Danny Sheridan of USA Today has made Charleston Southern a 73-POINT underdog against the mighty Florida Gators in the first week of the pending college football season. The staggering line is believed to be the biggest point spread in college football history. Vegas doesn’t normally post lines for FBS (1-A) versus FCS (1-AA) schools because the teams just aren’t on level playing fields. FBS schools are able to keep 85 players on scholarship while FCS teams are only able to have 63 scholarship players. Yet it is a common theme for FBS teams to include one of these games on their schedule so they can embarrass the weaker teams.
Since the NCAA created the separate divisions a little over 30 years ago there have only been five FBS that haven’t played a FCS opponent. These reputable teams are UCLA, USC, Washington, Notre Dame and Michigan State. That being Michigan State will no longer be on this list after the first week of this season after their home game against Montana State. I can only hope the other four hold strong because I respect them and others should as well.
Florida is the king of scheduling early creampuff games and shows no shame in doing so because they aren’t penalized in the end. Not only do they schedule early creampuffs they cater their entire nonconference schedule to their favor in egregious fashion. The Gators haven’t played an out-of-state regular season nonconference game since 1991 and it has even been longer since they last played a regular season game west of the Mississippi considering they haven’t done so since 1983. Charleston Southern, Florida International, Citadel, Florida Atlantic, Western Kentucky, Western Carolina, Middle Tennessee State, Eastern Michigan and Florida A&M are some recent examples of the cupcake competitors the Gators chose to chomp.
In the end this is the state of college football and I’m not going to lose sleep over it because it isn’t going to change. Now, on to more in important things and something we can control. Who is going to take the Charleston Southern Buccaneers +73?