There
were a few Saturdays during the fall that were just exquisite.
Tuesday
pretty much matched it for the average college football fan, and it served as a
reminder for less blanket grumbling about the bowl system in general, one that
save for one or two games, never has impacted the national championship picture
and never will.
You'd be
hard-pressed, through all of these years, to find anybody - fans or teams,
unless they were just idiots in the first place - who had a bad bowl
experience, outside of losing or having a general travel snafu. While the bowl
process is more complex than people think, yes, a few bowls need to go so we
have fewer 6-6 teams in and no 9-3 teams like Louisiana Tech get left out.
It gives
us the matchups we don't otherwise get, like Georgia-Nebraska, South
Carolina-Michigan and LSU-Clemson this year, and Michigan-Virginia Tech and
Oregon Wisconsin last year, and so on.
We get
to travel a little bit, courtesy of the Chamber of Commerce fillers offered by
the networks during games people promise on Dec. 8 to ignore and end up
watching a bit of.
The
open-minded enjoy broadening horizons, watching other teams play, recognize
that there is ability and wisdom outside of the local conference and home team.
It gives
the SEC fans their desired chance to gloat about success, because if we didn't
have the bowl system, there'd be less to gloat about (like how many teams go
bowling, and being No. 1 in bowl appearances and winning percentage).
It no
doubt needs some work, but what doesn't? As it is, we ended one year and began
another with a buffet of entertainment.
New
Year's Eve gave us Vanderbilt and uber-energetic head coach James Franklin
finishing off a 9-4 season - a nine-win season at Vanderbilt - by pulling away
from N.C. State.
And then
Georgia Tech thrilled SEC fans with an in-your-face performance against Lane
Kiffin and Southern Cal, which for all of its whining, will spend the offseason
explaining seven points and 205 yards to a defense that gave up 510 yards and
49 points to Middle Tennessee State, and played the bowl with an interim
coordinator.
Yeah,
that's the problem with being arrogant at bowl season. If you fail to put up,
you'll hear about it throughout the offseason, and the Trojans' ears will burn.
The
Liberty Bowl killed some time before the glorious Chick-fil-A bowl, which was
again a beauty, with Clemson and LSU turning in a buzzer-beater.
Shoot,
even blowouts in the Chick-fil-A somehow seem better than other blowouts.
Three of
Tuesday's five games gave "Jan. 1 bowl game" a little cache again.
Northwestern's
first bowl win since 1949 brought tears to the eyes of head coach Pat
Fitzgerald, and Oklahoma State hazed Purdue by 44 points. Then it got good.
Anybody
who saw Jadeveon Clowney's nasty hit on Michigan running back Vincent Smith -
it was a figurative de-cleater, and an actual de-helmeter - that changed the
game might have suffered from their own phantom rib pains afterward. And there
were South Carolina's quarterbacks, hobbling around like a pair of Fred
Sanfords, leading the way to final-minute win.
Georgia
fans were nearing the ledge when Nebraska took a halftime lead, and the
impatient knee-jerk crowd was frazzled until, well, the better team started
playing like the better team and in fact did not wear down.
Aaron
Murray had a monster day, as did several teammates on offense, and an unsettled
defense settled down against a squirrelly offense that was fun - and dizzying -
to watch.
Stanford
and Wisconsin engaged in the expected slobber-knocker, quality viewing for
purists, and then Florida State took care of business against Northern
Illinois.
Let's
not get too dismissive of Northern Illinois. Entering Thursday, eight other
bowls had spreads of 21 or more - and Florida is lucky not to have made it nine
- and NIU's underdogs certainly gave a better account of themselves than other
stronger programs did (hello, Purdue).
BCS
games aren't all nailbiters. Remember last year's Orange (70-33), and the Orange (40-12) and Fiesta
(48-20) in '10, and Sugar (51-24) in 09. So don't dump on the Huskies too much.
There have been blowouts all months,
like there always are, and were back before the Bowl Coalition and then
the College Football Association and then the Bowl Alliance.
We also
go into Thursday night with 12 games decided by single digits and seven by a
field goal or less.
With the
NCAA's increasing involvement in postseason college football, the bowl system
may finally be up for review, and that's good. But don't wish for too much
change. Do we really want less college football?
Didn't
think so.
LOUGHDMOUTHINGS
(Some are a few weeks old. December
will do that).
Talk about contrasts, that little
Capital One Bowl.
Georgia fans want Mark Richt to get
fired up. Nebraska fans want Bo Pelini to calm down.
Pelini, on Saturdays, seems like a
grumpy man undergoing a full-time prostrate exam. ...
