1. I don’t want to get on a soapbox, but ...
Since we’re days from the official beginning of the bitching and moaning season, it’s my duty to inform everyone that the College Football Playoff system you hold near and dear to your fan-fueled, tattered heart isn’t any different than the slop you think it replaced.
They say one thing, they do another.
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They rank teams with wild inconsistency, make excuses, then try to make it up later.
They use this nebulous concept of “metrics” to break down teams, then ultimately choose on gut feeling.
I ask you, Mr. and Mrs America, what system does this sound like?
“With the exception of more (teams), I’m not exactly sure how different it is from anything else we’ve had,” TCU coach Gary Patterson said this offseason.
Why would he think anything different? Why would any team this fall worth its weight in CFP sales pitch propaganda think any different?
Get ready, Alabama, the committee may or may not use those five turnovers in a loss to Ole Miss against you. Watch out, Michigan State, the committee may or may not think that Michigan win is tainted.
If we’ve learned anything about Year 1 of the CFP it’s this: it is no better at eliminating controversy — in fact, it actively feeds it — than the beaten-down BCS.
Case in point, TCU. The Frogs were the jewel of the new system in 2014, a shining example why the 13-member committee was developed: to eliminate those ill-informed pollsters and their inane voting habits and focus on what’s real and true. You know, like opinions.
Some opinions are more informed than others, Mr. Orwell.
TCU, you see, lost last year on the road by three points to Baylor, but those measured, thoughtful committee members declared head-to-head meant nothing; that TCU was ranked ahead of Baylor because of its — this is a key point — body of work.
So the final week of the season arrives, and No. 3 TCU hammers Iowa State 55-3, No. 5 Ohio State clobbers Wisconsin 59-0, and No. 6 Baylor beats Kansas State 38-27. From that, the committee dropped TCU three spots, and jumped Baylor — which trailed TCU for weeks despite head-to-head — ahead of TCU.
And then, in the mother of all BCS-esque/eye test moves, jumped Ohio State into the final fourth spot for the first playoff. That’s right, the team with the worst resume (a CFP metric), the team with the worst loss (a CFP metric), the team with the worst of the three best wins (best win a CFP metric) — the team with the worst body of work among the three — magically showed up as the No. 4 team.
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If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Jeff Sagarin was behind the curtain pulling the ropes. He or Barry Alvarez twisting arms.
The best part of all: Ohio State won the whole damn thing.
The worst part of all: who says TCU wouldn’t have done the same thing?
I ask you again, what system does that sound like? Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Only this committee was born because of the BCS nonsense. It’s sole — and at this point, soul — purpose was to eliminate reactionary weekends and judge a team on its body of work.
Not a 59-0 win where you get caught up in the moment of a third string quarterback doing the unthinkable. Who among us can’t see Alvarez, in his booming, commanding voice, stating he had never seen the Badgers get beat that badly in all his years in Madison when the turn came to voice his opinion?
I’m sure that wouldn’t influence committee members if he did. Wink, wink; nod, nod.
“It doesn’t matter what it is,” LSU coach Les Miles said this summer. “It’s what we’re using.”
I ask you, where have we heard that before?
2. Thumping their chests
Ladies and gentlemen, your Clemson Tigers: from a stupid, nonsensical, lazy, I’m a bobblehead and I have to say something cute in five seconds narrative, to the team that plays so devastatingly complete, it gets a coach fired.
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3. The raging debates
In the spirit of the aforementioned embarking on the season of whining and complaining, the top CFP excuses for the top one-loss teams:
— Stanford
The whining: You fly two time zones away, play a game at the local time of 11 a.m. (that’s 9 a.m. on The Farm) and try to get mentally into it.
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The CFP response: Stanford only had nine months to get ready for that time change.
— Notre Dame
The whining: We’ve lost five key starters, including our starting quarterback, and our only loss is by two points on the road to a top three team in a tropical storm.
The CFP response: At least you didn’t blow the whole two-point conversion thing while you were leading like, you know, some people.
