Tag: college football

These college football coaches bathe in smarm

College Football’s moral high ground stands roughly 7 circles deep, which is apparently still tall enough to preach from.

Written By Kyle Magin

The college football recruiting game is a well-acknowledged cesspool.

Hordes of assistants chasing a seven-figure head coaching contract head into some of America’s poorest neighborhoods to recruit its best athletes to beat the living shit out of one another for the next three-to-five years.

Along the way, it’s the adults who spread misinformation and lies about each other and the kids in order to achieve their ends of assembling a recruiting class which will impress the rotten fart-sniffers who cover that sort of thing with the zeal of a beltway wonk on election night.

It’s the adults who arrange for, hand out or look the other way on cash payments to land the biggest fish.

It’s the adults who stand to make far bigger sums of money based on the performance of the kids, especially the 95-plus percent who will never make a dollar for playing football.

It should be (but is not) surprising, then, when the adults involved in this 21st century sharecropping racket are the ones who moralize at the youngsters they’re so feverishly trying to pull into America’s most corrupt game.

Recently, there’s been a trend on social media of coaches publicly rescinding scholarships to students after seeing questionable things posted on the youngster’s social media pages: foul language, drinking, smoking, showing shaky decision making skills, etc., etc. These pronouncements are met with a furious nodding of heads and tweets of agreement from parents and the sports’ moralizing, sepia-stained fans.

This is revolting for a few reasons:

  1. There but for the grace of God go you. Listen, yes, it’s to be strenuously discouraged for young men to broadcast their stupid decisions via social media. It’s a habit that can haunt them for years, maybe decades. But have a little empathy, Mr. Assistant Coach. You and your cadre of meathead college football friends had the good fortune to grow up in an age before everyone was carrying a camera and before every kid could blast his thoughts on romantic relations to hundreds or thousands of followers. Imagine the fallout if your Dazed and Confused-era parties were recorded for all to see. Reprimand and attempt to correct the judgement or behavior but don’t yank a scholarship, the one potentially valuable thing kids are even allowed in this facacta relationship.
  2. You’re pulling these scholarships tactically and for effect. Contemporary college football is littered with out-loud social media fuck-ups who are really, really good at throwing, catching, blocking and tackling. Will Hill is a good example. Don’t act like you’re some moral paragon for pulling an iffy kids’ scholly offer (coaches almost never actually name the kid they’re dropping) while Orgy McDrinksalot-AY-DAY is out there hauling in touchdowns and Title IX complaints.
  3. Most importantly, remember that you, Hon. Reverend State U, represent an industry that makes billions in television money, jerseys and gate receipts annually and doesn’t share that scratch with the overwhelming majority of its laborers. You tell kids that the pittance they do have access to–the scholarships that represent a fraction of overall revenues–is subject to your total discretion as some sort of rector. You will pretty much openly lie, cheat or steal to land a kid, then abandon him the second you get a better job offer, he gets hurt or earns a succession of bad grades because he’s really devoting 50 hours a week to football. You represent a university that likely admits kids who are unprepared for its academic environment to remain competitive, then hands them phony degrees that sometimes don’t even require adequate reading skills to attain. You over-offer kids then push them out of their scholarship offers when someone better comes along. You’re the boots-on-the-ground functionary in the dirtiest apparatchik in sports, and your moral high ground was measured by Dante seven centuries ago. Shut the hell up.

 

Pints and Picks Week 3: The Mormons love LA and Heineken brings its end-of-wedding-reception skunkiness to the microbrew masses

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. Here, the boys are talking about Mormons gone Hollywood, Randy Newman’s ironic love for LA and how that microbrew you’re drinking is made in the same vat as that Colt 45—works every time.

Here, ready to throw for 4,200 (words)…Kyle Magin

kyleIVAJ,

Sit down and strap the hell in. College football embarks on its first real batshit weekend of the season Saturday. In a microcosm of the sport itself, the week 3 punctuation mark lands in the Rose Bowl with BYU’s visit to UCLA.

It’s pretty intoxicating for the city to be the epicenter of college football–USC is home against Stanford, meaning two top-10 teams and three top-25 teams will play in LA Saturday. As the NFL closes in on the city, it sort of feels like one last garden party before the new, tricked-out pool with a swim-up bar and loud music comes to the back yard. Even if it’s stupid nostalgia and the football factories in Westwood and South LA are every bit as greedy and consuming as any pro franchise, it’s comforting to know the city’s best will be lacing them up for coeds and aging alums in historic venues rather than CEOs and brawlers in a Jerry World knockoff.

And, AJ, speaking of coeds, Song Girls or the UCLA cheer squad? I’ve been studying photos all week and can’t decide. I have a natural antipathy to SC because they’re SC–home of drunk Sark and OJ and the Bush Push and, maybe worst of all, SC fans. This will require at least a few more hours of deliberation. I’ve ordered some posters to enter into evidence.

