Tuesday morning buffet

No Pop Tarts on the menu, I’m afraid.

• The WAC as football conference, dead at 50.
• Seriously, why does anyone care about this?
• Weighing the options in light of the new kickoff rules.
• Weird stuff with Florida recruiting.
• Aaron Murray: “We need to play every game this season like we did during the winning streak.”
• “Of course, there are times when punting is a good idea,” Romer said in an e-mail message, “just not nearly as many as football coaches seem to think.”
• Not all penalties are created equal.
• Just when you think the NCAA can’t make a bigger ass out of itself, it proves you wrong.  If I were a student-athlete and read that, my blood would be boiling.

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Tuesday morning buffet

Today’s buffet tries to show more staying power than Vince Dooley thinks Isaiah Crowell had.

• One thing about Missouri’s defensive line to keep in the back of your head:  “The average weight of the projected starters heading into fall camp is 262 pounds.”
• Mark Emmert’s no amateur, that’s for sure.
• Michael Elkon wonders why ESPN can’t take the same approach to broadcasting college football as it does with Euro soccer.  He’s got a point – it’s a long way down from Ian Darke to Jesse Palmer – but it could be worse.  Just ask Fox Sports.
• Karl Benson is one wild and crazy commissioner.
• cocknfire presents a well-reasoned argument on why a four-team playoff is just the right size and all I could think of as I read it was this.
• Welcome back, Brandon Burrows.
• And The Valley Shook posts an instruction manual for our new SEC brethren.  My favorite bit of advice:  “DO develop a hatred of the color orange. A&M already has a leg up in this area, so to help Mizzou out, we are sending 20,000 Tennessee fans to your campus. You’re welcome.”
• Evidently Georgia’s backup quarterbacks can kick every other SEC program’s backup quarterbacks’ asses.  ESPN’s bloggers rank Aaron Murray as the second-best quarterback in the conference, but have Georgia’s quarterback group as tops in the SEC.
• Patrick Garbin offers us 20+ minutes of Munson’s classic broadcast of the ’75 Cocktail Party.

AQ, Shmay cue

The Conference USA commissioner looks at the sweeping away of AQ and non-AQ designations for conferences and sees a glass half full.

“The old system, with the AQ and non-AQ, was very difficult for us,” said Banowsky. “To be honest, it was just a negative branding for our universities.

“There was no reason for it. It was a branding that labeled some schools worthy and other schools unworthy. That label as unworthy was very damaging.”

But here’s the thing about that.  What he’s most excited about - “We now have the possibility of a team from our league being in the national championship conversation.”  – never had anything to do with whether his conference was an AQ.  That designation only had to do with admission to the BCS games that weren’t hosting the title game.

It’s true that conferences like C-USA won’t be automatically locked out from having more than a certain number of their schools play in the upper tier bowls.  But that doesn’t mean they still won’t be facing an uphill struggle to do so.  Meet the new perception:

It will take a school in the perceived smaller football conferences playing a difficult nonconference schedule and then sweeping through its schedule without a loss.

“The schools in our league understand that,” said Banowsky. “Schools in our league have done that.

“I think you can look at Tulsa. They played Oklahoma last year.”

Now he’s discussing that in the context of the four-team playoff, but it’s applicable to the other games as well.  After all, the selection committee is going to be ranking more than four teams at season’s end.

Bottom line?  It’ll be interesting to see if he’s as optimistic about the new regime in, say, 2018 or 2019.

Meanwhile, Joe Bailey, the Big East’s new commissioner, looks at that same glass and can’t help staring at the half empty part.  He knows that the Big East losing its AQ status and not having a contractual tie in with a top-tier bowl puts his conference in a tougher spot than before.  He just can’t put it that baldly.

“… This relationship with the bowls that other conferences have, they’ve always had them. We’ve always felt that at the end of the day, even though there was AQ status, you wanted to play well and earn your way into a bowl and not necessarily be anointed.

“Based on the meritocracy, we feel pretty good that quite a number of teams based on our historical performance level will mean the conference will be absolutely fine.”

