1. I don’t want to get on a soapbox, but …
The moment it all went down, the exact point when Mark Emmert decided to be king for a day, no one in their right mind could have imagined Penn State as anything more than a football afterthought for the next decade. Maybe longer.
Then Bill O’Brien happened. Then Penn State hit the sweet spot again, and James Franklin happened.
Now here we are, barely 30 months removed from NCAA penalties so severe — penalties specifically designed to be worse than the dreaded death penalty of shutting down the program — no one would have blinked if Penn State football became Temple and faded away to irrelevance.
“The future is very bright here,” Franklin said. ‘We’re very excited.”
That was Franklin in the Penn State locker room on a cold New York City afternoon, taking a break from the raucous bowl victory celebration to single out a group of seniors that, by all rights, saved this program.
Guys like Mike Hull and Sam Ficken, like Bill Belton and C.J. Olaniyan; 17 seniors in all who never flinched when Emmert started swinging his mighty hammer.
They could have left without penalty and transferred to another school when the NCAA slapped Penn State with a four-year bowl ban and what seemed like 18,000 scholarship losses in response to Jerry Sandusky’s horrific crimes against humanity. Could have packed up and left the program for dead.
Instead they stayed while O’Brien and his hardscrabble south Boston personality molded this program into something no one believed it could be. They stayed while O’Brien made an NFL quarterback out of a former walk-on (Matt McGloin) and squeezed out every win in 2012, and when O’Brien landed elite quarterback Christian Hackenberg and proved you could recruit to State College, despite the stigma, after all.
They stayed when O’Brien left for the NFL and Franklin arrived from Vanderbilt, where he somehow fashioned back-to-back nine-win seasons with the SEC’s annual tomato can. Then nearly did the same thing with his first team at Penn State, winning seven games and losing three by a combined five points — and losing another (to Big Ten champ Ohio State) in overtime.
“Those guys will be remembered forever,” Franklin said. “Every win we have from here to eternity will be on their backs.”
That’s not hyperbole; that’s reality. It’s bad enough the program was ripping at the seams by two warring factions within the community (those loyal to former coach Joe Paterno, and those who wanted to move on), it was worse when O’Brien felt his only recourse to a lack of sustained, consistent support was to leave for the NFL.
The shock of O’Brien leaving may have been exactly what the program needed. Franklin’s dynamic and charismatic personality picked up where O’Brien left off, and helped the two sides slowly see each other for what they are: two groups with the same goal of showing the NCAA where it can stick it.
Is it perfect now? Not by a long shot — but it’s getting there, and each win on and off the field closes the gap. Each win in recruiting — the Lions are primed to land a top 15 class after last year’s top 25 class — brings the program one step closer.
“We’ve been fractured, no doubt,” Franklin said. “But when everyone is doing what’s best for the students, the players, the community as a whole, the ceiling is very high at Penn State.”
Even Emmert’s mighty hammer can’t reach that high.
2. A fitting farewell
Part of me wanted Cole Stoudt to stand on the bench on the sidelines late last month during the rout of Oklahoma, turn to the absolutely awful, small minority of Clemson fans (you know who you are, dimwits), and give the ‘ol two finger salute.
If any guy earned it this bowl season, it was the massively message board-criticized Stoudt. He had the unenviable reality of playing next to a guy (Deshaun Watson) who might be the sport’s biggest star over the next two seasons, and eventually having to play for him when he got hurt.
So he’s no Watson. About 99 percent of the college game isn’t, either.
3. All about the quarterback
We’ve hit the paralysis-by-analysis point of the how and why the SEC didn’t win another national title. Maybe it’s best if we just simplify it:
Bad quarterback play.
No matter the level, successful teams — championship teams — begin and end with elite quarterback play. The SEC, at best, was average at the most important position on the field.
Want to know why the Pac-12 passed the SEC — for this season, anyway — as the nation’s best conference? Quarterback play.
Among the Power 5 conferences, the Pac-12 had the best overall quarterback rating (143.5), TD-INT ratio (355-107), completion percentage (64; only Power 5 conference over 60) and yards per attempt (7.55).
Runnerup in each of the four critical passing categories: rating (SEC, 135.6), TD:INT ratio (SEC, 309:149), completion percentage (Big 12, 59.1), yards per attempt (Big 12, 7.51).
That the SEC fell short of the Pac-12 in all of those categories wasn’t the be-all, end-all, but it underscored this reality: The SEC didn’t have a player who could dictate pace and/or play in a game. When any of the 14 teams in the league absolutely needed a first down, or a big play or a score, there wasn’t a quarterback on the field with the consistency to make it happen.
The Pac-12 had Marcus Mariota, Brett Hundley, Cody Kessler, Anu Solomon and Taylor Kelly. The SEC had Dak Prescott — and no one else.
The SEC West Division, for three months the talk of the race for the College Football Playoff, struggled mightily at the quarterback spot for much of the season and into big bowl games. The quarterbacks for the division’s five heavyweights — Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State — combined to throw for eight TDs and seven interceptions in bowl games, and lost all five games: two by blowouts (Ole Miss, MSU), one a lot worse than it looked (Alabama) and two on last-second plays (Auburn, LSU).
