LSU and Houston are the only major unbeaten teams and Houston has zero shot of making the title game (it’s not fair, it just is). If LSU wins out, the Tigers will get one slot in the title game. But who will get the second?

There are a bunch of one-loss teams, led by Alabama, Oregon and Oklahoma — one of those has the inside track simply because they rank higher in the standings. But what about Clemson or Virginia Tech or Arkansas (which plays LSU next week), or Stanford or Boise State for that matter? (Note: Oregon, Oklahoma and Clemson all lost Saturday). It will be impossible to say that any of the one-loss teams is clearly better than the others. And if LSU should lose, the BCS might as well draw two names out of a hat. It couldn’t happen to a more screwed-up system.

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The study by Lawrence J. Mrozek and Elizabeth Burns found:

When players were found out, they could become targets. One former student who witnessed a couple of people being outed said that when his team found out a player was gay, “they became like a pariah; they had to be gotten rid of.”

In an interview with Mrozek, he described how this drove one player to self-destruction. “Other members of the team found out, and what they basically did, they just started beating the crap out of him whenever they could catch him alone,” he said. “He was so upset about it he ended up – he was actually found somewhere outside of town – because he didn’t want to play football and he didn’t want to tell his parents and, I know it was deliberate…. He mangled up his legs so that he couldn’t play.”

Six of the seven played on BCS-level teams within the past 15 years. All of them asked for anonymity since they still did not want their former teammates to know they were gay. Mrozek’s conclusion is that while attitudes have changed for the better for gays in sports, he said that was not true for football.

His views are rebutted by Eric Anderson, a longtime friend of Outsports, who has done groundbreaking research into gay males in sports. Anderson makes the point that attitudes have changed very quickly in a short time span. For example:

Anderson compared the experiences of openly gay college and high school athletes who came out between 2000 and 2002, which he had gathered for a previous study in 2002, to the experiences of those who came out between 2008 and 2010. (The athletes, who were all male, played in a variety of sports, including football, hockey and wrestling.) He found that the latter group was much more well-received than the former; none of the 26 athletes he interviewed most recently had “any substantial difficulties on their teams” after coming out as gay, Anderson wrote. “Much of the turmoil and anxiety that I found with the 2002 athletes is absent from the 2010 men’s narratives,” he wrote.

I think Anderson is right. Times have changed and the culture in sports has gotten better. Cyd and I know of one Division I college football player who is out to his teammates and is accepted. A 2009 ESPN poll found half those college football players surveyed say they have a gay teammate (though it did not talk about acceptance). I would be curious to know whether the linebackers who are younger had experiences any less negative than those who played 15 years ago.

There are still no publicly gay college football players (or basketball or baseball for that matter), so homophobia still has its grip on those sports. These “major sports,” where there is more money and public attention, are still seen as places where it’s better to fit in and stay in the closet.

If anyone reading this played sports in college, I would love to read your comments on what that was like and whether you ever came out while playing or after graduating.

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Oregon, which was idle, will almost certainly be one of the top two, but after that it gets tricky. Boise State should be one of them, but there are rumblings that the Broncos will be screwed in the coaches’ poll because of their perceived easy schedule.

The coaches do not have to reveal who they voted for, so can be as petty as they want to be. No way they should get a vote since any coach is only focused on his team, next opponent and conference. Plus, many coaches allow assistants or administrators to vote.

The other highly ranked unbeatens with a claim to an even high ranking are TCU, Oklahoma. Auburn, LSU, Utah and Michigan State. I would love to hear who college football fans think are the two best teams based on what they’ve seen so far (try to put your biases aside). I would take Oregon and Boise State — I don’t see how teams can be dinged for being idle (Oregon) or winning 48-0 (Boise State).

Update: Oklahoma and Oregon are 1-2 in the first BCS poll. Everything that’s wrong with how major college football decides its title are summed up in this paragraph:

Boise State is No. 2 in all the polls and seventh according to the computers, but the math leaves the Broncos third in the BCS standings. “The computers do not like this team,” BCS guru [Jerry] Palm said.

Yes, because computers are experts about football. Ultimately, this is why major college football blows.

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With college football starting this week, the Wall Street Journal looks at what it terms “college beefcake photos,” which have become more widespread thanks to the Internet (see gallery below). What’s missing is any discussion of the homoerotic aspects of the photos, though there is some discussion about “sending the wrong message.”

