The Pac-12 is too good for its own good

Nobody else is saying it, so I will: The Pac-12 is the best, most-dominant, rife with talent, toughest to win in consistently, not-ugh-this-game-fucking-sucks-and-glad-I-watched-all-sixty-minutes-for-it-to-be-10-3, disturbingly proficient at producing NFL-ready players conference in college football. And yet, after last weekend they’ve virtually been eliminated from post-season ‘tournament’ play. Why taking the Pac-12 out of the equation is like taking the ACC out of post-season college basketball consideration. In other words, it’s the mark of a disastrous faux-team playoff® system.

By Andrew Pridgen

The four-team College Football Playoff system is a fucking joke.

For starters, the CFP leaves out at least one of the Power Five conferences. Can you imagine having to choose a pair of Harry Potter books to not make into films (OK, we could’ve all done without Goblet of Fire or Half-Blood Prince) or the Huxtables without Rudy or The Jackson 5 without Michael Tito? Or how stupid and not-tasty Four Guys Burgers sounds? Six-dollar footlongs? That sucks. How ‘bout giving your co-worker a high-three? Yes, the CFP is ostensibly leaving the opposing thumb off its roster—failing, in other words, to evolve into a real tournament.

Better yet, imagine in college hoops saying an ACC team can’t compete in March Madness because they had a handful of losses/didn’t win the conference championship: Sorry Coach K., but we’ve got to go with our gut and give your tourney bid to Buffalo and Albany (…more on the football/basketball analogy in the bullets below, because, yeah it’s just that good). Just picture the complete meltdown along the Eastern seaboard if the ACC were to get jobbed in hoops like the Pac-12 does in football. It’d be akin to the tuck call not being reversed and Our Lord and Savior Tom Brady as we know him having never been born.

The CFP’s philosophy is that a one-, or possibly two- or three-loss team doesn’t belong in a playoff regardless of regular season competition. This creates a very disinterested conglomerate of about 20 big square states that make up the majority of the country’s electorate. I can’t totally blame them though. Beyond Manhattan, everything East of where Hardee’s becomes Carl’s Jr. shuts down about the same time as Jiffy Lube and therefore, a Pac-12 tilt with a 7:30 PST kickoff has about as much chance of standing out as a gay bestie at a Katy Perry concert.

The East Coast-heavy demographic of the CFP voters also do a splendid job consistently alienating that really key electoral state on the left side of the map which is also the country’s most populous/richest. Yeah, that’s smart. Totally ignore your nation’s biggest, wealthiest, most influential base in favor of, I dunno Podunk religious school in the place where it floods because Jesus actually hates white people.

The CFP’s short-comings and growing pains cut especially deep this year as the prep school bully score-spitters seemed to be Bopping and Stanky Legging all over Bristol Saturday night singing ding dong the Pac-12’s gone after Oregon took down Stanford on The Farm and Arizona stole one at home from Utah.

ESPN.com senior editor Mark Schlabach couldn’t fucking wait to eulogize the West with his ‘Eliminator’ recap this week as his lede: Say goodbye to the Pac-12 was written in a fugue state while he was mainlining Arby’s Horsey Sauce and praying that his company’s 20 percent stake in DraftKings will spare the dying media juggernaut from cable ratings oblivion and save his job.

There are two ways to look at the parity of the Pac-12 this year: 1) They’re not that good. That every team’s just kind of pretty average, especially on defense, and can drop one to another pretty-average team any given Saturday. 2) They’re really really good and basically each team features a bunch of NFL-ready offensive set pieces who run more plays, more schema and execute more efficiently than the rest of the country. The shit is real. Usually this kind of play is rewarded with all the riches and adulation all the post-season schwag bag junk you can stuff into a carry-on. In CFP world top-to-bottom conference quality of play = self-destructive. CFP is the result of vetting based on convenience of time zones, favorable scheduling and who’s got the most Jimmy John’s within a three-mile radius of campus

For argument’s sake, I’ll take the latter, you know, argument that the Pac-12 is in fact really good—bolstered by the following:

• Fact: Top-to-bottom there is no better, faster, stronger, more rigorous league in college football than the Pac 12. Oregon State and Colorado are as close to breathers opponents get and even they’ve won the majority of their out-of-conference match-ups (the Buffaloes were three for four and the Beavs were two for three, dropping one to Michigan). Mike Leach’s Washington State Cougars can play with anyone, and faster than anyone in the country. Oregon and USC are NFL farm teams (see: below), UCLA and Cal feature lottery-pick QBs/the NFL’s future. Stanford and Utah are perhaps the most well-rounded teams in all of college football and the Arizona schools can and do beat anyone—especially when it’s not convenient. And yet NONE of these teams are going to make it past the Holiday Bowl on Dec. 30.

• Fact: The conference is plagued by a trio of high-profile week-one losses (Arizona State lost to Texas A&M, Stanford dropped one to Northwestern and Washington got outplayed by Boise State…) not to mention Washington State hiccuping in its opener to Portland State. But it’s competitive out-of-conference play scheduling (I’m looking at you Big 12, SEC and ACC) that makes the Pac-12 noteworthy. Besides the B1G, who generally is down to party, the Pac-12 is the only Power Conference putting anything beyond Patsy State, Southern Racist Tech and Blue Laws U on the September schedule. Ohio State got walloped by Virginia Tech week one last year and we know how that turned out. Plenty of programs, good ones especially, don’t get it right until right about now (week 10-11). And many of the hottest West Coast teams (see: Oregon) are ostensibly eliminated while the offense is still getting the plugs switched out and a new air filter. What was that axiom in sports about the importance of getting hot at the right time? Doesn’t apply here.

• Fact: What do Wofford, Appalachian State, Louisville, Georgia Tech, Boston College, Miami, NC State and Syracuse have in common? Besides the fact that they’re all unranked, they’ve made up all but two games in Clemson’s schedule. To its credit, Clemson handed Notre Dame its only loss to date and took down 8-2 Florida State (both at home) but week-over-week the competition is probably just a hair shy of a fifth grade talent show. Sure, maybe one kid will be able to show up and nail Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Doubt monologue but for the most part it’s two-seconds-off lip-syncing to One Direction and magic tricks that turn into soggy newspaper. The only Pac-12 programs Clemson would stand a chance against on the road are OSU, Washington, Cal and Colorado. The other eight would likely beat them at home or away. Can you imagine Clemson’s record with Washington State’s schedule? I can. It’d go something like this:

Portland State – W

@Rutgers – W

Wyoming – W

@ Cal – L

@ Oregon – L

Oregon State – W

@ Arizona – L

Stanford  – L

Arizona State – W

That’s right, to this point in the season Clemson with a Pac-12 schedule would likely be 5-4.

