And here we go...the 2013 season begins

Hopefully this year will have more interesting storylines than last year.  Unfortunately for me, with Virginia Tech struggling, the lack of decent storylines, and the resurgence of the Redskins in the NFL, my interest in football has shifted slightly towards the pro side.  I'm looking forward to the Redskins opener on September 9th more than the Hokies opener on August 31st.  We'll see how things change as the games start playing out.

The biggest offseason storyline has been Johnny Manziel, and I'm sick of it.  He looked great on the field last year, but the greatest thing Texas A&M did was to keep him away from the media.  Now that he's allowed to talk some more, and won the Heisman, he hasn't stopped doing stupid things.  And when exactly is ESPN going to start raising the important question about why a 20 year old seems to be out drinking all the time?

I'm not that far out of college. I'm not naïve.  I know there's underage drinking going on in college.  But when you're a big football star, you don't get yourself into the position of having said drinking reported on ESPN.

Of course, the biggest scandal that Manziel brought to the football world was his possibility of signing a bunch of stuff and making money off of it.  But this "scandal" also brought harsh questions towards the NCAA itself as well.

Now that we've gotten playoffs established for next year, the fanbase and media need a new main topic of conversation.  It looks like the NCAA itself is the target.  As someone said on ESPN the other day, if the NCAA doesn't choose a champion, and doesn't make any schedules, what do they do?

From an outsider's perspective, it looks like they try to make a boatload of money while doing everything they can to keep the student-athlete down.  It looks like the next major debate in college football will be paying players.

Probably the biggest issue, though, I have with the current NCAA/Manziel scandal, is the punishment -- or rather, the threat of punishment.  For a few days, it looked like Texas A&M was going to have to weigh their options and risk potentially forfeiting games if Manziel was deemed "ineligible".

And here's the problem -- Johnny didn't do anything to give himself or his team a competitive advantage.  He didn't cheat on a test, or shoot up some steroids, and he didn't go break the kneecaps of Alabama's defensive line.  The only reason he would be "ineligible" is because the NCAA said so.  In this hypothetical case where they weren't able to make a decision until after the season started and games were played, why would the punishment have been retroactive?  The NCAA wouldn't have made the decision in time, so it's their fault.  Why punish the entire A&M program because the NCAA couldn't live up to their end of the deal?

But we're past that, and Johnny only has to miss one half of a game.

Meanwhile, we begin the BCS farewell tour...only 16 months until playoffs!