Sunday, August 30, 2009

How I Spent My Summer Vacate

The news arrived late this summer that the NCAA was slamming down the gavel and forcing the Memphis State University basketball program to “vacate” 38 victories and its Final Four runner-up appearance of 2007-08. Really?
Everyone, friend or foe and, yes, you there on the couch, who watched even a minute of the Memphis Tigers’s record number of wins from the autumn through the national semi-finals is supposed to pretend they never saw them. Didn’t happen. UCLA fans, who have no problem remembering basketball victories, are presumed to be now celebrating their Bruins’s win in the April 2008 regional final, even though the scoreboard read: Memphis 78, UCLA 63. One wonders if Westwood sports fans really hoisted cold adult beverages when they heard the happy news their Bruins really had beaten Memphis.
This magical erasure of the sports mind has happened in college football too. We used to call these reversed decisions “forfeits.” They were handed down for all sorts of misdeeds, often the use, purposeful or accidental, of an ineligible player. The NCAA would slam down the gavel and shout at Arizona State (1979), Kansas (1960), or Mississippi State (1977): “You have to forfeit!” In today’s politically-correct world, the NCAA advises Memphis State that “You have to vacate your victories.”
Either way, it is the lamest punishment anywhere. This ain’t no Death Penalty, now is it SMU? Nobody is ever going to change their mind about what really occurred on the football field or basketball court.
Recently there was some talk that those arbitrary devils at the NCAA might punish Florida State for its academic misadventures in 2007. It was discovered several football players received answers prior to their final exam in a music appreciation course, just days before they were to compete, ironically, in the Music City Bowl. Perhaps the NCAA would force the Seminoles to vacate some or all of their seven football victories of that season. The first reaction was dismay that popular coach Bobby Bowden might have to turn back some wins that would almost certainly prevent him from finishing ahead of Penn State’s Joe Paterno in their on-going, nip-and-tuck race to the most all-time wins by a coach. By the NCAA’s count, Paterno currently leads 383 to 382.
We love Bobby Bowden. There could be no better ambassador for college football. He is gifted, smart, energetic, humble, religious, committed to his players and school, and downright witty. So, this is no personal indictment of him. But if Bowden were to be stripped of victories, don’t take “vacated” wins. The wins that should go are the truly-tainted victories he earned as head coach at his alma mater, Howard College (now known as Samford University) in 1959-62.
In those years, Howard played in the “College Division,” a level lower even than what we now call the FCS (or Division 1-AA). In other words, Howard played truly minor college football. When Henry Aaron approached Babe Ruth’s career home run record in baseball in 1974, did the baseball powers-that-be decide to include Aaron’s minor league homers against minor league pitchers in ’52 and ’53 at Eau Claire and Jacksonville? Of course not.
Bowden should vacate some victories, all right. Not Florida State’s wins over Colorado, Alabama, Boston College, and Maryland, et al, in 2007, but Howard’s 31in 1959-62 over the likes of Maryville, Sewanee, Livingston State, and Millsaps.
Bob Boyles

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Should He Stay or Should He Go?

He really didn't have a chance. Sure Aaron Corp has been on campus for two years and sure he has gone through plenty of drills with the vaunted Trojans staff, both past and present. He stands 6'4 and was a top-flight prospect himself coming out of Orange County in 2006. But how was he to beat out the more highly-touted Matt Barkley to become the starting quarterback for Southern Cal, when no one really wanted him to? He was always going to be looking over his shoulder. Every incompletion would have produced a groan; every pick a shout for the kid. And after choosing John David Booty over the highly-touted Mark Sanchez in 2006, and then watching Sanchez depart after only one season once he did become a starter two years later, head coach Pete Carroll was not going to miss out on any chance to showcase the expected heir to the throne of great quarterbacks at USC--Barkley. So Corp's recent injury, a crack to a bone below the left knee, was a convenient excuse to do the inevitable. Chose the kid you are in love with now and not delay the inevitable.

