SAFETY NOTE: The following dissection of a June 2014 Wild Sportspinion by Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi was done by a trained professional in a controlled environment. We at SB Nation do not recommend you attempt this difficult procedure on your own; stupid is contagious and has no known cure.
Writing opinion pieces is about taking chances and being unafraid of failure. Sure, you're going to have some misses. But as long as you've thought through your argument carefully and presented it strongly, you should be ok.
My thoughts: If the Power 5 leagues truly want to break off into their own division then they first need to jettison the dead weight and add more deserving schools like UCF before setting sail for the brave new world of college football.
Perfectly reasonable. There are a number of power-conference schools you can rank below UCF right now, in every conference: Vanderbilt, Colorado, Wake Forest, Illinois, Kansas ...
Geographical issues aside, the AAC's Knights went 38-15 from 2010 through 2013, including bowl wins over Georgia and Baylor. A resume like that could be a real asset to a bigger league.
Example: The SEC should dump Ole Miss and Mississippi State and invite in UCF and USF to take their place. It's crazy that the Mississippi schools get to be part of the most powerful league in college football in a day and age when the sport is all about cable television subscribers, recruiting base and growth potential.
Poor Bianchi
Poor Bianchi
See what happened there? You got fooled into thinking we were having a rational discussion and then BOOM. Attacked by a Wild Sportspinion.
Now, you may be tempted to fight back against the Wild Sportspinion with "facts" and "other facts." It'd take a two-thirds vote to kick a team out of the SEC! Mississippi and Mississippi State had 2014 recruiting classes ranked above USF and UCF! The whole point of television is that you get to watch something that is not where you already are!
Luckily, you didn't do any of that at the time. A fight is just what the Wild Sportspinion wants, and the only way to kill it is to starve it of attention and wait for real life to render it irrelevant. In this case, we needed just four months:
Let's face it, the only reason Ole Miss and Mississippi State are part of SEC today is that they happened to be at the right place at the right time 100 years ago when the conference was formed while UCF and USF weren't.
Nice try, Wild Sportspinion, but now we know how to kill you.
Remember these lessons next summer, when Bianchi writes his "The Best Quarterbacks Throw The Least Because Teamwork" column.