In the meantime, my only real bitch about week 3 is the slow start. The 9 a.m. PST games are a bore–the kegs n’ eggs matchup in College Station between A&M and Nevada might hold the most interest with Wolf Pack headman Brian Polian returning to take on his mentor in the Aggies’ Kevin Sumlin at Kyle Field. That’s a stretch though. I know they’re competitors, but do CBS and NBC really need to run Auburn-LSU and Georgia Tech-Notre Dame opposite one another in the 12:30 PST slot? Game theory, gents, Game Theory.

Alright, AJ, over to you…

ajIVKyle,

I was going to hit you with my Newmanesque (Randy, not Paul) love for LA and why it is the center of my sporting universe, but instead—a housekeeping item:

The prominent pachyderm in the place comes in the form of mostly ignoring the pints section of this featurette thus far this season (both on the page and in the podcast). Also apologies for the alliteration. To me the whole craft brew age has, like the city of Yorba Linda, been swallowed up with corporate intent and now suffers under the tyranny of greed. Beer fanboys who started brewing in their kitchens as far back as the early ‘90s are now seen as cash cow saviors for the shrinking macro-brew industry.

Last week my hometown brewery Lagunitas, once famous for its Undercover Investigation Shut-Down ale—named after a 2005 marijuana bust at the local plant during its legendary Friday afternoon tasting/release parties, not only announced it’s opening a second plant, LA and a third, Chicago, by 2017—but it’s also doing so after having partnered with a foreign skunk beer baddie. More on that in a sec. Lagunitas produced 600k barrels of beer last year, up from 400k in 2013 and will eclipse a million next year. They are the sixth-largest “micro” in the US and so…it was only a matter of time before the brewery that has sponsored every last trip to the bar at the end of the wedding reception—Heineken—would jump at a chance to merge.

While the macro-brew industry has shrunk about 5 percent each year for the past decade, mega craft brewing has swelled about 25 percent year over year for the past half decade. It is currently a $20 billion enterprise domestically and the big guys are no longer eschewing IBUs and hand-drawn labels.

Whether it’s 10 Barrel Brewing Co. in Bend (InBev snapped up ‘em last year) or surfer-bro-crafted Saint Archer out of San Diego (MillerCoors gulped them down in August), the foamy fringe is getting scooped up faster than drunk girls outside the club at 2 a.m. by a recently dumped Uber driver.

Others, Utah’s Uinta (The Riverside Company), Atlanta’s SweetWater brewing (TSG Consumer partners) and Colorado’s can-generation OGs Oskar Blues (Boston’s Fireman Capital Partners), went the private equity route.

My current backyard big craft player, Paso Robles-based Firestone Walker Brewing Co., New York’s Ommegang and Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing all recently fell to Belgium’s Duvel Moortgat.

Add ‘em up and you’ve got very few options left on the store shelf that are still in classic single proprietor/beer-lover/maker mode.

Lagunitas owner Tony Magee, self-appointed spokesman of the basement bro brewer generation, once decried similar sell-outs. “If you look at the biggest American brewers, they are owned by bankers now,” he said last year in an interview.

Now he and his craft ale—are part of the problem.

Kyle, other than New Belgium (employee owned), Eugene, Oregon’s Ninkasi which recently told Anheuser-Busch to fuck off, and a handful of plucky winners: Alibi in your own four-season playground comes to mind as does BarrelHouse on the Central Coast and Point Loma-based Modern Times—there isn’t much left that isn’t brewed in the same factories and vats as your pop’s old Michelob in the sexy curvy bottle with the enticing gold foil.

That’s why, in honor of my father and every macro-micro brew this week, I am going to kick it full-time live with some good old-fashioned Michelob Lager. The Lincoln to Budweiser’s Ford, it’s smooth and malty sweet. You can drink a dozen and avoid a hangover with a handful of 3 a.m. Totino’s Pizza Rolls and you will never, ever—get a sideways glance for rolling up your sport coat sleeves and belting out the fact that tonight, tonight, tonight…it’s on when there’s a Michelob in your hand.

Fear not, the pints part of us will never go away, intrepid window monkeys. Drinking foamy malted goodness goes with gambling and good decision-making like Johnny Depp goes with guyliner. So, as good book placement goes, we’ll never be too far from the taps at the bar.