— Florida
The whining: LSU had to trick its way to beating us at home, and only after we dropped a touchdown pass on the last drive.
The CFP response: There’s a lot of green left in that November putt, bub.
— Oklahoma
The whining: It was a rivalry game, and Texas is much better than a 35-point loss to Notre Dame and a 43-point loss to TCU.
The CFP response: I don’t know why you even try.
— Alabama
The whining: We had five turnovers and gave away the Ole Miss game.
The CFP response: Sounds good, Mr. Saban.
4. Above reproach
I’m going to say this once, and you just let it sink in, OK?
Earlier this week Ohio State coach Urban Meyer criticized the way FSU dealt with the Jameis Winston crab legs incident.
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I mean, just think about that.
“It would have been hard to let that go,” Meyer told Bill O’Reilly while promoting his new book during a bye week.
It would be easy to remind everyone that since the mid-2000s there has been no bigger enabler for poor player behavior in all of college football than Meyer. Player arrest, firsthand accounts and anecdotal evidence make that abundantly clear.
You know what else is clear? The more you win, the less everyone cares how it happens — all the way to the point where you can make an absolutely foolish statement on one of the largest national television shows in the nation and not be fantastically embarrassed by it.
Good one, Urb.
5. The Weekly Five
Five things we expected to see in Pullman, Washington before Mike Leach played a game of significance:
1. The lost GameDay crew from 2003 finally showing up.
2. The triple option.
3. Pirate ships on the Palouse River.
4. A Final Four banner in The Bease.
5. An apology from Craig James
6. The choice
There are now six Power 5 job openings, each with their own unique characteristics and value. A breakdown of the six, ranked in order:
1. USC
Biggest strength: The program recruits itself in the deep and talented southern California geographic footprint — and nationally.
Biggest weakness: If you’re not winning like Pete Carroll, you’re failing spectacularly.
Best fit: Bill O’Brien, Houston Texans coach. USC doesn’t need a coach with school ties; the last two (Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian) flamed out while embarrassing the university. USC needs a no-nonsense guy who will run the program like a professional organization. Because in Los Angeles, this is their professional team.
2. South Carolina
Biggest strength: The program finally knows what it takes to compete at a high level in the best conference in the game — and isn’t afraid to spend to make it happen.
Biggest weakness: You play in the SEC. You play in a division that has been down for the better part of a decade, and will soon cycle back up with heavyweights Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. Good luck dealing with that.
Best fit: Mark Dantonio, Michigan State coach. The South Carolina alum might be ready for a new challenge — especially if the Gamecocks start throwing around $5 million a year for Dantonio and another $2-3 million for his staff to make it happen.
3. Maryland
Biggest strength: Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour and mega Maryland booster. The East Coast version of Phil Knight — and we saw what Nike did for Oregon.
Biggest weakness: Zero history, tradition and glitz and glam to attract today’s athlete. And one more thing: Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State and Penn State are your Big Ten East Division friends.
Best fit: Dan Mullen, Mississippi State. Look at Maryland’s weakness, and understand Mullen built through the identical issues at Mississippi State and had the Bulldogs on top of college football for a few weeks in 2014. Plank will pay him whatever he wants. How can Mullen say no?
4. Miami
Biggest strength: Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Hello, talent.
Biggest weakness: The stadium is 40 minutes from campus, and the facilities are either outdated or can’t match the ACC’s elite. Everyone associated with the program is living in the past instead of embracing the reality of the here and now.
Best fit: Butch Davis, out of coaching. So he’s in his early 60s, so what? He can relate to south Florida high school players like no one else can. He was the last guy who put together the greatest assemblage of talent ever on a college team in the early 2000s — then walked away for the NFL. Can the 'U' forgive one of its own for turning his back?
5. Minnesota
Biggest strength: State of the art facilities and a passionate fan base desperate for a winner. For years, many in the coaching fraternity have called Minnesota the Big Ten’s sleeping giant, “if only.” With the new facilities and cash from the Big Ten Network, the program can be elite.