At some schools, as many as half the players, sometimes more, will strip to their uniform pants, lather up with oil and flex their pectorals while posing with an ever-more-eclectic array of props including chains, sledgehammers, hard hats and, in one recent case, a $120,000 orange Lamborghini Gallardo. These unofficial photos aren’t widely distributed. They’re printed in small quantities and given to players to hand out to friends and family as evidence of their progress in physical training. 

Peyton Manning posed for such a shot with his Tennessee Volunteer teammates in the 1990s (alas, I can’t find that photo anywhere. Update: Thanks to a reader it is posted below).

Colts quarterback Peyton Manning says that when he played for Tennessee in the mid ’90s, a spot in the front row was a “pride thing,” and he and his teammates would arrive to the weight room as early as they could on photo day to do enough lifts and push-ups to make their muscles bulge. “There was a lot of baby oil involved,” recalls Mr. Manning. “It helps with muscle definition.”

Players take these pictures because they are justifiably proud of the results of their hard work in the gym, and one player’s mom last year ordered 15 copies of the poster. But the article, written by Hannah Karp, points out that “even some unofficial team photos where players are fully clothed make schools nervous.” She points to the shot of Virginia Tech players “holding hands and leaping gleefully in the air on media day.”

A school official deemed the shot “not in our best interest.” Translated: It made our players look gay. The homoerotic aspects are the unspoken of 800-pound gorilla in this story. As one commenter, who disproved of the practice, wrote: “I wonder if these stud-muffins realize that a vast majority of their consumers are other men?” So what? Why should jocks, who are never bashful about showing all they got in a locker room — as anyone who has ever been in one can attest — suddenly turn into 85-year-old nuns at the thought that another man might be looking at them approvingly?

What is weird is that Karp could not find any examples for this season (she asked me to help in her search and I came up empty). USC did take a shirtless shot, but has yet to release it. If so, it shows how uptight these programs are getting. These are great marketing tools — these images get a lot of hit on websites, both gay and mainstream — so why hide some of your best assets?

Here are some of the past shirtless shots from the past few years:

(click on an image for a larger view and on that image for a full-sized view):

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Bama QB Greg McElroy

No surprise, but defending BCS champ Alabama is the overwhelming favorite to repeat as No. 1 in college football, if the preseason AP poll is accurate. The Tide garnered 54 of the 59 first-place votes. Rounding out the Top 5 are Ohio State, Boise State, Florida and Texas.

It’s Boise State at No. 3 (the Broncos are No. 5 in the USA Today poll) that is the most intriguing to me. It’s by far its highest preseason ranking and gives the school from the non-power  WAC a legitimate shot of the BCS title game, which pits the top two teams in the BCS rankings.

Because — unlike college basketball — big-time college football does not have a playoff, rankings play an oversized role in determining major bowl bids. This is why even preseason polls matter, even though the first BCS rankings don’t come out until after a few games have been played. Teams ranked preseason in the late teens (like Georgia Tech, Arkansas, North Carolina and Penn State) need to leap-frog a lot of teams to be considered viable.

I would love to hear from college football fans which teams they see as being sleeper teams that will wind up in the national title conversation. The season kicks off in two weeks and hope spring eternal on campuses everywhere.

One of the major knocks on the BCS — besides there not being a real playoff system — is that schools such as Boise had zero shot of winning the title since they were perceived as being from lesser conferences. But the Broncos have won two BCS bowl games the past few seasons and should they wind up as one of two unbeatens, it’s hard to see them not playing for the BCS title.

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Heisman winner Tim Tebow of top-ranked Florida.

The 2009 college football season starts a week from Saturday and every one has an opinion on who will play in the BCS title game in the Rose Bowl in January. Florida is an overwhelming favorite to win its second straight BCS title, but teams such as Texas, Oklahoma, USC and Alabama are widely considered in the mix.

I like college football but don’t follow it nearly as closely as a lot of you do.

We invite you to post your thoughts on the season, such as which two teams will play for the BCS title and who will win it; the most overrated and most underrated teams; and the game you are most interested in. Also give your alma mater, so we can check your biases. I went to Penn State, for the record, and am glad the Nits are in a lot of Top 10 preseason rankings.

