College & Pro Football

As the football season begins to gather steam, I've come to a few realizations:

• It sucks living in this part of the country in terms of what sort of games get broadcast on the national channels (I don't have cable). For pro games, we're pretty much guaranteed to get horrendous NFC West games (nearly every team in that division sucks and I have no interest in any of them) or AFC West games (same problem unless you're a San Diego fan, and they are consumate choke artists in the playoffs). For college games, we continually get stuck with the PAC-10 even if there are Mountain West or WAC games I'd much rather see, (much less getting to see the decent marquee matchups nationwide). The PAC-10 is easily as overrated at the Big-10 and I have no emotional ties to any of them.
• I don't enjoy watching Texas or Ohio State play big games anymore, because they make so many stupid mistakes and play so inconsistently. It's silly to get upset by their performances, but recognizing that just makes me realize that it's equally silly to get very excited by their wins. I hope they win, but I'm thinking of just not watching them play. They're both huge programs that spend immense amounts of money and land high-level recruits. They are basically mini-professional franchises and pretending that I'm watching college athletes seems increasingly hypocritical.
  
• Still fun to watch Boise State, because I've seen a lot of the athletes and they are not any bigger than I am. The program also lacks the huge cash flow of the biggest state schools. On the other hand, it is frustrating that they no longer show the games on broadcast TV. BSU is too small to get major network airtime and too big to stay local, so all the games so far have been on one of the ESPN channels.
  
• When basketball season starts, the disparity will be even bigger. They hardly ever show college basketball games on the network until January.