Race, avarice, and entertainment in bowl-ville

Among the glut of year-end college football bowls, I figured the Cotton Bowl in Texas between Penn State (ranked #10 in the country) and Memphis (#16) was just another ho-hum match up. Players eligible for the NFL draft would strut their stuff optimistically for any scouts present; students and alums who managed to make it to the game would cheer their home gladiators; coaches would flaunt their worth to watching athletic directors as advertisements for the schools. This might even amount to an entertaining athletic display -- a good game.

Well the Cotton Bowl was all those things, but it turned out to be more.

I got my first inkling there would be more when the ESPN announcers felt they should explain the "WT" decal on Penn State helmets. The school was proudly calling out the fact that, in 1948, their squad had included African-Americans Wally Triplett and Dennie Hoggard. Previously the team had assented to Southern segregation rules by not bringing their African American players along to games in the old Confederacy. This time, Penn State said no, everyone comes, even though the team had to stay at a US airbase, as no hotel would have the integrated group. Triplett scored in the game and was later drafted into the NFL. He died in 2018 at age 92.

It turns out that James Franklin, the Penn State coach, insists on talking about race when necessary. In October, he stood up publicly for a player who was being criticized for choosing to wear dreadlocks.

And, despite the fact that there only 12 Black coaches leading teams at the top college level, Franklin has announced that he intends to be the first Black college coach to lead his team to a national championship.

That's ambitious -- the game Franklin's 10-2 team played against Memphis was a kind of consolation match for also-rans in the cut throat College Football Playoff system. When the most affluent conferences -- the Power Five: Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and Southeastern Conference (SEC) -- created the current national championship structure, all the other football-playing schools were left out in the cold. Even if schools had perfect records, there was no way in for them to the high-paying, high-attention bowl games. So, they were given this one sop: the highest ranked non-Power Five school would get to play in one highish-profile bowl game against a high-also-ran from the rankings. That's the game that Franklin's Penn State dominated in the Cotton Bowl on Saturday.

The situation of Memphis' team and coach illustrates the crazy cut-throat nature of college football. The Memphis team won its place in the Cotton Bowl with an 11-1 record under head coach Mike Norvell. After the season but before the bowl game, Norvell was able to parley their success into a new, more prominent, job for himself at Florida State. So the Memphis players had to compete in the Cotton Bowl under a new coach, Ryan Silverfield, who'd never before been in charge during a game.

Penn State won 53-39, but the contest was no beat-down. In fact it was an enjoyable game to watch. That's college football for you.