Committee uneasiness
We woke this morning and crazy was everywhere.
Kids are going to school two hours late because of the storms. (Side note: We understand the call for safety and importance of safe travel conditions and learning environments, but either a) our parents and school administrators did not care all that much about those things back in the 1970s or we are a touch overreactive to them today. Heck, we can recall recent incidents where school was cancelled because a heating or cooling unit wasn't working. Yes, cancelled. Not to go all "Walked 5 miles to school through the snow uphill - both ways" on everyone, but it just seems a little strange, no?)
Where were we? Ah yes, the crazy. We have not had meaningful rain since May, and the Lord tried to make all of that up in one night. Our yard has transformed over the last five-plus months from grass, to cooked grass to dead grass to dirt and this morning to mud slides.
With that we also are at a place in which someone in Donald Trump's inner circle needs to tell the president-elect of the United States to stay off the social media for a while. Deal? Deal.
Which also leads us to the craziness that was last night's college poll. And the fallout. There is some clarity.
Alabama is No. 1 and we are in a place where if a miracle happened and the Tide lost in the SEC title game, they still could be No. 1. That division is because of the Tide's total dominance and the inconsistencies of the rest of the top 10.
No other power five conference team is unbeaten other than Alabama, which did not allowed a TD in November. (Forget No shave, November; Bama's defense is raising awareness with No score, November.)
But Ohio State is No. 2 without even winning its division, while the team that beat the Buckeyes is No. 7 and could very well be the conference champ of the clear best conference in football this season. And if that's where the playoff has lead us - and let's be clear, if that's what we are staring at, as we said yesterday, this is an invitational not a playoff - then the playoff is violating the one caveat we have always held: No matter how college football crowns its champ and no matter how many teams invited to the tournament, it can't take away from the regular season.
Before we go completely off the deep end, Tuesday's rankings mean little more than nothing. It's not even a starting point since the committee that says it starts from scratch every week.
OK, we'll see, and we are going to refuse to play the "what if game" for a couple of reasons.
First, it has always felt - with the exception of 2004 - the college football Gods have always teased the great masses only to have the pieces fall into place at the end and things work themselves out.
This year, however, that seems rather improbable because a lot of folks believe Ohio State is the second-best team in the country and they are done playing and have no chance to win the title of the best conference in college football.
So, if we are going play any of the cards that back Ohio State - eye-test, NFL-talent, big-time name, only-team-with-a-chance-to-beat-Alabama - we are ignoring the simple truth across all sports. What happens on the field has to be held as the truth. Period.
You win you advance.
So if the committee is bound and determined to have THE Ohio State in the field on New Year's Eve, they need either Wisconsin to beat Penn State; or Clemson or Washington to lose in its conference championship game.
Yes, those scenarios are not perfect either, considering it would bring to light that if conference championships are not supremely rewarded then conference championship games are actually determents to winning a national title. Yes, those are the doings of the conferences rather than the committee, but it still stands as the truth. And Alabama may not be the best example, and in no way would they do this - or should someone suggest it to Lord Saban - but you can make a hard argument that if there's any wobbling either way on health, Alabama should rest its players Saturday in the SEC championship game to make sure they are ready for the playoff. (And that would be an even more real scenario if/when the field expands to eight teams and there's a game two weeks after championship weekend.)
There are a couple more things that have become clear with the brokenness of the playoff this year. First, and this has been the case for a while, delivering the playoff results before Navy concludes its season is wrong a multitude of levels. Second, for all the pomp and circumstance of the committee crying for playing a tough nonconference schedule, ask Oklahoma whether they feel rewarded for putting Houston and Ohio State on the schedule? If Oklahoma had scheduled UTC and Lamar, the 11-0 Sooners would be No. 2 in the nation. Heck if they had scheduled only one of those and were 10-1 going into a chance to win the Big 12 outright, they would be among the top four. But they scheduled tough and lost and now they are going to be headed to the Sugar Bowl even as a likely conference champ. (Oklahoma is a double-digit favorite over Oklahoma State in Saturday's rivalry game that will decide the Big 12.)
So there you go. The committee needs help.
They need help on the field Saturday or they will need it among themselves to come to the realization that Ohio State likely doesn't deserve to be included, especially over Penn State.
Austin Appleby and the Florida Gators failed to score an offensive touchdown in last week's 31-13 loss at Florida State, and now they face an Alabama defense that did not give up a touchdown in November.Poll knowledge
While the intrigue and the unknown of Sunday can not be forecast - so we can't be too forlorn yet - the details involving the bowl order of the SEC was offered a little clarity.
The committee's ranking showed that unless Florida beats Alabama or loses on a last-second field goal, which would be a win compared to the way Alabama has beaten most people, that Auburn is viewed as the second-best team in the SEC. Yes, we believe that to be open for debate in a multitude of areas, but so it goes.
The Tigers were ranked 14, a spot ahead of Florida. LSU was 21st and somehow, even after losing to Vandy by double-digits, Tennessee remained in the poll at 22. If those views hold relatively consistent, it would put Alabama in the playoff, Auburn in the Sugar and Florida in the Citrus as long as the Gators do not fall behind LSU after losing to Alabama.