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Do you have any gay teammates?

Almost half of those surveyed (49.4%, to be exact) said yes, they believe they have at least one gay teammate. In the Pac-10, 70% of those surveyed said yes.”

Half is a big number and 70% is pretty stunning given how often we’re told that being gay in a sport like football is impossible. What the poll question does not answer, though, is whether those surveyed personally know a gay teammate or whether there are players on their team they suspect are gay. It also does not answer whether these respondents perceive having a gay teammate as a positive or negative thing. Finally, 85 is a small sample and we don’t know if it was weighted to be representative.

We profiled anonymously a college football kicker who is known as gay by his team. He has had nothing but support. Times are changing, especially for young people who are growing up either knowing gay people or seeing them constantly in the media. When we’ll get a publicly gay player, though, is still anyone’s guess.

Hat tip to Towelroad.

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 3
– International Bowl: UConn vs. Buffalo (ESPN, 12pm) – The advertising surrounding this game makes it sound like they’re playing this in Monte Carlo or Rio or some place really exotic, alas, it’s just a game in Skydome in The Center of the Universe (that’s Toronto, for those of you not from Toronto).  Two offense oriented teams should make for a fun match up, I’m giving the edge to Buffalo since a) this is pretty much a home game for them, b) having a 3000+ yard passer in Drew Willy and a 1300+ yard rusher in James Starks will trump the Huskies one-man-wrecking-crew name Donald Brown (1800+ yards and 17 TD’s).

MONDAY, JANUARY 5
– Fiesta Bowl: Ohio State vs. Texas (FOX, 8pm) – Poor Ohio State.  Every year, a seemingly good team gets obliterated in a bowl because the other team is pissed… and Texas has a very good reason to be pissed.  If it weren’t for a tough loss to then-#6 Texas Tech, they’d be playing for the title.  And a lot of people consider them to be the best team in the country, and it’s hard to argue with Colt McCoy passing for about a mile a game and a stifling defense that allowed 14 points or less seven times.  tOSU isn’t going to lay down and die though, and true-freshman Terrelle Pryor is going to try to win this game by himself.  But it will not be enough.  This one may get ugly.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 6
– GMAC Bowl: Tulsa vs. Ball State (ESPN, 8pm) – Oh god, let’s just end this season already.  Ball State was the team that was the sporting blog universe’s “this year’s Boise State” until they randomly lost to Buffalo.  They’ve got an absolutely ridiculous offense led by Nate Davis (and pay attention to that name, you’re going to hear it alot in the 2010 NFL draft talk) and a pretty decent defense to boot.   But Tulsa’s offense is going to make you say wow.  They average 565 yards per game(!) and score 47.4 points per game(!!).  Tulsa QB David Johnson is like a mini-Brett Favre,  he’s passed for 43 touchdowns and had 18 INT’s.  But that’s where the impressiveness ends….  their defense is suspect to say the least.  They’re one of the only teams in NCAA history to win a game by scoring 70 points and lose a game by allowing 70 points. And Johnson ended the regular season by allowing 5 picks to a decent, but not great East Carolina team.  BSU should win this one handily, but they do not want to get into a shootout.  It’s anyone’s game then.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8
– National Championship: Florida vs. Oklahoma (FOX, 8pm) – And this is it.  The Sooners fought and clawed their way to get in and curbstomped a good Mizzou team to get into this game.  The Gators have averaged nearly 50 points in their nine game winning streak and have an absolutely deadly special teams unit.  And frankly when you’ve got two teams as evenly matched as these two, special teams usally makes the difference and that’s where UF should take this game over.  OU has awful special teams coverage and UF has Brandon James.  James makes (college) Ted Ginn look like a kid,  he makes Devin Hester look terrible.  He’s going to crack off a couple of big ones against OU and give Tim Tebow the ability to circumcise the Sooners… whether they want to be or not.

Well that’s it.  Goodbye college football.  Until next year when we can all debate the horridness and terroristic nature of the entity known as the BCS.

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It started out like a normal college football Saturday evening in Fresno, albeit with a little more excitement than usual.  The nationally-ranked Bulldogs, for the first time in school history, were hosting another ranked team at home.  And it wasn’t just any team.  It was Big Ten heavyweight Wisconsin coming to Bulldog Stadium, and the game promised to be thrilling.  It was long ago sold out, and a standing-room-only crowd clad almost entirely in red was on its way to the stadium by car, bus and foot.  What fans encountered as they approached the stadium though, was something for which Fresno State shouldn’t be too proud.

