It's semi-ridiculous that you have teams and players assigned arbitrarily to locations in December to play games in weather they have never played in.
As I said to (name drop, please) Mr. Munchkin, this is not the NFL where players have played two, three, four cold weather games each year. Some of these kids have played zero cold weather games this year. Some have played zero in their lifetime. So to just blithely say, "Arizona State and Boise get byes and get home games; Tennessee and SMU go play in 10 degrees" basically determines the games. If you have QBs and skill players from the SEC who have grown up in the South, they have not EVER played in those conditions. You can't expect them to function well in their first time out. It's ridiculous.
As I told Mr. Munchkin (name drop -- LOL), I lived a half mile from Beaver Stadium for five years. There was an outdoor artificial practice field on University Drive about 200 yards from our apartment. Boz, you probably know where that is. When it was 10 degrees or less, and the wind was blowing, I would go out to the artificial turf field and try jogging and cutting and doing squat thrusts to simulate getting up and down and moving in those conditions. If you haven't done it under those conditions, you have no idea what it's like to try to do athletic things in late December on frozen football fields. Now picture some poor kid trying to play QB for the first time in those conditions. SMU and Tennessee blew up, and it did not surprise me at all. In fact, I said to Mr. Munchkin (name drop) that they had almost no chance because of the weather.
That's a sign-off for me.
Have a good Christmas and New Year's, Boz. If you ever need to get in touch, use the old
IntegritySports@aol.com.