But what should Corp do? Should he stick around and enjoy all of the benefits of being a USC Trojan? Or should he transfer to a school that will give him a shot at a starting gig? The Trojans pride themselves on recruiting too much talent and setting up battles for starting jobs. The losers are almost always highly-regarded players. Except for the rare transfer--Emmanuel Moody, Vidal Hazelton among few others--they stick around to continue the fight and provide uncommon depth. Even at quarterback, a position where the subs can rarely play, they tend to stay and in one celebrated case a USC backup got drafted and developed into a starting professional quarterback (Matt Cassel).

But that was a rare case. If Corp's goal is to play in the NFL, then he really has no choice. He has to go, and go soon. In a similar situation, Jevan Snead as a true freshman lost the battle to become the starter at quarterback at Texas to redshirt freshman Colt McCoy back in 2006. While McCoy was throwing for 2570 yards and a whopping 29 touchdowns that year, Snead was limited to mop-up duty. With McCoy entrenched as the starter, Snead transferred to Mississippi and led the Rebels to the Cotton Bowl in his first season. With another fine season this year he will be set up financially with professional riches.

Corp does not possess the talent of Snead, but after this season he will have had three years of USC training under his belt and two years of eligibility left. He will be a desireable commodity to programs looking for a new quarterback for the 2011 season. Or, if he does not wish to take off another year, he can do what Joe Flacco and others have done before him and transfer to a lower level so as not to sit out a season. Tired of backing up Tyler Palko at Pittsburgh, Flacco transfered to Delaware and played himself into a no. 1 pick.

But he must choose wisely. Corp needs to just look at a fellow Trojan to learn that there are right programs to transfer to and wrong programs to transfer to. Like Barkley, Mitch Mustain was considered the top quaterback his senior year in high school--all of the touts had him ranked higher than fellow high school senior Tim Tebow--before commiting to Arkansas. His time there deserves its own post, but when deciding on a new school he chose one that already had Mark Sanchez and new recruit Corp. But Mustain's ego and meddling parents did not see a problem with those players, despite the leg up Sanchez would have in the USC system. And so Mustain is now third string. Corp would do much better for himself if he let potential playing time and coaching dictate his choice and not his own ego.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Big Matchups Dwindle Down to Precious Few