That’s the thought of a man who goes home at night praying that the Boise State love doesn’t end any time soon.  Because talk of historical meritocracy doesn’t go very far when it’s about a conference that’s been blown up and reassembled with parts from mid-major conferences scattered across the continent.  And that’s why instead of talking specifics, Joe Bailey winds up sounding like Chance the gardener.

“The best way to say this is that most schools and then most conferences have peaks and valleys,” Bailey said. “Sometimes you perform well over a period of time, and other times you go down a little bit.”

Expect to hear more talk like this from Big East folks if the ACC continues in its present mediocrity.  It’ll be small consolation for not having an Orange Bowl contract.

Access isn’t easy.

So as college football’s postseason morphs in to something that sounds like the punchline to a bad Yakov Smirnoff joke (“in D-1, schools don’t qualify for bowl games; bowl games qualify for schools”), one question that remains to be answered is what sort of impact on access to the playoff and top-tier bowl games can schools not affiliated with conferences that have already secured (or in the case of the SEC and Big 12, created) tie-ins with those top-tier bowl games expect after the changes.

The answer for now seems to depend on whom you ask.  Jerry Hinnen, for example, is fairly benign about access.

… But as this blog’s Matt Hinton illustrated, boost the playoff field from two to four, and look what happens: a Mountain West team and a Big East team playing for a national title in 2009, and that same Mountain West team earning that right in 2010. Boise never quite broke through in Hinton’s projections, but it’s not like it was any better off under the BCS, where the Broncos were probably first-runner-ups even if they survive Nevada in 2010 or TCU in 2011. If the Broncos had gone undefeated either of those seasons, though, a playoff would have rewarded them with a shot at a national title.

Isn’t this reason enough for non-AQs to celebrate the BCS’s dissolution? TCU and Utah have solved their problems by making the leap to AQ status anyway, but Boise — and Cincy, and UCF, and San Diego State, and Nevada, and Houston — has gone from starting every season knowing that the greatest prize it can reasonably win is a league or bowl championship* to knowing that with the right breaks, it could win a national championship. These teams now matter in a way they never have before.

This is a step back? This is running in place?

Andrea Adelson, however, is a good deal gloomier about their prospects under the new arrangements.

But I still think access could potentially be a big issue. The past two years, the Big East champion finished: unranked (UConn, 2010) and No. 23 (West Virginia, 2011) in the final BCS standings. Under current rules, both teams earned automatic spots into BCS games. Under the future system, neither one of those teams would have been invited to the elite bowl games. Why? Because the Big East does not have an automatic tie-in into one of those games for its champion.

Let’s face it, for all intents and purposes, the Big East is now little more than a glorified mid-major conference.  For its schools, life in the postseason just got tougher.  You don’t need me to tell you which schools don’t have the same problems.

I do think Jerry has it right with regard to the playoff in one aspect – doubling the number of teams that make up the field playing for a national title is a serious increase in access.  But I also think his optimism about overall mid-major access may very well turn out to be misplaced for one significant reason, which is that nobody knows how the selection process is going to turn out.

That’s the big problem I have with all these “here’s how the last ten postseasons would have looked under the new deal” pieces that popped up seemingly everywhere over the last couple of weeks.  It’s an apples-to-oranges exercise, because the way schools were selected then and the way they’ll be selected beginning in 2014 are different.  Going forward, you’ve got conferences dictating tie-ins to lucrative bowl games and you’ve got a selection committee that will be calling the shots on which schools make it into the playoff.

Nobody knows for sure how that committee is going to operate.  But I think it’s foolish to assume that it’s going to make its decisions completely outside the commercial framework that the powerhouse conferences have been busy constructing over the past few months.  I’m sure they’ll be subtle about it, at least until things come to a head and a certain part of the have-nots find themselves officially lopped off from D-1′s football riches, but all the same, I expect there will be a certain amount of game-rigging going on.  Jim Delany hasn’t gone to all this trouble simply to make sure that four or five mid-major schools can crack the big money games.

*********************************************************************************

UPDATE:  Year2 adds some thoughts on the matter of access here.

Thursday morning buffet

No fireworks.  Just football.

