By
Pete Fiutak
What's your beef? ... E-mail with your
thoughts
Past Whimsys
2006 COWs
| Bowl Musings, Part Two
If this column
sucks, it’s not my fault …
My best receiver injured his ankle early on,
and then the rest of the column went into the tank.
Ah, my Lord, we’ve lost the college football season, and the
Millennium Falcon, in an asteroid field, but ack auuuugh arrrrrrrrr …
(cue the Darth Vader music).
Let the college football PR disaster between the Sugar Bowl and the
national championship be a lesson to the powers-that-be. Everyone loves
college football on New Year's Day, and they've even gotten into, and
accepted, the night games on the second, third, and fourth. After that,
you'll lose to the Evil Empire, a.k.a., the NFL.
I was jacked up about the BCS Championship Game. You were jacked up
about the BCS Championship game. Unfortunately, outside of the good
people of Columbus and Gainesville, we were alone until Florida made
news with its blowout win.
After a great New Year’s Day of bowl games, the Boise State win, and the
destruction of Notre Dame, the entire sports world was talking college
football. Everyone wanted to fire off their opinions about the games,
every wanted to replay them, everyone wanted to analyze them over and
over again. And then came NFL Wild Card Weekend making the national
title, and its irrelevance to so many, the story over the game itself to
the point where it became fashionable to dismiss college football's
biggest event.
Even though the playoff games were awful and poorly played, all the talk
was about Tony Romo’s fumble, the Indy run defense against Larry
Johnson, Bill Belichick shoving a cameraman, and the fantastic matchups
in the next round. Even baseball, freakin’ baseball, got ink and
air time with debates about whether or not Mark McGwire would get into
the Hall of Fame and if Cal Ripkin would get 100% of the vote.
I was a guest on 14 radio shows on Monday, and every one led into the
segment with something like, “Let’s switch gears a bit and talk college
football.”
Switch gears? On national championship day?! (Heavy sigh)
Worse yet, the college football discussion was partly about Bobby
Petrino going to Atlanta and Calvin Johnson, JaMarcus Russell and Alan
Branch leaving early for the NFL. All of a sudden Ohio State vs. Florida
didn’t matter, and the big boys should've seen this coming.
Had the title game been played on January 4th, or even Friday the 5th,
it would’ve had all the hype to itself, everyone would’ve cared,
everyone would’ve been talking about it the next day, and then they
would’ve moved all focus to the NFL. As it turned out, there was nothing
but a big yawn of indifference about the game, just like no one cared
about week 17 of the NFL season when the bowls were kicking into
overdrive, and after it was over, it got about a half a day of press
before it was back to the Hall of Fame voting and the NFL playoffs.
Hey Florida, thanks for such an amazing show, now go over there and sit
quietly while we talk about something else. It wasn’t right.
While the timing of the game was a killer, it also didn’t help that Fox
was televising it. How much national title talk was there on
SportsCenter throughout the week? It didn’t even get the lead item on
ESPN.com until late afternoon on the day of the game, being relegated to
the side like the WNBA draft or a big day from Kobe.
Had it been played on ABC, ESPN’s sister network, you’d have had feature
after feature about the game, hype that would’ve gotten to the point of
sickening, and promotion that would’ve made it seem like the biggest
event in the history of mankind. ESPN isn’t about sports, it’s about
marketing, and unfortunately in today’s day and age, if you don’t have
the network’s attention, there’s no buzz about you.
So will the national title matter again, or was this the beginning of a
freefall into obscurity, much like college basketball’s championship?
(Everyone cares about the first four games of the NCAA tournament
because of their pools, the distraction from their dreary Thursday and
Friday work day, and the Madness, people sort of care about the Final
Four, and no one gives a hoot about the title game.) Things should get
better when the BCS Championship is midweek instead of Monday, with a
full day to pump it up, but the schedule needs to be changed quickly.
New Year’s Day should be the big bowl day with the Rose in the late
afternoon and the Fiesta that night. The Orange should be on the 2nd,
the Sugar on the 3rd, and the title game on the 4th.
Go ahead and keep the International Bowl on the 6th and the GMAC Bowl on
the 7th if you want.
New Alabama head coach Nick Saban has flatly denied any rumors ...
that he's in discussions with the Los Rios Community College
District for the assistant dance professor opening at Folsom Lake
College in Sacramento.
