a Mountain West team at the time) was frozen out in 2010 when they went 13-0. That's 3 straight seasons that an undefeated team was not allowed to play in the BCS National Championship Game. [It also happened in 2006, when Boise State went 13-0.] But what does winning the BCS National Championship Game get you? It gets you the Mythical National Championship. Because no matter how you spin it, that’s what winning the BCS Championship Game still is. The NCAA does not recognize the title. The media just does.

NCAA Division I Football is probably the only competitive sports organization in the world that has never recognized a champion. The Bowl Championship Series is a third-party organization. Excerpt from the en.wikipedia.org page on Bowl Championship Series : “The NCAA, the governing organization of most collegiate sports, has no official process for determining its FBS (Div. 1-A) champion. Instead, FBS champions are chosen by what the NCAA calls in its official list of champions “selecting organizations”.” Selecting organizations?…a more apt description would be…Organizations set up to make sure only an SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, ACC, or Big East team can ever be called champion, so the NCAA can pass the buck on this, and so the Bowls can continue to make profits on pointless Bowl games.

The BCS was supposed to solve the problem of NCAA Division I not recognizing a Division I football champion, because of the belief that doing so would undermine the established Bowl system. The Internet is instead undermining the Bowl system by democratizing ticket sales. Fans are voting with their wallets, and those 19 cent tickets for the 2009 Music City Bowl speak volumes. Fan apathy might be the thing that brings down the BCS. I await the day when a college football team turns down a Bowl invitation so they don’t lose money. Do you think Western Michigan really wants to lose half a million bucks again, by going to some quasi- Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl game?
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Photo Credits -
Auburn/Jordan-Hare Stadium…College Stadiums at http://www.collegecharlie.com/stadiums.html.
TCU/Amon G. Carter Stadium…Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
Oregon/Autzen Stadium…http://tom.nosleep.net/flying.html.
Stanford/Stanford Stadium….Skyscrapercity.com/thread ‘USA – College Football Stadiums’, submitted by westsidebomber here.
Ohio State/Ohio Stadium…College Charlie.com, here.
Oklahoma/Gaylord Family Memorial Stadium at Owen Field…Sharenator.com, here.
Wisconsin/Camp Randall Stadium…Bing.com/maps/Bird’s Eye satellite view, here.
LSU/Tiger stadium…http://www.collegecharlie.com/stadiums.html.
Boise State/Bronco Stadium…BroncoSports.com, here.
Alabama/Bryant-Denny Stadium… http://www.rmbama.com/alabama.html.

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘NCAA‘.
For the helmet illustrations…Thanks to MG’s Helmets, http://www.mghelmets.com/.

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On the map, at the far right, top, there is the top 10 listed, along with the result of each team’s bowl game. Also on the map there is a shot of each team’s home stadium. In the little text boxes that accompany each photo, I have included the years when there were stadium upgrades (an upgrade usually means expansion). I have also noted when the playing surface was altered. Three of the venues have switched back to good old real grass (hooray for Florida, Ohio State and TCU!), while the Iowa Hawkeye’s Kinnick Stadium, and the Texas Longhorn’s Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, have switched back and forth , and now back again, to artificial turf (boo). PS, that story about Boise State’s blue astro-turf at their Bronco Stadium causing waterfowl to think it is a body of water, thus killing the birds when trying to land ?…Wikipedia says it’s an urban legend. Not so sure about that, but maybe I’m being a color snob (and an opponent of artificial turf in general). 

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Below is a little chart I put together that shows each of the top 10 teams’ 2009 home average attendance. The blue column on the left shows the 2009 averages, plus the team’s rank in the 120-team Division I-Football Bowl Subdivision (the Michigan Wolverines were the highest-drawing college football team once more). In the middle column is listed percent capacity that each team drew (some venues allow for standing-room tickets, hence the percentages which exceed 100%). The light blue blue column on the right shows 2008 average gates, plus percent change from 2009-versus-2008.  

Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org {2009-10 NCAA football bowl games page,  here}.  Thanks to NCAA site,  or attendance figures {click here (pdf )}.  

Thanks to http://www.rolltide.com {Bryant-Denny Stadium page, here}.   Thanks to http://www.gatorzone.com {‘The Swamp”, here}.   Thanks to http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu {Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial stadium, here}.   Thanks to konrad_photography at http://www.flickr.com , {click here (Lane Stadium,  Blacksburg, Virginia)}.

Thanks to NCAA Stadium Guide,  at http://ncaafootball.com  {click here for interactive stadium guide} **Recommeded**.

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Thanks to Bing.com‘s awesome Bird’s Eye view.  Just check this shot of the Cincinnati Bearcats’ Nippert Stadium complex {click here}. 

Here’s how you can easily access Bing.com’s Bird’s Eye view…

1). Make a Google search for whatever you want to see,  inserting wikipedia in the query…say, “oregon ducks stadium wiki” / {you get this (first search result: ‘Autzen Stadium-Wikipedia..’)}.  

2). Once you click to get to Wikipedia’s ‘Autzen Stadium’ page, {here},   click on the Coordinates (at top, right in bright blue).  

3). You should then have this page (GeoHack-Autzen Stadium) {here}.  (It might take a while).  

4). You will see in the middle of the screen a purple band for Bing Maps (popular).  One of three options there is Bird’s Eye .  Click on Bird’s Eye,  and you get this, {click here}.

Thanks to Micosoft for that.

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Thanks to Jeremy at Albion Road site [2013: now defunct, sadly], for catching my error in not showing an up-to-date photo of the Texas Longhorns’ Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium,  which he found (somewhere) at http://onair.cstv.com/ . The endzone stand in the open air part of the horseshoe, (ie, at the far left in the photo) is the upgrade this photo shows.

Final AP Poll,  {Click here (ESPN site) }.  17 of the 65 voters refused to go with the program,  and voted for a team other than the Florida Gators.  The Utah Utes received 17 (!) first-place votes,  and the USC Trojans got 1 vote.  What does this tell you ?  That the BCS system has solved nothing,  and there will never be a time when there is a completely undisputed National Champion in college football,  until playoffs are established.  But that would eat into the lucrative Bowl system.  There must be some way to work it out so that the Bowls stay intact, but a playoff system,  like between the top 8 ranked teams,  is implemented.

Kudos to the Mountain West,  a conference that is for so-called mid-Major programs,  but has produced the 2008 AP College Football  # 2 (Utah) and  # 7 (TCU)  teams.