• Honestly, I’m surprised Nick Saban has time for this shit.
• As Georgia Southern looks to move to D-1, it faces money concerns.
• Brady Hoke says coaches are talking about an early signing date for recruiting.
• Jeff Long on fans hoping that Arkansas might bring back Bobby Petrino:  “It amazes me that that’s still out there.”
• Can somebody explain to me why this was considered to be a good idea?
• The NCAA pulls a last-minute move to put Leonard Floyd’s admission to Georgia on hold.  Is there some reason that couldn’t have been researched months ago?
• Kevin Scarbinsky thinks the new playoff is going to make the regular season more attractive.
• Mark Bradley wants to know “why is it always Georgia?”.  Maybe it’s because you don’t pay attention to stuff like this, Mark.

Watching the selectives

I mentioned that while the money fight from the new postseason would get most of the attention, the selection committee would be the place where the real action is.

It turns out that the two may be joined at the hip.  Per Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick,

The most notable revelations from Swarbrick on Wednesday were the criteria ND must meet to qualify for consideration for the top tier of bowls in years the Irish fall short of the Final Four, and that a selection committee will be charged with not only designating the four teams to play for the national title, but creating weekly standings of what it considers to be the top 20 teams from midseason on.

Twenty teams?  Why so, when only four qualify for the national playoff?  Well, because it’s the teams that show up in the next eight slots that will be eligible as at-large schools to play in the top bowls.  And that’s big.

But because there are six bowls that will rotate as hosts as the national semifinals and because of bowl tie-ins with the Rose, Champions and Orange bowls, there may be years with very limited at-large spots available.

“Because of the complexity of the Rose and Champions bowls and the Orange Bowl,” Swarbrick said, “it’s impossible in any year to say it’ll be ‘X’ spots available for teams 5-12.”

If you’re a school not in one of the big five conferences, your window of opportunity has just shrunk.  I’m amazed Swarbrick signed off on this.  If the day comes when Notre Dame has to join a conference, you’ll probably be able to point to this as why.

All this is all the more reason the selection process itself has to be transparent.  With this much at stake, financially speaking, being placed on it, there will be tremendous pressure to see certain schools’ appearance.

Publishing weekly results is nice, but if nobody knows how the results were tabulated and the committee isn’t required to explain them, it’s hardly going to matter.  The way the BCS results flipped in 2007 after West Virginia lost in the last game of its regular season left a bad taste in a lot of Georgia fans’ mouths.  That kind of unexplained reshuffling by a selection committee won’t sit any better – at least not with the public.

Jim Delany’s message is getting through.

What does it tell you that the most rational voice in Kristi Dosh’s piece about playoff revenue distribution comes from Gary Ransdell, the president of Western Kentucky University, who said this:

“It’s those five conferences who have invested the most, have the largest stadiums, and create the television marquee. We just want to be sure we get a little more proportionate share. For the BCS to survive it’s going to take all 120 institutions. The 50 to 60 in those five conferences can’t just play each other. There has to be competition across all the conferences going forward.”

Asked if the current non-AQ conferences would continue to pool their revenue as they do under the current system, Ransdell said, “I would prefer each conference receive whatever is determined. Now that AQ has gone away, I see no reason to have a pooling or gathering of revenue.”

It tells me that Delany’s epic bitch slap of then-WAC commissioner Karl Benson has begun to resonate with mid-major schools.  You remember that, don’t you?

Delany sat between SEC commissioner Mike Slive and Scott, the Pac-10′s new commissioner. Only a few feet to Delany’s right sat Benson, but they may have been located on opposite sides of the Earth — much like their polar opposite views of the BCS.

At least on two occasions during the forum, Delany interrupted Benson to hammer his opinion home.

“The BCS has provided greater access,” Benson said. “Look at 120 schools, 11 conferences and to establish opportunities for those student-athletes. To play on the big stage, we’ve been to the big stage. …

“The problem,” Delany interrupted, “is your big stage takes away opportunities for my teams, to play on the stage they created in 1902.”

