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They are the conference that got embarrassed in the 2006 bowl season, the conference that has never won the ACC/Big Ten basketball challenge (got a hurt when the comish lives in Charlotte, NC!) and the conference that just sustained the biggest upset in college football history.....yes bigger than Miami of OH beating LSU.

In the interest of fairness, I must report that I am proud to have spent my college years in Boone, NC at Appalachian State University.  Boone is a beautiful town that more than doubles in size in late August each year with students from all fifty states.  When I was a Mountaineer our big football rival was Marshall, "The Thundering Nerds" and our home golf course was in Tennessee!  My how things change.

Many of you may know about the rise of App. St.: two football national championships in the last two years accompanied by a university president that loves athletics and believes through sports we can grow the university to national, academic prominence.  Until the first of the football championships, Appalachian had never won a national championship in any sport.

That's the back-story.  However, my Happy Appy is not Michigan and the Southern Conference is not the Big Ten, thank goodness.

I first called out the Big Ten after the 2007 Men's Golf Championship at the Scarlet Course.  The conference decided to not break a tie for the championship between Minnesota and Michigan St. on the course.  They scammed to have two champions, thus trying to force the NCAA to invite both teams to the national championship.  So candy-ass!  How about acting like men, playing on the course, head-to-head, and actually having a team win the championship.

Let's look again at the concept of the Appalachian State University Chancellor Kenneth E. Peacock:  Through athletics we'll grow awareness of the university and thus increase enrollment.  Now let's examine the concept of the Big Ten Network: Lets launch a television network that hoards all the conference games and let's not let the general public watch the games unless they change their cable system to one of the very few that carry our network.  And by the way we demand that each system that carries our network pays us $1+ for every subscriber they have, BUT they cannot pass the charge along to their customer.  Don't worry about Big Brother; the Big Ten is who to worry about.

Who the hell do they think they are, this conference with a riot culture and holier than though attitude.  I'll tell you who they are:  They are the conference that got embarrassed in the 2006 bowl season, the conference that has never won the ACC/Big Ten basketball challenge (got a hurt when the comish lives in Charlotte, NC!) and the conference that just sustained the biggest upset in college football history.....yes bigger than Miami of OH beating LSU.

Why all the disappointment?  Maybe if they stopped acting like General Motors and more like the hungry, humble, little company that works hard for everything they get and has respect for their foes things would turn around.

Here is some advice: Settle all ties on the playing field.  In your 33 or so non-conference football games, play 3 against each BCS conference.  Stop threatening to not participate in NCAA baseball if the schedule doesn't get changed (nobody cares if you play or not)....In short, get an attitude adjustment and be thankful that ESPN lets your network exist and that the other conferecenes haven't banded together to form a super-conference and leave your sorry ass out.

Tags: appalachian st., lsu, miami, michigan, mountaineers