preseason crash-dummy test<\/a> for Houston to work on all the good plays,\u201d Faulk told reporters, via Brad Crawford of CBS Sports.<\/p>\nSouthern was paid $450,000 to serve as the cannon fodder for the Cougars.<\/p>\n
For decades, high-level programs have scheduled lower-level schools in the early weeks of the season. What used to be games between Division I-A and Division I-AA have become FBS vs. FCS slaughterhouses.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s just be real, OK?\u201d Faulk said. \u201cThey\u2019re better than us. We\u2019re FCS, everybody knows what this is, let it be what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
The transfer portal has made matters worse, because the best young players at FCS schools typically end up getting big bucks with FBS programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was literally standing on the sideline thinking to myself, back when let\u2019s say Southern had juniors and seniors . . . this could be a competitive game playing a team like Houston,\u201d Faulk said. \u201cIn today\u2019s landscape, we don\u2019t have the budget to compete against them. We just don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s game included an eight-minute fourth quarter, after Houston built a 70-0 lead through the first 45 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is our kids were giving their best effort, but we\u2019re not good enough to beat a team that doesn\u2019t beat themselves,\u201d Faulk said. \u201cThere\u2019s not anything we could\u2019ve done. I\u2019ve been around a lot of football, man. We don\u2019t have the bodies, we don\u2019t have the funds, we don\u2019t have the equipment . . . all the stuff needed to compete with a team like that. . . . Guts and glory and want and will is not enough to compete with a team like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, it\u2019s been that way for a long time. Recent trends have made it worse. The question becomes whether the powers-that-be will change the rules to prevent games like this from happening.<\/p>\n
The problem is that, even if the players have no business going against elite programs, their schools won\u2019t want to give up the revenue that comes from serving as a sacrificial lamb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new age of college football has made one of its time-honored traditions even more glaring \u2014 the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-848127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}