Back in what now seems like the dawn of time, in 1970, the NCAA voted to allow its top division schools to add an 11th game to football schedules that had been limited for the most part to 10 games, plus a bowl if a school earned its way into the nine—yes there were only nine—major post-season games.
Several schools took advantage right away. Arkansas, coming off a 9-2 season and a loss in the “Game of the Decade” for the 1960s against Texas, hosted Stanford, a team on its way to the Rose Bowl with the Heisman Trophy winner-in-waiting in quarterback Jim Plunkett. Stanford prevailed 34-28 to launch eight wins in its opening nine games.
No one could have asked for a better intersectional matchup to fill that extra space on the slate, except perhaps another pivotal game played on the same September Saturday in 1970. It was the now-famous visit of defending Rose Bowl champion Southern California to Birmingham, Ala., where the Trojans became the first racially-integrated team to visit Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide. The Trojans, with an all-black backfield led by quarterback Jimmy Jones and fullback Sam “Bam” Cunningham, walloped Alabama 42-21 (after leading 32-7 in the third quarter), and as legend supposedly tells, paved the way for African-American players at Bama.
However one views the historical impact of USC’s trip to Birmingham, it and the Arkansas-Stanford game typified the adventurous intersectional challenges in the 1970s. September 1970 was littered with such matchups: Baylor-Missouri, Washington State-Kansas, Oklahoma State-Mississippi State, Wake Forest-Nebraska, Oklahoma-SMU, Baylor-Army, Syracuse-Houston, Oregon-Illinois, Colorado-Indiana, Kansas State-Kentucky, Arizona-Michigan, Wisconsin-Oklahoma, UCLA-Pitt, TCU-Purdue, Nebraska-USC, SMU-Tennessee, Michigan State-Washington, Kansas State-Arizona State, Indiana-California, Penn State-Colorado, Tulane-Illinois, Air Force-Missouri, Army-Nebraska, Oregon State-Oklahoma, Northwestern-UCLA, and Michigan-Washington.
Intersectional fun became as much a 1970s trend as disco music and bell-bottomed plaid pants. Alabama soon scheduled visits from Missouri and Washington in 1975 as well as home-and-home encounters with Nebraska and Notre Dame later in the decade. Ohio State played Colorado, North Carolina, UCLA, and Penn State. Notre Dame and Penn State inked a 12-year annual deal that launched play in 1981. These special matchups were the norm, and college football was far the better for it.
Let’s call Maine
Nowadays, every FBS (formerly Division 1-A) school has the opportunity to schedule 12 games. How has that extra game turned out? Does Alabama seek out USC? Does Nebraska call Alabama? Frankly, no. Very rarely does the athletic director look to a traditional powerhouse to create a more attractive schedule. Usually, the question is: “Who has the phone number for Maine?”
Back when Penn State, then an undervalued Eastern independent power, sought no. 1 votes but was being ignored by poll voters despite a bushel full of undefeated seasons, the Nittany Lions took matters into hand and replaced Army, Navy, Colgate, Temple, and Ohio University with Nebraska, Miami, Iowa, Ohio State, Alabama, and Notre Dame.
Today, there is so little incentive to seek out tough opponents like Penn State’s image-building half-dozen of yesteryear. There is always Arkansas State, Eastern Michigan, Louisiana-Monroe, Middle Tennessee, North Texas, and San Jose State to beat up. If low-level FBS teams are completely booked there is the succulent smorgasbord offered up by FCS (formerly Division 1-AA) teams looking for a big payday in front of a six-digit capacity crowd. These include such treats as Coastal Carolina, Eastern Washington, Gardner-Webb, North Dakota State, Southern Illinois, and Wofford. Can the NAIA be far behind?
In fact, Penn State, which won 12 of 13 games last year and could be undefeated this season, has booked a 2009 out-of-conference slate of Akron, Temple, Syracuse (a team with a good history but down and out at the present), and Eastern Illinois of the FCS. The Nittany Lions are not alone.
Little Incentive
There is little incentive for Penn State or anybody else in a conference, like Penn State’s Big Ten, with an automatic bid from the Bowl Championship Series to consider snarling foes like Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Southern California, or Texas.
Who is at fault? How about the polls that insist on publishing preseason editions based solely on past reputation? Really, what happened in June to solidify Florida’s claim on no. 1, Texas’s on no. 2, or Penn State’s on no.8 as reflected in the USATODAY Coaches Poll? Can’t the polls start at mid-season in October? Or at least can’t the voters reconsider their choices after watching four or five weeks? Preseason polls aren’t awful in and of themselves. What truly is criminal is the fact that voters rigidly cling to their preseason “genius” with all their might. Should an unranked team from a BCS conference like West Virginia, Miami, or Wisconsin sweep through their season undefeated, it would take an awfully peculiar twist in voting to have them unseat a preseason top-10 team that also goes undefeated. Yet, how do we know Miami isn’t better than Texas?
So, it is a far better thing for a team to do to go undefeated against a so-so collection than to risk a single loss against a top team.
Football fans, raise a toast to that small group of adventurers (notably Brigham Young and Virginia Tech) out there taking risks in 2009. Here’s to the handful of potentially great intersectional matchups that bring together pairs of preseason top 25 teams. In September they include: Alabama-Virginia Tech on Thursday, Sept. 3, BYU-Oklahoma and Georgia-Oklahoma State on the first Saturday of the season, Sept. 5, and Nebraska-Virginia Tech, Florida State-BYU, and Utah-Oregon on Sept. 19. Too bad it is such a short list.
Bob Boyles

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

A Healthy Team is a Winning Team

While August is typically a time for position battles and the hazing of freshmen, it has also become a crucial time for programs in the injury department. With stars like running back Darren Evans of Virginia Tech and center Kris O'Dowd of USC falling by the wayside weeks before game one, the 2009 season has gotten off to a bad start in this regard. While the elite teams have depth at every position, the Hokies are turning to a trio of inexperienced backs to replace Evans's production: sophomore Josh Oglesby and freshmen Ryan Williams (RS) and David Wilson. Oglesby rushed for only 88 yards last year, 1180 yards less than Evans. With Alabama's terrific defense lurking week one, the pressure is really on quarterback Tyrod Taylor.

