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Where
there's Maize and Blue smoke ...
By
Pete
Fiutak
1.
To
clean up one of my favorite sayings, don’t whiz on my
back and tell me it’s raining.
My man Richie Cirminiello got inside word on the Friday
before the SEC Championship that the Tiger players knew
that Les Miles was going to take the Michigan job and
that Bo Pelini was off to Nebraska. This was a big-time
inside tip, but doing our due diligence, we held off on
the story (trust me when I say almost any other outlet
would’ve gone with the info we had) until we could get
absolute, 100% confirmation. By that time, other media
outlets had heard the same thing, and from
different sources. Then on Saturday morning, ESPN and
Kirk Herbstreit went public with it causing LSU to react
swiftly with great vengeance and furious anger.
Again, this wasn’t exactly exclusive insider knowledge
to Herbstreit. So even after the cat was totally out of
the bag that Miles was at least thinking about Michigan, what does Miles do? He has the temerity, the
unmitigated gall, to hold a press conference just before
the SEC Championship game and feign righteous
indignation by basically suggesting that the story was
made up. The LSU official web site had in the SEC
Championship game story that Miles had “debunked an ESPN
rumor,” like the story came from a Tennessee fan on a
message board. Just because someone yells and acts all
mad, that doesn’t mean what he’s saying is necessarily
true.
What possible good would it do ESPN, or any reputable
media outlet, to lie about something like this? It’s not
like GameDay is at the forefront of investigative
journalism, and it’s not like it’s known for being
anything more than a very, very good Up With College
Football show, so if Herbstreit is going to report on
something that big, it’s going to be relatively
rock-solid. Remember, ESPN could've gotten it right, and
then the story changed because of it.
Again, we didn't have the story cold and didn't go with
it, but all indications were that Miles was at least
mentally in Ann Arbor and thinking about the opportunity, LSU stepped up to squash the
situation before the biggest game of the year, and the
marriage in Baton Rouge apparently remains intact … for
now.
Now this gets really, really interesting because Miles
is stuck. He can't go take his dream job and he has to
be Mr. LSU, even though he's a worse actor than Keanu
Reeves when it comes to talk about the Michigan gig. Now
that his team actually won the SEC title and is playing
for the national title, he can't go after the job,
Michigan needs to move on, and LSU fans are left
wondering if they really have an LSU guy coaching their
beloved team.
Here's the deal. If Miles actually signs the long term
contract with LSU, then the situation is squashed and
life goes on. But if Miles ends up taking the Michigan
job, he has to go to each and every LSU player and fan
and personally apologize for yanking their chain. Let's
wait until Michigan actually hires someone else before
closing the book on this.
And at the end of the day, it's going to be
LSU 1, USC 2 ...
By
Richard Cirminiello
3.
Nothing made sense throughout the 2007 regular season. It was
wire-to-wire mayhem marked by unimaginable surprises and a complete
upheaval of all things logical. It was a world gone mad. Or maybe
not. Yes, there were signature upsets delivered by the likes of
Appalachian State, Stanford, and Pittsburgh, and nobody anticipated
a two-loss team in the title game, but were things really as whacky
as you’ve been led to believe? Consider, for instance, the six
winners of the major conferences. West Virginia will be
representing the Big East. Most everyone had the ‘eers winning the
league in the preseason. Virginia Tech in the ACC. No surprise.
Ohio State in the Big Ten. Unexpected, sure, but it’s the Buckeyes,
so it’s not as if Minnesota took the crown. Oklahoma won the Big 12
for the sixth time this decade. USC took the Pac-10 for the sixth
year in-a-row. The SEC winner was LSU, the overwhelming favorite
before the season began. Meeting for the national championship in
New Orleans will be the Tigers and the Buckeyes, a pair of
traditional powers that have been in this position before in the 21st
century.
An odd year? You bet. However, one good look at the power brokers
heading into the bowl season reveals that things haven’t turned out
nearly as bizarre as you might think.
If you actually stayed up past midnight, you
would've liked him more
By
John
Harris
3. Colt Brennan’s circuitous college career ended early this
morning, well, at least from a regular season standpoint. It’s been a
“Long, Strange Trip” – a trip that has taken the once cocky youngster
from the brink of self-destruction to being the leader of the only
undefeated team in the nation. Three years ago, all anyone knew about
Brennan was that he was trying to resurrect (or salvage) his career at
the University of Hawaii in relative anonymity. Today? Different
story.
He missed two games
this season and still threw for 4,174 yards and 38 touchdowns on the
season. Over the last two seasons against five BCS conference teams and
Boise State (twice), Brennan has averaged 438 yards passing and four
touchdowns. Yes, that’s over two years, but it dispels the bogus lack
of competition argument, or at least quells that argument. He actually
played better against Boise State and Washington than he did all season
long.
A good number of
Heisman voters held on their votes over the weekend to see what Chase
Daniel and/or Pat White were going to do with the stage to themselves.
And, it’s a good thing they did because Brennan was able to make one
last push. All he did in the biggest game in Hawaii history was
complete 84% of his 50 passes for 442 yards and five touchdowns, leading
the Warriors back from a 21-point deficit to a 35-28 win.
I’m not saying that
he’s going to win it, but Heisman voters, just take a look. A long hard
look before you pencil in another name.
Uh, what was that
thing in Kansas City for?
By
Matthew
Zemek
4.
If the BCS insists on limiting
conferences to two BCS bowl appearances, why is it that the
third-best teams in two conferences--and two weaker conferences at
that--are in the BCS?
Kansas was the third-best team in the Big 12 (perhaps fourth-best if
you ask the Texas Longhorns), and Illinois was clearly the No. 3
team in the mediocre Big Ten. Second-place Arizona State and
second-place Missouri have to be fuming right now.
Good ol' college football. Teams bust their chops for an elusive
shot at the big time, but politics denies the Sun Devils and Tigers
at the expense of clearly inferior teams. Great. (It's time for a
break before the bowl rush.)
The gods of college
football are about to squish us like a bug
By
Pete
Fiutak
5.
If this wasn't the most fun college football season
ever, it was at least number two, going down to the
final last moments deep into the night when Hawaii
picked off Washington to save it dream year. Every
moment of this season from day one was a treat that got
better and better as the year goes on, and now it's
payback time.
I really, really hope I'm wrong, but don't we all know
exactly what's going to happen when USC plays Illinois
in the Rose Bowl? Oklahoma vs. West Virginia should be
great, but if the Sooner defense plays like it did
against Missouri in the Big 12 title game, that could be
a dog with fleas. If Georgia shows up and brings its A
game against Hawaii, the Sugar Bowl might be brutal.
Virginia Tech is playing the wrong Big 12 team in the
Orange Bowl, and it's not like there are a slew of
must-see bowl matchups up and down the line. I'm college
football boy and I love watching everyone, but I'm
having a hard time doing my Dick Vitale-like sell job on
the early bowls.
With 32 of them, the odds are good that we'll get at
least a few classics to cancel out the duds. I'm just
hoping the games don't kill the buzz of such a great
year.