College Football - Aaron Torres Sports
As I mentioned on Thursday, if you’re looking for hard-hitting coverage in the lead-up to next week’s National Signing Day, well, Aaron Torres Sports might not totally be the place for you. There are only so many hours in the day, and less time I spend using those hours to learn about 17-year-old high school football players, the better off we all are. Just trust me on that one.
But while I’ll be the first to admit that I have little interest in learning about high school football players, I’m proud to report that I have no problem taking thinly-veiled shots at the men who’ll coach them in college.
That’s why yesterday, I broke out the first half of my “Fake Recruiting Pitches,” chronicling what I believe to be the most outlandish ways that the coaches of the SEC, Pac-12 and Big East would try to land recruits, and convince them to come to their schools.
Well, today I am back with Part II: Looking at the coaches of the Big Ten, Big XII and ACC.
As always, along with my own recruiting pitches, I encourage you to share your own, in the comments section.
Now, let’s get to the pitches:
I’m just going to be real with you here for a second: If you’re looking for some quality college football recruiting coverage, Aaron Torres Sports simply is not the place for you (although, we are doing some things at the other site I work for, CrystalBallRun.com). I’m not saying I’m a busy guy per se, but the idea of tracking a bunch of 17-year-old kids, more than half of which will never make any tangible impact on the college level, just doesn’t sound all that appealing to me. Especially when I’ve got more important things to do… like watch re-runs of How I Met Your Mother, for example.
Still, this whole recruiting frenzy does kind of make me wonder, and think how much fun it’d be to be a recruited athlete. Beyond just the bags of cash, free trips and endless girls (boooooring), I’m always curious what it’d be like to have a Nick Saban or Lane Kiffin in your house, pitching the merits of their school to you. What would they say? How would they act? Do you think Les Miles likes dogs?
Which is why in the lead-up Signing Day, I’ve decided to do something different here at ATS. Rather than pretend like I know a damn thing about any of these recruits, I’m going to instead focus on the guys that I do know, the coaches. And in one paragraph or less, I’m going to try my best to sum up what I think they might say, and what their top selling points might be.
In Part I today, I’ll look at the coaches of the SEC, Pac-12 and Big East and tomorrow I encourage you to come back with Part II, evaluating those from the ACC, Big Ten and Big XII.
Here goes:
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It was right around this time four months ago that I was putting the finishing touches on my book ‘The Unlikeliest Champion.’ For those of you who know nothing about the book (or likely about me), it is about the UConn men’s basketball team and their National Championship last March, and as I finished it up this past fall, I was looking for one final quote to really sum up the entire season as a whole. To give such an unexpected championship some broader, “big picture” perspective.
That quote eventually came to me from a guy named Leo Papile. Papile is a legendary figure on the Boston hoops scene, an AAU coach who has sent more guys to college than the G.I. Bill, and a guy who has forgotten more basketball in the last week than most “analysts” on TV have learned in a lifetime. He’s also one of UConn head coach Jim Calhoun’s oldest friends, going back over 30 years, way before the TV cameras, National Championships and Hall of Fame speeches Calhoun has become famous for now.
When I asked Papile what the 2011 championship meant to Calhoun’s legacy, he said something so elegant, it practically brought tears to my eyes.
This quote is straight from my book (available on Amazon.com by the way!):
“Through the years Jimmy’s best teams would out-work you, out-tough you, out-compete you,” Leo Papile, Calhoun’s friend, dating back 30 years to their days in Boston said. “That’s exactly what that team was all about. It was his perfect team. This was Jimmy’s masterpiece.”
His “masterpiece.” How beautiful, huh?
And as I watched last night’s BCS National Championship, I couldn’t help but think back to that quote.
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As you’ve probably heard by now the BCS title game is tonight. Crazy, I know. After all the waiting, all the analyzing, and the debating, incredibly, it’s just time to ball.
With so much build-up to this game you need no further introduction from me. So instead, let’s just jump right into it, talking about some of the biggest story lines entering tonight’s game.
The Talent On The Field: Go ahead admit it, you expected the first bullet point here to be “the defenses.”
Honestly, I can’t blame you, and if anything they probably should have been. But considering I started my preview of the November 5 game the exact same way, and given that not much has changed with those defenses since then (it’s not like Alabama’s entire secondary came down with mono or something) it doesn’t seem worth rehashing old thoughts. As I said on November 4, “How many different ways can you say “These are far and away the two best defenses in college football” anyway?
So instead, I’ll keep the same theme, change the context, and ask an abstract, impossible-to-answer question instead: Is this the most “talented” title game since USC and Texas in 2005?”
Obviously, there’s no real way to answer that. But I think that it just might be.
For Alabama- to put it as simply as I can- the Tide may very well be the most talented top-to-bottom college defense I’ve ever seen. The numbers obviously back it up, since incredibly Alabama ranks No. 1 in the country in the following categories: Total defense, scoring defense, run defense, pass defense and red zone defense.
Before we get to the New Year’s Day recap, I’d first like to offer an apology. I’ve been a bit of a scrooge lately, and really it hasn't just been the last few weeks, but really more of a four month thing. Well, with the New Year upon us, I’d like to apologize, and start turning over a new leaf.
So why was I so grumpy? (If you’re guessing that it had anything to do with the pink snuggie my sister got me for Christmas, well, you'd be wrong. It's been before of college football.
First, let me start by saying that I love college football. I love it more than most of my immediate family, I love it more than a weekend getaway with a lady friend, I even love it more than a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s (which if you know how I like to eat, says something). It’s true. Give me a good game over a good book any day, and time with Lane Kiffin over time spent with friends going down memory lane. I’m consumed by the sport not just from Labor Day to New Year’s, but from New Year’s back to Labor Day again. For some, the sport might be a hobby. For me, it’s a passion.
Which is kind of why I’ve been a scrooge since September. That’s because in my opinion, this very well might have been the most uninteresting college football season I can ever remember. I can’t remember a season with fewer interesting games, fewer interesting teams or fewer interesting stories, not to mention more Saturday’s where I was bored by what I saw on TV. Usually there are at least three or four games every Saturday that I’m genuinely excited about, but this year I usually struggled to find more than one in most weeks. I’m not sure if that had more to do with me (I am an admitted scrooge after all) or the sport as a whole, but from about mid-September on, the whole season lacked a certain “oomph” that I don’t remember it lacking before.
Alright, so let me get one thing out of the way right up front: Ultimately, I don’t actually care who plays LSU in the BCS National Championship.
A lot of you have asked my opinion, a lot of you have shot down my opinion when I’ve given it, and a lot of you have argued the merits of your own opinions. And ultimately, you know what? You’re right. And so am I. And really, that’s the gift and the curse of the BCS; it leads to arguments, debates and discussion. It makes college football relevant from the first Saturday in September until the first in December. And it makes your opinion just as valid as mine, and ultimately just as valid as any pollster’s too. The only difference between you, me and the pollster is that his or her opinion counts and ours doesn’t. That doesn’t make one opinion more valid than the other though.
So with that as some context, I’m just going to throw this out there: Alabama should play for the BCS National Championship Game. Quite frankly, I don’t even think it should be a debate.
Now don’t get me wrong. I watched last night’s Beatdown at Bedlam, and quite frankly, I enjoyed it immensely. I’ve thought Oklahoma was overrated for two years, I’ve thought Oklahoma State was the better team for two months, and I’m glad each got what was coming to them. I’m also glad that Mike Gundy is no longer just some dude who’s 40, and his quarterback has proven to be more than a guy closing in on 30. They’re both really, really good at their respective crafts, and I’m happy we can finally acknowledge each for it, rather than continuing to make the same played out jokes about them.
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So the plan yesterday was to sit down and do a column on college football’s coaching hot stove. Again, that was the plan, until I actually sat down to write. At which point instead of doing a hot-stove piece, I lost my train of thought, lost my focus and ended up with 1,500 words on Mike Leach alone. Woops. I can’t quite say how that happened, but I guess I should just be thankful that when I did, I finished it all wearing pants. Needless to say, it was a weird experience, which leads me to wonder, is this how Mike Sherman feels when he wakes up every day?
Anyway, because of my love affair with Mike Leach, it left a lot of room, and a lot of leftover material from my college football coaching notebook. From Ohio State to Ole Miss, Arizona and Arizona State, now onto Texas A&M, college football coaches are coming and going at a rapid pace. Not nearly as a Mike Sherman team can blow another fourth quarter lead, but pretty close. (Woops, did I mention Sherman again? My bad!)
Here are some big-picture takeaways from the college football coaching carousel, and in addition below are my Championship Weekend picks.
Basically, look at this as a college football hodgepodge column.
Enjoy!
Since starting this website over three years ago, I have written hundreds of thousands in this very space on college football. I’ve written about two Urban Meyer retirements and the subsequent un-retirements that followed. I’ve written about the Big Ten expanding to 12 teams, the Big XII shrinking to 10, and the Big East no longer being “big” or strictly located in the East. I’ve even written about not one, but two pairs of McCoy and Shipley brothers at Texas. (Speaking of which, did you know that Colt McCoy and Jordan Shipley were roommates at one time? Seriously!)
But in all those words and all those columns, one thing that I’ve pretty much never touched on is the Washington State football team. In my defense, there’s never been much reason to. Since I’ve started this site, the Cougars have not only been one of the worst AQ teams in college football, but they’ve done it without any of the flair or quirky trappings of historically bad teams. They’ve never had the overall feistiness of Vanderbilt, the-easy-to-make-fun-of head coach like Tim Brewster at Minnesota, and haven’t really ever found the spectacular ways to lose otherwise winnable games like Ole Miss has. Nope, worse than being bad, Washington State was simply uninteresting, their football team dull and drab. Kind of what I suspect Pullman might be like this time of year too.
Well, it’s safe to say that’s all about to change. In one day, Washington State has gone from dull and drab to innovative and exciting. That happened on Wednesday afternoon, when they went ahead and hired former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach to run their football program. And with all due respect to Urban Meyer at Ohio State, Rich Rodriguez at Arizona, and anything that might happen at UCLA, Ole Miss or Arizona State going forward, this will go down as far and away the best hire of the offseason.
Let’s start with the obvious and start with this: No matter what you think of Leach’s quirky personality, outspoken nature, or how things ended at Texas Tech for him, there’s no doubt the dude just wins football games.
There was so much college football goodness Saturday, and really, there's just never enough time or space to discuss it all.
Still, I tried. Here is my Sunday college football notebook, on the Iron Bowl, emerging Heisman candidates, what's wrong at Notre Dame and much more...
The Iron Bowl: I’ve got a totally un-Iron Bowl related thought here, but stick with me for a few paragraphs, and I think you’ll see how I wrap everything together into one neat bow. Just trust me here.
By now as you all know, I was unable to do this Sunday morning preview last weekend. Obviously life comes up, and last Saturday and Sunday was one of those circumstances. And of course the one day I decided not to do a recap, it just happened to turn into one of the most eventful days in recent college football history. As I’m guessing you’ve heard by now, Oklahoma, Clemson and Oregon all lost, which came on the heels an Oklahoma State loss the night before. Gotta love college football in November, huh?
Regardless, I wasn’t able to get all of my thoughts on paper about last Saturday then, but I think it correlates very well to yesterday’s Iron Bowl in a sense.
Here was my one thought on the shake-up at the top last weekend, how it correlates to the Iron Bowl, and more importantly, the race towards the National Championship Game in New Orleans.
That’s this:
To the fans of Oklahoma State, Clemson, Oregon and Oklahoma, I’d like to apologize: You poor souls never stood a chance. The fact that your teams lost last Saturday had much more to do with me, than anything they did on the field last weekend.
Let me explain. Last Saturday, I had dinner opportunity come up that I couldn't pass on, meaning that I wouldn’t be able to watch Saturday night’s games, and in turn wouldn’t be able to do my Sunday morning recap.
And once my Sunday recap was off the table, well, it only seemed a matter of time before all hell broke loose. That’s basically what happened on Friday night and Saturday, when four Top 10 teams all lost, giving us one of the most confusing and unappealing final weekends in recent college football memory (well, unless you’re a fan of the SEC West). Call it Murphy’s Law, or Aaron’s Law (if you please), but just know that once I agreed to do that dinner, there was a 100 percent chance that something crazy was about to happen.
Still, just because we’re down to basically three teams with a realistic shot to play for a National Championship (and in actuality, it’s only two, really), that doesn’t mean that this won’t be a fun weekend of football none the less. We’ve got still got a Thanksgiving plate full of traditional rivalry games (the Iron Bowl, Ohio State-Michigan), spruced in with some fun made-for-TV events (Stanford-Notre Dame) too.
With it, here are the Week 13 picks. As usual, home teams are in caps, and this week, the good folks at Wager Web provided the point spreads.
Oh, and by the way, happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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