O'Dowd's injury, a dislocated kneecap, is not as severe as the torn ACL suffered by Evans. USC has incredible depth along the offensive line, returning its two-deep across the board. Guard Alex Parsons is expected to slide over to man center until O'Dowd's return early in the season. The Trojans need the O-line to carry the team in the beginning of the season while breaking in a new quarterback and several new starters on defense. That Dowd could miss crucial games against Ohio State and Cal--both on the road and both featuring teams with excellent D-lines--is significant.

Injuries are one of the reason the top programs seem to over-recruit positions on an annual basis. Both Georgia and Clemson had promising 2008 seasons falter thanks in a large part to a lack of experienced depth among their respective blocking units. Penn State, on the other hand, had so much depth along its defensive front seven, that injuries and suspensions suffered by expected defensive leaders hardly fazed a unit that excelled all season.

That Nittany Lion depth has already been challenged this summer by the knee injury that will knock out rising soph linebacker Michael Mauti. But Penn State has a host of returning talent at the position, including senior Sean Lee who spent last season recuperating from his major knee injury. So whenever you notice a program like Penn State landing a number of hotshot recruits at the same position, just remember that the problem of too much talent is an easier one to solve than not having enough.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Governmental Fairness in the BCS

Here it comes. We are about to offer an extremely patronizing note to defenders of college football’s sympathetic and heralded little guys like Utah and Boise State: Be damned careful what you wish for! You don’t want a motivated championship-level team from a BCS conference slapping you around. People could get hurt. Ask Hawaii about the fun it had in the 2008 Sugar Bowl when fired-up Georgia came to play.
For those readers only one paragraph into this blog and already frothing at the mouth, we offer two words: Chill out! We know all about Boise’s thrilling BCS bowl upset of Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl and Utah’s fast start in last January’s Sugar Bowl toward a big BCS win over Alabama. More on that nonsense later.
The Senior Senator from Utah
In early July, the U.S. Senate became the second body of Congress to take up debate over the dreaded bias of college football’s Bowl Championship Series. From the Presidential Bully Pulpit, Barack Obama had on at least two occasions proposed a playoff system for college football. Oh, really?
Interestingly, the leader of the anti-BCS movement in the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee—mostly with the indifferent absence of his fellow committee members—cropped up from the other political party. The BCS muckraker turned out to be the senior Republican in the Senate, Orrin Hatch of Utah.
Prior to the hearings, Hatch authored a pointed piece in the Scorecard section of the July 6 issue of Sports Illustrated. In it, Hatch railed on about the BCS’s “biased nature,” that the case for “government involvement is compelling.” He went on: “…six conferences, which include slightly more than half of the teams in Division 1-A, receive automatic bids to play in the five most prestigious and lucrative bowl games—even if teams from other conferences have had better seasons.” Hatch revealed a lot when he conveniently brought up the school in his own home state, the University of Utah, as prime example of a football team that “had plenty of big wins, (but) the BCS system denied them the chance to play for the national championship.” When tallying BCS bowl income, “the numbers are staggering.” “(But) the disbursement scheme places teams from these smaller conferences at a disadvantage when it comes to hiring staff and improving facilities.” He went on: “there is no denying college football is a business.” And also: “If the government were to ignore a similar business arrangement of this magnitude in any other industry, it would be condemned for shirking its responsibility.”
What the Senator left out was that no BCS rule exists that would prevent a Utah or Boise State from the championship game, so long as that team finishes in the top 2 of the final BCS standing in early December. So, take up your case with the voters in the USA TODAY Coaches Poll and with the computers. The only way to influence the computers is to win against a tough schedule. Look into history and you’ll find both Penn State and Florida State, once considered football weaklings, scheduled their way into national championship opportunities.
