Bill Bishop has some end of the
year thoughts:
Postroute, Postroute. You
are like the old lover with whom we all had a brief but passionate fling.
I’m making a late season booty call. I have some thoughts on the season:
1.
Now that everyone makes it to a bowl game and the January 1st games
have been dispersed, Thanksgiving weekend is the best weekend in college
football. Rivalry games start early and run late. This time around
we have been treated to Texas/Texas A&M, Michigan/Ohio St., Clemson/South
Carolina, Georgia/Georgia Tech, Pitt/West Virginia, Alabama/Auburn,
Stanford/Notre Dame, Missouri/Kansas, FSU/Gators and a host of others.
For the last three days, I have been able to watch a good college football game
whenever I wanted.
2.
Missouri is joining the SEC, specifically the SEC East. I’ve probably
heard a thousand times recently, “We can compete in the East.” Of course
we can compete. Win? Georgia has ripped off ten straight wins and
looks exactly like they were supposed to look in August. They have more
meat up front than your local butcher shop. I’ve seen Spurrier in this
position before. One year he looks good, the next year he gets close, and
then he kicks in the door leaving teams wondering what happened. The
Florida defense is stacked. This is coming from a FSU alum. Their
offense is horrible, but they play SEC defense. Vanderbilt just beat Wake
Forest and was close enough to win every other one of their games except
against Alabama. The SEC is loaded for next year. I could easily
see Alabama, LSU, Arkansas, Georgia and South Carolina in the top ten at the
start of the year. Thank God for Kentucky.
3.
Michigan finishes the regular season at 10-2 with a win over Ohio State.
Somehow, that seems right. Brady Hoke has done a remarkable job turning
that program around and adding some respectability to the Big 10. The Big
10 is always better when the Big Blue is doing well. As a whole, the Big
10 has suffered through its most embarrassing season ever. Scandals at
Ohio State and Penn State have knocked the sheen off of the Big 10 in a way
that one would not have imagined 12 months ago. Football in the Big 10
seems normal again. Indiana, Purdue and Minnesota are living at the
bottom, Illinois had another inexplicable collapse that leaves you wondering if
the coach will have a job come January, Iowa showed glimpses of really good
football and settled for middle of the road, and the true conference power once
again resides around the upper Great Lakes in Michigan and Wisconsin. Oh
yes, and no one even remembers if Northwestern suited up this season.
4.
I am not a fan of rematches in bowl games, especially in championship
games. I consider it a foregone conclusion that the BCS title game will
be LSU vs. Alabama. They are the best two teams out there, and it is
apparent no one else wanted to play LSU so I guess we are stuck with it.
I envision another great defensive game in which the punter and place kicker
are the most important players of the game. My problem, though, is what
will we have learned if Alabama wins?
5.
We need new rules for the PAC-12. The first rule should be that after a team
makes its first 40 pass attempts, the clock no longer stops on incomplete pass
plays. PAC games last five hours because they pass the ball every
play. The second rule should be that every team is required to field an
actual defensive unit. Not 11 kids they borrowed from a local high school
for the game, but honest to God real scholarship athletes who are instructed by
real defensive coordinators. I don’t know what defensive coordinators are
actually paid in the PAC, but I know it is too much. If a head coach in
the PAC really wanted to win, they would go grab any SEC defensive coordinator,
pay him a million dollars to recruit a defensive unit and then turn the kids
loose on the field. The other 11 teams would have no idea what hit
them. My third rule change for the PAC would be that if no team in a
particular division was any good, two teams from the same division would get to
play for the Championship. Yes, that would violate my rematch aversion
noted above, but anything would be better than watching the train wreck that
will be Oregon vs. UCLA for the PAC championship.
6.
The best thing about conference realignment this season: Missouri’s
wrestling team will win the SEC championship next year, and every year for the
foreseeable future. After that, I’m not sure what college football as a
whole has achieved. It looks like things will settle down once the Big
East works out a survival plan. The PAC, Big 12, Big 10, SEC and ACC are
set for now. Television contracts in those conferences are pretty much
set for a few years. If the Big East can add a few, they, too will
survive and get paid by the broadcasters. I would love to see the smaller
conferences (CUSA, MAC, MWC and WAC) form a 36 team super-conference.
They could institute a mini playoff with four divisions and the winner having a
guaranteed BCS berth. That would be fun and they would have some clout to
negotiate a good television deal. That would settle things down a bit.
7.
I think that is about it. I know a list of ten would be better, but I
don’t have much more to say. I have enjoyed this season of college football
and look forward to the upcoming bowl games. It has been a crazy season
with a lot of parity. Outside of the SEC, the conferences have been open
for whichever team wanted to step up and win. Mizzou beat Kansas.
FSU beat Miami and Florida, which is always good even if the games were
meaningless outside of the state of Florida this year. Thanks for taking
my late night call Postroute. I think I’ll go have a smoke now.
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