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.

no comments

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.

no comments

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.

 

no comments

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!

no comments

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.

no comments

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:

no comments

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!

 

no comments

(Before we start, remember that my website is teamming up with a cool new service called FanLime, and that it's incredibly easy for you to enter and win a $50 Amazon.com Gift Card. Click here for details!)

If I’ve learned one thing covering the sport of college football over the last few years it’s this: Much my like my 95-year-old grandma, we as fans simply worry too damn much. We are so busy discussing what could potentially happen, that we forget to pay attention to what actually does happen. Every year, we substitute different players, teams and coaches, but debates remain oddly the same.

In some order they usually are:

“Should a one-loss SEC team play for a title over an undefeated team from another conference?”

“Should we allow two teams who played during the regular season to play again for a BCS title?”

“Should we give Boise a shot?” (Incredibly, it doesn’t matter the year, Boise is ALWAYS in the discussion. They’ve become the proverbial "fat kid on the playground waiting to get picked for a kickball game" of the college football world.)

And every year, like clockwork, all this crap sorts itself out.

This year has been no different. It sorted itself out with losses by Wisconsin and Oklahoma a few weeks ago. It happened when Clemson got tripped up a week later. And guess what, the herd was thinned again with losses by Stanford and Boise last night. We’re now left with two undefeated teams, and two clear paths to the BCS National Championship Game. If LSU and Oklahoma State win out, they play for the BCS title. If they don’t, well, all hell breaks loose. But again, these things have a funny way of working themselves out, so for now, let’s not get caught up in hypotheticals, ok?

 

no comments

Because of the Penn State column that was posted earlier today, I didn’t have much time to think or write about this weekend’s games. Quite frankly, given everything that’s happened the last week, I’m not too sure how important they are to begin with.

Regardless, here are some quick, Week 11 picks:

CINCINNATI (-4) over West Virginia: Saturday, 12:00 p.m. ABC/ESPN2

Much like Dana Holgorsen’s hair-do, something just hasn’t been right with West Virginia all year. Every time they look good, every time they seem to be figuring it out, every time they look ready to turn a corner…they fall flat on their face. With their talent, there’s no excuse for losses to Syracuse or Louisville. None.

On the road, against a good team, I think things could get ugly for the Mountaineers.

(On a much less negative West Virginia note, I thought this column by John Canzano on Mountaineers Athletics Director Oliver Luck was outstanding)

Oklahoma State (-17 ½) over TEXAS TECH: Saturday, 12:00 p.m. ABC/ESPN2

Truth be told, I feel like the Pokes got a break here. Lubbock is always a tough place to play, but an 11 a.m. kickoff seems much more manageable than an evening one.

Oklahoma State…big.

PENN STATE (+3) over Nebraska: Saturday, 12:00 p.m. ABC

So…who likes field goals?

After a tough week around Happy Valley, I expect a hard-fought, emotional, defensive struggle between these two teams. Think of it as the ugly step-brother of LSU-Alabama last Saturday, if you will.

Last week the Tigers won 9-6. This week I’ll take the Lions by the same score.

 

no comments

If I was asked to describe this entire messy situation at Penn State in one word, it’d be “gray.” The cover-up was gray, the after-effects are gray, and just about everything we thought we knew about Joe Paterno is too.

All I see is gray. But unfortunately, for many of you, that word might not be good enough.

That’s because in the society we live in today, there is no such thing is gray. Everything is black or white, right or wrong. You need an opinion, you need a strong opinion, and you need it now. There is no time to collect facts, no time to gain perspective.  There is no middle ground. There is no moral gray area.

Never has that been more apparent to me than the coverage this past week at Penn State. Hang out on Twitter, watch the television coverage of the event or read columns about the topic anywhere and it seems to me like everyone is one of two very distinct sides of the fence. You either:

1. Want to see everyone fired, want to see Joe Paterno run out of town, and want Penn State burned to the ground…

Or

2. You’re a Penn State homer, a Joe Paterno apologist and (please excuse me for being so blunt) an advocate for the sexual abuse of children.

Believe me, I hate typing that last sentence as much you hated reading it. But that is how I feel the reaction to this whole uncomfortable situation at Penn State has been.  And I also can’t help but feel like I’m caught somewhere in the middle. I can’t help but see gray when looking at this situation, and see even more of it when trying to find answers.

no comments