Maybe Hurricane Irene packs such a punch it can blow away the scandals of Ohio State, Miami, North Carolina and now LSU. Maybe the sheets of rain can wash the sport of college football clean.
Don't bet on it, of course, not in a hypocritical, outdated system in which the AD (Paul Dee) of one school (Miami) can punish another school (USC) for virtually the same transgressions that are taking place at his own school.
Not when we have a system in which supposed educational institutions and colluding conferences run by middle-aged adults are making collective billions of dollars off the backs of 18- to 22-year-old kids.
College football is broken perhaps beyond repair.
And, oh yeah, come Thursday night when the actual games kick off for another season, we'll all be watching.
That's the thing, for all the supposedly unprecedented scandal, college football has never been more popular.
The National Football Foundation reported that 49.6 million fans watched an NCAA football game last year at the 639 schools. That's an increase of three percent over the prior season.
The Oregonian reported recently, "Single-game ticket prices to the most sought-after college football games have surged 30 percent in three years, to an average of $65. The brisk rise, far outpacing inflation, illustrates the high demand for games despite the lingering effects of the recession."
The BCS title game last year between Auburn and Oregon drew a 15.29 television rating, which was an 11 percent decrease from the Alabama-Texas matchup the year before. And yet it far surpassed the ratings of other major sporting events.
The sixth and final game of the NBA Finals between Dallas and Miami drew a 15.0, and that was the best for a Game 6 since the 2000 series between the Lakers and Pacers.
Compare that to last year's World Series which never drew higher than a 9.0 rating. In fact, the last non-Yankees World Series to get a rating higher than last year's BCS title game was the 1997 Fall Classic between Florida and Cleveland.
There were 92,310 at Alabama's spring football game last year. There were 66,784 at Nebraska; 53,209 at Auburn; 51,000 at Florida; 43,177 at Georgia.
Coming off a 4-8 season, Ole Miss drew 28,000 for its spring game.
Those are — substitute best Allen Iverson voice — spring games.
No wonder the newly expanded Pac-12 has a new $2.7 billion television deal with ESPN and Fox. No wonder the contracted Big 12 has a $1.2 million deal with Fox. Once Texas A&M arrives on board, the SEC will go back to ESPN and demand some sugar be added to its $2.25 billion deal.
In college basketball, CBS had to recruit a corporate partner in Turner Broadcasting to make the numbers add up for the NCAA Tournament.
In college football, we have a prime-time game every Saturday night on a major American broadcast television network.
So yes, we're concerned about what has been going on at South Beach and Columbus and Baton Rouge.
But we also want to see how Nebraska will do in the Big 10. We want to see if Auburn can win without Cam Newton. We want to enjoy the added bonus of Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck for one more year. We want to see if Oklahoma and Alabama are really BCS-title worthy.
We want to listen for Verne Lundquist's folksy play-by-play and Gary Danielson's astute breakdowns on Saturday afternoon, then spend our Saturday nights with Kirk Herbstreit and (even) Brent Musburger.
Even here in the heart of college basketball country, we want to see how the football Cats will fare in their second season under Coach Joker Phillips.
Phillips brought in new defensive coordinator Rick Minter, who was asked about coming to a so-called basketball school.
Answered Minter: "I've never seen 70,000 fans in Rupp Arena."
