College football's fun police seems dead-set on ruining best moments

The coaches are making millions. The athletic directors are making millions. The commissioners are making millions.

And somehow all these millionaires are so miserable they have to invent reasons to admonish, reprimand, suspend or humiliate the players because well … who knows?

It is crime and punishment season in college football and the only thing more absurd than the punishments are the “crimes.” Basically, a lot of rich old men are wandering about looking for ways to be offended.

It’s raining snowflakes in college football.

Consider that two Arkansas players, Ryan Pulley and Kamren Curl, were suspended by Razorback coach Chad Morris for what Morris deemed “unacceptable behavior.”

Wow. Unacceptable behavior? That sounds serious. What was it, armed robbery? Academic fraud? Crashing a Harley with a volleyball player on back that isn’t your wife but whom you hired for a job in violation of state law?

No, the guys happened to be caught flirting with a couple members of the Mississippi State dance team prior to the Arkansas-Mississippi State game on Saturday. They were apparently trying to exchange “information” with the ladies, presumably phone numbers.

“It’s completely unacceptable in all areas of this program,” Morris said.

Boy, this guy must be fun at a party. He claimed the suspensions were needed because he was building a culture that evidently is opposed to any normal college behavior.

Coach, buddy, you’ve had one winning season in your college coaching career and you’re being paid $3.5 million a year. Things are good. R-E-L-A-X.

Look, maybe for you, a social life of attending booster meetings in the Ozarks where a bunch of middle-aged men shout ‘Woo Pig” over and over is satisfactory.

To each their own.

But let me break this down for you. For a college guy (or just about anyone), getting to meet the Mississippi State dance team is the American Dream. If that opportunity comes around, you’ve got to shoot your shot.

This is one of those so-called life lessons, Coach. This is part of the educational experience. Opportunity knocking. Carpe Diem. Let them try to live their best life.

The reality is, Arkansas is 2-9 and in last place. Morris should be glad anyone, let alone members of the Mississippi State dance team, are willing to even consider giving their number to his defensive backfield. And if either of them actually managed to score a date, Morris should immediately hire them as highly paid recruiters because they clearly know how to sell top-level prospects on the idea that woebegone Arkansas football is somehow worth their attention.

Coach, this isn’t Alabama football, you know. Sure, sure, when Tua Tagovailoa crosses the border half the state immediately swipes right. Arkansas has to work harder to get the same results though. It has to be creative. It has to use guile and luck. It has to find ways to win, even if the timing isn’t perfect. Three-star talent but five-star heart.

Earlier this season you played North Texas and it was willing to get a kid maimed by having him fake a fair catch, confuse your punt-coverage unit and race in for a touchdown. If it didn’t work, he gets lit up and earns a lifetime of chiropractic treatments. It did work though. As much as it was humiliating to fall for it and lose to North Texas, 44-17 no less, you had to appreciate the boldness, the aggressiveness.

It’s possible your players did too and became inspired. A fake fair catch is the exact kind of impudent, roll-the-dice play calling that equates to a couple guys trying to make a move with the opposing dance team prior to a game they are about to get crushed in, 52-6.

These guys shouldn’t be suspended, they should be named game captains for your next loss just for still believing that against all odds Arkansas can spring an upset, romantic or otherwise.

Our sidelined Razorback Romeos are but one example though of this stick-in-the-mud sport.

The Big 12 reprimanded Texas player Breckyn Hager on Monday because he stated “OU sucks.” This, of course, is a sentiment with which just about every Longhorn fan fully concurs about their archrival and themselves chants an average of 7.3 times a day. This is offensive? To whom? Are Oklahoma fans so sensitive that they couldn’t just laugh and, at most, respond with a “Texas sucks.”

“Mr. Hager … will be expected to issue a public apology for his inappropriate comments,” the Big 12 said in a stuffy, scolding statement.

And, indeed, Hager released a public apology that rang with all of the authenticity of a hostage praising his captors. Here’s hoping he believed not a word of it.

If Hager had just said, “OK, cool. Hook ’em” they might start referring to it as Royal-Hager-Texas Memorial Stadium. Bob Bowlsby’s head would have exploded, but hey, freedom ain’t free.

It isn’t often that Texas football and Harvard football have much in common, but Crimson running back Devin Darrington had a touchdown wiped off the board in a game Saturday against Yale.

At first it appeared that Darrington had flipped off the defender chasing him as he ran to the end zone. That seemed to ratchet up the Harvard-Yale rivalry to some SEC-level heights, which was cool. What could two Ivy Leaguers possibly be arguing about that required such a gesture, which 18th-century translation of the Iliad rings most true?

Well, it turned out Darrington had merely raised his index finger, not his middle finger. It wasn’t the Flip Six, but it got called back anyway because he was pointing straight up in the air, which it seems fair to point out, is in the direction of … no one.

Of course, people often get offended when no one is offended.

Especially in college football, apparently.

The weekend started off, of course, with Houston coach Major Applewhite deciding that the most important thing he could do in the middle of an actual game was not to try to coach the game, but to try to wrestle injured defense lineman Ed Oliver out of his coat because it was apparently the wrong kind of coat.

The puffy ones are reserved for active players, not injured players, and this is very, very important because … oh, who the heck knows.

Culture. Discipline. Sportsmanship. Anal retentiveness. Something. Anything.

We’ve heard it all from college coaches and college administrators. We’ll hear more. They are only getting softer.

If these millionaires took themselves any more serious they’d get the Southern District of New York to make violating their little amateurism rules into actual federal crimes.

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