Sweet :15

When I attended Florida State University, we became famous for someone, not something. The something later became famous; because of the someone. Let me set the stage for you. Florida State is playing the University of Miami and the cameras are panning the stands… STOP! Who are those girls barely wearing anything? 

As Brent Musburger comments on the unknown females, he had no clue, that one of them would become linked to him for life on the internet. Her name is Jen Sterger. She's the one in the middle who would wind up getting offers to do Maxim magazine and Playboy all because of her :15 seconds of fame. As she disappeared into her fading spotlight as a sideline reporter for the New York Jets, someone famous brought her right back into the spotlight for all of the wrong reasons.

The Iron Man Brett Favre chasing Jen Sterger the girl from my friends English class? Who would have thought all those years ago that she would be one of the final nails to be put in Brett Favre's retirement coffin? I can't tell you if 1500 guys transferred to FSU after seeing that :15 second clip of Jen and her friends, but I can tell you that years ago, Brent Musberger saw something in that :15 seconds that made him want to do a double take and years later, it turns out, made Brett Favre want to do a double take as well.

So the question of, "can 15 seconds change your life?" In this case, not just one life, but two.

My Kid's on the Honor Role. My Kid Plays Ball.

With recent numbers being brought to light by the Orlando Sentential about the grade point average needed to get into state college’s in Florida, I thought it might be interesting to ask a few individuals what they thought the GPA needed to get into a state run school in Florida would be. The average number out of 20 individuals totaled 3.3. All of these individuals are college graduates and have attended their schools of higher learning over the past 30 years. I then asked them what they thought the average GPA needed by a student athlete is. They all said about the same with a few going a couple of decimal points lower. 

(Imagine cool graph here. Once I learn how to create my own, I'm all over it)

Let’s say, I’m 6’4” and 235 pounds, run a 4.4/40 and have a vertical leap that's off the charts and I play defensive end for one of the top high schools in the country. I'm 17 and I’m looking at a number of Division I schools to play football for that can get me to the “next” level. I have received over 30 offers from some of the top football programs in the country and I’m down to three. What grade point average do I need to get into college? According to the NCAA, you must "earn a combined SAT or ACT sum score that matches your core-course grade-point average and test score sliding scale (for example, a 2.400 core-course grade-point average needs an 860 SAT)."

According to the University of Florida website, the fall 2009 incoming freshman class had an average 4.14 GPA and 1963 SAT score to get into The University of Florida, which they talk about on their website. The most recent information I could find on the University of Florida’s football players is from the Atlanta Journal Constitution that says, "the biggest gap between football players and students as a whole occurred at the University of Florida, where players scored 346 points lower than the school’s overall student body. That’s larger than the difference in scores between typical students at the University of Georgia and Harvard University."

I’ll be the first to say, that I majored in English and math was my worst subject in high school and college, besides Spanish, but something tells me that the math doesn’t add up. At what point does a college take into account 40 times or height to weight ratios into the SAT?

I love college athletics and cheering on my team to a championship, but what about those students who want to go to FSU, UF, USF or UCF to name a few Florida public universities that don't get in? Do those who pay attention to things other than a playbook get penalized for making better grades than I made in high school? Do those high school students who work hard to obtain a good GPA, but don’t have a blazing 40 time or the height to weight ratio of a offensive lineman suffer and have to attend a community college or choose a different school other than the school they have always wanted to attend? Does someones son or daughter get turned down from a University so that a student with a sub 3.0 GPA can get his shot at bringing home a championship to that college that the other student can not attend? 

It's just an idea, but what do you think? Are you for or against colleges allowing student athletes to get into state universities when there are others with more deserving GPA's and SAT's and ACT's?

I would like all to know, that I am not picking on The University of Florida. I started doing research and it was the one school that had most of the information available. I understand that this is a problem at a lot of major Universities.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

 If you are reading my blog I am assuming you are a sports fan. If not, humor me as I take local, national and world news and combine it with college sports to show you the impact that any news can have on college athletics.

If you live in California, Texas, New York, Florida or Pennsylvania, you know what it’s like to cheer for college football. Not to say any other state doesn't, but these are the powerhouses. When USC went on its run through college football in the 2000's some celebrities couldn't even get tickets to see the games. Remember when Syracuse made their run through the college basketball ranks with Carmelo Anthony? Madison Square Garden was returned to the glory days of Ewing. Florida went on the run with Tim Tebow and almost won 3 National Championships in 4 years and Florida, Florida State and Miami all were in the top 5 in the country for a 10-year span in the 90's. Penn State has Joe Pa and Texas has their beloved Longhorns and Aggies. These colleges have combined for several National Championships and some of the most memorable games in college football history. Although most of these programs are coming off sub-par seasons, fans still pack the stadiums. I wondered how and really why fans could and would still attend these games and came up with two answers. The why is simply because of tradition. Going to any one of these stadiums is like being at the hottest nightclub to be seen at. Even waiting in line to get in might get you a high five. These arenas are palaces dedicated to our modern day gladiators. The why is easy. The how? That's actually kind of easy to answer if you reside in any of these States, because of disposable personal income. No other States in the United States have more disposable income than these five along with Illinois.

All the schools I mentioned, USC, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Penn State, Texas and Texas A&M not only have championship winning football teams, high profile coaches and beautiful stadiums, but the residents of the States have the disposable income to be in the seats. So next time you go to a game in Wyoming and you are looking around to see only a few hundred of your fans in the seats and say for example 10,000 Texas fans, you can rest assured that it may not be that people don't care about the team, just the fact that your State has the second lowest disposable income in the United States.

All data is according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis