Friday morning buffet

Plenty to sample…

• Here’s a shocker:  “But as the College Football Playoff’s selection committee wrapped up two days of meetings at the Gaylord Texan on Thursday, it’s clear that objectivity is a sticking point as the college football season draws closer.”
• Patrick Garbin tells us that over the last two decades, experience has nothing to do with the performance of Georgia’s offensive lines.  I think that’s supposed to relieve us.
• For some reason, Vanderbilt has decided to move its home game against Ole Miss to the Titans’ stadium, which seats 68,798.  That seems like an invitation for OM fans to come fill the place up.
• This doesn’t sound good:  “The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation of Florida State University into whether its handling of the Jameis Winston rape allegations violated Title IX laws…”
• How would you like it if Finebaum hosted a live show from Sanford Stadium?
• Texas paid $266,990 to a search firm to help find Charlie Strong.  I bet most of us would have offered to do the job for a tenth of that.
• Here’s a look at how much of a role conversion rates and big play potential on both offense and defense as well as field position played in determining the last ten BCS champs.
• Marc Weiszer takes stock of how Georgia’s new focus on special teams is going.
• Tramel Terry, on life as a new defensive back:  “Each day it’s getting better and better. I’m just trying to get all the little terms and get them out on the field instead of thinking so much. Other than that I’m fine. I’ve just got to work hard in the summer time and get my feet right. I feel like I’ll be fine and be ready to play this year.”

Perverse afternoon question

Do you think there’d be as much energy devoted to the topic of player compensation now if they hadn’t replaced the BCS with the new playoffs?

Wednesday morning buffet

Dig in, peeps.

• From his new role as H-Back, Quayvon Hicks vows that this year will be different.  “I fell off and it won’t happen again,” the junior said. “I’m going to do what I’ve got to do to make sure I’m on the field all season this coming fall.”  I’ll leave it to you to ask the obvious follow-up question.
• Football Study Hall looks at how sack rates affect point production.
• Barrett Sallee argues that SEC teams have a track record of thriving with inexperienced quarterbacks.
• Division III is struggling financially, but is is likely opposed to the easiest way to cut costs, limiting the number of teams in the NCAA championships.  Typical.
• Man, it hurts a little reading this.  What could have been.
• The NCAA is looking at adding parties other than college presidents and giving them voting rights to its Board of Directors, while reserving an option go into a president-only executive session when desired.  Accountability without effect – it’s the NCAA way!
• Another Mark Richt has lost control incident.  You think he’ll make a crack about it?
• Dr Pepper spends the money to have its name plastered on the CFP championship trophy.

You can’t stop settling it on the field. You can only hope to contain it.

John Pennington:

When the conference commissioners decided to do away with polls and computers in favor of a selection committee, we warned that come March everyone would be reminded of all the things they dislike about selection committees.  Here we are.  And with people complaining about the sheer randomness of the seeding process as well as the hard-to-figure out invitation process for the final four or five bubble teams, it should all be quite worrisome for college football fans.  If there’s this much debate over 68 teams, how hot will temperatures rise when we’re talking about a bracket that will include only four teams?

The good news is that the football panel will have a former Secretary of State, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, and a career basketball man to help pick the teams and set the matchups.  Yes.  That was sarcasm.

If anything, the 13-member football panel should expect to receive even more hate mail than the hoops group.  As we noted above, more teams will be getting turn-downs in football.  And American sports fans are also more passionate about college football.  (Check the TV ratings and recent TV contracts if you need proof.)  There will be some serious howling when a team ranked in the top four of all the (now meaningless) polls gets jumped by a fifth- or sixth-ranked team that won its league.  Top 25ish SMU not getting one of 36 at-large bids?  Try an SEC runner-up getting bounced by a lesser-ranked Big Ten champ.

Every March we’re treated to Jay Bilas and Dick Vitale and Seth Davis and Andy Katz telling us what the hoops committee got wrong.  Set your DVRs.  This December we’ll get another batch of analysts telling us everything the football committee botched in carrying out its duties.  So prepare yourself right now to be disappointed.  We see no way the College Football Playoff selection committee escapes controversy.  The basketball committee never does.

That last point – how often do we bitch about ESPN’s narrative?  Is there any reason to think the selection committee will be immune from that?  Of course not.  A couple of loudly trumpeted “controversies” about a deserving number five and we’ll find ourselves in the same kind of mess that playoff proponents insisted the BCS created.

We’ve got playoff fever.  And the only prescription is more playoff.

Tuesday morning buffet

I don’t know if there’s enough here to take your mind off this morning’s stupidity, but I’m trying.

• Carvell discusses the one recruiting rule change nearly all coaches support.  Makes too much sense for the NCAA, probably.
• Nick Saban says Alabama is still a “pro-style offense type of team.”
• Spring practice starts today.  Field Street Forum has a tentative schedule, if you’re interested.
• For obvious reasons, it’ll never happen, but could Vegas do a worse job of picking seeds and eligible teams than the people running college athletics do?  (“The committee is a bunch of frauds,” Salmons said. “The way they do this thing makes no sense.”)  I don’t see how, and at least we wouldn’t have conflicts of interest to worry about.
• I guess the NFL thinks it isn’t settling things on the field sufficiently.  And this is great:  “… I’m not a fan of playoff expansion because I think it devalues the 17 weeks of the regular season.”  Peter King is a funny man.
• Chris Low’s spring football summary for Georgia isn’t bad (even if it may already be a little dated because of today’s events).
• Ivan Maisel’s puff piece on Jim Delany, however… ugh.
• Nate Silver on the key stat the basketball selection committee relies on:  RPI, as I’ve written previously, was “developed in 1981 in the era of the DOS prompt and the Commodore 64.”  Hey, the football folks have to be more forward thinking than that, since they’re a completely diff… ah, hell, never mind.

A foreshadowing of things to come?

Virginia shocked the world – and me, too – by pulling off something it never managed before, even in the Ralph Sampson years, winning both the ACC regular season and tournament.  It then managed the topper last night of garnering a number one seed in the NCAA tourney.

As thrilled as I am about that, there’s just one little nagging detail that makes me wonder… about the football selection committee.

Wake Forest athletic director Ron Wellman, the chairman of the selection committee, said Virginia’s two championships trumped an RPI rating of 11 to earn a 1 seed over Michigan and Villanova.

So, an ACC athletic director explains that winning his conference was a bigger factor in determining seeding than play against overall strength of schedule.

Now, this wasn’t about anything more than ordering a top seed, so maybe that’s why there isn’t much of an outcry over it.  But how do you think that rationale, delivered by such a person, would go over were it used to justify four vs. five in a college football playoff?  I’m thinking not well.

Thursday morning buffet

Hungry?

• You know, there’s a guy every year who seems like he’s been around forever.  My 2014 nominee for that guy is Florida’s Andre Debose, who was just granted a sixth year of eligibility.
• “I just don’t want to see any University of Alabama (logos).”
• David Ching makes a case for a guy we probably haven’t thought about much yet, tight end Jordan Davis.
• SEC basketball crowds suck.  And here I thought continuously loud music packs folks in.
• So, the question becomes would college basketball be better served as a one-semester sport?  What I love about this discussion is that there isn’t a single word about what fans might want, other than to blame our limited attention spans.  “It is a big challenge to get people to care about college basketball when football is still being played.”
• Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney thinks it would be swell if college football players didn’t come out early.
• The day Georgia football almost died.
• Pretty good column in the Boston College student newspaper about March Madness:  “Thanks to March Madness, regular season success is overlooked.”
• Auburn’s AD has fired the football, baseball and men’s basketball coaches he hired since 2008.  Think he’s indebted to Malzahn right now?

Office pools and Cinderellas

It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those “March Madness is waaay better than college football, dude” pieces, and this one manages to hit all the old, familiar high points.

But the only ones interested will be the fans of the teams that are involved and your normal college football fans. Your mother and grandmother and hipster cousin won’t suddenly jump on board to watch the college football Final Four…

He says that like it’s a bad thing.

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

UPDATE:  Apples and oranges.

The “settling it on the field” dilemma, in two sentences

The NFL is pondering the expansion of its playoffs by adding two more teams to the field.  Why, you may ask?

As if you didn’t know.

In any event, the league is trying to make it sound as if postseason expansion is not inevitable.

Some owners are apparently wary of the potential for de-valuing a playoff spot by allowing too many teams into the postseason. But such concerns could be offset by the potential for increased TV revenues.

Delany and Slive couldn’t have expressed that more delicately if they tried.  Which they will, in a few years.

They set up a college football playoff and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

If you’re looking for further proof that the people running college football believe they’re way smarter than they really are, you need look no further than here.  Somebody actually thought there’s good money to be made pushing stuff like this:

Aside from the fact that it’s boring as hell to look at, who’s the audience for it?

I give it a year and Delany’s handing them out as a bonus to sign up for the Big Ten Network.