It’s just that time of year.
Prognosticators take over the airways and dot the newspaper pages, blogs, chat rooms and tweets with predictions often based on limited information, especially when it comes to conference overviews in national publications.
We must be approaching football season, and it seems every year the off-season gets shorter and journalists like myself – bored with baseball after 100 games of a 162-game season when your team hovers close to .500 – turn to college football to tickle their fancy.
Journalists and coaches rank league teams and some even rate players, although I’m with Steve Spurrier when he says he usually does not fill out his form (the next thing you know he’ll be in Congress) and didn’t realize he left Florida’s Tim Tebow off his ballot as the SEC’s top quarterback.
I’m a priority guy – you know the kind: A, B, C – and quite frankly I barely find time to rank the FCS top 25 every Sunday, let alone pick the top three players at every position before the season starts with a limited amount of knowledge about whether they are going to be eligible or got a girlfriend in the off-season, which by the way shouldn’t be allowed. It’s football after all – they may have sustained an off-season injury hidden by paranoid coaches.
Much already has been said about the Montana Grizzlies named for the ninth time in the past 11 years to win the Big Sky Conference title for the 12th straight time, even though league co-champ Weber State dominates the pre-season all-conference team.
Remember that old sports analogy: There’s no I in team?
It surely is overused, often even creeping up in the workplace. But having been fortunate enough to have been a part of some kind of team since grade school, nothing could be more accurate when it comes to long-term success.
I mostly enjoy the speculation, which always spurs conversation and arguments in a state where loyalty between the Griz and the Bobcats often is wider than the Mason-Dixon line. Let me be clear. I love any real rivalry. It’s a conversation starter, like politics, and bleeding blue and gold is great as long as it also happens on game day.
I have plenty of friends in Bozeman after making the jaunt over there for the past 24 years, but like in Missoula for a Bobcat fan, it is not always the most pleasant of experiences. I suppose 16 straight Griz victories will polarize a fan base, but really, in my case, it’s all good fun.
There’s nothing I’d rather do than call out a Cat – like I did to Gail Lewis on his dock at Rollins on Sunday – when he displayed his new Bobcat head covering.
But he broached a subject on which we readily disagree. And he wasn’t just talking about the Grizzlies, but included his beloved Cats as well.
It’s the issue of what we call drop-down players, ones who have gone to a FBS-level school and for one reason or another opted to transfer to an FCS program to secure more playing time, have a better relationship with coaches or, in some cases, like UM basketball player Anthony Johnson last year, join his spouse as a scholarship player.
At the University of Montana this year, Oregon transfer Justin Roper, a quarterback, is one of those players.
The Grizzlies have had a few such transfers. Receiver Joe Douglass (Oregon State) and quarterbacks Craig Ochs (Colorado), Josh Swogger (Washington State) and Drew Miller (BYU) are just a few who come to mind. Does everybody remember Randy Moss?
The observation has been made by Lewis and several others over the last month that such a transfer is unfair to players who are already in the program, have paid their dues and thus expect to get their chance in the limelight.
The argument usually comes to light because it’s an in-state product that is affected. Believe me, I’ve seen plenty of out-of-state players who are unseated by the drop-down process and few fans hardly noticed.
While I know quarterbacks Andrew Selle and Jeff Larson have worked diligently and expected a prominent role in the 2009 football season, I also know that the presence of Roper will do nothing to diminish their continued effort and contribution.
If they didn’t think they were the best player for the position, they wouldn’t be here and do not expect to have the position handed to them. The competition only will enhance the situation.
There are no givens in the Grizzly program. Roper was not adorned the starter, but I’m guaranteed that he would have the opportunity to win the position.