…

“If you think you can continue to push for more money, more access to the Rose Bowl, or Sugar Bowl. I have tremendous respect for Boise and TCU. … I think they are tremendous teams that can beat any team in the country on a given day. I think the only question is, ‘Does one team’s 12-0 and another team’s 12-0 equate?’ And that’s where the discussion plays out, not whether or not they’re elite teams or deserving access to the bowl system.

“I’m not sure how much more give there is in the system.”

There isn’t any.  The mistake the mid-majors made was focusing on the AQ battle.  The big boys just nuked that.  And now it’s dawning on the mids that the real battleground is whether they’re going to be around much longer as proud members of D-1 (by the way, are they going to ditch the FBS designation now?).  Conference expansion, student-athlete stipends and multi-year scholarships are all current developments that are mid-majors unfriendly – and ominously, two of those are being pushed by the NCAA.  The trend lines suggest that a separation between the haves and have-nots of the Division may be coming, and coming soon.

Ransdell realizes that there’s little use in debating how big a share of the pie schools like his should be entitled to when there’s a distinct possibility that they may not even have dessert plates in the near future.  College football has arrived at a very different place than it was at when Tulane’s Scott Cowen picked a fight back in 2003, even if Cowen isn’t quite ready to concede that.  The big win for the mids this time around isn’t going to be about increasing opportunities for TCU and Boise State to crash the postseason party.  It’s going to be for the San Jose States of the college football world to be allowed to continue to ride their coattails to pick up a check.

The next time Jim Delany snarls at you, pay better attention.

Put this one in “Things I’d like to see happen”.

Here’s a reminder that all isn’t sweetness and light in the Big 12:

Texas Tech’s Sept. 8 road game against Texas State may be broadcast on the Longhorn Network…

Tech learned of this possibility several days ago, and according to the source, is “adamantly opposed to playing on the Longhorn Network” and is “putting serious consideration into canceling the game and playing an 11 game schedule” this fall.

First of all, Texas Tech is traveling to Texas State?  That’s how you get yourself into situations like this in the first place.  ESPN lies in wait for moments like this, where the WAC gets to call the shots on the broadcast partner.

Second, in all its tone-deaf arrogance, don’t you figure the WWL is wondering right now if this is merely another one of those “we know what you are, we’re just haggling over the fee” situations?  Given the current state of affairs in college football, it’s hard to blame it for thinking like that.

Third, Tommy Tuberville has to be shitting a brick or two over this.  Tech went 5-7 last year and missed a bowl game for the first time in years.  The Red Raiders beat Texas State by forty for one of those five wins.  Giving up a sure win to stand on principle?  Let’s not be too hasty here, fellas.

Tot no longer.

Akron goes all in on a guy who looks more like a fully loaded baked potato now.

I have to confess I don’t get the Bowden mystique.  Does it all stem from an almost twenty-year old winning streak?  Because the only other noteworthy item on his resume is running a lower division home for SEC strays the past couple of years.

Friday morning buffet

Just like George Costanza, the buffet is back, baby!

• Sonny Dykes doesn’t think Ole Miss and Mississippi State have better players than his Louisiana Tech team.
• Here’s something I did not know:  in 1989, the American Football Coaches Wives Association was created to provide “camaraderie, support, information and service.”
• Patrick Garbin points out something I think most of us suspected – Phil Steele isn’t that hot a predictor of how teams fare nationally.  (Although Steele’s been better on calling the SEC East’s pecking order.)
• I’d love to hear Jimmy Sexton explain the difference between college and pro coaches contracts.
• Sometimes, I wonder if I’m missing something.
• “No offense,” he said, “but this will be perfect for the bathroom.”  I’m not sure if that’s a metaphor for something, but it probably ought to be.
• Here’s a follow up on that story about the Memphis player who’s overcome reading challenges to be on the verge of earning a degree.
• Mark Emmert isn’t worried about a “splintering of the NCAA”.  Blissful ignorance or informed opinion?  You tell me.
• TAMU’s Kevin Sumlin talks about transitioning to the big, bad, fast SEC.
• Brian Fremeau thinks three teams in the SEC East have a shot at a national title this season.
• How do schools pay for improvements to their athletic facilities?  Kristi Dosh counts the ways.