Cupcakes and Cream Puffs

Mr. Dick Vitale made the word"cupcake"famous along college basketball circles when he used to rant and rave about some big time college basketball programs playing cupcakes to soften up their schedules. In college basketball, you have around 335 Division 1 program classified as High Major, Mid Major, and Low Major programs. Some big time programs have out of sight budgets and some of the low major programs have minimal budget to go out and recruit. So in Division 1 basketball you have a variance of degrees of talent from the # 1 program to the # 335 program. Now in football, you have Division 1A and 1AA. 1A programs have 85 players on scholarship and 1AA programs are maxed out at 63. That is a huge difference of 22 additional players on full scholarship. 1A are supposed to beat up on 1AA opponents. Not only the scholarship differential but you also have a recruiting budget differential from 1A to 1AA. It is hard to call 1AA programs "Cupcakes" when they are playing 1A programs in football. But let's look what happened this past weekend. 1AA Jacksonville State goes into Ole Miss and beats them in overtime 49-48. Ole Miss is pumping guys into the NFL(Steelers Mike Wallace), Ole Miss has a great budget, Ole Miss has 85 scholarships. Most people do not even know that Jacksonville State is in Alabama. They received a nice guarantee for playing Ole Miss. Also, North Dakota State goes into Kansas and beats them 6 to 3 and spoils former U at Buffalo Coach Turner Gill's debut. Same scenario as Jacksonville State. People may disagree, but 1AA programs are not "cupcakes." The cupcakes to me are the 1A programs with 85 scholarships and good recruiting budgets that never win. They should be classified the "cupcakes" or maybe even better terminology calling them "cream puffs." There are some out there in the mix of the 120 Division 1A's. Iowa State was one for a while until former Pitt Defensive co-ordinator Paul Rhoads took over the helm. They are not a "cream puff" any more.