In other words, if you’re for a playoff, you might as well have
closed down the East Bank-bound bridge and blown up the levees … BCS
head honcho Mike Silve said in his press conference with the Football
Writers Association of America that there’s no way there can be a
plus-one, or a playoff of any sort, until after the Fox contract runs
out in 2010 (although he did leave open the possibility that it was
doable some day). He also stated that the last thing the BCSers want to
do was hurt New Orleans, who needs the business of a national title
game, by changing things up for next year.
Whether you’re for a playoff or not, everything is in place for things
to be changed right now, and if everyone really wanted to make it
happen, it would. (Wouldn't Fox be much happier if it got a four-team
playoff instead of the current system? The ad buys would go through the
roof.) The BCS Championship Game is already there a week after the bowl
games; it's not like the system would have to be altered.
However, as always seems to be the case, they're going to screw it up.
The first plan, for after 2010, would be to play the BCS bowls sticking
with the traditional ties (Big Ten vs. Pac 10 in the Rose, Big 12 to
Fiesta, SEC to the Sugar), and then come up with another post-bowl BCS
ranking to determine No. 1 vs. No. 2.
Two major problems: 1) It's not fair. What if No. 1 Ohio State plays No.
2 USC in the Rose Bowl, and No. 3 Florida gets No. 21 Big East champion
in the Sugar? Florida gets a walk-in-the-park, while the Rose Bowl
winner has to beat its head against the wall to move on. 2) What if No.
1 Ohio State beats No. 2 USC in the Rose Bowl in a triple-overtime
thriller, and USC finishes No. 2 in the final, final BCS rankings?
Should there be a repeat a week later?
It should be this simple: The No. 1 conference champion (Ohio State,
this year) vs. the No. 4 conference champion (Louisville) in one game,
the No. 2 conference champion (Florida) vs. the No. 3 conference
champion (USC) in another (with the caveat that if Notre Dame finishes
in the top four, it's in), with the winners playing in the BCS
Championship game. No one outside of Boise, Idaho would have any beef of
any sort, the integrity of the regular season would remain intact
because you have to win your conference title to get in to the Final
Four, and there’s no fluky playoff with only the one extra game. I want
to hear one sane, rational argument about why this can’t be done right
now, and I want to hear it from …
Don’t pay any attention to the men behind the curtain … It’s time
to stop being obtuse and using (cue the dramatic music and use a big,
booming voice) The College Presidents as a barrier to get by before we
have a rational way to make 99% of the college football world happy. If
the NCAA didn’t cower to the bowl people, it would have its playoff, or
plus-one, tomorrow. (Again, cue the dramatic music and use a big,
booming voice) The College Presidents don't have as much to do with
this, and they don't care, as much as you might think.
New Alabama head coach Nick Saban has flatly denied any rumors ...
that he's the No. 2 candidate for the Pizzeria Sales Specialist
position at the Grande Cheese Company in Seattle.
And good luck getting that No. 2 from Aaron Brooks … It appears
obvious that draftniks and NFL player personnel guys are way, way, way
too easily swayed by bowl games because that's one of the few times they
seem to actually watch the top players. Last year, most were saying
Vince Young should come back for his senior year, and then after a
transcendent performance against USC, he became a top draft pick. Years of seasoning and tutoring under Chuck Weis told everyone that
Brady Quinn should be the number one pick in the 2007 draft, while
JaMarcus Russell was on the fence as far as coming back to LSU or not.
One blowout win over a woefully overmatched Irish secondary, and now
Russell is thought by some to be the number one pick in the draft.
Didn’t anyone notice Russell’s size, athleticism and arm before the
Sugar Bowl? Didn’t anyone watch Quinn against Michigan and USC? I love
Russell as a pro prospect, but not for Oakland. Quinn is used to playing
behind a lousy offensive line.
Then again, Mike Price appeared to be on the right track … Saban
isn’t the college football version of Larry Brown, and he hasn’t taken a
job that 99% of all other coaches wouldn’t have jumped on in a
heartbeat. Despite all the weeping and gnashing of teeth, his career has
gone in a logical progression. He cut his head coaching teeth at
Michigan State, got offered the LSU job, took it, won a national title,
became the "it" coach, jumped to the Miami Dolphins, realized he didn’t
really like not being able to patch the holes with a big recruiting
class and wanted to get back into the college game, was offered a deal
by Alabama that would pay about as much as his gig with the Fins, and
took it. While he’s been weasely in the way he’s gone about doing all
this with his various denials and lies, the actual job jumping is par
for the coaching course.