Disassembly of the Argument
Pardon us while we disassemble the Senator’s argument. The vast income generated by the BCS Bowls exists simply because American football fans care so much about the giants, not the Cinderellas, of the college game. For longer than anyone alive today—including the venerable Sen. Hatch—teams like Alabama, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Miami (Florida), Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Southern California, Tennessee, and Texas and many more have fueled interest in football so that teams like Utah and Boise State could join the fun and actually turn a profit on their pigskin endeavors. Roll back the clock 40 years: Ohio State averaged 86,235 fans per home game, and Utah attracted and average of 23,107; Alabama averaged 60,733, while college-division teams like Boise State didn’t even report figures because the Broncos were playing the likes of Central Washington, Whitworth, Hiram-Scott, and Colorado Western.
Perhaps the large number of Democrats roaming the halls of Congress these days has swayed Sen. Hatch’s thinking. The pioneers of exploration and innovation made America great and permitted it to be great for every “me-too” to follow in their footsteps. There is plenty of room for “me-too” lesser lights, but the pioneers of football earned the right to be paid for their greatness, not have the playing field leveled against them.
Ultimately, Hatch’s antitrust maneuvering turns up as terribly transparent. Alabama and Notre Dame fans don’t vote him into office, Utah fans do. So, fair-minded Sen. Hatch, where was your indignation when undefeated Tulane was barred from BCS bowls all together in 1998?
(As an aside, there was plenty of indignation about Tulane back in ’98, especially from the president of the university. The cries grew loud that BCS exclusion prevented a fair chance for the Green Wave. The truth is Tulane had plenty of chances, but blew them as a frequently-inept member from 1933 to 1966 of the Southeastern Conference, a mighty backbone of today’s BCS monopoly.)
If the “little guys” are shut out “even if they had better seasons,” how is it better if most of the victories come over puny foes? Please examine Boise State’s 2008 schedule and compare it to, let’s say, Auburn’s slate. Boise enjoyed a 12-1 mark last season, the only loss coming by a single point in the Poinsettia Bowl against fellow-mighty-little-guy Texas Christian. Boise had a very nice win—the school’s first-ever road victory over a BCS conference team—when it beat injury-riddled Oregon early in the season. Otherwise, the powerhouses that fell to the Broncos included Idaho State, Louisiana Tech, San Jose State, New Mexico State, Idaho, and Fresno State. My, my, wouldn’t Auburn, a miserable failure in 2008 at 5-7, have longed to replace LSU, Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama with Boise’s list of also-rans? The Tigers might have gone 12-0 and hardly been scored upon. Fired-for-failure coach Tommy Tuberville still would be a hero.
Colleges Are Businesses?
And since when, Sen. Hatch, are colleges to be considered businesses under the microscope of antitrust regulation? Last we looked, colleges were supposed to be non-profit enterprises with a goal of excellent education. Along with dispensing knowledge, college communities also offer an array of out-of-classroom activity, including athletics. Major football programs must to be run like businesses, as you say, in part because of the last act of fairness that government forced upon college sports. Every college athletic program is burdened today by a long list of silly women’s sports required by Title IX legislation. That is not to say there aren’t silly men’s sports too. It’s just that Title IX has forced upon the world far more phony women’s sports than men’s, all draining bushels of dollars from athletic budgets that must be refilled by profitable football and basketball. The only people who care about women’s badminton are the badminton athletes themselves (many of whom are on athletic scholarship by the way), and their coaches and parents.
