Rankings unchanged
Alabama is 1, Notre Dame 2, Clemson 3 and THE Ohio State is 4. That's how the college football playoff committee viewed the top of the realm.
From there, Texas A&M is a clear 5 and waits to see the movings and shakings of this upcoming championship Saturday. More on that in a moment.
The rest of the ranking is flawed to a point that there are sweeping generalizations to be made from a schizophrenic top 15 that seems pulled from a hat as much as it was culled from the action in helmets.
Iowa State is 6. A two-loss Iowa State, including a two-score set-back to Louisiana in the season opener. Florida dropped one spot after losing to a shell of a version of LSU that is now 4-5.
That's the same Louisiana team that unbeaten Coastal Carolina beat and will face again in the Sun Belt title game this weekend.
Also puzzling is the fact that unbeaten Cincinnati fell one spot - the same as Florida mind you - for not playing.
So, the chances of chaos in this college football playoff truly hinge on either on a couple of double-digit upsets.
First, if Notre Dame beats Clemson, which is an 11-point favorite, well, the following things will happen:
> Dabo Swinney will go into full-blown political spin mode. Buckets would he lay it on thick;
> A&M and the SEC would campaign desperately or that final spot, which would seem undesirable at best for the committee considering it would pit a rematch between the Aggies and all-powerful Alabama in a game the Tide eked out 52-24 on the first Saturday of October;
Now, if Notre Dame and Northwestern both win - NU is a 20-point underdog vs. THE Ohio State in the gerry(faust)mandered Big Ten title game - then Clemson likely would have another mulligan as the 4 seed.
But a few things are clear. A few others could not be more cloudy.
Alabama is in. Period, end of conversation. And you know what? The Tide earned that right.
I think Notre Dame is in, unless Clemson drops a 50-burger on them in a five-TD win, and even then, the committee and its TV partners need the Irish involved. (And let's not pretend that is not part of this.)
Because it is simply impossible to rationalize away the hypocrisy of this list.
Hey, I'm good with a 5-0 THE Ohio State being there. I believe they are that good and the cancellations were 100 percent not their fault. It's the COVID year.
But saying every game matters - when Florida losing to a short-handed LSU bunch and Cincinnati not playing gets the same result; Iowa State's opening loss to Louisiana - no longer rings true. And when that is lost, so too is college football's most valuable asset - the best regular season in sports.
And it's not just the little brother programs in the Group of Five conferences. Did you know that USC is unbeaten? Yes, that USC. And the Trojans are 13th. Really?
We have said it multiple times and I think it is worth repeating: While I am against anything that will detract from the greatness that is the college football regular season, and I believe expansion of the playoff field will do just that, I am befuddled as to why Bill Hancock and the College Football Playoff poohbahs did not take the one-and-be-done chance that the craziness of 2020 offered and tried something different.
Even if that change proved to be bad, so what in this year of consistently bad, then we know, right?
Because in a season with dreadful ratings, here's betting an A&M-Alabama semifinal rematch - with the Tide favored by 24 - would draw something akin to the Army-Navy game last week.
NBA looming
Yes, it feels like the NBA ended sometime last week, but it's restart is less than a week away.
Honestly.
But the biggest news of Tuesday from the NBA involved Giannis Antetokounmpo signing a max extension with the small market Milwaukee Bucks.
It was a head-turning deal for sure, and not just because of the money.
(That said, the money is pretty staggering. He signed a five-year, $228.2 million extension with the Bucks that will pay him $51,935,360 in the final year of the deal in 2025-26. If he plays every game in that season, he will be paid $633,358.05 per game. In his seven-plus years in the NBA, Antetokounmpo has signed deals that will pay him $336.8 million to play basketball.)
Big picture, the ability of a non-big market franchise to keep an elite-level superduperstar is a huge deal that has to give hope to some of the other teams across the NBA that are not in NYC, L.A. or on South Beach.
And one of the interesting talking points about Giannis staying was that he did so because he did not grow up in America. Seriously.
Giannis played on the national teams in Greece in his age group and above. He was not part of the AAU culture in which young elite basketball players are recruited from the ages of 7 and up.
So Giannis was not looking to join a super-team like so many of his peers.
Thoughts?
MLB winter meetings
We have become a sports culture that covets the transaction almost as much as the actual action.
Trades. Anything but free agents. Signings. Deals and firings. We love the speculation because in large part it offers the rarest and most special emotion for every sports fan.
Hope.
Normally, the baseball winter meetings are dripping with that eternal spring of possibility. This year - this cursed 2020 - the MLB winter gathering is virtual and of course it swings on the lingering impacts of the financial disaster that was the COVID season we just completed.
Owners are calling for wide-spread vaccinations before spring training and a delayed start to the season.
While there was no word on the vaccinations, players responded by saying they will be there for spring and expect to pay the entire 162-game schedule.
No big decisions looming - other than the Indians changing their name before the 2022 season - so the hope of the offseason switches to simply hoping for something that resembles a normal season.
Anyone else ready for 2020 to hurry on out?
This and that
- Wow today is the first day of the early signing period. Hard to remember a time when I cared less about recruiting than I do right now, and to be honest, how would any player sign with Auburn right now?
- We discussed Tuesday the eye-popping bad beat the last-play safety dropped on bettors who had the Browns plus the 3. Well DraftKings refunded the money lost for those who had the Browns in pre-game bets of Cleveland plus-3, plus-3.5, and plus-4.5. Granted they traded the money in site credit, which can't be cashed unless you win a new bet, but it was still a gesture that was north of $750K.
- Speaking of DraftKings, the betting house is now offering git cards at various convenience stores. Seriously.
- OK, I saw a commercial this morning about a movie that is coming to theaters tomorrow. Seriously. Something called "Monster Hunters" is actually hitting the big screen.
- OK, we're headed into the fantasy football semifinals. We're the 2 seed. We had a boss draft and turned excellent running back depth into a couple of trade pieces that allowed us to acquire Davante Adams (wonderful addition) and Christian McCaffrey (who has played exactly one game for the Wing and A Helaires). Keep your fingers crossed the C-Mac can play this week, otherwise well, that swing for the title fence looks like a pretty big whiff.
- You know the rules. Here's Paschall on UT fan favorite Trey Smith, who has quite the roller coaster ride in his time in Knoxville and a preview on the SEC title game.
- Speaking of Paschall, here's his report on the basketball Vols, who simply crushed App State on Tuesday night. Defensively, UT is legit.
- Alabama wide receiver DeVonta Smith is now surging to the top of the Heisman straw polls. And rightfully so. That dude is great.
- Congrats to Tara VanDerveer for passing the legendary Pat Summitt for the most wins in women's college basketball history. That gives her a very strong argument as the No. 3 women's basketball coach of all time, and it's a distance third behind Geno and Pat.
Today's questions
Which way Wednesday starts this way
ESPN bigwigs announced the new SportsCenter rotation on Tuesday. More here. Which current ESPN anchor is the best? (Remember, that's different from the analysts like Bilas or Riddick and also different from the 'Insiders' like Woj and Schefter.)
Speaking of movies, which is the last movie you saw in a theater?
Which sporting day/event did you once really care about but now do not give a flip about? Mine is easily college football recruiting.
Which will happen first, Luka will win a title in Dallas or Giannis will win a title with the Bucs?
As for today, Dec. 16, let's review.
Benjamin Bratt is 57 today. Thought he would have had a better career than he did.
Frank Deford is 82 today. Rushmore of all-time sportswriters.
Go and remember the mailbag.