OK Kyle, cheers to that. And I’ll see you on the other side of this swill with my marquee pick: Cal v. Texas.

kyleIVAJ,

And a hearty cheers to you. TBH, I’m not a great beer expert, so that may be why the ‘pints’ portion of our eponymous post pales in comparison to the picks (I see your alliteration and raise you.)  I have recently been inundated with Founder’s All Day IPA at multiple summer weddings. It’s perhaps the most accurately-named microbrew in existence and doesn’t rely on any fart-sniffing punnery to get it done. You can literally drink All Day from cocktail hour to last call before you scamper off to the bathroom because they’re playing a slow song and you’re too sweaty to convince another wedding guest to slowly turn in circles with you. The offering from Grand Rapids, Michigan’s Founder’s brewery combines the things you really like about an IPA–a little bitter with a nice citrus pop and light flavor–without any discernible aftertaste. That’s exactly what makes it dangerous, it’s buttoned-up enough to make you think you’re safe, then you’re teaching your mom and aunt how to whip it and nae nae on the dance floor. Celebrate All Day, but in moderation and carefully-chosen company.

Speaking of carefully-chosen, that’s pretty much exactly the opposite of BYU’s schedule (I give that transition a 6.5) this season. Look at this and tell me a half-hearted masochist didn’t put it together:

@Nebraska, vs. Boise State, @UCLA, @Michigan, vs. UConn, vs. East Carolina, vs. Cincy, vs. Wagner, @San Jose State, @Mizzou, vs. Fresno State, @Utah State.

No sane coach would purposefully schedule his lads to play four bowl contenders (without a bye) including three on the road to open the season. No respectable program would force its fans to watch four straight snoozers at home to follow that up. The back third of the schedule is the only part that kinda makes sense once you get past defending SEC East champs Missouri taking a whack at the Cougars late in the season. I’d launch into my ‘going independent was a roundly stupid decision by Mormon U’ screed but it wouldn’t land because through two games the Cougs have played the schedule like a harp. They took on a B1G west division contender (in fairness, a little girl and her bunny rabbits would be a dark horse there) and came out with a Hail Mary win, then did the same in Provo. Winning two games in the first four looked damn near impossible at the start of the season, and now the Tanner Mangum-led Cougs are a respectable loss away from being a slight dog to a slight favorite in Ann Arbor in two weeks. Hell of a sport.

Now, I realize that ‘respectable loss’ is anything but a guarantee. UCLA is likely this win away from being the most-buzzed about team in the country and could roll over BYU to make the point with panache. That said, the Cougars have seen it before. They went to Lincoln. They took out a Boise team under the lights with a redshirt freshman leading the way. UCLA owned an increasingly-desperate looking Virginia Cavaliers team at home and then shot over to UNLV to roll up the Rebs in front of a pretty Bruin-friendly crowd. If BYU’s fans show up like they’re saying they will in the Rose Bowl, the pressure will rise on true freshman QB Josh Rosen. Let’s do this…

UCLA -17 vs. BYU

Mangum v. Rosen. Mormons v. Hollywood. Throw out those storylines. What this game is really about is a contender in UCLA getting tested for the first time this season and BYU’s ability to draw penalties, bottle up the Bruins’ rushing game and continue to do big things in the pass game. The Cougars’ pass defense has broken so far this season–opponents have done most of their damage against the Cougars through the air with 616 yards and four TDs of the 7 the team has allowed this season, in addition to passes accounting for 29 of the 42 first downs BYU has allowed. Their neat trick has been staying just ahead of their opponents through the air, averaging 15.3 yards per catch to 12 for opponents. Part of that is the two Hail Marys, but part is Mangum and his predecessor’s ability to find the open man underneath. Staying ahead of Rosen won’t be easy, though. The Bruins have allowed just 147 yards per game through the air this season. They’ve allowed only one through the air, and exactly none on the ground. Opponents convert just 21 percent of their third downs, and only 1 red zone trip has resulted in an enemy touchdown. If you score on UCLA, keep the ball, because it hasn’t happened often this season. A lot in me wants to say 17 is a helluva lot of points to cover for a team who hasn’t seen much competition this season against a team that’s seen nothing but. However, I think the Cougars’ number comes up in the Rose Bowl this weekend. Rosen may be the bark, but his defense, led by linebacker Miles Jack, is the bite.

Alright AJ, before I take a look at the action in South Bend, Baton Rouge and Tuscaloosa, I believe you have some very definite thoughts on the action in Austin?

ajIVKyle,

People forget that Cal once featured Aaron Rodgers under center. Cal once had Marshawn Lynch bringing his Beast Mode science project from Oakland Tech and adding signature dredlocks just up the road at Memorial Stadium. Cal’s DeSean Jackson and Keenan Allen ran post patterns all the way down to Fat Slice, handed their change to the guy on Tele and Haste busking Dylan to a hip hop beat and made it back up to the stadium in time solve the Bears’ perennial 3rd and 23 woes. All Nnamdi Asomugha did was change the DB position forever and put a ring on Kerry Washington. And GOAT TE Tony Gonzalez once posted up for PG Jason Kidd and caught out routes in blue and gold. Your Golden Bears have informed or at least provided about a half dozen names for the backs of the NFL Shop’s top jersey sellers for the better part of this millenia and yet, the program gets about as much love as Chaz Bono at a Chick-fil-a.

