We've all been to the County Fair as kids growing up. Clowns, barking carnival announcers, dirt everywhere, a smell of livestock, cotton candy, merry-go-rounds, wild rides. Meet College Football 2011, and it's "Tilt-A-Whirl". Like throwing a ball at the milk bottles, trying to hit the bell with a sledgehammer or shooting moving ducks, today’s college football is like the county fair, a money grab after you’ve been taken for a wild ride.

Who cares if you go home on Saturday night with no money in your pockets and just a kewpie doll or a booby prize. Did you have a good time? Same thing now with college football; did you like the big game? Are you intrigued by this mega conference? Maybe we should have seen this coming more than a decade ago when the Big 10 reached into Happy Valley and snatched Penn State from independent status. Surely someone should have paid attention when the historic Southwest Conference fired half its members and merged with the Big 8, bringing us the Big 12.

Maybe someone should have been alarmed when WAC Presidents had one too many martinis after dinner and we wound up with an ill-fitting 16-team Mountain West Conference Raids conducted summers ago set the college football landscape ablaze. Virginia Tech, Miami, Boston College merged into the ACC. The Big East also followed with raids. Nebraska moved to the Big 10. Colorado and Utah joined the Pac 10. Boise, Fresno, Nevada and Hawaii were added to the Mountain West. BYU headed out into its own world, while TCU somehow wound up in the Big East. When the last domino fell, you knew there were toxic situations and sick conferences left behind.

The WAC was on its deathbed and the Big East was teetering on existence. The Big-12 infighting was awful, while The Pac 10-seemed unfulfilled. The Mountain West still worried about more poachers hidden in the bushes. When they got done, the only stable thing left was the powerful SEC, and maybe the Ivy League, where Magna Cum Laude awards are more important than Heisman Trophy votes. Texas A&M thinks its mail will be sent to the SEC, but all of its former partners are screaming, see you in court for violating your blood oath in the Big 12.

No one seems willing to forgive Syracuse and Pitt for bolting in the middle of the night, leaving the Big East to go to the ACC. But good luck playing all those games on Tobacco Road, where you will forever be viewed as a carpetbagger. For some odd reason, the Mountain West thinks some type of merger with Conference USA makes sense, though I don't know playing Marshall or Tulsa will fill Qualcomm Stadium. The Big East and Big 12 (or what’s left of them) decided not to merge and think they can carry on as wounded as they are.

If someone hits the red button and nuclear winter becomes reality, I don't know what will happen to who is left standing when the music stops and the chairs are filled. Right now the fail-safe switch is on and no one seems ready to launch a strike to go to a 16-team league. The saddest part of all this is the history and rivalry and hatred of college football programs. Nebraska vs. Oklahoma is gone forever. BYU vs. Utah has become extinct. It's about TV contracts, money, and big sized markets. It's no longer Bevo, the Aztec warrior, the Nittany Lion or the Orange man mascot at the Carrier Dome.

The BCS system for post season play continues to be a firefight. Bowl games, (36 of them) no longer carry the shiny star status they used to. Hell, nine bowl games were played after the January 1 date last winter. Too many (6-6) teams want a place to play, and empty seats, crummy teams, and bad weather bowl games can be found everywhere.. The NCAA has its hands full with scandals right now. There are currently 10 on going investigations of different college football programs nationwide.

Where is NCAA President Mark Emmert when all this is going on? Quit worrying about rules about how many carrots players get at their training tables and start paying attention to those ruining the game. It's no longer just sleazy agents, runners, AAU coaches or $100 handshakes from dirty alums. Now it's school presidents and conference commissioners and power hungry athletic directors that you have to monitor.

Remember great games, great players and great Saturday afternoons? Give me back the specialness, even if it is Ohio University vs. Toledo or Dartmouth vs. Brown. Yes, Michigan vs. Ohio State and USC vs. UCLA are important, but they don't see to mean as much now. College football today is like the "Tilt-a-Whirl" at your county fair. Upside down, and like the kid with too much cotton candy, watching the clowns run the circus.

You get might get sick watching this wild ride amidst all this dirt.