After Championship Week!

Given my passion for college football, I'd like to start this week by extending my thanks to late, great, President of the United States Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt without whom we may not have the game as we know it.  It was as a result of a meeting Roosevelt had with college football's powers that be, during which he strongly expressed his concern over the injuries and fatalities in college football and that they were causing many schools to consider abandoning it altogether, that led to formation of the IAAUS (Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States) in 1906.  It changed it's name to NCAA four years later.

Another regular season done (except for the Army/Navy game) and another round of complaints over bowl selections and another coaching merry-go-round.  A five-loss team put up 70 points in a conference championship game and will now play the Rose Bowl.  For the first time a non-AQ team that has a loss will play in a BCS bowl as a result of Northern Illinois being in the Top 16 in the BCS polls and being ranked above an AQ conference champion (actually, two of them).  Neither of these two teams, Wisconsin or Northern Illinois, will have its head coach on the sidelines during their bowl game.  Bret Bielema left the Badgers for Arkansas while Dave Doeren left the Huskies for N.C. State.  Kirk Herbstreit was irate that NIU is playing in a BCS bowl calling it a "sad state for college football" which led to an interesting response via an open letter from an NIU alum and former Indianapolis Colts offensive tackle, Ryan Diem.  Some SEC fans are upset that Florida is playing in the Sugar Bowl instead of Georgia because they feel the Bulldogs are being punished for playing in the SEC Championship which led to its second loss (and therefore has one more than Florida).  What those fans may not realize is that if it weren't for pressure coming from Mike Slive and company, Georgia wouldn't even have been chosen by the Capital One Bowl; they wanted Texas A&M.  One of the biggest surprises in terms of bowl selections is the case of Louisiana Tech.  The Bulldogs were 9-3 and led the nation in scoring and will not play in a bowl this year due to the Athletic Director's reported refusal of an invitation to play in the Independence Bowl against Louisiana-Monroe (he claims that he simply asked for time to consider the invitation and to see if they received any other invites) and not receiving any other invitations.  That's too bad for the 31 seniors on the team, and for the underclassmen, as I don't envision head coach Sonny Dykes staying much longer.

The biggest bowl selection mistake was … the Blue Raiders of MTSU.  I think the team that got the biggest bowl snub is Middle Tennessee who isn't "going bowling" this season.  The Blue Raiders lost big (45-0) in the Sun Belt Championship against Arkansas State on Saturday to finish the season 8-4.  However, they have wins against two teams with lesser records which are participating in bowls.  Georgia Tech played in the ACC Championship against FSU because  of North Carolina and Miami (FL) being ineligible and their loss on Saturday resulted in their having a losing record (6-7).  The Blue Raiders beat them by 21 in Bobby Dodd Stadium.  Western Kentucky finished the season 7-5 and is playing in Little Caesars Bowl against Central Michigan and the Blue Raiders beat the Hilltoppers as well.  If the bowls were looking for a reason to avoid inviting the Blue Raiders they could possibly point to the fact that they started the season with a loss to an FCS school (McNeese State), but Pittsburgh did the same and needed a win this weekend just to get to 6 wins.  Perhaps they were focused on the fact that they were blown out in the championship game to the defending conference champions, but is that enough to negate their 8-win season?  I'd like to think not.  If any team got punished for losing a conference championship game, it's this team. MTSU has only played in five bowls ... and this year should have been the sixth.