• Fact: To extend the basketball analogy from above, the Pac-12 in football is similar to the ACC in hoops. Think of Stanford, Oregon, SC and LA as the Virgina, NC, Duke and Notre Dame. All fun to watch, right? That’s why I don’t begrudge all four of the aforementioned and then some from that conference competing in the field of 64. That’s why I do not bat an eye when a four-loss Duke team grabs a no. 1 seed in the big dance after losing its conference tournament—and then going on to win the whole thing. Why? Because they’re that good. They’re that fast and that smart and that well-coached and have to endure that much of a gauntlet during the regular season. Using the current CFP system, Duke’s 2015 championship season would have been done in mid-January.

• Fact: The Pac-12 had 39 draftees into the NFL 2015. Sure, it wasn’t the SEC’s 54 but once there, Pac-12 players seem to have the most staying power. USC leads all schools with 38 players who are active on NFL rosters in 2015, just narrowly beating out the Oregon Ducks, which is tied with Alabama with 36. And this year should be no different with 49 Pac-12 players predicted to be drafted next April.

• Fact: Arizona (7), Oregon (9), Cal (15) and UCLA (17) all have more total yards than Clemson (19). Of the Power Five conference schools, only Texas Tech and Baylor rank higher than a Pac-12 school. While keeping scoring low is a bit of a problem in the conference (Stanford, ranked 35 is tops in yards surrendered) maybe that says a little more about the pace of play and the athleticism on the field than the lack of quality defense.

-and-

Fact: Notre Dame is going to be beaten, handily, by Stanford on Nov. 28. Even if they lose to Cal, which they could, this weekend, Stanford should throw the Irish a beat-down on The Farm by double digits. To the domers’ credit, they’ll have mostly a House of Pain-sized hangover from the Shamrock Series football game Saturday night against Boston College at Fenway but more than that, the Irish haven’t faced a front seven like the Cardinal. Look for DeShone Kizer to be more lost and confused than as if he had just stumbled into a Math 51 lab on the Palo Alto campus.

So ESPN’s Ryan McGee, bend over to hide your boner because NOBODY this side of wherever there’s still a Krispy Kreme is looking forward to that Clemson, Iowa/Ohio State, Oklahoma State/Oklahoma and, I dunno, probably fucking Florida playoff.

To bide my time between now and January 12, I’ll look forward to the Pac-12 going undefeated again (OK, so Arizona dropped one to Boise State) in second- and third-tier bowl season action—El Paso is calling my name—and then in April watching the NFL take a flier on 50 of the conference’s finest as the prognosticators pretend the dozen schools with the most football talent in the land didn’t deserve a place on the national stage.

 

Pints and Picks Week 11: Road Trip!

Each week, during college football season DPB’s Kyle Magin and Andrew J. Pridgen pour on the prose with Pints and Picks™. Who to wager and what to drink while doing it. This week: Road Trip.

Kyle,

Holy cow! Have I got a Saturday planned.

So, about a half-decade ago, I fled Park City in my Forester with exactly $3.78 in loose change a half-eaten ‘neath-the-seat Slim Jim and an interior covered in Border Collie hair. The car finally broke down on the Central Coast of California and it’s here I’ve been living ever since—watching housing prices desperately try to keep time with the Bay Area as the job market floods with newbie Cal Poly polyglot brocoders each spring.

It has been, in other words, a long time since I’ve been both mentally and physically ‘back’ to Utah. But lo, a quarterly budget-centric, um, you know, examination of our credit card bill and my significant other (who moonlights during the day as an accountant) feels the $80/month spent on a storage unit windowless Airbnb rental near the Kimball Junction McDonald’s (#doubledrivethru) is a drain on both mental and monetary resource. It got to the point where I couldn’t even say the word ‘park’ without inducing a cringe-worthy cringe.

And so, she generously volunteered for 26 hours of solo parenting in exchange for me to go ahead and hop two states over to clean out my past. I agreed and decided it’d be a morning flight there and an afternoon flight back, with nary the time to make a lunch date in between; my tacit acknowledgement that this was an all-about-business trip.

But what of your stuff, she asked. I said I’d either drop it at the Park City thrift (where you can still score last year’s Bogner onesie for under $100…sequined and fur-lined and all) or carry-on/ship some of the more keepable keepsakes back. Nope. That was a no-go. I won’t bog down with the details or take my creative license to misquote the conversation (it’s already a sore enough spot) but I will say, to you and to our generous reading public, she is 100 percent right. That I didn’t just blow two grand to have a bunch of skis and half-tees sit in a shed only to let it flick away into the rarefied Utah mountain ether like a MGD wrapper skipping behind the Circle K Dumpster.

I could, in other words, be recovering the Ark of the Covenant or three giant bags of plastic spiders. It doesn’t matter. It’s coming home.

So, I present to you Kyle, the itinerary of my ballsiest/most comprehensive and audacious Western States road trip to date.

Saturday, Nov. 14:

6:15 a.m. — Check in at San Luis Obispo international (state one, Calfornia. Check). At SBP, there is a single airline agent who also checks your bags, puts ‘em on the plane, sells granola bars at the magazine rack and even works the Avis counter. San Luis Obispo is no hub and there’s always a connector to be had, but the longest I’ve had to wait to be scanned by the 92-years-young TSA agent waving the old-school wand is about three minutes…whether I have ID on me or not.

8:20 a.m. — Wheels down at PHX/Sky Harbor (state two, Arizona. Check)…Resist the urge to Uber it to the Coach House in Scottsdale to down a $4 morning pitcher of Coors heavy and pretend it’s Spring Training already during my two-hour layover. Note: Upon Terminal B to Terminal A gate switch OJ sprint, I had to pause and take a shot of this…yes, this awful goes down in AZ in fewer than two months:

Noon — SLC Int’l (state three, Utah. Check)…Pick up that azure Ford Focus and be on my way from the best airport in the world to ever get to pick someone up at: SLC features a waiting corral/parking lot with flight arrival times up on a big board so you don’t have to keep circling and can read a book instead.

12:28 p.m. — Quick detour off the 15 en route to the 80 to Epic Brewing Company on State Street. Epic can’t give you sample pours in their brewhouse because they’re all high-point suds. Clever blue laws Utah. In the five years since I left, Epic went from a single vat, double bro-with-beards operation in the shadow of the Temple to a pretty big Utah/Colorado macro-micro movement that sticks with its roots in providing not-too-hopnoxious flavors to the local climbers and riders. Can’t wait to clink clink clink out of there.

