I can't sleep, so I figured I might as well share something.

First off, I played football in junior high, baseball in little league, flag football city league, ran track and cross country, and several other sports in other leagues as a kid. I'm a competitor. I come to play. I bowled a 207 once. (I'm not really that great at any of them but I did play a lot)

I was a "serious" college athlete:

The year was 2002 (or somewhere near there). I was in a BYU ward that took ultimate frisbee pretty seriously. We practiced a couple times per week, and when we signed up for BYU intramural Ultimate Frisbee, we knew that we had a good shot at winning the championship. FTR, this is the extent of me being a college athlete.

We had a lot of close, incredibly competitive games, but we ended up getting to the championship game. We lost by 2 points in a nail biter. No one in the world cared we were playing. But it sure felt good to know we weren't bad as a team. We all had grass stains head to toe and we felt like heroes.

Fast forward one year, another year of practice, and we knew we were a shoe-in to win the whole thing. Our best athletes were still on the team, and we had a lot of time behind the disc as a group. Well, bad luck happened and we lost our first two games due to the flu. We couldn't even field a full team. We churned out two close losses in the seeding games.

We ended up in the lower division (I think the middle one of three).

AND IT WAS AMAZING. We steamrolled every team on the schedule (usually by at least 7-8 scores) and worked our way to the championship game where we completely blew out the competition. We looked crisp, sharp, and the mistakes were minimal. It was a perfect season.

But... we hated it. We walked off the field of the championship game with our heads hung low knowing we were better and didn't belong in that division. We would have all traded the championship for the hard fought wins of the year prior.

I can't imagine any top talent in college football wanting to play the watered down schedule. They want to play the best, in front of a lot of eyes, even if it means they take a few more losses. I'd hope that coaches, especially our coach, would feel the same way. ESPN vs Facebook stream would be an easy decision for any of the top talent in FBS.

Sure, the less talented guys know their place and would be ok with the G5 games and prestige. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But if we want the best, we play the best, on the best station, in the best venues. I'll take 7-5 vs eight P5's over 10-2 against two P5's every time, And especially those awesome years that we go 10-2, or better) against a P5 heavy schedule.

"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." — Jimmy Dugan

Go Cougs!