Biggest weakness: No real geographic recruiting footprint; no real area to call its own. It’s not like the state of Minnesota is churning out elite high school talent. That means finding success in Ohio and Pennsylvania — and dipping into Florida — to procure talent. That’s a lot of work against a lot of other elite programs for a Minnesota program with a recent history of average.
Best fit: Matt Wells, Utah State. One of the game’s best young coaches isn’t going to leave his alma mater for any job. A dynamic personality who can win recruiting battles, and a terrific offensive mind who will energize the fan base.
6. Illinois
Biggest strength: With the right dynamic, charismatic coach, Illinois can own both Chicago and St. Louis recruiting while competing in the very winnable Big Ten West Division.
Biggest weakness: It’s a basketball school first and foremost, and everything else means nothing once late October rolls around.
Best fit: Dino Babers, Bowling Green. Would the Illini go after another MAC coach after the Beckman Experience? Two things: they’re not going to get a guy like Justin Fuente (who will have his pick of schools), and they could do a lot worse than Babers, an Art Briles protégé who oozes cool and charisma.
7. Enjoying the soak
I think I can speak for everyone when I say the campus at UCLA is a much safer place now that Josh Rosen’s homemade hot tub no longer is allowed in his dorm room.
I literally have no idea where UCLA got this soft label.
8. More on the way
It’s all the rage: coaches “retiring” midseason. And it’s not over.
A look at four more potential retirements before the end of the season:
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— Bill Snyder, Kansas State: Could have happened this week. The timing was perfect after back-to-back losses to Oklahoma and Texas by a combined 78-9 left the Wildcats 0-4 in the Big 12. The Wildcats have a bye week, and then play host to Baylor (and new QB Jarrett Stidham) on Thursday night. Lose big there, and one of the game’s greats may bow out during a nine-day stretch until the next game at Texas Tech.
— Frank Beamer, Virginia Tech: The Hokies (3-5, 1-3) play at Boston College this weekend, and a loss gives VT its third six-loss season in the last four years. The Hokies then have 12 days until they play again at Nov. 12 Georgia Tech. This won’t be so much about the administration making a move as it would be Beamer deciding to make it easy on the school he adores.
— Larry Coker, UTSA: Coker’s teams have one win and play at winless North Texas this weekend. A loss there, to a winless team with an interim coach, and we’ll all soon be reminiscing about Butch Davis handing Coker the keys to the Ferrari in South Florida more than a decade ago.
— Norm Chow, Hawaii: The Warriors are winless in the Mountain West, and the next two weeks will dictate the immediate future. If Hawaii can’t beat Air Force at home and/or UNLV on the road, three straight home games to finish the season (see: no travel, no distractions) might be the perfect spot for Chow to retire.
9. Long lost love
I don’t want to alarm the good folks of Athens, Ga., but your coach clearly is looking to get out.
Then again, that may be OK with all involved, anyway.
Georgia coach Mark Richt was asked Tuesday about his name popping up on candidates for the Miami job. And unlike the last time the job came open in 2010 and the former Miami QB shot down any notion of returning to his alma mater, this response had an eerie sense of, well, wanting.
“I don’t think much of it really,” Richt said. “I love my alma mater, the U. No doubt about it, but there’s been nobody calling or writing or texting or anything like that. So I’m sure they’ll find a great coach.”
A couple of things: When Richt was at Miami, it wasn’t the “U” — it was a program that was on the heels of nearly being shut down before Howard Schnellenberger took over. That statement from Richt is a clear message that he’s not only interested in Miami, but he’s interested in other jobs.
Richt is in the middle of his 15th season at Georgia, and is facing a critical game this weekend vs. Florida in Jacksonville. Win, and the Bulldogs control their destiny in the SEC East Division race and there’s a chance to salvage something from a season of lost expectations.
Lose and Florida all but locks up the East, Richt’s record vs. his bitter rival falls to 5-10 and Miami — or any other Power 5 job — suddenly looks like the prettiest girl at the prom.
10. Welcome to the club
Dear Lance Austin:
It’s a great time to be alive.
Sincerely,