4. By the numbers
Breaking down the Power 5 quarterbacks (total numbers for all quarterbacks):
Rating
1. Pac-12 (143.5)
2. SEC (135.6)
3. Big 12 (134.7)
4. ACC (128.6)
5. Big Ten (123.9)
TD:INT ratio
1. Pac-12 (355:107)
2. SEC (309:149)
3. Big 12 (234:114)
4. ACC (276:166)
5. Big Ten: (261:175)
Completion percentage
1. Pac-12 (63.7)
2. Big 12 (59.1)
3. SEC (58.9)
4. ACC (58.8)
5. Big Ten (56.7)
Yards per attempt
1. Pac-12 (7.55)
2. Big 12 (7.51)
3. SEC (7.48)
4. ACC (7.05)
5. Big Ten (6.88)
5. The Weekly Five
Five things Alabama coach Nick Saban, who had planned on playing in the CFP National Championship Game, will do this week:
1. Stare into the vast nothingness that is his $7 million-a-year contract.
2. Lose himself in the “process” that is rearranging his sock drawer.
3. Search for a “medical” excuse to leave Alabama, and take over at Texas.
4. Take the lovely Miss Terry to the movies, err, uh, game film.
5. Reach out and touch someone.
6. Moving on
For those wondering if Braxton Miller truly will leave Ohio State for another program after this season, consider this:
After avoiding media day at the Sugar Bowl, Miller was on the sidelines when the Buckeyes beat Alabama to advance to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
So was Ohio State redshirt freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett, the Big Ten Player of the Year who replaced Miller and broke his ankle in the final regular-season game against Michigan. Barrett was wearing his No. 16 Ohio State jersey; Miller wasn’t wearing his Ohio State jersey.
Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer says he expects Miller back in 2015, but if the Buckeyes beat Oregon in the national title game — behind third-string sophomore quarterback Cardale Jones — the idea of Miller returning to compete with the Big Ten Player of the Year and the quarterback who led Ohio State to its three biggest victories of the season is a pipe dream.
Miller needs game tape if he wants to play in the NFL, not two straight seasons of inactivity.
7. Run to win
One trend we’ve learned this season: True freshman running backs are all the rage.
From Dalvin Cook at FSU to Royce Freeman at Oregon, the position has never been more adaptable to the college game. This season alone, there was Leonard Fournette (LSU), Nick Chubb and Sony Michel (Georgia), Semaje Perine (Oklahoma), Nick Wilson (Arizona) and Jonathan Hillman (Boston College) developing into instant stars.
The No. 1 running back in this year’s recruiting class is Damien Harris of Berea, Ky., who likely will choose between Alabama, Ohio State and Kentucky.
The No. 2 running back is Soso Jamabo of Plano, Texas, whose short list includes Baylor, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas A&M.
8. Evaluating Jameis
So Jameis Winston’s father says his son is leaving early for the NFL Draft.
It’s a fairly simple roadmap in regard to staying or leaving: Leave for the NFL and he’s a lock in the first round. If he stayed, there was nothing left to prove.
Now read this from one AFC scout who says Winston would be foolish not to leave:
“There’s no way he can improve; he’s only going to hurt his ability (to earn) by staying another year and getting into more off-field trouble or regressing on the field. He’s already dealing with too much instability in his game, and we’re not talking about his behavior — something clubs haven’t even begun to dive into. He can make all the throws, but he can make some unthinkably bad decisions, too.”
The biggest problem facing Winston now is his inconsistent play and his tendency to throw balls where they shouldn’t be. He can get away with those throws at the college level; it’s not happening in the NFL where the margin for error on throws drastically decreases.
9. Feeling the heat
The days of legendary coaches riding out a hiccup season (or seasons) are over.
In the past week alone, we’ve seen the Virginia Tech administration publicly put iconic coach Frank Beamer in a win-or-walk situation for 2015, and Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops — the winningest coach in tradition-rich Sooners history — is suddenly staring at a pressure-filled 2015.
The difference: Beamer hasn’t made changes to his offensive staff and will keep embattled offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler. Stoops, meanwhile, has fired an offensive coordinator (Josh Heupel) for the first time in his 16 seasons in Norman.
Five previous offensive coordinators have left OU for head coaching jobs: Mike Leach (Texas Tech), Mark Mangino (Kansas), Chuck Long (San Diego State), Kevin Sumlin (Houston) and Kevin Wilson (Indiana). Heupel, the hero on OU's 2000 national title team, never found a groove as play caller and the offensive struggled over the past two seasons with Blake Bell and Travis Knight at quarterback.
Forget about OU luring Jake Spavital from Texas A&M or Rhett Lashlee from Auburn; those are lateral moves and each will get a bump in salary to stay. The more logical options are ECU’s Lincoln Riley (a former Leach assistant) and David Yost (a former Leach assistant and Missouri OC).
10. Overlook at your own risk
All I’m saying is, there’s Urban Meyer, there’s Jim Harbaugh and there’s another guy that’s a pretty good coach in East Lansing.
And Mark Dantonio is probably not too thrilled Harbaugh and Meyer have sucked the life out of the Big Ten. Just in case one of the game’s best motivators needs anything else to light a fire under his perpetually us-against-the-world team.