1:09 p.m. — Sunridge Perimeter Trailhead Snyderville, (suburban Park City) USA. Kyle, I can’t NOT go out and do a quick out-and-back on one of my favorite aspen-lined tacky single-tracks of all time. My lungs won’t be acclimated and I’m 10 pounds of baby weight not yet shed more than my last time out. But this is 50 minutes I’m going to take to stretch my legs, breathe in that pure Utah mountain cush and re-set.

2:05 p.m. — El Chubasco. (Translation: The Chubasco). If you’re ever around the Wasatch Back, be sure to check out the salsa bar that most salsa bars dream of becoming (hint: try the mango). Unfortunately, I’m taking this to go.

2:39 p.m. — Going all in for my own #storagewars. Everything that fits in the Focus comes with.

3:01 p.m. — Back on the 15 pointing south. Look out Provo, St. George, Northwest corner of Arizona…I’m coming down hawt. Setting the cruise control at a responsible 82 and looking for that sub 5 hour, 30 minute throwdown to state number four which is…

7:49 p.m. — Viva Las Henderson, Nevada. No, my math’s not wrong, I gained an hour getting back to PST. Second-half wagering on the Oregon/Stanford game at the Green Valley Ranch Sports & Race Book awaits.

*Beer Break*

Sunday, Nov. 15

6:14 a.m.— Bid farewell to my host family (former college roommates) and their three daughters and his kegerator. And get back on the 15 for the homestretch 420 miles. Barstow to Bako to SLO.

12:39 p.m. — Back at SLO int’l. Crack open an Epic and transfer gear from rental car to full-time car. Remember that no matter where you are, it’s there that you are.

My Picks:

Oregon +8/5 @ Stanford

Is this the wrong time to profess I had a dream this week that Oregon was leading 45-25 in the fourth quarter? I don’t believe much in dreams Kyle, so I’ll go ahead and talk about the things I’ve learned in the waking hours from watching these two Pac-12 North rivals:

1. Ducks’ OC Scott Frost is going down to The Farm for nothing less than a 3 hour 23 minute job interview for David Shaw’s gig. He’s got the Stanford pedigree (not to mention degree) and, you know, Ken Doll hair. Unlike Shaw, Frost doesn’t branch off the Harbaugh coaching tree but if the Stanford Tree needs a suitable sideline replacement next year to run the offense a bit more up-tempo, he’s the obvious choice.
2. Oregon D coordinator Don Pellum’s DBs are starting to learn how to turn around and find their place in space. Plus Stanford’s Kevin Hogan can’t throw the ball more than 15 yards. True sophomore/NFL-bred RB Christian McCaffrey is the Cardinal offense’s singular attraction and will be tougher to bottle than genie Shaq. Pellum will let the son of Sir Edward Thomas have his 35 touches and 220 all-purpose and key in on the wideouts and tight ends instead. Oregon is 105th in the nation on points/yards allowed per game, but of late has an answer along the lines of 660-plus yards of total offense per game (777 last week). However, with so much ‘explosive offense’ hype happening pre-game, I’m feeling Oregon/Stanford will take it into the locker room 10-3 at the half before the six guns come out in the third.
3. Oregon playcaller Vernon Adams is finally creating under center and he has shown the last three weeks that can be a dangerous post-graduate transfer when given a little wiggle room. Stanford’s D line is one of the better fronts in all of college football, but with Oregon’s chorus of five-star RBs starting to find their extra gears the Ducks could forestall the Cardinal from locking up that bid to the Pac-12 championship game for one more week.

SJSU +1 @ Nevada

The Spartans and the Wolfpack have transposed records (4-5 vs. 5-4) but San Jose State is a better team with a tougher schedule. Spartans’ running back Tyler Ervin is top two in the Mountain West in rushing yards (1,239) and total touchdowns (14). Of those 14 touchdowns, a dozen came on the ground and a handful are of the 20-plus yard variety. That’s gamebreaking speed that probably won’t slow much in the communion wafer-thin Reno air. The Wolfpack’s D-line is anchored by Ian Seau and Lenny Jones who know how to sneak into the backfield like it’s the buffet at the Peppermill. But once Ervin is sprung into the Pack’s secondary, it’s on.

Last week, San Jose State juco transfer quarterback junior Kenny Potter had the Spartans rolling in the first three quarters against BYU and was a PAT away from a tie and some overtime action at home. If the Spartans’ defensive front seven can similarly contain the increasingly dangerous Wolfpack RB tandem of James Butler and Don Jackson and apply their formidable pass rush to QB Tyler Stewart—who when the heat is on is less light on his feet than Gary Busey doing the Nae Nae!—SJSU should leave Mackay Stadium with a dust of snow on the helmet and a minor upset.

Minnesota +12 @ Iowa

Kyle, I gotta say Minnesota has been getting better every quarter in the bid to keep HC Tracy Claeys employed. A couple weeks ago, the Golden Gophers barely let Harbaugh and co. out of Minneapolis with a complimentary set of little brown jugs (which I only just now realized wasn’t a euphemism for over-spray-tanned strippers). Last week, Urban Meyer’s Ohio State Buckeyes looked like they were dying to let one slip in a really big way against the Gophers and their suddenly stingy D. For three-and-a-half quarters, the pre-season favorite to repeat looked like they were going to sleepwalk to their first L at home in a calendar year.

This week, it’s a different type of ____eyes the Gophers are attempting to derail. Iowa has the opportunity to be 10-0 for the first time in school history and is carrying a giant head of team steam into the CFP top four if this week’s SI jinx doesn’t create a ripple. The Grapple on the Gridiron event Saturday morning outside Kinnick Stadium should surpass 40k and all those folks queuing up at the cornfield to see a bunch of racist baseball players—and James Earl Jones—under the lights, have made their way to Iowa City.

Is this heaven? No, it’s a school that finally is in the spotlight enough to have an alternate uniform. Props to The Guy Who Looks Like the Guy Who You Want to Be Your Next-door Neighbor Iowa HC Kirk Ferentz for taking a shot back this week at Fox-sponsored bag ‘o wind Colin Cowherd and his brand of assured drivel infused with not-so-informed hatespeech. This, and the fact that Iowa can replace a vestigial SEC franchise during the January bowl miasma, is enough for me to root for them to get over, but just barely, on the Gophers.

Kyle, would you like to join me on the road?

AJ, 

I’m jealous of every aspect of your trip, save one. Dropping off a rental car is one of the most painful experiences known to man. OK, maybe not man who owns one of Carroll Shelby’s famed rides or some obnoxious one-percenter who waxes every weekend and bristles at watering restrictions, but the rest of us. Look, even if you opt for the Focus or a souped-up Go-Kart like an Aveo, it’ll nearly always have a nicer interior (and probably exterior) than your current whip. There’s no coffee stain on the front seat. Your dog hasn’t tracked 10 pounds of the world inside with her after countless trips to the beaches and trails and post office (where she always finds the most fascinating dead animal to roll in.) It’s almost always a product of the current administration’s auto policy and carries a music system that will make yours sounds like an eighth grade band concert. Cousin Michael learned all seven notes to Jingle Bells.

