COLUMN: College football should wait for students

Josh Callahan, Commentary The Wolverines took a different approach to their 1997 campaign by not beginning their season until last Saturday. Their dominating win proved that being first doesn't mean being best. What a concept! The Wolverines waited until after the rest of their students had arrived on campus before beginning their athletic season. Meanwhile, the UCLA Bruins have put together a 1-2 record two weeks before students arrive in Westwood for the fall semester. Every other team ranked in the top 25 has played at least twice, with some teams having put on their uniforms in late August. Even in front of a home crowd of 106,000, many were expecting 14th-ranked Michigan to look rusty and unprepared against the No.8 Colorado Buffaloes. Michigan, 426 offensive yards later, had posted a 27-3 victory, hopefully sending athletic administrators around the country scrambling to move back their schedules and eliminate off weeks for future seasons. Maybe Michigan will go on to win the national championship and become the model for Division I football teams everywhere. But that's unlikely on both counts. Instead, made-for-TV games, such as the Pigskin Classic and the Kickoff Classic -- which have football players fighting for school pride while their classmates are a world away lying drunk on a beach somewhere -- will continue to provide poorly played and unnecessary football. Students and athletes at Michigan, on the other hand, had two weeks to adjust to the joys of college life before having to deal with the stress of a football game. Players and their rabid fans will not have to endure the lull of an off-week either, as Michigan will hit the field on each of the next 10 Saturdays. College football in August and early September doesn't just affect our Saturday TV-watching routines, it also ruins the Ivy League football schedule. The Penn-Dartmouth matchup on Saturday will probably end as the turning point of the season for both teams and the league as a whole. It also is the first game being played. How exciting for us -- a three-hour-long football season. And why are the top two teams squaring off on Opening Day? They don't want to have to play teams which have already been playing for three weeks. This miraculously stupid Ivy League tradition has its roots in the past stone ages of Ivy League football, when teams were not allowed to hold spring practice sessions. Afraid of being no match for non-league opponents who had practiced over the spring plus had already played a game or two, the decision was made to have the Ancient Eight square off in league battles as a tune-up game before heading out into their non-league schedules. So this fall, in order to get ready for the insignificant and fairly unattractive three week stretch of playing Patriot League opponents, Penn will "tune up" against the defending Ivy League champs. Now with spring practice permitted, this bone-headed ritual will be phased out. With schedules finalized years in advance, however, Quakers fans will be forced to swallow a few more seasons which will be without the crescendo that most football leagues arrange for their teams. Michigan has put together a perfectly laid out schedule that the Ivy League only has half perfected. Students are ready for a big campus weekend event after spending the first couple weeks settling back in to their college routines. This is the exact time to kick off a football season. Unfortunately it's exactly the wrong time to play the big conference game.