Why dredge up the past you may ask Kyle? It’s because exactly NONE of the above and their respective Cal squads would’ve been given less than double-digit underdog odds marching into Darrel K Royal. And being on the minus side would simply have been…oh, about as likely as winning as many national titles as they have Nobel Prizes.

Indeed, these are heady times for the Golden Bears.

Cal -6½ @ Texas

As the Bears board Southwest for Austin, they are 6½ -point favorites which is more than enough to hang the cost of a case of Shiner and a pound of brisket on. But before I dive into the match-up, I should also disclose that Cal has been my horse since pre-season when I picked Sonny Dykes’ squad to win more than their predicted 6½ before the leaves in Strawberry Canyon change.

I took the Bears game one and two and they’re perfect against the spread thus far. When I glance down the remainder of their 2015 dance card, I don’t see a major test till Oct. 22 at UCLA. So, I think with the spread less than a touchdown—even on the road—bookmakers are still trying to figure out whether Cal is for real.

The answer: yes.

Here’s why:

  • Cal players are all kinds of bought-in to Sonny Dykes’ approach. Dykes falls from the gnarled Mike Leach (Texas Tech) and Mike Stoops (Arizona) branch of the coaching tree so he’s equal parts innovation, hubris and unapologetic. He’s probably the coach Oregon needs and Stanford wants but wouldn’t (pun not intended) stoop to. What the Bears get is a fearless and borderless recruiter and a little bit of a bullshitter. It’s not necessarily a sustainable model but it’s the model you want when you’re trying to a) turn a program around through recruiting b) graduate some kids (Cal, the most venerable public institution in the US, had the worst athlete/graduation ratio in the land as recently as 2013—Dykes was charged with changing this and succeeded) and c) have a game-day motivator. He’s also very level-headed and complementary to the opposition but in a back-handed way the way most Pac-12 coaches (who are either on their way up or down and are mostly on the spectrum) are not. Dykes this week on Texas coaching staff and redshirt QB Jerrod Heard: “They have a lot of good football coaches and bright minds on their staff. They made the switch to Heard; he’s a dynamic playmaker, very fast in the open field. You have to do a good job keeping lanes, pursuing, maintaining leverage.” Dykes is a master at using that coaches trick of giving more credit than where credit is due. But, again, his players BUY into that kind of bullshit. It’s like he baits them into thinking they’re the underdog all week and switches it up in the locker room at game time. That’s some SEC-style motivation right there, a first from the confines surrounding People’s Park but a welcome respite from the dreary culture of losing that has thrived in the shadow of the Campanile for the last decade.
  • Goff is starting happen. Junior Cal quarterback Jared Goff is starting to get the inevitable Aaron Rodgers comparisons. Kyle, I’ll take full credit for first placement of this reference from our last podcast and though it’s not quite there yet, at least Vance Bedford, UT’s seasoned-as-a-salt-lick defensive coordinator is prepping for the second-coming this week. “This young man is the real deal. This young man exceptional.” Indeed, Goff has NFL draft boards shuffling as he completed 41 of 56 passes for 630 yards, six touchdowns and two interception thus far this year. More importantly, he dug Cal out of a minor funk against San Diego State last week to dominate the last three quarters of play. Coming from behind is an increasingly less-familiar task for Goff who finally has the front five protection he was missing in his first two campaigns. If he makes a splash in that sea of burnt orange, look for Cal to suddenly start finding their schedule loaded with TBAs, especially during those back-to-back LA matchups at the end of October.
  • Texas is still marinating. I don’t buy the line that Texas is in a transition year as much as they seemed to be in Notre Dame. However, they do still need some extra time for those burnt ends to come up just right and the Craigslist post for a new AD this week is proof of this. Charlie Strong’s horns are still down 10 starters from last season and the defense is more suspect than Bartolo Colon’s listed age. The horns are allowing 500 (plus) yards per for its first two efforts. Goff, as mentioned, has enough in that right arm of his to double his stat line for ‘15 on Saturday and still have plenty to decry Whole Foods’ crimes against shopping humanity in the post game. Strong is making moves that connote his surname: The aforementioned Heard looks like the strongest under center for Bevo and co. since Colt McCoy and was masterful in the second half last week against Rice. So there is hope for the horns and not just because it’s still six months from when Austin becomes Normandy on Douchebag D-Day (aka SXSW)…but saying they’re there now, especially when they’re not holding, is a damn dirty lie.

Take Cal and make your day’s wages by bumping the line to an even 10.