New Alabama head coach Nick Saban has flatly denied any rumors ...
that he's a candidate for the 12-4 shift wearing the Mr. Pickle
outfit handing out fliers for the Captain Submarine in Lubbock, Texas.
And they didn’t go unbeaten, either … While Florida fans will
deservedly be obnoxious until early April as the dream of dreams has
come true holding the national titles in both basketball and football,
it might not have been a first. Kentucky is listed in the NCAA record
book as the 1950 football national champion after winning the Sugar Bowl
over Oklahoma. Back in the day, national champions were crowned before
the bowls. The 1951 hoops team won the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament,
meaning that UK also could lay claim to the double-double.
The C.O.W. airing of the grievances
followed by the feats of strength
Ten things I’m a tad grouchy about.
10. Non-college media types have to stop whining about wanting
playoffs unless they know what they're talking about.
Everyone wants a college football playoff of some sort, but if I
hear one more talking head, newspaper columnist, or radio loudmouth,
who’s only interested in the sport for about five days out of the year,
say they want a playoff to determine who the best team really is,
like all the other sports do, I’m going to break something tasteful.
Were the Pittsburgh Steelers really the best
team in the NFL in 2005, or did they just play really well over the
second half of the year? Was George Mason really one of the four best
teams in college basketball last year, or did it get smoking hot over a
miraculous four-game stretch? No one’s arguing that the BCS is weird,
but college football gets it right far more than the other sports do
when it comes to crowning a true champion. Far more. As I've said
before, if you're all about playoffs, then throw out the regular season
in every sport, play one big playoff with every team, and be done with
it. If you're going to have a regular season, then make it count like
college football does.
9. The We Beat Notre Dame fallacy
LSU fans are screaming and yelling that their team should be number
two over USC after the Sugar Bowl blowout over Notre Dame. While LSU is
a great, top ten-caliber team, it blew out a bunch of awful teams at
home, came up with nice wins over Arkansas and Tennessee (who later got
beaten by Big Ten teams in the bowls), and crushed Notre Dame. Everyone
thought Michigan was the bee’s knees after dismantling the overblown
Irish. The world couldn’t get USC to Glendale fast enough after it took
its turn at bat in late November. Last year, Ohio State paved the way to
a preseason number one spot after its Fiesta Bowl win over Charlie’s
boys. Everyone watches Notre Dame, so everyone sees what happens when a
great team calls wins in a walk. Don’t think your team did something
special just because it’s part of the crowd.
8. “No one respects the SEC”
If you’re a Boise State fan, go ahead and chirp away. No one thought
your team would do that against Oklahoma, and since you have no
history of being the national spotlight, enjoy it. However, to all SEC
fans who are unnecessarily and falsely angry about how no one gave the
SEC any respect, I ask you to provide the web article, newspaper clip,
or YouTube clip of anyone at the end of this season who said any
conference other than the SEC was the best in the country. Everyone
respects the SEC, that’s part of the reason Florida got into the
national title game. Go find something else to be angry about.
7. Death of the myth (again)
(Taking a deep breath in disgust for having to keep writing about
this) Please, please, please, stop being lazy by saying the SEC is
faster than everyone else just because Florida blew out Ohio State and
LSU ran past Notre Dame. I’ll bet you four dollars and a bag of CornNuts
that Ohio State’s two-deep runs a collective faster 40 time than
Florida’s two-deep.
There’s a difference between playing fast and
being fast, and the great teams can combine the two. When a team has a great gameplan, is executing it to perfection, has a high energy level, and is
in a groove, it’ll play very, very fast. That doesn’t necessarily mean
the team is actually faster than the other. It means it's sniffing out the plays better
on defense and doing a better job of getting its speedy players in the
open field on offense. One guy with warp speed tearing off a big run
doesn't mean the entire team is faster than any other.
Of course Florida and LSU are lights-out fast. Teams with four and five
star recruits tend to be speedy, and that includes just about all the
ones that are top-ten worthy.
But even other teams have great athletes.