Auburn and Arkansas make interesting hires.  As I wrote last week, Auburn should have fired Athletic Director Jay Jacobs along with Gene Chizik because there was no indication that he wouldn't make the same mistake ... which I think he did.  He hired yet another coordinator that was on a national championship-winning staff and that had minimal head coaching experience.  Sure, you can point to Gus Malzahn's Arkansas State squad winning the Sun Belt Championship and finishing with a 9-3 record, but keep in mind that the Red Wolves won that championship last season too (under current Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze) and had a 10-2 record, so it's not as if he turned around a program.  Did we really learn anything about Malzahn's head coaching acumen from his season there?  I don't think so.  So Jacobs fired Chizik, presumably not giving Chizik very much credit for the 2010 national championship.  I don't blame him for that as I give most of that credit to two one-and-done, junior college transfers, Cam Newton and Nick Fairley along with a fluke Michael Dyer play against Oregon.  Jacobs, apparently, gives most of that credit to Gus Malzahn, seemingly hinging his job security to the former offensive coordinator.  The bright side for Auburn fans is that there are several offensive players still on the roster that were recruited to run Malzahn's hurry-up, spread-option, offense.  Arkansas AD Jeff Long, on the other hand, went after some serious Petrino replacements.  He tried to make Les Miles the highest-paid coach in the nation and then he reportedly offered Vanderbilt's James Franklin nearly five million a year.  I had him hiring Louisville head coach, and former Florida defensive coordinator, Charlie Strong all season, but in a surprising move he hired Wisconsin's Bret Bielema.  Bielema didn't like Urban Meyer's aggressive recruiting tactics of pursuing players that have committed to other schools earlier this year, saying, "We at the Big Ten don’t want to be like the SEC in any way, shape or form."  Well if he didn't like one coach recruiting aggressively, what's he going to do now that he's in a conference in which they all do so?  I suggest he jumps on that train and tries to get current Alabama commitment Altee Tenpenny (how great of a name is that?) to stay in his home state and play running back for the Razorbacks.  Even though Bielema is a lifetime Big Ten guy (born in Illinois, played at Iowa, and coached at Wisconsin), his coaching style actually fits in perfectly in the SEC.  He believes in big offensive lines and an offense with a running game foundation and a play-action passing attack.  Rumor has it that Bielema wants to coach the Badgers in the Rose Bowl (which they are playing in for the third straight season) but that Athletic Director and Bielema predecessor, Barry Alvarez, won't let him and may possibly coach that game himself.

One coaching door closes and another opens.   Tuesday, Boston College hired Temple's head coach (and former Florida offensive coordinator), Steve Addazio to be their next head coach following a 2-win season.  Addazio's Temple Owls only won four games this season after a nine-win first year (which may have been residual success from the Al Golden years).  I still think it's a good hire for the Eagles whose only two wins were against Maine and Maryland.  Another Tuesday hire was Purdue's hiring of Kent State's head coach, Darrell Hazell.  Hazell, just finished his first year coaching the Golden Flashes after being a longtime Buckeyes assistant and led them to their first bowl game since 1972 and a double overtime loss this Saturday away from a BCS bowl appearance.  As a Buckeye fan, I hope Hazell joins the long list of former Buckeyes assistants that includes the likes of Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, Jim Tressel, Pete Carroll, Mark Dantonio, and Lou Holtz to have a successful head coaching career.  However, now that he's coaching in the Big Ten, I can't cheer him on as the Boilermakers are divisional rivals.  Those two hires, along with firings at South Florida and Florida International, open doors to yet more major head coaching opportunities.  Tennessee is supposedly pushing hard for Charlie Strong and reportedly interviewed Oklahoma State's Mike "I'm a man!" Gundy on Saturday; if either happens, yet another major job will open up.  Former Arkansas and Ole Miss head coach Houston Nutt interviewed for the South Florida job previously held by Skip Holtz on Tuesday.  Bobby Petrino supposedly spoke on the phone with Auburn, but Jay Jacobs and company reportedly made no job offer and instead inquired only about the off-the-field problems that led to his firing from Arkansas.  Cincinnati head coach, Butch Jones, was being pursued by Purdue and Colorado all weekend, but I don't see him walking into a terrible situation at Colorado (obviously, Purdue is off the table now).  Fired Kentucky head coach, Joker Phillips, got a gig pretty quickly as Will Muschamp hired him as his Wide Receivers Coach.  Phillips is known as a strong recruiter and I suspect that was Muschamp's true motive in hiring him as Florida is not really a huge passing team.  I’d imagine Wisconsin will reach out to Pittsburgh head coach (and longtime Badger assistant), Paul Chryst, despite his being adamant on Twitter that he is committed to the Panthers.  I’ll be surprised if Clemson offensive coordinator, Chad Morris, isn’t the next assistant to get a head coaching opportunity, perhaps at Tennessee, Temple, Northern Illinois, or Kent State.