For a brief time in the sun, you get to drive the living shit out of a new car. I’ve never not repeatedly redlined a rental and really opened that sucker up. You’ve got a God-given opportunity to cover a lot of not-real-populated desert real fast on your way between the two intermountain meccas of Mormonism and Payday Loanism. I envy that most of all, and I’m not even a motorhead.

Onto the picks…

Oklahoma State -14 @ Iowa State

This may be more of a sure thing than the over on 60 in this game. Mike Gundy is firmly in ‘look-at-me’ mode with his 9-0 OSU charges this weekend. The team is on the outside looking into the playoff right now, so it’s vital they build their case in the most sadistic way possible in Ames against a sad-sap 3-6 ISU team coming off a throttling at the hands of Oklahoma. That means Gundy will be turning his quarterback JW Walsh loose both early and often and also late and frequently when the Pokes are up many, many points. The Cowboys need a(nother) statement after beating TCU last week. They also need so, so much insurance because a frankly unimpressively-scheduled Baylor Bears team plays a strong Oklahoma team on Saturday (more on that in a moment) before the two get together next week. If Baylor were to lose to the Sooners, big, bloody wins are going to be OSU’s best argument to lay at the feet of the playoff committee. A victory in Ames needs to be decisive, and I imagine that’ll happen.

Oklahoma +3 @ Baylor

Boomer! How did the 8-1 Sooners ever lose to Texas? That’s an enigma wrapped in a mystery. I can tell you how they’ll keep it real close on 8-0 Baylor and maybe even win. That’ll be by the Bears continuing their maybe-we’re-not-that-dominant trend. In the past four weeks, their margin of victory has dropped from 59 versus Kansas to 24 vs. WVU to 18 vs. ISU to 7 vs. Kansas State. OU’s Bob Stoops is both a slightly better coach and a man with far superior talent to the band-aids and walk-ons Bill Snyder rides to winning records every year. Art Briles’ bunch at Baylor just haven’t seen this kind of attack in Waco (<<S.E.O. S.E.O.!) Oklahoma hasn’t given up more than a touchdown in a road game since week 2 and they’re eyeing upcoming dates with TCU and OSU to bolster their playoff resume, too. I expect OU to come out on top.

BYU @ Mizzou +6.5

Everybody knows what happened at MU this week so I’ll spare our readers the re-hash. The key thing to remember is that Gary Pinkel stood by his guys, and then on Friday announced his impending retirement due to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I like the idea of a siege-mentality team, even a 4-5 one, coming out to fucking play against a 7-2 Cougars team who last saw real competition before Hotline Bling dropped.

PNP Recap:

AJ:

Last week: 3 and 3 (need to bet the NBA more)

Overall: 17 for 28 (one tie)

Oregon +8/5 @ Stanford

SJSU +1 @ Nevada

Minnesota +12 @ Iowa

Kyle:

Last week: 1 for 3

Overall: 18 for 34

Oklahoma State -14 @ Iowa State

Oklahoma +3 @ Baylor

BYU @ Mizzou +6.5

Pints and Picks: Finally there were Four

During college football season each week DPB’s Kyle Magin and Andrew J. Pridgen pour on the prose with Pints and Picks™. Who to wager and what to drink while doing it. Here, a very special PNP—Viva Las Tournament.

KM,

My plucky Pulitzer-winning publisher once told me, “There’s a fine line between taking a stand and grandstanding. It’s a newspaperman’s job to figure out which side public figures fall on.” This notion came back to me today as I read about Kevin Ollie’s boycott of the Final Four.

My knee-jerk was in lock-step with the rest of whomever’s left of the newspapermen out there that the Connecticut head coach did the right thing by skipping the tournament’s final weekend because of the host state’s recent passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The act could allow for businesses in Indiana to deny services to patrons based on sexual orientation and has about as much place as the Barbie whose boobs grew (<-or the creepy guy watching it here) in 2015.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy Tuesday issued an executive order that banned state-funded travel to Indiana and though state and school officials left it up to the NCAA defending champs’ head coach whether to go, it seems the ultimate decision was made by Ollie’s employer.

“In support of Gov. Malloy’s travel ban to the state of Indiana, Kevin Ollie and other members of the UConn men’s basketball staff will not travel to Indianapolis for the NCAA Final Four and events surrounding it,” Connecticut President Susan Herbst said Tuesday. “UConn is a community that values all of our members and treats each person with the same degree of respect, regardless of their background and beliefs and we will not tolerate any other behavior.”

Connecticut AD Warde Manuel said he hoped Indiana lawmakers would repeal SB 101 before the women’s Final Four is hosted there next year and other ADs, including USC’s Pat Haden, will boycott this month’s College Football Playoff meetings in the Hoosier State as well.

But is this taking a stand, or grandstanding?

After more careful consideration, I believe it’s the latter. It’s not that SB 101 isn’t a terrible misstep by Indiana and it’s not that it shouldn’t be repealed, but events like the Final Four equal jobs and there are a lot of folks in the region, which routinely tops hardest-hit/slowest-to-recover from the Great Recession lists, that are reliant on marquee events not only to showcase their state, but to attempt to get back on their feet.

Indiana lawmakers are doing what lawmakers do and getting in the way of not only their state’s progress, but its recovery. In this case, the folks being punished aren’t necessarily the LGBT community, but the workers in the service industry who haven’t had the opportunity to be the beneficiaries of that necessary financial bump the national spotlight can bring in a long, long time.

A better stand by Ollie and his contemporaries would be to say, I’m going to Indiana and while there I’ll support only local businesses that gladly serve anyone: black, white, gay or straight; Christian, Jew, Islam…even Duke fans—we all deserve equal treatment.

That to me would say a lot more.

Speaking of equal treatment, over to you KM…

AJ,

This is where you and I take differing views.

I’m of the firm belief that somebody needs to go upside Indiana’s head before more of these RFRAs pass. Indiana begged for grandstanding when it passed this law.

Listen, I understand that the convention business is a key driver behind the turnaround in downtown Indy. The city hosts everything now—Super Bowls, Final Fours, the Big Ten Tournament, and countless non-sports related events in their facilities. It would rightly suck to bone all those employees—you know many are not well-compensated—out of work with a boycott, stoppage in travel or delays and cancellations in projects.

But, I doubt it will get to that point.