Every time we go through realignment
crap, I'll remind you of my plan offered here waaaaay back when:
It was posted here on Sept. 18,
2011. Only insanity has followed. ...
The coaching circus each early
December is entertaining and annoying at the same time.
Every misguided fan base - our
redundancy of the day - thinks everybody should be lining up for their job: PLEASE
STOP PINING FOR JON GRUDEN, COLLEGE FANS. And it's pretty idiotic, another
topic where fans lose the so-to-speak minds they work and live with each day.
There is no lock. And fans being
basically uninformed outside of their bubble, they know little about coaches
that they don't hear on the Stalkng Network.
This "make a splash"
concern is, bluntly, absurd. The splash comes when you win. Every hiring press
conference gets splashy coverage, and people talk about a hire all off-season.
The splash comes when you play.
Ditto signing day - talk about a convention of nincomtwits - and draft weekend.
Tennessee got its, what, fifth
choice? And Tennessee will be fine. As your faithful correspondent has said for
years, it takes longer to dig out of a hole than it does to fall into one, but
UT didn't fall to Chattanooga talent. Derek Dooley did many good things for the
program, but he didn't win, and progress in that regard had stopped.
Butch Jones will be the beneficiary
of all that. Worth noting: Brian Kelly was 55-22 (seven D-I seasons) before his
big promotion. Jones is 50-27 (six D-I seasons) as he gets his.
Other silly stuff: how will Bret
Bielema recruit at Arkansas?
For one, a school's name and
reputation recruit. For another, Bielema has done nothing but win. For another,
he's smart enough to adjust, like good coaches do. And really, isn't the SEC
fairly hard nosed? Hasn't a hard-nosed team been in the national title game a
few times? Aren't LSU and Alabama fairly hard-nosed?
Bielema will bring some non-SEC air
into the SEC, which isn't a bad thing. And Arkansas has identity issues: it's
still Southwest Conference, but in the SEC, but as close to a few Big Ten
schools as it is SEC schools.
Kids want to be on TV, have a chance
to go pro, win and play in front of a lot of people, pretty much in that order.
Arkansas, like about 40 or so programs, has all that, and Bielema has rings.
Kids are less confused about all
this than the brilliant adults in the stands and on message boards.
Silly, II: Can Butch Jones handle
the pressure at Tennessee?
Let's see: money, fan base,
facilities, tradition, talent. There's more pressure to win at Cincy.
And again, Jones has won and been
around winning.
People overcomplicate things. ...
More this weekend on bowls and
firings and hirings, with this note: the job of "recruiting
coordinator" does not involve neeeeeeeearly as much as civilians think, so
Georgia will not be hurt by Rodney Garner's departure (especially when thinking
of Crowell and Ealey and King, oh my).
From Mike Bianchi of the Orlando
Sentinel at the Sugar Bowl:
"It
seems the Gators took a cue from their fans in this game and failed to show up.
The crowd of 54,178 was the smallest at the Sugar Bowl since 1939. Because
Louisville fans so badly outnumbered UF fans during bowl week, the locals began
referring to their city as Lou-Orleans.'"
Ouch. ...
(From
Dec. 7) It would appear that Georgia men's hoops coach Mark Fox is on the
clock.
He
has gone 14-17, 21-12 and 15-17, and is 2-6, giving him a 52-52 mark at
Georgia.
The
Bulldogs have five straight home games - Iona, Mercer, Southern Cal, Florida
A&M and George Washington - against a group that is 17-23, and only one
opponent is in a BCS conference.
Then
SEC play opens.
Georgia
goes two ways: the non-conference schedule adequately prepares the Bulldogs for
the SEC, and they improve when it counts; or: not.
If
it's the latter, Fox enters next season with it likely to be his last.
Update: UGA lost to Iona and then won
three straight, with one of true quality, Southern California. But three
straight is three straight, and it might be that aforementioned start toward
progress with a young team. ...
In general, it's unwise to encourage
a lawsuit, but it's hard to argue with the state of Pa. filing one against the
NCAA, which became a poster child for overstepping bounds with the Sandusky
mess.
Saner heads tend to wait for at
least some part of the legal process to take course, or at least wait for those
in charge of the violating institution to take some measure of punishment and
repair. When was the last time the NCAA jumped the gun at all, let alone so
severely?
Hopefully, they'll come to an
agreement so we don't wonder if some NCAA higher-ups are watching too many old
movies about strong-arm governments in European countries, because the NCAA
pretty much ignored a lot of the standards of America. ...
Muhammad Ali was at the Sugar Bowl
coin toss, noted more than once by Bianchi, who paid tribute:
"Float
like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
"The
'Ville just put a Big East whuppin' on the big, bad SEC!"