The first thing noticeable — in addition to the thousands of red-clad fans walking towards the stadium — was a group of men dressed mostly in suits gathered near the intersection where Cedar and Barstow avenues meet.  Wearing suits to a football game?  That’s something you rarely see anywhere, but especially in central California on a 90-degree, late Summer evening. 

In addition to the group of approximately six to eight men wearing suits (which can best be described as ill-fitting), there were at least two men displaying large “sandwich board” type signs as though they were advertising something.  A closer look revealed that the thing they were advertising was hate.  The messages on those sandwich boards referred to the “evils” of being gay, calling the GLBT community “sinners,” and saying homosexuality was wrong.  Signs were held by these protesters that proclaimed marriage to be only between one man and one woman.  With California’s Proposition 8 on the ballot in November, the group’s intentions were obvious.  The proposition seeks to overturn California’s recently enacted law allowing same-sex couples to marry in the state.

It was as though I’d ventured into a college football stadium and a Cher concert broke out.  I remember several years ago standing in line to enter a concert featuring the pop diva (during one of her numerous farewell tours) and being subjected to similar homophobia complete with anti-gay signs.  Before that concert, however, the homophobia was a little more subdued, and far less in-your-face.  No literature being passed out.  No interaction between fans and protesters.  Just a somewhat pathetic looking group holding anti-gay signs that made concert goers roll their eyes.  Needless to say, the differences between a crowd attending a Cher concert and a Fresno State football game are entirely different.  While the concert attendees were more forgiving and definitely of the live-and-let-live variety, Saturday’s homophobic protesters played much differently in front of the mostly conservative football crowd.

The men dressed in suits (some equipped with odd sashes as though they’d just been crowned Homecoming King, and another in full highlander regalia complete with the accompanying bagpipes) were standing in a prime location near the school’s softball diamond where thousands of spectators who’d just been dropped off on the university-sponsored shuttle buses were making the short walk to the football stadium across the street. 

The group, apparently affiliated with an ultra conservative group touting Tradition, Family and Property, proceeded to distribute hate-filled literature to the crowd that included such thought-provoking information as, “Legalization of same-sex marriage creates a terrible problem of conscience, “ ”Same-sex marriage harms the common good,” and the always intriguing, “We are opposing the homosexual moral revolution and battling for the soul of America.”

Football fans passed by and were handed pamphlets entitled, “10 Reasons Why Homosexual Marriage is Harmful and Must be Opposed.”  At least one fan responded with the obligatory “f’ing faggots,” comment (but with the expletive intact).  “Dudes getting married?  That ain’t right,” said another fan who then looked around as if he was expecting a high-five from fellow fans.  A 60ish gentleman, who was in Bulldog garb and holding hands with what I can only assume is his wife, made the strangest comment of all.  He walked directly up to one of the protesters, shook his hand and thanked him.  “Keep up the good work,” he said.  “Thanks for all you do,” he told the anti-gay hate monger. 

Ah!  Saturday college football.  Nothing screams pigskin like a pig (with or without the lipstick).

Attempts to confront the protesters would almost certainly have been futile, given the pre-game setting and an environment where drinking was the norm, and the home crowd was already a bit on edge.  The opponent — 10th ranked Wisconsin — brought upwards of 3,000 of its own fans to the game, and while it didn’t result in the fan-on-fan nastiness that sometimes results during, say, a Fresno State-Hawaii matchup, there was a certain element of friction surrounding the game as early as 90 minutes before it started.  Badgers head coach Bret Bielema said this of his reception from Bulldogs fans on his way into the stadium, “There were several interesting discussions about my history and ancestry.” 

Imagine a tailgate crowd in Tuscaloosa, and then transport them to the San Joaquin Valley.  Fresno State has a knowledgeable football crowd and a devoted fan base that is the envy of nearly every school not affiliated with the Bowl Championship Series.  If Stanford and Cal are cheese and wine, Fresno State is clearly meat and potatoes.  This was not the environment in which to confront anti-gay hate, and there appeared to be no university officials monitoring the situation, which certainly on its face had the potential to become violent.