I'd love to pick Mark Richt's brain.  One minute, eight seconds, and eighty-five yards to go after an Alabama punt is fair caught at the Georgia 15-yard line.  Knowing Alabama would likely be in a prevent defense so that Aaron Murray and company couldn't beat them deep and to protect the sidelines (to prevent them from stopping the clock), Mark Richt clearly instructed his quarterback to exploit the middle of the field.  Murray did just that throwing four passes to tight end Arthur Lynch on the drive.  However, how could Richt not have instructed him to "clock" the ball if he makes a first down in or near the red zone?  After hitting Lynch on a 26-yard pass to the Alabama 8-yard line with 15 seconds left, Murray rushes to the line to run another play.  The clock stops momentarily because it is a first down, and I am expecting Murray to spike the ball into the ground to stop the clock, but instead he inexplicably drops back and throws it to Chris Conley (who, by the way, dropped passes all night, it seemed) who catches it and is tackled in bounds at the 5-yard line and time expires before another play can be run.  If Murray spikes it, he has at least one shot at the end zone to take a 2-point lead if it is successful.  If it's quickly thrown and an incompletion, he likely has two shots at it.  Aaron Murray is a junior and I don't see his thinking here.  Maybe he was still the "I have to get yards" mode rather than the "Oh crap, I need to get points now" mode.  Maybe Richt didn't talk to him about it or maybe they didn't go over this scenario in practice that week.  Maybe Murray was thinking that Alabama's defense was expecting him to spike it too, and he might catch them off guard.  I know its easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but it was hard not to be a right-after-he-dropped-back quarterback in this instance.  We obviously don't know if the Bulldogs would have scored if it had been able to take a couple of shots into the end zone, but it would have been fun to see what happened.  Nevertheless, this was a great game and I think it was actually a better one than the oft-titled "Game of the Century" last November that pitted Alabama and LSU against one another in Tuscaloosa.  

Still think the Coaches Poll is a good thing?   There were two BCS at-large bids available going into the weekend and Oregon was definitely going to get one of them so Oklahoma needed to beat unranked TCU and hope that the winner of the Northern Illinois/Kent State game didn't finish in the Top 16 in the BCS.  Northern Illinois beat Kent State on Friday night and on Saturday afternoon the Sooners took care of business against the Horned Frogs.  The waiting game began after Kansas State beat Texas to ensure it shared the Big 12 title with the Sooners (a loss would have given it to Oklahoma outright) and that it would represent the conference in a BCS bowl due to having a head-to-head advantage over Bob Stoops' squad.  As we know, each of the human polls count for a third of the BCS formula.  The Coaches Poll, one I've never been a fan of for a variety of reasons, came out Sunday morning and had Northern Illinois ranked 16th (rut roh).  The final regular season Coaches Poll is fully transparent and one can see exactly how each of the voters voted.  You'll notice here that there are five Big 12 coaches with a vote in the poll and you'll notice that four of them tried to get Oklahoma the bid.  Bob Stoops, Dana Holgerson, Paul Rhodes, and Art Briles each ranked Oklahoma in the top ten (three of them as high as 6) which is higher than the Sooners were ranked in the poll the week before. They all also ranked Northern Illinois 20th or below, which is lower than the Huskies were the week before in the poll.  The only Big 12 coach that seemingly didn't get the memo was Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville who happened to rank the two teams right where they would land:  Sooners 11, Huskies 16).  Perhaps it's a coincidence that only one non-Big 12 coach ranked Oklahoma higher than 9 and NIU lower than 19th (Mark Dantonio).  I am not saying I blame these coaches for trying get Oklahoma a bid, because that BCS Bowl money would have made more money for the entire conference.  I’m not even saying that coaches in other conferences didn’t do the same at some point in the season.  Obviously, the strength of the votes coming from four people wasn't powerful enough to get what they wanted, because the Huskies are playing in the Orange Bowl, but they obviously didn't take the ranking process seriously either.  What I'm saying is that this is just one more indication that this poll has no place in determining national championship participation, or any other kind of true team comparison.  

Quote of the week: "T.J. Yeldon runs through more players than the Kardashians." -- Desmond Howard on College Gameday.

FYI: Middle Tennessee State University and Florida Atlantic will move to Conference USA in 2014 from the Sun Belt Conference.