Kyle…let’s keep it going:

kyleIVAJ,

I, too, am wondering if there wasn’t a little more than meets the eye in that Texas-ND matchup, but with the other contestant…

Georgia Tech @ Notre Dame +2.5

If the Texas game was the marquee party on Notre Dame’s home dance card this season, Georgia Tech is perhaps the marquee game. Those nerds from Atlanta aren’t known for their fan base’s ability to travel, but they are known for their triple-option rushing attack, which has resulted in a passel of video game numbers in their tilts versus Alcorn State and Tulane to open the season. They’ve already rushed for 915 yards, 15 rushing TDs (versus 4 passing) and 41 rushing first downs. Granted, they haven’t racked up those totals against even mildly imposing defenses, but at a certain point, just executing a game plan that would result in those numbers against anyone more advanced than your local charter school’s squad is pretty damn impressive. The Rambling Wreck’s defense has been nearly as flawless in its ability to shut down opposing offenses. Here’s the rub, though: Notre Dame has some very definite ideas about time of possession. In wins over Texas and Virginia, the 2-0 Irish have averaged nearly 33 minutes per game of TOP as opposed to Tech’s 31. This comes from a team that rushes about half as much and passes twice as much. With a freshman signal caller in the fold in DeShone Kizer, look for Notre Dame to stoke the fires on its successful but less-used running game in this matchup and potentially into the future. If the Irish can win the line of scrimmage on offense, it limits the damage Tech can do with its offense and begins to test a defense that hasn’t been pushed around yet this season. Kizer throws an absolutely beautiful deep ball and he’s got a receiving corps that can go up and get it. Add in the home-cooking in South Bend and I think you see the Irish cover ATS and win at home.

Ole Miss @ Alabama -7

Ole Miss is likely the faster, more explosive of these two 2-0 squads. They average almost 3 more yards per catch and have offensive lineman who are routinely into the second level on rushing plays where the more staid Tide hogs stay home. Ole Miss has converted more third downs into first downs, red zone trips and turnovers into touchdowns than the Tide have this season. They put up 149 fourth quarter points to ‘Bama’s 72. Unfortunately for them, Alabama has been in one fistfight against an actual team (a week 1 win over Wisconsin), is at home and has Nick Saban patrolling their sideline. Tide running back Derrick Henry averages 7.8 yards per carry to lead an Alabama attack that controls the ball for four more minutes per game than their opponents. Saban is a master of taking the air out of the building and rarely allows opponents the space to make a big, game-changing play. Look for a low-scoring affair with the Tide covering.

Auburn @ LSU -7

Chalk. Also, Auburn is 0-2 ATS and has been pushed hard by the likes of Louisville and Jacksonville State. LSU has already been through the fire in a week 1 victory over Mississippi State and a much, much better QB in Dak Sheppard. Geaux Tigers and the points.

Alright AJ, bring us home

ajIVTexas A&M -10 vs. Nevada

Scanning the lines Kyle, I can’t imagine why A&M isn’t closer to 17-point favorites. Seems like Vegas isn’t wanting to doubt the still-in-need-of-a-toe-hold Wolfpack too much; nor are they admitting A&M could win the SEC West (I happen to think they’re better top-to-bottom than Ole Miss and LSU; then again, I think BYU is too).

Facts ‘r facts though and I’d take A&M to put up a two-digit lead on the Wolfpack before halftime if you wanna double up on this bet. Nevada usually sneaks up on one team a year (remember when they took Boise State out of BCS title contention in 2010?) but don’t look for that to happen in College Station this week as the Wolfpack offense is simply a one-man show. QB Tyler Stewart throws 200-plus per game, but most of those yards come from his second or third option underneath. The Wolfpack receiving corps should be easy for venerable Aggie DBs to contain and there’s no run game to prevent a bevy of three-and-outs. And if that’s not enough to convince Stewart he’s his own one-man wolfpack, think about the havoc 6-foot-1, 335 pound Texas A&M defensive tackle Daylon Mack is going to create. That’s the same future first rounder who chased a Ball State running back 30 yards downfield last week—and made a tackle. Oye.

On offense, the Aggies came out firing against Arizona State and basically showed up like a guy pounding beers in a sauna—depleted but inspirational—against Ball State to run to a quick 2-0 record. As their ground game keeps plugging look for another freshman, wideout Christian Kirk, who was targeted a dozen times against ASU and another eight against Ball State to stand out. It seems speedy youngsters will be giving the Wolf Pack fits on both sides of the ball Saturday.

A&M should be loving it like all-day McDonald’s breakfast as this is their last dress rehearsal before a SEC schedule that doesn’t relent until Western Carolina the week before Thanksgiving.

Utah -10 @ Fresno State

If only the cartographers of the Pac 12 knew which way was north they’d find that Utah is well above Cal and Stanford while flipping through the old Thomas Guide. But there they the Utes are, stuck in the division’s dominant south bracket trying to make a run against suddenly unstoppable UCLA and USC.