What makes all of this more alarming is where this took place.  On campus.  As fans were on their way to a football game.  And there were no visible indications anyone was unhappy or upset with the protesters, or that their presence seemed out of the ordinary!  All of this at a school where the sports discussion has been more about winning in a court of law than winning games on the field for the past year.  Literally within spitting distance of the outfield at Bulldog Diamond, the school’s softball stadium where head coach Margie Wright has coached her team to 27 consecutive NCAA tournaments, the best streak in the country.  A few months ago, Wright was awarded approximately $600,000 in a settlement with the university after originally filing a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights citing gender discrimination back in 2004.  Wright is one of several female coaches, administrators and staff members who have either settled discrimination cases against the university or won court cases against Fresno State in just the past 15 months. 

Former Fresno State women’s basketball coach Stacy Johnson-Klein, fired by the university in March of 2005, alleged sexual discrimination and was awarded an astonishing $19.1 million following a tension-filled, 8-week trial that concluded in December 2007.  That amount was later reduced to around $6.6 million.  According to a report from the Women’s Sports Foundation, Johnson-Klein’s lawsuit alleged that the Fresno State athletic department had a long-standing pattern of discriminating against women coaches, specifically those who are lesbian or who complained that women’s teams were not receiving funding or support equal to men’s.  Johnson-Klein alleged she was told, “that lesbian coaches were not to be hired” at Fresno State.

Former women’s volleyball coach Lindy Vivas, the winningest coach in her sport in school history and three-time Western Athletic Conference Coach of the Year, was fired in 2004 but won a $5.85 million verdict against Fresno State in July 2007.  That amount was later reduced to approximately $4.5 million.  As part of her claim, according to the campus newspaper The Collegian, Vivas (pictured in this Associated Press photo, hugging her mother following the verdict’s announcement) said the university discriminated against her because of her perceived sexual orientation.

Eleven months ago, former athletic administrator Diane Milutinovich settled with the university for approximately $3.5 million in yet another sexual discrimination case.  Milutinovich alleged that Fresno State reassigned her and ultimately fired her after she spoke up for equal treatment for female athletes on campus.

In a statement issued less than three months ago in response to a state legislative inquiry into the lawsuits and the alleged discrimination on the Fresno State campus, university president John D. Welty said the following, “I do not and I have not tolerated discrimination at Fresno State.  I act when any discrimination is found.”  He continued, “These lawsuits may indicate some past problems in athletics at Fresno State, but they do not reflect today’s new era in Bulldog athletics.  Nor do they reflect our reality at Fresno State as the university of opportunity for everyone.”

Given the legal cases and the events of the past year, it’s not surprising that the area around Bulldog Stadium became fertile ground for a group of hate solicitors.  While the anti-gay group may argue about their right to free speech, does Fresno State bear any responsibility?  Is this a public image the school really wants to portray after a year of lawsuits?

An e-mail was sent to president Welty as early as Monday morning following the Saturday evening game, along with two separate follow-up e-mails.  Welty was asked if the school planned to offer any sort of apology to GLBT fans who were forced to encounter this hate speech on their way to the football game, and he was asked if the university planned to denounce the group’s anti-gay agenda or post any response on the official school web site.  Welty responded Wednesday in a written statement saying he was awaiting additional information on this issue and would outline the steps the university plans to take as soon as he gets all the facts. 

Update:  University president Welty, on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, issued the following statement: 

“Some fans who attended last Saturday’s football game at Bulldog Stadium question why advocates of Proposition 8 (proposed state constitutional amendment that would recognize as valid only marriage between a man and a woman) were allowed to confront them as they arrived for the game.

Reports indicated that the advocates stood on public sidewalks adjacent to the campus and the stadium.  As the crowd grew, University Police Department officers asked them to move and they did so, walking to a public sidewalk in front of the Bulldog Shop.

Fresno State does not and will not tolerate discrimination against individuals because of sexual orientation.  I am deeply troubled by the homophobic slurs on signs these people carried aimed at our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.  I find this type of expression to not meet the civility that I would expect in a political campaign.

We at Fresno State support freedom of speech and the right of people to engage in civil political debate, but we do not support the use of language which lacks civility and promotes hatred.”

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