From there, the SEC would assign teams into these games (with our best guess as of this morning in parenthesis):
– AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl vs. Big 12 (Texas A&M)
– AutoZone Liberty Bowl vs. Big 12 (Vandy)
– Belk Bowl vs. ACC (Georgia)
– Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl vs. ACC or Big Ten (Kentucky)
– Outback Bowl vs. Big Ten (LSU)
– TaxSlayer Bowl vs. ACC or Big Ten (Tennessee)
That would leave Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi State, which will qualify with a 5-7 record because of the APR rules, left to be placed in the Birmingham Bowl (South Carolina) and the Independence Bowl (Arkansas). Mississippi State could end up anywhere from the Las Vegas Bowl to the Heart of Dallas Bowl as an at-large fill-in for a league without a full roster of bowl-eligible teams.
Side note: It will be very interesting to see how the SEC handles the bowl placement of Georgia, considering there are several match-ups between ACC and SEC teams that could potentially pit the Bulldogs against Miami and former coach Mark Richt. (We don't believe that will happen, but it certainly is a possibility.
Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich, center, comes onto the field for an interview before an NCAA college football game against Oregon State, in Corvallis, Ore., Saturday Nov. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Timothy J. Gonzalez) Is Oregon quackers?
Oregon fired Mark Helfrich on Tuesday night.
They did so at the rather lengthy and loud appeals of mega-booster Phil Knight, the Nike founder and former Oregon runner who is 78 has been open about his desire for his alma mater to win a title in football before he dies.
Helfrich came up through the Ducks program, and was the latest internal promotion. Oregon's rise came with Knight's money and a collection of building that started with Rich Brooks, who handed it to Mike Bellotti who handed it to Chip Kelly who handed it to Helfrich.
If that seems a little Old Testament, well that's because it kind of is. And it's certainly something foreign in today's 'hot name' coaching carousels. And now Oregon, the team that built from within, becomes the face of the quick ax. Oregon led its bowl game against TCU 31-0 at halftime before losing in multiple overtimes. If the Ducks had closed that loop, last year would have been another 10-win season for a program that was in the first college football playoff in 2014 with Heisman winner Marcus Mariota.
But Mariota's gone and was that high-water mark because of the success of a transcendental player. (Think Auburn and Cam in 2010 before Mean Gene Chizik was shown the door.)
Or was the defection of OC Scott Frost the undoing of a program that not only fell on hard times this, but was among the worst teams in a conference it had come close to dominating for the last decade.
Oregon made no bones about its displeasure in this season, using some biting words in its press release to announce its decision to fire Helfrich. So now there are two questions to ponder, the practical and the philosophical.
Practically, who will Oregon target, and the options are pretty wide open considering that despite the quick cool for Helfrich, there are a lot of things to like about the Ducks gig. Great support. Unbelievable facilities. Buzz among recruits. Names like Dan Mullen or even Lane Kiffin from the SEC. Maybe Frost comes back after a short stint at UCF. Is Jim McElwain interested? Who knows.
The philosophical view takes us to a place that we all may have known the game was but this is evidence. College football coaches are now one bad year away. Period. Oregon was a playoff team in 2014, and an upset and an injury away from winning 10-or-more games last year.
Now they are looking again.
There's two angles to that: If you know something is broken, letting it continue to rot does no one any good. But doesn't a certain level of previous success deserve at least some longterm trust?
Who knows, but the closing windows of coaching tenure - and the accompanying pay scale moving upward - will only continue to become more extreme.
This and that
- Bleacher Report (Slide Show!) has a monster take out piece on cheating in college football. Here it is and in it Terry Bowden says he and his staff paid players when he was at Auburn. (It's far from a mea culpa, mind you, rather it's a "the mess-I-inherited type of thing.) Thoughts?
- This is kind of surreal. JR Smith leaves the court to say hello to friend Jason Terry while the game is happening and Smith's guy scores an uncontested basket.
- Man, this Baylor University coaching search is taking some spins, right? SMU coach Chad Morris reportedly told Baylor "No thanks, it's not you it's me" and now Baylor is looking to Cal coach Sonny Dykes, according to this report.
- Speaking of crazy, because his name is being mentioned in job openings, Morris is about to get an extension from the SMU brass. Morris is 7-17 folks. Heck Dykes is 5-7 this year with losses to San Diego State and an Arizona State team that is dreadful, plus the Bears have lost four of their last five.
Today's question
We are going to skip the One-Word Wednesday portion of the show, because we need to make a couple of announcements about hallmark dates in our history.
On this day in 1487, Germany, led by Albert IV, the Duke of Bavaria, passes the Beer purity law, stating that beer only can be brewed with three ingredients: Water, Malt and Hops. That friends is government work at its finest. On this day in 1971, "Brian's Song" debuts on ABC television. On this day in 2004, Ken Jennings' 74-show run as the Jeopardy! champion ends. All told, he made more than $2.5 million, the biggest haul ever on a game show. And friends there are some birthdays of true greatness to be celebrated on this day:
Mark Twain (born in 1835), Winston Churchill (1874), Bill Walsh (1931) and Bo Jackson (1962). Now add in some high-quality folks like director Ridley Scott (1937), Billy Idol (1955), Ben Stiller (1965), Ivan 'Pudge' Rodriguez (1971) and Kaley Cuoco (1985) and there's a lot of talent born on 11/30.
Of that, there's a multitude of Rushmores to be done. We've already done the best athletes ever, so sorry Bo. (Although a quick Rushmore of SEC running backs would be, in our mind, Herschel, Bo, Darren McFadden and we have always leaned toward UGA star Frank Sinkwich but we can discuss that one.)
We'll go with two more Rushmores: Rushmore of MLB catchers, and we think Pudge is far left, and the Rushmore of Ben Stiller movies.
Go and remember the mailbag.