EricEwe.com

I admit that I am not a big college football buff but I know the teams, who is leading and who just lotst big time. In a USA Today article on Sept 3, 2009, I was rather shocked to find out that it small football schools take their lumps for a sum.

College football used to hightlight the competitive elements of sportsmanship and the enjoyment by participants. In the turn of the decade, most colleges are using athelatic programs as a cash cow as these programs are driven by business decisions, rather than then competitve elements – along with that, the idea of “sportsmanship” went out the window.

Top NCAA colleges like Florida or Michigan are able to pay off smaller college football program an absurd amount of money to have them play at their home court in order to fill up their schedule, which also means that the smaller college program will usually get a good beating.

A good example would be Delaware State where they was paid $550,000 to play Michigan at home. Delaware State which is a level below NCAA decided to forefeit their conference game which coincided with the Michigan game, and is now under investigation by their conference league. Delaware which plays at a 7000 seat stadium is expecting a bashing while playing at 106,000 seat Michigan stadium.

So much for sportsmanship if you can blow off a conference game to pay with a top college program for a big payoff, and along the way, get a good beating. Hey it pays to lose in college football.

Here are other schools and football programs getting paid to play with top colleges.

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Benson, the world’s largest carp is sleeping with the fishes. Benson lived for 25 years and was a resident of Bluebell Lakes, a private fishing complex in Tansor, England. The Bluebell Lakes is a catch and release fishing complex and anglers from across Europe came to fish for Benson.

On the flip side, Benson was caught and put back in the lake 63 times, hitting a high weight of 64 pounds two years ago. Imagine the torture that the fish went through every time it was caught, pulled out and made into a photo opp. At the time of death, Benson was 52 pounds on July 28, 2009.

The article was also reported in the WSJ.