But it’s also the 21st ranked Utes that are the dark horse to run that schedule in my mind. Fresno State is the Salt Lake squad’s final test before getting dumped into Eugene next weekend. And it’s this Valley dress rehearsal that will determine how next week’s line shakes down for the Ducks. My guess is it’ll be less than seven on the minus pending the Ducks having to struggle against Georgia State (they will, take GSU and the 10) this weekend.

But let’s do what head coaches say and not get ahead of ourselves: Utah will likely have a mirror game to last season’s 59-37 victory against the Bulldogs. Why? The Bulldogs thus far have had the fewest first down conversions from third and more than five in college football this season. Not a telling or a fully cooked stat, but after seeing Utah’s DB’s on hard-core lockdown the likes of which haven’t been seen since Money Train (<–this year’s first Money Train reference) things don’t look to get any easier for Fres-yes fans. Last week when Ole Miss put up 73, the Bulldogs had a third and ten or more yards seven times and converted none. They were five of 15 overall on third down.

“A lot of our first downs were for zero,” Fresno State HC Tim DeRuyter said. “Now they’re able to pin their ears back and tee off. If you’re behind the sticks like we were, against a really good defense like Utah’s, you’re going to have a long evening. We have to be productive on first down.”

Sounds like DeRuyter has his Per Diem on the Utes as well.

The only reason this spread isn’t 20-plus is because they’re at Fresno State which is just like Utah only they’ve got higher-point Goose Island on tap at East Shaw Avenue Buffalo Wild Wings. Otherwise, both teams still practice under blankets of smog. Look then, for the Utes to make themselves at home in the Valley this weekend and win by at least 20.

PNP Recap:

kyleIVKyle:

Last week: 3-1

Overall: 4-8

UCLA -17 vs. BYU

Georgia Tech @ Notre Dame +2.5

Ole Miss @ Alabama -7

Auburn @ LSU -7

ajIVAJ:

Last week: 2-2

Overall: 5-8

Cal -6½ @ Texas

Texas A&M -10 vs. Nevada

Utah -10 @ Fresno State

Pints and Picks Podcast Episode 3 — Coming Home

Like what you heard?

P&P Podcast Episode 1

P&P Podcast Episode 2

Florida State Needs the NCAA

This isn’t Lee Corso’s Seminoles…or is it?

By Kyle Magin

Have you checked in on Florida State University lately? Go ahead, Google the term ‘Florida State’ and see what comes up.

In the early morning hours on Monday, here are the top three search results I found:

  • Cook’s arrest forces FSU to confront its perception on SI.com
  • Florida State football reportedly bans players from bars after recent incidents on Fox News
  • FSU running back Dalvin Cook cited for mistreating puppies in 2014 on SB Nation

That’s a heaping helping of search returns no university wants associated with its name.

Numbers one and three deal directly with star FSU running back Dalvin Cook, who was arrested last week after allegedly punching a woman in a bar. He apparently also chains his pitbull puppies in a way that injures them to round out his reputation as a standup guy.

Number two deals with Cook indirectly, and also former FSU quarterback De’Andre Johnson, who was thrown off the team last week after video appeared of him punching a woman in a bar.

This comes to us from the same school that sheltered former star quarterback Jameis Winston as he dealt with the fallout of a rape allegation and, charmingly, uttering an outlandishly misogynistic comment while standing on a table in the school’s cafeteria.

FSU has a serious, systemic, program-wide issue with its players’ treatment of women.

That Johnson and Cook could be in the news for hitting women in bars within a week of one another is indicative, to me, of a lack of institutional control by Seminoles head coach Jimbo Fisher in Tallahassee.

Hey! You’ve heard that phrase before, right college football fans? ‘Lack of Institutional control’ is the term the NCAA likes to throw around when players are caught taking extra food/gas/housing money from boosters, always finding a free deal on tattoos and progressing toward a degree with classes in ‘tutor-written papers 101’ and ‘advanced third-grade math.’

When a program has demonstrated an inability to curb a certain behavior (in most cases anything that would threaten the NCAA’s sole domain on profiting off the talents of unpaid 18-22 year olds), the NCAA whacks it with a ‘loss of institutional’ control sanction and penalizes the school in anything from small monetary concessions to the loss of scholarships, postseason bans and forced resignations or firings.

One wonders when the pious protectors of profit may descend from their monastery in Indianapolis to address a real world problem, with real world victims, down there in Tallahassee.

So far, the backlash isn’t coming from the media. SI’s column—the top search result listed above—is a hand-wringy exercise in fretting over FSU’s brand ‘perception’ as a place for aspiring Chris Browns to hone their barroom hooks on coeds.

