Popping Up Support

Popping Up Support

Five College Logos Featured on Pop Tart Boxes this Fall. Photo from Yahoo! Sports

Just in time for football season- Kelloggs has your logo Pop Tarts ready for Saturday morning breakfast.

You can read the original blog post from Yahoo!

I find it interesting that three schools are from the SEC (Arkansas, Florida, and Georgia) one from the Big 10 (Michigan) and one from the ACC (UNC).

Three of the schools are in the top ten in the recent AP poll- Georgia (6), Michigan (8), and Arkansas (10). Florida was ranked 23 and UNC which is facing serious NCAA violations is not in the AP poll.

Are these the most marketable teams available to sell products? UNC would be a shoo in during basketball season- but college logos are funny things because you have to really look at how owns them.

So are you going to pick up your favorite team’s version of Pop Tarts- or like me look forward to chopping into an opponent on game day morning?

What do preseason rankings mean anyway?

According to the fine folks at Wikipedia (yeah I know but still come on y’all all know you’re there every other day looking up random facts)

The Associated Press (AP) College Poll provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling sportswriters across the nation. Each voter provides his own ranking of the top 25 teams, and the individual rankings are then combined to produce the national ranking by giving a team 25 points for a first place vote, 24 for a second place vote, and so on down to 1 point for a twenty-fifth place vote. Ballots of the voting members in the AP Poll are made public

 

Yay for Wikipedia- the AP has actually done the polls in various forms since 1943 but the current 25 team format began in 1989. There are a ton of polls out there- the Coaches poll (only really accurate in preseason because well coaches do not have time to watch game tape for any team other than their own and the upcoming opponent),  USA Today Poll, and a few others like ESPN, SI, etc.

In college football at this moment the polls mean everything because of a pesky thing called the BCS (Bowl Championship Series)

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is a selection system that creates five bowl match-ups involving ten of the top ranked teams in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), including an opportunity for the top two to compete in the BCS National Championship Game.

 

Once again thank you Wikipedia! The BCS began as a way to have a “true” national championship.  I put “true” because there is so much debate about the BCS system- especially last year when arguably the two best teams can be debatable because there is no playoff- well not yet a mini playoff begins in the 2014-2015 season. I could go on and on about why this playoff is seriously needed for college football (which FBS division is the ONLY NCAA sanction sport whose national championship is not run by the NCAA). 

Preseason rankings give us college football nerds something to talk about, debate, and stand on going into the first game of the year.  Typically pollsters will look at the depth chart (how much talent a team has in reserves), returning starters (shows leadership especially in key positions), and what the team did last year.  The two polls that are really big are the AP and USA Today.

AP Top 25

1. USC (25)

2. Alabama (17)

3. LSU (16)

4. Oklahoma (1)

5. Oregon

6. Georgia

7. Florida State

8. Michigan (1)

9. South Carolina

10. Arkansas

11. West Virginia

12. Wisconsin

13. Michigan State

14. Clemson

15. Texas

16. Virginia Tech (really VPI)

17. Nebraska

18. Ohio State

19. Oklahoma State

20. TCU

21. Stanford

22. Kansas State

23. Florida

24. Boise State

25. Louisville

USC QB Matt Barkley

Welcome Ladies Who Live for Game Day!

Hi there! As I am a graduate of Mr. Jefferson’s university and a devoted Wahoo I couldn’t help but notice there was a serious lack of content for the female college sports fan. 

 

Sure there are great blogs about college sports.  Even more websites devoted to covering news about your favorite team and the various ins and outs of the NCAA.  Yet none were focused solely on the female college sports fan.

Grrr. Why do the guys have all the fun?

I don’t know about you but I love college sports- especially the kings of college sport football and men’s basketball.  Growing up in ACC country if you didn’t like basketball many people would pull out the “Bless your heart” saying.  (For those who do not live in the South that means WTF- just a nicer way of saying it).  Saturdays are filled with tailgating, celebrating, and singing your fight song.

Nothing compares to the college sport experience- well maybe one thing church.  I know, I know church and college sports the two are like apples and oranges but if you really look close you see there are a ton of similarities.  After all for many in the United States, Saturdays in autumn are considered holy days of obligation.

1. To participate in the fan experience one must follow the dress code of your school colors.
2. Game day begins in the parking lot where you gather as a community for food, drinks, and games.  This in turn allows fans to have fellowship with one another.
3. During the game there are group chants, songs, cheers, and moments where fans will stand without being prompted.
4. The coach is the minister, inspiring not only his players and staff but also the fans in the stands and those watching from home.
5. The coach is a role model for the behavior the fans engage in
6. The athletic departments also passes the offering plate- and those boosters who give a bit more get the closest access to the action.

For the Lady in the Stands we’re in a slippery slope because often we’ve never played the game we’re cheering for… but we’re cheering.  And like many of you I wasn’t too sure about when, how, why to cheer when my team scored a goal, touchdown, home run, or basket.  When I got engaged to my husband I realized very quickly that if I were to have a happy marriage I would need to understand his favorite hobbies- especially watching sports.

What happened then was I started doing some good old fashioned research on football and basketball and became hooked.  I became an ESPN junkie, listened to sports talk radio, and even played fantasy football.  But nothing, nothing compared to when I completed my degree at the University of Virginia and did my graduating thesis on college sports.  You know you love a topic when you are willing to spend close to a year researching it and then you write a 60 page paper on the topic. 

The challenge is now I have all this great college sports information in my head and no where else to share it.  So now that graduation has happened my love of college sports still remains.  So what is a girl to do? Start a college sports blog devoted to the female fan. 

A large portion on the blog will be dealing with the big sports- football and men’s basketball, but I will cover smaller sports because those athletes are awesome!

Let me know what you think…. Ramona

My tiny humans and I celebrating my graduation from UVa in May 2012