The pressure that people like Ollie or Apple CEO Tim Cook or Salesforce are bringing to bear on Indianapolis has to be excruciating, unfortunately, for Hoosier State politicians. It has to send a message to every other backwoods legislature that passing one of these thinly-veiled freedom-to-discriminate laws (which is what this was, in part, if you learn about the lobbyists behind it) won’t fly. I know it’s a cold stance to take, but consequences on the bottom line are the only thing that’ll bring some of these nutcases to heel.

It looks like it won’t get to that point, which I’m thankful for, because as a former Rust Belter I agree with you that the region can’t afford to take too many hits.

Alright, AJ, who ya got?

KM,

I’m about to close this one out for $2,000 and you can hit me back with something on the turnaround, but I gotta understand one thing: For me, it’s atrocities upon atrocities here. I willingly watch, bet on and fawn over the NCAA Tournament with an evangelist’s high aspiration, forked tongue and double-sided face. I do this knowing full well the indentured servitude of the student-athlete and the literal sweat off their backs and their brows is fueling this kind of macabre three-week extravaganza that dictates not only this column but my weekends, free time and your pool time at Vdara.

So what, then, does it say about either one of us that we can write about the stuff all the way down to the homophobic and demonic Indiana legislature and still tune in Saturday with bulging cargo shorts, wringing slips with lousy point spreads and wearing logo gear stitched together by the Kali Ma slave children in Temple of Doom.

Maybe I learned a lesson with my NFL boycott last season: I don’t regret it but there is surely a way to ebb fanboy desire or ire while still writing objectively or at all about sport. I just feel I haven’t struck that balance yet, not completely.

Maybe the right thing to do is walk away…right after this weekend:

Michigan State +5 vs. Duke

Duke is the smart play here, the safe play here. History (Mike Krzyzewski 8-1 against Tom Izzo) says the Blue Devils will roll. The point spread keeps ticking a half a point a day in Duke’s favor and Michigan State has no business being in the Final Four in the first place.

That’s exactly why I like the Spartans.

Sure there’s Coach K’s super-senior Quinn Cook who can control the tempo. There’s Justise Winslow’s dialing from outside the arc better than anyone these last two weeks and Michigan State is probably three recruiting classes away from having the answer for Jahlil Okafor. And don’t forget Duke starts with a capital D. And they specialize in specialists. Duke held the Zags’ lethal point guard Kevin Pangos to four points and no assists and they look to neuter Travis Trice similarly.

But I still don’t buy it.

Michigan State is playing fast, uptempo, transition basketball, the exact kind you want to see in April. Too many pundits love to talk about what happened two months (or years) ago and not what they saw on the court last weekend. One needn’t go back further than Duke’s Sweet 16 victory over Utah to reveal its soft targets. While the Blue Devils eventually outclassed and outshined the Runnin’ Utes, it was Utah who had the answer, for the first 30 minutes.

Once Utah tired, or tried to slow down and put their super-frosh Jakob Poeltl toe-to-toe with Okafor on the blocks, it was over. If the Spartan’s dual-threat presence down low in Gavin Schilling and Matt Costello suddenly become the focal point of the game or get into foul trouble, the run for Earvin’s bunch will be over, quick. But Izzo won’t bite. More importantly, neither will Branden Dawson. The tournament’s MVP going into the last pair of games shows he’s the real Magic on the court and sometimes a little stardust is what it takes to make prognostications and Duke’s superior talent pool go the way of the superior-to-Duke Louisville Cardinal.

And the Spartans advance to the Big Dance.

AJ,

That did my heart good. At this point I’m fighting a few feelings about my Spartans; one being that everything from here on out is gravy. These kids went through the wringer this year and as a fan I can tell you I’m definitely just happy for them to be here.

On the other hand, Coach Izzo has conditioned Spartan fans to expect nothing less than a title every year, and that every season ending as one of the 320 or so D1 teams not to raise that last banner is disappointing. With that in mind, I can’t honestly say how I’d react if Saturday doesn’t go the Spartans’ way. Before we get to that, though, the Cats and Badgers deserve a little attention…

Wisconsin +5 vs. Kentucky

If Notre Dame’s gut-punch 2-point loss last weekend taught us anything, it’s that Kentucky has two weaknesses: staying focused through an offensive set and maybe, maybe looking ahead. Enter Wisconsin. The Badgers are the most efficient offensive basketball team in the country and they can easily replicate and improve upon ND’s blueprint: Moving the ball. The Irish doubled up on Kentucky on assisted baskets, 16-8.

Part of that owes to Kentucky players being able to create more for themselves on the break and in transition. But the other part of it is the Cats young defenders getting lulled to sleep by the fourth or fifth pass of a set. It’s difficult to keep up with anyone that deep into the shot clock, nevermind someone like the Badgers’ Sam Dekker or Frank Kaminsky who are just as deadly from the post as they will be popping off of screens. The Cats still bomb away from deep—they hit 50 percent of their three-point tries against ND–and can use that to make some major separation. But if Wisconsin can consistently force Kentucky to defend deep into sets, they start wearing on the Cats’ focus on the offensive end. Nobody is running away with this one.

Alright, AJ, before I get to Saturday’s undercard, what are your thoughts on Game 2?

KM,

I’ve been more up and down about the Wisconsin/Kentucky tilt than Anna Nicole’s weight (and career). Part of me thinks the Wildcats have yet to play their best basketball of the season. And part of me thinks they never will.

Wisconsin +5 vs. Kentucky

Notre Dame was a better basketball team than Kentucky and, depending on whether Connaughton chooses baseball, features the same number of potential NBA all-stars (two) as the Wildcats.

That said, I think the genius in Calipari’s coaching this year is to make it look like he’s not coaching at all. As soon as he got done signing every McDonald’s All American and building a team that is 10-deep with next-level talent, it seems like all he’s worried about is tie selection and whether anyone notices his hand slide down Allie LaForce’s back before heading into the locker room.

But make no mistake, casual Cal is very calculated. As his Wildcats found themselves on the brink elimination against the Irish, it was coach’s tireless off-seasons spent schmoozing and grooming including frequent trips to the Dominican as mentor/coach that proved his savior. It was abroad he found and trained up go-to freshman Karl-Anthony Towns. Towns on the blocks and posting up ad nauseum is automatic: 25 points on 10-of-13 against the stingiest of Ds in Notre Dame; wonder what year in the ‘80s he was really born.

It’s time for the Wildcats to get serious after playing around like the Von Trapp children in old drapes for the first four rounds. And the Notre Dame scare was the equivalent to when you date down for a slump-buster and then she breaks up with you.