There’s not a lot of media concern for the victims of these alleged attacks or the environment around a successful football team that apparently makes its world-class athletes think it’s OK to bash women in full view of the public in an age of ubiquitous cell phone cameras. First–that sort of behavior has never been OK. But a confluence of factors old–athlete’s privilege, access to alcohol and women–seem to be amplified by new ones–multimillion dollar TV revenues and exploding ticket costs to make these guys feel untouchable.

It’s not a stretch to say that young men responding in that way—beating women—to their environment (FSU’s football team) means that environment is totally out-of-control. So where’s the NCAA?

Nowhere, so far as we can tell. For once, the NCAA has a chance to enact some punishments that could protect real people and create real change in a culture that desperately needs it (let’s not pretend that FSU is the only place where this happens.)

If the NCAA makes an example of Fisher and his entitled asses by suspending players, revoking scholarships or taking a shot where it really hurts—at the revenue FSU could receive in bowl/playoff appearances and other major televised games—you’d better believe programs would institute controls wherein players would think twice before raising their voices in any situation where a female is present, much less their hands.

It’s a hell of a thing to know we need to rely on the NCAA for some moral guidance in this situation. The organization is, again, a cartel profiting off the backs of unpaid labor.

Welcome to 2015.

MARIOTA is an actual robot and that’s why Oregon will win Monday

January 26, 2010 is the day the University of Oregon football program took its most decisive step into the future.

The previous morning, the Ducks’ then-starting quarterback Jeremiah Masoli stole two laptops and a guitar from a U of O frat house. Masoli pled guilty to the charges and served 12-months probation. Weeks later he was cited for misdemeanor drug and traffic offenses and dismissed from the team.

Oregon football overlord and fetish shoe market provocateur Phil Knight caught wind of the trouble brewing and immediately pressed the go button on his most audacious program to date—completion of a robot.

Somewhere in a basement southeast of Beaverton, Nike engineers had been working since the 1975 death of distance runner Steve Prefontaine to assemble the perfect student-athlete. Coined the MARIOTA program (Mechanized ARtificial Intelligence Offensive Tactical Android), the robot would not only be seen as capable, precise and methodical on the field, but amiable, diverse and engaging off of it.

Ignoring the abject failure of fans to embrace RoboDuck, Knight kicked the program into high gear.

Two seasons later, on Sept. 1, 2012, the MARIOTA was unveiled without fanfare but with quiet quality control and efficiency assurance—just as Knight and his black-op engineers had planned.

The MARIOTA unit, disguised as a redshirt freshman, led the nation’s then-no. 5-ranked Oregon Ducks to a convincing 57-24 season opener victory over Arkansas State. MARIOTA was heretofore unknown even by team watchdogs: “Mariota was on the practice squad last season and was something of a mystery because Oregon closes practices, but he beat out Bryan Bennett for the starter’s job in fall camp,” wrote Ann M. Peterson of the AP in the wake of the robot’s 18-22, 200 yard, three touchdown debut.

At first, Knight and the MARIOTA team were conservative with their new toy. In 2012, they let offensive skill set pieces De’Anthony Thomas and Kenjon Barner (not robots) grab most of the headlines and the credit for the Ducks’ continued rise to the elite of college football.

But slowly, Knight let the throttle out on the MARIOTA unit. Insiders say to date the builders never have run the MARIOTA full-bore, not for fear of overloading its circuits, but out of concern people wouldn’t accept what they were seeing as real.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned at Nike, it’s that people will believe anything within the context of shoes and outerwear,” Knight was overheard saying at a Rose Bowl tailgater as Blue cheese dressing dripped onto his beard. “Look at the Air Yeezy 2 things or whatever. Someone paid $16 million for red shoes that didn’t even belong to Judy Garland. Once I saw that, I figured—people will buy anything.”

The MARIOTA unit concluded the 2012 campaign going 230 for 336 for 2,677 yards with a Fiesta Bowl victory over Kansas State. The robot team stayed on message coding in a “plausible fallibility” algorithm in 2013 resulting in the completion of 245 passes in 386 attempts for 3,665 yards and a victory over the Texas Longhorns in the Alamo Bowl.

Nike engineers wanted to see what the MARIOTA could really do for his assumptive final campaign. And Knight wanted to push the limits of what people would believe was truly humanly possible. In 2014, the MARIOTA threw 280 completions and only three interceptions in 408 attempts with 4,121 yards passing and a 184.3 rating.

The numbers, Knight said, were beyond the “metaphysical and spiritual and into the realm of ‘no way Jose’.”…But people still ate it up.