Which team has cranked out more NFL draft weekend picks over the last
six years: USC, Texas, LSU, Oklahoma, Auburn, or
Wisconsin? Nope, you're wrong. It's those supposedly slow,
unathletic Badgers (and it wasn't all linemen getting picked).
The Arkansas defensive front was quicker than the big, stodgy Wisconsin
offensive line, but the Badger receiving corps and secondary, full of
4.39ers, can move. Penn State was just as fast as Tennessee in its
Outback Bowl win. Ohio State has former World’s Fastest Dude Butch
Reynolds helping out all the five-star, NFL athletes as the strength and
conditioning coach; watch the draft lists for how fast these Buckeyes
are.
Does Vanderbilt play fast? How's Kentucky's speed. That Mississippi
State team can really fly, right? Instead of saying the SEC is faster,
just say the best teams in the SEC occasionally play better than
everyone else, just like the best teams in the ACC, Pac 10, Big 12, and
Big Ten occasionally play better than everyone else. With that said …
6. I still want to see the 1997 Michigan national championship team
play someone.
In this week’s Let It Go file, after watching Michigan get ripped up
by USC in the Rose Bowl, and seeing Ohio State's performance in the
title game, I’d like to find a way to go back and see what the 1997
national champion Wolverines would’ve done against 1997 Florida, Florida
State, Georgia, Tennessee, LSU, Auburn, or what appeared to be that
year's best team at the end of the year, Nebraska. Even more so than the
2004 USC-Oklahoma-Auburn fiasco, the historian side of me has the most
questions about the overall validity of that Michigan national title
5. The world wants to see Notre Dame. Deal with it.
While you and I might be sick of seeing Notre Dame getting
obliterated by great teams in high-profile games, the sports world wants
to watch the Irish. That’s the way it’s been ever since the TV was
invented, and it will be that way as long as they play college football.
While Notre Dame’s BCS deal might be unfair to the other 118 teams, it
also means that the opponent will get a higher profile than it probably
had all season long. About five people on the West Coast saw LSU play
this year, but everyone was watching the Sugar Bowl.
4. Just because Boise State beat Oklahoma, that doesn’t mean the
“little guy” always deserves a shot.
Boise State isn’t a one-hit wonder. This is a team that’s won as
much as any team over the last decade, has routinely done well when it’s
had a shot against BCS conference teams, and has won WAC title after WAC
title after WAC title. Those years of building a foundation for a
winning program helped pave the way for the 2006 juggernaut. In other
words, it earned everything it got and was overdue for the big stage.
That doesn't mean an 11-1 non-BCS conference team belongs in a big money
game next year.
3. Prediction. In the next two years, there are going to be a slew of
gigantic job openings like college football has never seen.
I’ve just come out of my Mr. Peabody wayback machine, and the future
is extremely interesting. By the start of the 2009 season, Charlie Weis
will be the head coach of the New York Giants (a $15 million buyout is
like a trip to Starbucks for an NFL team), Pete Carroll will be the head
coach of the Dallas Cowboys (Jerry Jones won't have just anyone coaching
in that new billion-dollar stadium), Jim Tressel will be the head coach
of the Cleveland Browns, Urban Meyer will be the head coach of the Tampa
Bay Buccaneers, Lloyd Carr will be canned, and Joe Paterno and Bobby
Bowden will retire. Fine, so maybe only a few of those will actually
happen, but there are way too many things going on right now, way too
many people talking, and way too much coin and power being thrown about
for these superstar coaches to all stay put. Can you imagine how crazy
things might be if Notre Dame, USC, Ohio State, Florida, Michigan, Penn
State and Florida State are all looking for coaches over the next few
years? It’s possible.
2. The Heisman has to be awarded on the day after the national
championship
We all blew it on the Reggie Bush over Vince Young call last year,
and after the ugly BCS Championship game, it's human nature to
second-guess the choice of Troy Smith as the runaway Heisman winner.
However, who was the second option? Darren McFadden and Brady Quinn both
lost in their bowl games, and Mike Hart had an awful day against USC.
Colt Brennan? Ray Rice? If nothing else, it would’ve been a fantastic
debate. I’ve literally sat here for the last ten minutes trying to
figure out what my post-bowl Heisman ballot would be (and I'm still not
happy about it). I finally decided it’d be 1) Brennan, 2) Smith, 3) John
Beck.