Bo Ryan’s offense is all the rage on the sportsblab but the drive-and-spin-and-dish-and-drive freneticism has been exposed like the read-option in the NFL. I believe Kentucky wins this game because Towns and Cauley-Stein stay home underneath and Booker and Harrison score in flourishes from outside; take next-gen athletes and install an old-school gameplan.

Ordinarily, the Wildcats cover and then some but for Frank Kaminsky, the one player left in the tournament who’s tougher for opponents to figure out than a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded. Kaminsky will help keep it a close, physical and one-possession game till the final buzzer.

Kentucky may not cover, but that won’t matter as they improve to 39-0.

All right KM, take us home with your boys in green.

AJ,

I was originally going to play this like Kirk Herbstreit when he punts on picking whatever game he’s calling that night. Mine is for different reasons—I’ve watched this team through the peaks and valleys of this season and am not sure I can come up with an unbiased opinion.

But, because coming out like Coach Taylor with a Clear Eyes, Full Hearts breakdown where I’m still deliriously happy from last weekend and nothing can ruin that would be boring, I’m going to do this…

Duke -5 vs. Michigan State

Because Gotham got the hero it deserved, but not the one it needed right now. Because ARod won a ring. Because Jimmy Chitwood will never again get the love Jesus Shuttlesworth gets. Because the eight miles of pine trees and two shades of blue narrative is more celebrated than four guys from Flint.

Because sometimes the outcome everyone expects is exactly the one they get.

Either way you bet, either way it comes out, I’m going to be proud of this team.

See you all for Pac-May next month.

 

 

 

Andrew James and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Game

When I went to sleep Sunday all my friends were in Dallas. When I woke up Monday I was still at home and they were all having breakfast beers on Facebook and smiling with their mouths wide open the way people do in pictures now.

When I got out of bed game day morning, I forgot to pack my work laptop so I got halfway out of town before I had to turn back to get it.

By mistake, I dropped my highlighter yellow Oregon sweatshirt in a puddle while getting my son out of the car for daycare and I couldn’t wear it to work. And I always wear my highlighter yellow Oregon sweatshirt on big game days.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game.

When I was eating my Clif bar at my desk a co-worker walked by with a sausage McMuffin with egg and even though I don’t like those, the whole room started to smell like delicious McDonald’s breakfast which is what 1994 smells like and that was a good year. I decided I would go to McDonald’s and get one but instead a meeting reminder email popped up on my computer and it was a meeting I hadn’t even prepared for—which is why I took my laptop home in the first place the previous night.

I think I’ll move to Dallas.

In the meeting, Candace let Bob and Natalie sit close to the phone in the middle of the conference table so the client could hear them and they didn’t even have anything to say. I was scrunched in the back next to a couple engineers who were there only because it was on the way to the kitchen. I said the client wouldn’t be able to hear me if I was so far away but nobody, not even people in the room, heard me at all.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game.

Back at my desk, I posted a picture of me from a game I went to in October drinking beer and wearing my highlighter yellow Oregon sweatshirt. But Sam and Dan and Rick and Mike posted pictures of themselves wearing shorts and flip flops drinking beers in a giant parking lot outside the actual stadium before the actual game. So people liked those pictures a whole lot more and could tell mine was old. My mom liked it and someone I didn’t even know I was friends with the name Raj liked it, but that’s it. I took it down. Sam and Dan and Rick and Mike’s pictures got like almost 100 likes each.

When the coffee truck rolled up outside work they said the credit card machine was broken. Matt only had enough cash for himself and Jonathan and he already owed Jonathan a coffee so I didn’t get any.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game.

Back at my desk, I turned Facebook off but then my phone started blowing up with texts. In movies, most friend texts say encouraging things or at least things like “what’s up” or “thinking of you xo.” But my friends’ texts say stuff like “you’re a fucking asshole” and “hope you’re having fun at work and not being at the game you piece of” and then an emoji of poo by it.

This happened over and over and over again. And over and over and over again and Sam and Dan and Rick and Mike kept running into more people and drinking more beers and posting more pictures and so I said in a group text next time you take off work and leave your families behind I hope someone shakes up your beer and it explodes in your face.

I was going to go to Taco Bell for lunch because I still had a fast food craving from the morning but I had pizza leftovers in the fridge from last week that needed to get eaten and 10 minutes between meetings so I ate that instead and got a stomach ache which resulted in me having to get up during the meeting to go to the bathroom. And everyone knows if you have to get up during a meeting, especially one right after lunch, it’s to go number two.

It was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game.

That’s what it was, because after work the game was starting at 5:30 and I got home plenty early to help change the baby and get his food ready because he has to eat baby food instead of wings and onion rings. But getting him ready takes forever. So long that I could’ve flown to Dallas and back.

When we finally got there, Oregon had already scored (good!) but then Ohio State scored a bunch right back and their running back who was wearing a half-tee like Stan Gable in Revenge of the Nerds was going everywhere and Oregon receivers were deciding to get nervous for the first time all season and drop passes like I drop groceries coming out of Trader Joe’s. My buddy Jerry turned to me and said maybe this isn’t their year.

Next year, I said, I’m going to Dallas.

By halftime I started crying and trying to make myself feel better by making fun of other people at the bar. The baby and his mother decided they’d heard enough so they packed up and went home and left me there to cry and try to talk shit some more. My buddy Mark texted me to tell me to take a shot and I said I don’t want to take a shot but he said take a shot and I said I shouldn’t and he said he did and I should because it’ll be good luck.

So I took a shot and told the bartender that I was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game. But she didn’t listen.

In the second half, Ohio State kept scoring and the stadium full of Ohio State’s fans kept roaring and everyone who didn’t go to school with me in Oregon kept texting me asking if “white and camo” were Oregon’s school colors when I went there and I didn’t think it was funny. Not at all.

I walked home from the bar during the fourth quarter because I remembered everyone was mad at me and I wanted to say sorry before bed and maybe catch the last 10 minutes on my couch because I’m undefeated when the Ducks play and I’m watching from the couch and maybe I could catch the Rose Ceremony too—but it was too late.

Four Weddings and a Funeral was on instead and Hugh Grant looks really young, surprisingly fresh as if he’s not yet done with school, in it and it was the funeral scene where the WH Auden poem is read by the guy who looks like he’s in the Pet Shop Boys and that all just gets me. So I watched the score pile up against the Ducks online while I got drunk-sad during the funeral part of the movie and drank water because I knew I’d have a headache in the morning.

I didn’t even want to watch the game anymore because the whole time the stadium made me dizzy and queasy because it looked like the inside of a giant airport terminal or a Best Buy but with dim lighting and all I could think of was all the people who’d be soon leaving and how empty it would be on Tuesday, This big, empty, giant shell where passes get dropped and half-tees come back and the bets I made for Oregon to win by seven and more than 73 points get scored combined go to die.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game.