Worrying the MARIOTA unit would be outed as an android prior to the championship game, resulting in all kinds of Nike-as-Skynet headlines, (though in the 1,076-page NCAA rulebook currently has no ban on android or synthetic student-athletes) MARIOTA engineers installed tear ducts for the Heisman speech (note, the tears did not actually flow but the MARIOTA did simulate wiping them) and programmed him to throw an end-of-first-half pick in the Rose Bowl.

A Nike quality control insider revealed CFB conspiracy theorists have already all-but-outed the MARIOTA using the Heisman pose engineers coded prior to the 2014 Civil War:

mariotaheismanpose

…as well as this play during the Wyoming game:

…along with the fact that his hair has never been out of place, nor has it grown in three seasons:

2012

mariota2012I

2013

mariota2013photoI

2014

Stanford v Oregon

…as evidence.

Yet the pervasive wisdom going into Monday’s first-ever College Football Championship Game is the MARIOTA is simply a human being who just happens to do everything like a robot would do, except maybe better.

Sy Pfeiffercorn, a post-doctoral fellow at MIT, has been analyzing the MARIOTA for the past three seasons. “His statistics, not to mention aesthetics, are definitely beyond human, but they’re not exactly merely robot either,” he said, pronouncing the word robot, rōbət. “My guess, based on more than 4,277 hours of analysis, would be alien robot.”

An alien robot who has never stolen a laptop. Though that may change if the MARIOTA turns evil someday and needs to break into The Mainframe.

Bettors thus far are showing they have no idea of the actual future they’re witnessing today in no. 8 as they’ve moved the line from the 7-point Oregon favorite opener to 6.5 this week.

“People who bet against robots usually end up dying,” Knight wrote in a memo to the MARIOTA team this week. “I don’t want Buckeye fans to die. But if they lose their shirts so they have to buy a Nike Dri-FIT™ instead. I’m OK with that. LOL.”

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.

 

Michigan views college athletes as Wal-Mart employees

Ronald Reagan and Henry Ford are having a great smile up in Heaven today.

The Republican-controlled Michigan legislature won a victory for college sports’ plutocracy—athletic directors and NCAA administrators, who never catch any breaks in life—by passing a bill denying student athletes the right to unionize.

Surely acting as a proxy for their national GOP kin, the Mitten State’s lame duck lawmakers declared that such a powerful body as student athletes—some of whom can barely afford to pay the true cost of college despite a ‘full ride,’ are sometimes plucked from godawful poverty and family circumstance and remain on a free or reduced ride totally at the whim of a well-compensated coach—must make due without the right to organize their labor freely.

What heroes those Republicans are. What noblemen. They’ve tamed labor in a cosmic closing of the full circle those rabble-rousers began under Ford’s terroristic reign sage guidance.

“The discussion of this issue really begs an answer to the bigger question: What is the intended purpose of college?” asked chief union smasher Michigan state Representative Al Pscholka, who introduced the bill. His name totally does not sound like some shitty Polish meat/carb/root vegetable combo your grandmother brought home and left out for five hours after Mass. “Is it about making money, or is it about getting an education? Are student-athletes to learn, guaranteeing the best shot at future success in life? Or are they enrolled as employees just there to pull in money and attention to the university?”

Fuckin’ A, P-Hound. Fuckin’ A.

Kids attend college to get an education, an endeavor completely separated from making money. Why, in a world where people with college educations out-earn their high school diploma-winning counterparts by seven-figures, making money and education are about as related as virgin birth and a ham sandwich.

Of course student-athletes are there to learn. That’s why they never enroll in junk classes for the express purpose of staying eligible on Saturdays. That’s why they always attend institutions commensurate with their scholastic abilities upon completion of totally legit high school educations. That’s why so many of the most talented continue their educations even after professional leagues attempt to draft and sign them exactly six months into their college careers.

And, as you’ve made entirely clear with this bill, no, they’re not “enrolled as employees just there to pull in money and attention to the university.” No seven- or six- (how do they eat?) figure coach or administrator ever recruits them specifically to help fill a stadium with paying customers every week , or to be showcased on TV for a school which makes $44.5 million per year on the arrangement.

The players certainly aren’t the key cogs in a spectator sports cartel organization that signed an $11 billion deal to televise its postseason basketball tournament for the next decade.

No, those students are there to learn. Those admins and coaches are all be-mortarboard-ed, scholarly saints who pluck these young fellows from their humble hometowns to give them a shot at a grand education. They’d never need to negotiate wages or protections like medical care or ongoing educational expenses through a union. A group of old millionaires and almost-theres surely have their best interests at heart. They’d probably already have these athlete’s problems dealt with if they weren’t actively, aggressively dealing with the rampant rare instances of on-campus rape in their midst.

Al, I want to write you one of those cheesy old Real Men of Genius ads, because you, like Reagan before you in his time as a paid on-camera spokesman for GE, taught these idiot laborers a thing or two about how much capital loves them.

You really stuck up for the little guy.