While I've not gotten to watch too much college football today (I've got Colorado-Colorado St. going, with some check-ins on USC-Auburn and Ohio St.-Washington), among the scores that stood out (not sure which I like better - Cal 34, Southern Miss. 2 or what is currently Kansas State 34, Troy St. 5) was this one:

UConn 34, Indiana 10

The shock is not that Indiana lost. They are rarely good. It's more that UConn throttled them, took their nouveau D1 act to the Hoosiers. Not a bad way to open your new home, either.

What was really striking, though, was that while 2003 marks a new beginning for the UConn program, it simply marks the sixth football season to start without a BU program. For those of you who missed it (and, sad to say, many of you who read this regularly didn't), Boston University, my alma mater, dropped its football program at the end of the 1997 season. At the time, BU and UConn played in the same conference.

So why did BU drop their program? There are many reasons. The team lost millions every year. Low attendance. The threat of a Title IX lawsuit. Poor on-field performance. The traditional reverence for the hockey team. It all played a part.

John Silber was interested in canning the team when he got to BU in '73, and to be honest I'm surprised it took over 30 years for him to get the job done. It apparently takes a long time to pack a board of trustees.

Will a new president make a difference? Goldin is forging change among the upper administration, but if it's the same group of trustees what are the odds they'll relent? He's also got a reputation as a cost-cutter, which makes putting a money loser back in the budget seem very unlikely.

Which all means that I get to sit at home writing about this while fans in Storrs toast their victory. It's not even that I want BU to compete at that level. I'd be very happy with any team, be it in the Atlantic 10, the MAAC, Northeast, or independent. Non-scholarship would be fine, too. Anything so I can go to Nickerson Field 4 to 6 times a year, see friends, celebrate victory and lament losses.

Is that too much to ask?