When I went to bed I was already having a headache and nobody liked my sad Facebook post about how teams who don’t wear their own colors don’t deserve to win national championships and the nightlight in the bathroom went out so I stubbed my toe on the scale when I went to pee.

I forgot to brush my teeth and I had bar burp breath. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game.

My mom says some games are like that. Even in Dallas.

The brilliant end of the Southeast’s stranglehold

The Ohio State vs. Oregon college football championship Jan. 12 in Jerry Jones’s basement game room is causing more heartache in football’s America than Papa John’s Fritos Chili pizza.

Because, well, it SHOULD’VE been Bama and FSU. The BCS WOULD’VE given us Bama and FSU. And two weeks ago nobody COULD’VE believed it wouldn’t be Bama and FSU.

Yet, the semi-final games were played and it’s very decidedly never going to be Bama and FSU.

That Nor’easter nipping at your neck is everyone west of the place that decided a president by the margin of a piece of confetti in 2000 breathing a collective sigh of relief.

And the crosswind is a pair of decisive victories by Oregon and Ohio State breathing life into the notion that a four-team playoff—at once incomplete in its infancy while adding heft to the notion college football is about as close to an amateur enterprise as amateur porn sites—is thus far working.

The decisive semi-final outcomes resulting in this unlikely pairing is such a disturbingly better match up than the prospect of a traditional Southeast-themed championship that it can only be the result a couple decades of gears turning toward college’s fringe, rather than sheer luck or fate intervening on Jan. 1.

Oregon, a program on the rise since Rich Brooks roamed the sideline and title sponsor Nike’s best-selling sneak was coined for a man named Penny, is still routinely maligned by the blubbery pundits as gimmicky; versus Ohio State, resurrected and spit-shined from the 2011 rubble of Jerseygate by one Urban Meyer—known from his Utah days to now as a little flavorful and gimmicky himself.

But these gimmicky West Coast-based blend (not bland) spread offenses and other erstwhile ignorable programs which color outside the margins and the hashmarks (think: Marshall, Boise State, Utah State, Baylor and TCU) will grow in number and remain venerable for the following reasons:

• The SEC’s patsy out-of-conference regular season schedule does come back to bite it (or at least took a chunk out of Vegas) during bowl season: Mississippi State, which was one game away from being named the second SEC team in the final four, was trounced by ACC also-ran Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl joining other top SEC programs Auburn (34-31 loss to Wisconsin in the Outback Bowl) and LSU (31-28 loss to Notre Dame in the Music City Bowl) in this year’s SEC bowl bust…a parade of futility whose grand marshal was Ole Miss. The school with a secession-era mascot less than two months ago stood tall with Bama and Mississippi State as three of the top five programs in the nation. Then they got waxed like Andy Stitzer by, who else? Final-four odd-team-out TCU. The 42-3 final score doesn’t take into account TCU suited up the band for the fourth-quarter SEC mercy rule and the Rebs still barely avoided a shut-out with a late field goal. On the bright side, new-to-conference Missouri does run a very fresh-looking offense under second-year coordinator Josh Henson. Though the Tigers lost to Bama in the SEC title game it was more at the behest of head coach Gene Mauk’s conservative play calling which loosened up ever-so-quietly as Mizzou took down the Golden Gophers of Minnesota at the Citrus Bowl.
• College football’s parity is just beginning to show not only because Oregon and Ohio State represent teams with progressive coaches who run progressive schemes, but because the regions slowest to embrace football as a track meet or ballet not a heads-down Smashmouth scrum are going to continue to lose. And by lose we don’t mean just 42-3, we mean lose athletes, lose alumni support, lose programs. The spread is quickly becoming the offense of choice of high school football because it plays faster, smoother and more athletic/watchable than the rendered fat amorphous blob of your grandfather’s single-wing attack. Well-publicized head injuries and the expense of equipment has dropped Pop Warner participation numbers almost 15 percent since 2012. Nutrition, conditioning, speed and sportsmanship are the new pillars of youth sports which doesn’t leave much room for molasses asses and barking coaches. Prep football programs will still cherry pick some of the school’s best athletes, but gone is the propensity to want to hit and be hit. Scrambling brains and sacrificing joints truncating careers in track, soccer and swimming—sports student athletes can more likely excel at at the next level—no thanks.
• Recruiting and appeal is no longer regional. The rest of the country, specifically the West, has quietly caught up with and surpassed the Southeast on defensive size and speed, offensive schemes, coaching prowess and practice facilities. Oregon’s current top two commits are from Missouri and Georgia and another five of their top 10 hail from Southern California including guard Zach Okun, skill position player Malik Lovette, defensive tackle Rasheem Green, defensive end Keisean Lucier-South and inside linebacker John Houston Jr. Stanford, USC, Washington, UCLA, Arizona and even Utah are ever closer to tipping the scales of in-state/out-of-state recruits to even, each taking big chunks from yesterday’s stay-home football states Texas, Florida, Alabama and Louisiana.

Still, it is a transition moment. And this year, to much of sports nation, the Buckeyes/Ducks sounds like an aberration, a great Holiday Bowl match up and not much else. But that’s the same “Oh, it’s just one comet” mentality that did in the first set of dinosaurs.

Recruits will continue to migrate to the West and regardless of tradition and a TV contract, the ONLY thing the Southeast has in store for the rest of the country henceforth is Sperry topsiders and blotchy frat guys screaming in the Gameday broadcast backdrop with crooked hats and half-empty Solo cups to house their beery tears.

And no, one disastrous bowl season combined with emergence of a four-team playoff does not spell the end for the biggest conference in all of amateur sport. What it does show is SEC has much more to prove in coming seasons than they’d like to admit. Without change, the very distinct, very recent memory of relevance could be the only salve as the search continues for a schedule replacement for University of Alabama-Birmingham 

A timezone stranglehold on an arcane cable highlight show no longer matters and neither does the old guard in a burgeoning meritocracy spawned by manifest destiny and the possibility of more than 700 really ugly uniform combinations per game.

Though it may already be too late for some storied programs because change—a college football first in the first year of a playoff—has already taken place.

 

What a silly, greedy, corporate mess college football has become with a four-team playoff

In a blind mad rush to further commoditize and professionalize amateur sport, we’ve taken college football, destroyed it with the BCS and then shit all over those ruins with the playoff system.

Prior to the playoff system, bowl games were decided by the Associated Press and UPI polls, an assemblage of writers and coaches. Bowl games were set with the rankings and tradition in mind. Each year, without controversy, a national champion was crowned.

