Being a sportswriter, it would seem, is relatively easy.  Sure there are levels of sportswriting, from getting paid (working for the newspaper or ESPN or some such) and not getting paid (writing for this blog), but other than that, the differences are relatively minor.  Sure we here at Fulmer’s Belly might reach a slightly smaller audience than our counterparts over at Yahoo! Sports, but the j-o-b is the same.  We write to entertain, to enlighten, to educate and to e…nunciate.

Even though we have no experience actually playing the sport nor do we ever research anything, I think one could pretty successfully argue that neither does Stewart Mandel do members of the main stream media.  The reason I say that there is little difference between us, is that everyone has to write crap that people will want to read about, and in both worlds (blogging and MSM), the better the story, the more attention it gets, whether or not this story is true.

That was just a really long way for me to get to this point: What do the “experts” know that we don’t?  All the experts are taking a huge cop-out by saying that there’s gonna be a great season this year.  Is there?  How do they know?  What if the season ends up sucking really bad?

What is the definition of a good season anyway?  Is it one where 2 teams dominate the entire season, where there’s no mystery as to who will play for the title game?  Most would say no, but to a sportswriter, that would count as an exciting season because “they could have lost any week, but overcame the adversity… blah blah blah.”

What if all of the big time teams all lost to other big time schools?  What if all of the conference champions had at least 2 losses each?  Would that be considered a good season?  Probably, because that would mean there’s so much parity in college football.  Then there would be even more to write about in terms of who should be playing in the title game, etc.

So, to reiterate my point, whenever a sportswriter writes that it’s “gearing up to be a great season,” just know that that’s one of the biggest cop-outs in this biz.  It’s one of the things that will get a double eye roll from me (you should see the single eye roll, it’s impressive in it’s own right).  So on that note, let’s gear up for the upcoming football season, which may… or may not suck.