Speaking of stupid politics hurting college sports, how about the case of Texas Christian? TCU was a long-time, up-and-down member of the Southwest Conference that fell on hard football times in the latter days of the league. When the Big 8 and SWC were melded to form the Big 12 (another gem of today’s BCS) in 1996, TCU was just beginning to regain its football footing. But instead of being included in the new mega-conference, TCU was shunned in favor of Baylor. The Baylor Bears weren’t any more attractive to the Big 12 than the TCU Horned Frogs, but the Governor of Texas at the time, Democrat Anne Richards, was a Baylor graduate. She used political clout to secure a spot in the Big 12 South for her Bears, who have rarely poked their noses out of the division cellar in all the years since. TCU, meanwhile, was forced into a little-guy schedule in middling conferences and not surprisingly posted a very solid record in this decade of 83-28 against mostly weak foes.
Nearly every year, the little guys offer up an undefeated team to argue for a spot in the BCS title game. As predictable as sunrise, supporters of non-BCS conferences gripe continually about lack of fairness. They point vigorously at the BCS bowl wins earned by Boise State over Oklahoma and Utah over Alabama. However exciting (especially Boise’s win), both are tainted victories, as the little guys faced highly unmotivated major teams. The failed cases of Oklahoma in 2006 and Alabama last year are similar, so in the interest of saving space, let’s discuss Alabama of 2008.
The Crimson Tide spent much of the second half of the season ranked at no. 1 because they surprisingly roared undefeated through a difficult schedule that included eight tough foes from the SEC, the best league of them all, and pre-season no. 9 Clemson. To make the BCS title game, the top-ranked Tide had only to beat fast-closing and determined Florida in the SEC championship game. Alabama led early, rallied to take a fourth-quarter lead, but lost in the closing moments to a tremendous effort led by Gators quarterback Tim Tebow, who many believe is the best college player ever to buckle a chinstrap.
Tremendous Letdown
Is it any wonder that facing Utah in the Sugar Bowl was a tremendous letdown for Alabama, which also lost offensive tackle Andre Smith, its best player, to suspension? Consider for a moment a concocted but equivalent NFL situation. The New York Giants, playing as defending Super Bowl champions, spent a good deal of the 2008 season as (debatably) the best and most physical team in the NFL. But as the regular season drew toward the end, the Giants lost their fastest and best field-stretching receiving threat, Plaxico Burress, to a gun-shot wound and eventual criminal proceedings. Injuries to both offensive and defensive lines also robbed the Giants of some of their toughness. So, it wasn’t altogether stunning when they lost a bitter playoff game to the rival Philadelphia Eagles. If this had been college football, the crestfallen Giants would have been told they were headed to the Sugar Bowl to play little-guy Utah. Is it tough to get up for that game? You think!?! Perhaps Utah even could have beaten the professional New York Giants in a Sugar Bowl game the pros (and Alabama) thought superfluous.
Lastly, if fairness is to be forced upon a group of superior college football teams that essentially infused all the greatness into the sport, let’s fabricate one more situation any football fan would find ludicrous. What if the Arena Football League was to flicker back to life, and the Philadelphia Soul were to go undefeated the next year? Should the Soul be allowed to play the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL playoffs because they “had a better season” than the (let’s say 12-4) Eagles? Please!
The NFL is a closed society of the very best in football. The top pro league has earned the right to choose which of its members are permitted to play for the annual championship. The schools from BCS conferences have earned the same right, but nearly every year the BCS coalition still graciously permits one Utah or Boise State or Hawaii into the bowl party even if the schedule those schools have clobbered is truly third-rate. That is plenty fair.

by Bob Boyles

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Intro

Quick, cue the band and cheerleaders. The debut of Sunday Morning Quarterbacks, a new blog dedicated to the grand sport of college football, is upon us. Bob Boyles and myself, Paul Guido, are the co-hosts of a blog that will offer a unique perspective to coverage of the sport. Having first presented a comprehensive review of the modern history of the sport through our book, The USA Today College Football Encyclopedia--available in a brand new edition wherever fine books are sold--Bob and I are now ready to offer commentary, information, predictions, and a little humor to a web audience. We hope you enjoy reading what you see here and we hope to hear from you often.