Marshall Faulk acknowledges the truth of early-season “crash-test dummy” video games

The new age of faculty soccer has made one in every of its time-honored traditions much more obvious — the early-season tuneup video games.

First-year Southern coach Marshall Faulk witnessed it on Saturday, when No. 22-ranked Houston shredded his Jaguars, 77-6.

“That wasn’t really a game, that was kind of a preseason crash-dummy test for Houston to work on all the good plays,” Faulk informed reporters, by way of Brad Crawford of CBS Sports.

Southern was paid $450,000 to function the cannon fodder for the Cougars.

For many years, high-level packages have scheduled lower-level faculties within the early weeks of the season. What was video games between Division I-A and Division I-AA have develop into FBS vs. FCS slaughterhouses.

“Let’s just be real, OK?” Faulk stated. “They’re better than us. We’re FCS, everybody knows what this is, let it be what it is.”

The switch portal has made issues worse, as a result of one of the best younger gamers at FCS faculties sometimes find yourself getting massive bucks with FBS packages.

“I was literally standing on the sideline thinking to myself, back when let’s say Southern had juniors and seniors . . . this could be a competitive game playing a team like Houston,” Faulk stated. “In today’s landscape, we don’t have the budget to compete against them. We just don’t.”

Saturday’s recreation included an eight-minute fourth quarter, after Houston constructed a 70-0 lead by the primary 45 minutes.

“The reality is our kids were giving their best effort, but we’re not good enough to beat a team that doesn’t beat themselves,” Faulk stated. “There’s not anything we could’ve done. I’ve been around a lot of football, man. We don’t have the bodies, we don’t have the funds, we don’t have the equipment . . . all the stuff needed to compete with a team like that. . . . Guts and glory and want and will is not enough to compete with a team like that.”

Again, it’s been that means for a very long time. Recent tendencies have made it worse. The query turns into whether or not the powers-that-be will change the foundations to stop video games like this from taking place.

The downside is that, even when the gamers don’t have any enterprise going towards elite packages, their faculties gained’t wish to hand over the income that comes from serving as a sacrificial lamb.