Sources tell…

In a time when seemingly half the head coaching jobs in the SEC are in play, does anyone besides me miss the amateurish insanity of Footballcoachscoop.com?

Now there was a site that could give Bleacher Report a run for its money.

Playoffs: I’m not the only one with mixed emotions.

It may come as a surprise to Brian Cook, but evidently you can find postings on the Internet by people who are anti-playoff without being pro-BCS.  Besides me, that is.

Bill Connelly put this out today, for example.

… There are legitimate arguments for keeping the current system in place, but yesterday’s egregious USA Today column from BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock didn’t actually touch on any of them. Instead, it just infuriated me.

Bill may have in mind something like what Teddy Greenstein wrote in the Chicago Tribune yesterday.

… So it’s a 16-team playoff — as the book “Death to the BCS” endorses — or bust. And a 16-teamer, in my book, would water down the regular season.

Instead of a compelling weekly drama, dozens of games would be reduced to glorified exhibitions. Auburn-Alabama and the SEC title game were must-see TV because the Tigers were playing for their lives, not a playoff seed.

No other sport has this. In the NFL, some teams use Weeks 16 and 17 to rest their starters. Borderline .500 teams can make the NBA and NHL playoffs. Yet some cry about 6-6 teams playing in bowl games that have no bearing on the national title.

In college basketball, teams toil for four months for the sake of seeding. Did it matter that Michigan State lost to Syracuse on Tuesday? What was at stake, the chance to move up or down a line in the NCAA tournament bracket? When two top-10 teams square off in college football, it’s compelling.

That’s about as succinctly stated a diminish-the-regular-season argument as I’ve seen.  (Although I don’t agree with his assumption about a four-team playoff.)

This is on the mark, too.

The playoff crowd argues the BCS is not a fair way to determine a champion. But would it be fair to Auburn or Oregon — the nation’s best teams throughout the season — to have to win four more games to claim a national title?

With a 16-team playoff that has 11 conference champions and five at-large teams, Auburn might have to beat two-loss teams such as Arkansas and LSU — again. Same goes for Oregon, which already beat Stanford.

You know who makes a 16-team playoff? Sun Belt champion Florida International (6-6) and Mid-American champ Miami of Ohio (9-4). But a team from the at-large pool of Stanford, Ohio State, Michigan State, Arkansas, LSU and Boise State would not. Is that fair?

When college football crowns its champion Jan. 10, Auburn or Oregon will be the undisputed best team. Compare that with baseball, where the 2006 Cardinals can go 83-78, get hot in the postseason and end up guzzling champagne.

Greenstein’s third point, that an extended playoff would not be a boon to fans who now travel to bowl games, sort of touches on a tradeoff that I’m not sure playoff proponents have thoroughly considered.  The larger a playoff field gets, the more difficult it becomes for the fans of a program to travel to its postseason games.  The likely response to that would be to propose shifting more of the postseason to schools’ home fields, but that plays right into Hancock’s position that a playoff would adversely affect the bowls.  You can dodge that whole thing by keeping the field smaller than eight, but…

Advertisement

Ass man

And we bitched about Nick Fairley’s tactics.

So… just how rich is that SEC TV contract?

This rich:

… Auburn coor­di­na­tor Gus Mal­zahn, who was in town Wed­nes­day, is thought to have recei­ved another offer from Van­der­bilt that approaches the ball­park of $3 million per year.

Three million dollars per year for a guy who was coaching high school football five years ago.  Paid by Vanderbilt.

Even more incredibly – if that’s possible – John Pennington is reporting that it’s a seven-year offer.

When did Mike Hamilton agree to moonlight for Vandy’s athletic department?

Thanks, but I’ll wait for the movie to come out.

I’m not shocked by the allegation that Craig James’ agent may have been at the heart of the pay problems that resulted in SMU getting the death penalty.  But Craig James wrote a book?

Best review I found at Amazon:

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars toilet paper, January 3, 2010

By

Michelle L. Bishop (pittsburgh) – See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Game Day: A Rollicking Journey to the Heart of College Football (Hardcover)

Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t have a “zero-star” option. Worst gift I received this Christmas. Totally sucked.

I don’t know about you, but if somebody gave me a Craig James book for Christmas, I’d have to seriously reevaluate my relationship with that person.

Holy Heisman

Ending the only real suspense over the Heisman Trophy award ceremony, Cecil Newton announced that he won’t attend, saying in part,

“So that my son Cam Newton can receive all the honors and congratulations that he has worked so hard to accomplish without distraction, I have decided not to be in attendance at the ceremony as it will perhaps rob Cam and the event of a sacred moment.”

“A sacred moment”?  Does that mean the GPOOE™ will present the award?

Simulated reenactment of Cecil Newton's Heisman vision