Familiar face in 2011?

From today’s Athens Banner-Herald:

Former Georgia assistant coach Jon Fabris is poised to be named defensive line coach at Louisville on new coach Charlie Strong’s staff, according to a source close to that program. An announcement is likely to come this week.

Fabris, who coached defensive ends at Georgia for nine seasons under Richt, also coached the position at South Carolina in 1999 when Strong, the former Florida defensive coordinator, was the Gamecocks’ defensive coordinator.

The Cardinals are scheduled to open the 2011 season at Georgia, and the Bulldogs will play at Louisville in 2012.

No mention of special teams duty there.  We could be poised to see a directional kicking battle of epic proportions.

It’s so easy, Xbox edition.

I get that, like so many people, SI.com’s Andy Staples, really, really wants a football playoff.  I just wish he wouldn’t write such appalling dreck about his heart’s desire.  I didn’t think he could come up with anything more awful than his tortured comparison of the bowls to Pontiac, but I was wrong.

Because he’s found the Holy Grail.

Owen Good writes about video games for a Gawker Media site called Kotaku, but at first glance, he strikes me as the kind of writer who could turn an instruction manual into a page-turner. Why? This past weekend, Good produced a compelling argument that a playoff not only wouldn’t kill the bowl system, but might actually enhance it.

In a post that detailed his video-game simulation of a college football postseason that includes a 16-team, seeded playoff and the bowl games — minus some dead weight — Good illustrated that a playoff and bowls wouldn’t just offer a more fair system and distribute millions more to the dozens of schools currently using your tax dollars to subsidize their athletic programs, it would also be must-see TV…

That’s right.  A video gamer has done what nobody else has been able to do so far – find a way for us to have it all.  And Andy knows this is essential truth from personal experience.

… As a writer for The Tampa Tribune in 2007, I conducted a playoff simulation similar to Good’s using an Xbox.

Gawd almighty.  And some of you wonder why I continue to get irritated about this debate.

By the way, this Good fellow’s constructed a 16-team playoff with Troy, a team that lost to Florida by 50 and Arkansas by 36, as one of the seeds.  Why, you may ask?  Well,

… I’d only add that teams like Troy are either major college football participants or they’re not. It’s not a self-declared thing. The NCAA admitted these teams to the highest level…

If you stretch that reasoning to its logical conclusion, you can justify a football playoff of any size you’d like, as long as it’s composed of D-1 teams, which, after all, play at the highest level that the NCAA sanctions.

The stupid, as they say, it burns.

Sadly, I haven’t even gotten to the dumbest part of Staples’ piece.  That would be his insistence that the bowls wouldn’t be hurt by being bypassed by this new tournament.  For example, the Sugar Bowl would be just as happy hosting Ole Miss as it would Florida.  Happier, even.

… Since they never were about determining a national champion, one would think bowl organizers and civic leaders would prefer a thrilled eight-win team (Ole Miss) over a disappointed 12-win team (Florida).

Yeah, not hosting Tim Tebow in his final game as a collegian would go over great, one would think.

When you read Staples’ argument carefully, he’s not actually taking the position that the bowls wouldn’t be affected.  In essence, what he’s saying is that their time has passed, anyway, and they just don’t know what’s about to hit them.

… I thought the bowls would be too important to leave out of the system. That was before the economic collapse dovetailed with the realization by publishers of newspapers that printing the news once a day on dead trees was no longer a sound business model. As I watched the industry that once provided my paycheck nearly collapse before reinventing itself in a streamlined form, I did two things. First, I thanked my current bosses for helping me escape to the Web before the bottom fell out. Second, I realized nothing is meant to last forever.

Just because the Rose Bowl has been around since 1902 doesn’t mean its honchos should help call the shots. Lehman Brothers was founded in 1850, and it certainly wasn’t doing the financial world any favors before it was swallowed by a sinkhole it helped create. The beauty of all this is that despite the grave predictions of those who run the BCS, the Rose Bowl wouldn’t go away…

Nah, it would host Penn State and Arizona instead.  The bowl folks should be happy with that.  Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s probably worth mentioning about now that the NCAA has plenty of experience running a postseason tourney alongside an exhibition event.  The NIT has certainly thrived under that arrangement, hasn’t it?

Somebody needs to come up with a video-game simulation of negotiating a new college football postseason format.  Sounds like that would be a lot of fun for some folks.

Envy and jealousy: something was rotten in Vegas department

Sure, it sounds like something straight out of a cheap detective novel, but in terms of describing how awful Oregon State looked last night, it’s hard to beat this (h/t The Wiz of Odds).

For Oregon State, the stench of a surprising no-show in the windy, freezing-cold MAACO Bowl Tuesday night will linger like a pile of garbage that hasn’t been picked up for weeks.

Pretty much sums it up for me…

Wednesday morning buffet

Nothing particularly earth shattering on today’s menu, but there are still a few bowl-flavored items worth checking out.

• It’s bad enough to sit through Thom Brennaman verbally fellating Tim Tebow without having to pay for the privilege.  Fox wanting to charge a cable broadcast fee is adding insult to injury.
• Speaking of the GPOOE™, it sounds like he’s making another Promise about his last game.
• “I’m a Dog, baby!”:  Hutson Mason has his future at Georgia as mapped out as I’ve ever heard a recruit sound.
• Nevada is doing its bowl trip about as cheaply as possible.  It wasn’t required to make a ticket purchase guarantee to attend and it’s not bringing the school band.  It’s got the latter covered, though:  “We are, however, working with the University of Hawaii, and their band is learning our fight song and will play with us at events. As a fellow conference member, they are willing to do so. We’ve already sent some shirts and some gear over to the islands for them to don Nevada silver and blue for the game.”
• Nevada has also found a rather unique way to cut back on housing expenses for at least one of its players. (h/t The Wiz of Odds)
• And even if it’s playing in a BCS game, times are tight at Georgia Tech, too.  “It has been years since the car has made trips of great distance to fulfill its duty of leading the team onto the field, and the account has not been properly prepared for such a venture.” So much for acting like you’ve been there before, Jacket fans.
• January 1st ain’t what it used to be…
• … which may be one reason you can get into the Cap One Bowl for less than the price of a case of beer.
• Nick Saban begat Will Muschamp, who begat Kirby Smart.  Or something like that.
• Mark Richt likes bowl games, both as a coach and as a fan.