From 1936 to 1997 the two polls at the end of the season didn’t mesh 11 times—an 85 percent success rate over six decades. So what if there were multiple champions crowned? That just meant more than one team had a really great bowl game and claim to a share of the title.

In the decade and a half of the BCS, there was controversy over the eventual taker-homer of the big giant football crystal ashtray EVERY year of its existence.

That’s a 100-percent failure rate.

This year’s four-team College Football Playoff™ playoff with the new upside-down-unicorn-horn-which-blooms-into-a-football-vagina-on-top trophy is merely a re-branding of the BCS’s unfulfilled wishes.

The playoff’s participants are all 10 conferences, as well as the FBS Independents (yes, they capitalize the ‘i’—whatever, they’re not the College Football Grammarians™) like Notre Dame and BYU. The new entity which represents the schools is called the CFP Administration, LLC. Nobody knows much about this corporation other than that it’s based in Irving, Texas and it’s a company that makes money off college football; so they’re kind of like a bookie, but legal.

The College Football Playoff™ site (which I think my cousin registered in like 1998) also lists a Board of Managers, Management Committee, Counsel and College Football Playoff staff as deciders in “the execution of the playoff.” Spoiler alert: apparently they kill the playoff at the end.

The computer which helps tally the results is pretty much the same—think of the BCS as the Craigslist of rankings devices: Janky, yet the only thing out there pretty much. The key voters/committee members also make up the Board of Managers and the Management Committee and the Counsel and College Football Playoff staff are pretty much the same. See: sexagenarians whose wealth of experience is likely only matched by present-day inefficiencies and hang-ups (Tom Osborne? Check. Mike Tranghese? Check. Pat Haden? Check. Tom Jernstedt? Check. Archie Manning? Check.) Oh, and Condi Rice is in too so the class photo isn’t all Haggar slacks and Cialis bathtubs.

And the format is the same. Only now, the two finalists get a pair of marquee bowl match-ups instead of one = $$$ for those schools along with the LLC.

The number four-ranked team will face number one and number two will face number three at the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1. The final will be Jan. 12 at the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T stadium and then Arizona the next year then Tampa then back to Texas or whatever.

A look at the brief and tortured history of the BCS reveals the problems never arose from the teams in bowl games from the one through four slots—they came from everywhere else: Bowls skipping over worthy schools and bidding others with more money, bigger alumni bases or a conference cache; big-program coaches launching campaigns for their schools to leapfrog or upend smaller-conference challengers with better records; coaches forced to run up the score to mesh with the computer’s algorithm for purported excellence and idle schools leapfrogging schools who lost their conference championships—penalties for playing in to a playoff.

That’s exactly what’s happening this year, but with potentially more big players getting left out.

If the final four were announced today, it would go something like this: No. 2 Oregon would play no. 3 Florida State and in a please-wake-me-when-its-over moment for the entire nation save for one very red region east of Biloxi, no. 1 Alabama would play no. 4 Mississippi State. At least this prohibits an all-SEC final and the ratings Hindenburg of 2012: Alabama 21, LSU 0 …thirteen people watched the game in its entirety and that’s because the hotel bar remote at the Shreveport Homewood Suites was broken.

This leaves out one-loss TCU, Baylor and Ohio State—all of whom deserve to be dancing as much as the current top-four (we’re especially looking at you Florida State and the rest of the ACC’s ability to supremely fold in the second half). Small-conference but can-play-with-anyone Colorado State with one loss and undefeated Marshall would also prove the new LLC includes all conferences in name only.

But then it gets more complicated from there.

What if, say, UCLA—who’s playing the best football in the country over the last five games—were to beat Oregon in the Pac-12 championship on Dec. 5? With two-losses, should QB Hundley and his ability to put up 250 yards passing on anyone in a half plus a maturing O-line and stifling D, be left out? Should Oregon and the eventual Heisman winner automatically drop from relevance and never be heard from again, cancelled out by a division rival they couldn’t take two from on the road?

How about if Ohio State lost to Wisconsin in the B1G championship game Dec. 6? Both teams would end up with two-loss seasons and similarly drift into college football’s abyss because they didn’t have schools like Southern Miss, UAB, South Alabama, Kentucky, UTM or Vanderbilt (Mississippi State) or Florida Atlantic, Southern Miss or Western Carolina (Alabama) on their tough-as-nails SEC dance cards.

What if two-loss Georgia, Georgia Tech, Michigan State, Kansas State, Arizona, Arizona State, Boise State and Missouri were to win out? Georgia and Missouri are SEC schools and yet they don’t seem to command the same respect as Alabama, Mississippi State, Auburn, Ole Miss or LSU. What if Bama loses to Auburn and Mississippi State loses to Ole Miss to deliver four two-loss SEC teams?

Hell, what if Missouri beats Arkansas at home in the season finale and wins the SEC championship by taking down Bama at the Georgia Dome Dec. 6? Should there be an ALL SEC final four? Surely Clay Travis who fake goes to tailgates and fake talks about football while he fake writes a blog for Fox would think so.

Would anyone else?

Playoffs aren’t about who’s on the cover of SI at the beginning of the season. It’s not about who won last year. It’s not about Nick Saban. It’s about who’s healthy and dealing the hot hand at crunch time. It’s the separation between who’s exhausted and falling asleep at the wheel and who’s going to ride with the gas light on for four more exits or until there’s a McDonald’s at the same off-ramp. Who can, in the course of a single drive, one big play, one step on the secondary, change the events as they should be written and re-write (if not re-right) the course of history. Playoffs are wild cards and underdogs and Cinderella breaking it down in front of the DJ booth, both arms in the air, make-up running and feet blistered and bleeding as she screams along with Violent Femmes Taylor Swift into the morning light.

But a two-game playoff is none of that. It is a semi-final and a final. It’s the Williams sisters walking into Wimbledon and drawing one another in the first round. It’s Michael never having to face Isiah to get to Stockton. It’s Tiger and Lefty roshambo’ing for the first three rounds and teeing off in sudden death. It’s nobody showing up to claim the bronze in pairs figure skating. It’s being left off the e-vite because the former Secretary of State caught tails instead of heads (how do you think we went to war with Iraq?)

I’m not the only one thinks a two-game playoff can’t hide an at-best unsustainable and at worst criminally flawed system that colludes the NCAA with its biggest football brands. There are others. “If we’re going to go anywhere,” former Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe told the New York Times at the start of the season, “I’d rather go back to the old bowl system.”

Until there’s one representative from each of the 10 conferences plus two at-large wild-card teams for a 12-team, four-week playoff, (the one through four seeds get a first-round bye) the old bowl system and its 85-percent success rate is still the undisputed champion of college football.