1. Did Florida actually underachieve?
My knee-jerk reaction to the BCS Championship was that everyone
should’ve scrutinized the schedules a little bit better and realized
that Ohio State really didn’t play anyone for a huge chunk of the
season. Upon further review (I think I might be the only non-Gator fan
in America to have watched the game again), I just think the Buckeyes
went into the tank and Florida played out of its melon and up to its
full capabilities.
Remember, I’ve said all season long that the Buckeyes were a mediocre
No. 1 team and that Florida deserved more attention because of its
schedule, but I’m not prepared to say the Gators would’ve beaten the
Buckeyes nine out of ten times, and I’m not prepared to say they
would’ve won had the matchup been on October 8th instead of January 8th.
Florida looked way too flawed and way too average too many times this
year to not think the BCS Championship game was a bit of an aberration.
It has to be asked; did Florida actually underachieve during the regular
season? The Buckeye coaching staff was completely outmatched and the
team appeared to be totally unprepared, but Florida played at a level it
hadn’t been at all season long. If the Gators really were that
good, then why did they need a blocked field goal to beat South
Carolina? Why did they struggle so much with Tennessee, Georgia,
Vanderbilt and Florida State? How did they lose to an Auburn team, which
in hindsight, was far more average than its final record might indicate?
While the schedule was brutal, either Florida didn’t play up to its
talent level all year long, or the way the BCS Championship game played
out was a fluke (not Florida winning, the unbelievable blowout). It
can’t be both.
New Alabama head coach Nick Saban has flatly denied any rumors
... that Wayne Huizenga flew to
Tuscaloosa to interview him for the open Miami Dolphins head coaching
job.
More provocative musings and tidbits to make every woman want you and
every man want to be you (or vice versa).
- Want the 2007 version of 2006 Notre Dame,
or, the team everyone will overrate in the preseason? Michigan. To the
naked eye, the Wolverines appear to be great with Chad Henne, Mike Hart
and Mario Manningham returning, but some big holes need to be filled on
the offensive line, while the early
departure of All-America Alan Branch kills the defensive line that
already loses LaMarr Woodley and Rondell Biggs. You heard it here first;
Michigan will be in everyone's top five, but with so many teams
returning loaded, it probably should be around 15 to 20.
- Ohio’s Frank Solich, formerly of Nebraska, is being considered for the
open Minnesota job. While the option and a strong running game certainly
has a place in major college football, and you can win with it,
Minnesota needs to make a much bigger splash.
- I’ve been on Notre Dame all year long for being average, and I’ve
dogged everyone who drank the Kool-Aid early on this year, but now it’s
time to ease back. This was an average team, certainly not a top five
squad, but the schedule wasn’t a complete pile of garbage. The Irish
beat Georgia Tech in Atlanta, blew out the same Penn State team that
beat Tennessee, beat Purdue, UCLA and Navy, who all went to bowls. To
everyone who wants to get on ND for playing the service academies every
year, that’s the equivalent of most teams playing the dregs in their
leagues.
- Troy Smith’s post-game media session after the awful performance
against Florida should be required viewing for all star players. That’s
how you lose with class.
- Every year, receivers are the highest-profile draft busts (cough, Troy
Williamson, cough), and South Carolina WR Sidney Rice bears major
scrutiny after choosing to leave early. He has all the tools and
measurables, but I would’ve liked to have seen him stay another year
just to see him up his all-around game and be more consistent against
the top teams.
C.O.W. shameless gimmick item …
The weekly five Overrated/Underrated aspects
of the world
1) Overrated:
Jeremy Shockey ... Underrated:
Earl Everett
2) Overrated: Donald vs. Rosie … Underrated: Sorority girl pillow fights
3) Overrated:
Baseball Hall of Fame
voters who didn’t pick Cal Ripken or Tony Gwynn on the first ballot
... Underrated: Bert Blyleven
4) Overrated: The season premiere of 24 ... Underrated: The
season premiere of Rome
5) Overrated: The 2006 college football season
... Underrated: The 2007 college
football season
New Alabama head coach Nick Saban has flatly denied any rumors ...
that he's a candidate for the 12-4 shift wearing the Mr. Pickle
outfit handing out fliers for the Captain Submarine in Lubbock, Texas.
Sorry this column sucked, but it wasn’t my fault … I'm a little
off after being hit by a car while streaking. I wasn't celebrating the
Florida win; I simply had a particularly good quesadilla.
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