Scapegoat Season Has Arrived For College Football

There are only three undefeated teams left in the top (as in moneyed) level of college football, which suggests that the word “elite” is being replaced by “last one standing.” The middle shall hold because everyone is heading for it.

This forms a tight braid with the other central truth about the sport, which is every fan base announcing loudly that someone must pay for their outsized expectations for teams who clearly don’t deserve it. A year ago, this led to a flurry of coach firings that began in Week 3 (UCLA) and powered almost weekly into January.

But all those contract settlements resulted in a new level financial conservatism among athletic directors and other quarter-choking real estate speculators that decided that paying for people who don’t work (fired coaches) is almost as bad as paying for people who do all the work (players). And “conservatism” in this case meant waiting an extra four weeks to start detaching heads from “head coaching.”