Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Yet Another Brutal Off-season for Irish

In the past few off-seasons Notre Dame has lost its share of top recruits and key freshmen.  Now the Irish will be tested by the academic suspension handed down to QB Everett Golson, which will cost him the 2013 season.  Notre Dame has depth in former starting QB Tommy Rees and mobile back-up Andrew Hendrix.  Incoming freshman QB Malik Zaire was expected to redshirt this year but if he continues to impress--and he is the most Golson-like--then he may begin his run as a starter.  That will make for an interesting situation next spring, if Golson is reinstated, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.  This is a big loss for the Irish as Golson's improvement on the field was supposed to help the offense deal with losses of the top two RBs and star TE.  Instead a potential co-share at QB will have to lead the Irish against a tough schedule.
More importantly Notre Dame is showing why it is a different football power than most anyone else.  I am unsure which programs would boot their starting QB over an academic issue but ND did and fans should be proud.  While it seems that the football program is too big there, as everywhere, it does have to follow academic rules the way any program or student at Notre Dame has to.

Monday, May 27, 2013

College Football Attendance Figures

Based on a ridiculous article by Tony Barnhart on CBSSports.com, the SEC is looking for ways to improve their fans' experience at games due to a decrease in attendance the past few years from a high set in 2007.  Barnhart talks about the mighty conference hiring experts to sort out the problem when the answer is buried, by not analyzed, in the column.  Stop scheduling so many mediocre opponents!  True it mysteriously does not hurt you in the polls and some lunatic fans seem to not care about the opponent as long as their favorite is running up the score, but when you schedule lesser opponents solely to get an easy win and still charge $100 to the game, some fans are not going to show up.  Surprise, surprise.  Barnhart quotes Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley as saying, "It's a real issue (of the drop in attendance)."  He then states, "A confluence of things is coming together and the world has changed.  We have to change with it."  Huh?  Later Barnhart allows Foley to point a finger at Stubhub and the like.  And then in a buried section on cupcake scheduling, which is not given full consideration, the discussion again attacks the secondary ticket market.
Nowhere in the piece does Barnhart explain that yes ticket sales were down 2% at Florida despite an 11-win season because...the Gators hosted such powers as Bowling Green, Louisiana and Jacksonville State.  Their SEC home opponents did include LSU and South Carolina but also Kentucky and newbie Missouri who is not exactly a rival.  Why do you need a panel to explain a drop in attendance with that slate of games?  And guess what Florida, the fact that your home schedule for this year includes Toledo, Tennessee, Arkansas, Vandy and Georgia Southern plus the only game fans are now excited about--Florida State on November 30--means that you probably need another blue ribbon panel to give you suggestions for less than stellar ticket sales in 2013.
The other problem with the SEC is that the more you keep telling us that the conference is the best and there really is not a second best, the more you establish SEC rivalry games as important and everything else as meaningless.  It is a self-fulfilling set of B.S.
So feel free to continue to cry that you "only" sell 98% of your high priced tickets.  All of your friendly media experts will back you up 100%.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

NFF Hall of Fame Announcement Continued

As I said yet another great class of great college football players and coaches will be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and this class will be the first to be enshrined in the bran new Hall building being erected in Atlanta with an August 2014 opening date.
It is hard to get two better representatives for an incoming class of Hall of Famers than Tedy Bruschi and Danny Wuerffel, who were both in attendance yesterday at the announcing ceremony at the NASDAQ building in Times Square.  Both of course mentioned that the Hall vote was a great honor.  Bruschi talked about being a freshman in high school and seeing some friends sitting in a group waiting.  He asked them about it and they mentioned football tryouts and that he should join them.  He did, despite having never played organized football and being more suited then for the band, and fortunately received some great coaching.  Bruschi first day of practice with pads was somewhat humorous as everyone split into groups and he did not know where to go.  A coach took one look at him and sent him to the linemen group and that proved to be a good decision.  At Arizona he became an AA defensive end despite being overlooked as a recruit.  Bruschi praised coach Dick Tomey as a needed father figure and mentioned that the group that became the Desert Swarm defense used a sense of being disrespected as recruits into the needed chip on their shoulders that helped them achieve a high level of play.
Wuerffel talked about how in synch he was to the vision that coach Steve Spurrier wanted in a QB.  Wuerffel greatest strength may have been that he processed everything Spurrier threw at the QBs at a quick pace.  A fellow reporter forced the modest Wuerffel to admit that he was a tough SOB and his ability to get up after continued hits in games like the loss to FSU in the 1996 regular season endeared him forever to Gator fans.  Being able to avenge that loss and the previous year's loss in the de facto national title contest with Nebraska was a great way to end his college career.
In December I will get to hear from the rest of the group, including a representative for the late Rod Shoate.  I look forward to it.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

New College Football Hall of Fame Class

Yet another outstanding group of college football greats have been elected to the Hall as announced today live from New York City.  I will list them now and then weigh in later.
Ted Brown, the great RB from NC State in the late 1970s
Tedy Bruschi, who is now known as a broadcaster and former Patriot LB but is honored for his great work for Arizona as a DE.
Ron Dayne, the all-time great RB from Wisconsin and first college football player to rush for 7,000y.
Tommie Frazier, the QB and electric leader of the great Nebraska squads from the early to mid 1990s.
Jerry Gray, the brilliant safety from Texas.
Steve Meilinger, a multi-purpose star from Kentucky who played in the early 1950s.
Orlando Pace, one of the greatest all-time offensive tackles from OSU.
Rod Shoate, a star from my youth as a LB for OU.
Percy Snow, the tackle machine for MSU in the 1980s.
Vinny Testaverde, the 1986 Heisman winner from Miami.
Don Trull, an accomplished QB from Baylor from 50 years ago.
Danny Wuerffel, the 1996 Heisman winner from Florida.
plus coaches Wayne Hardin, who won 118 games total at Navy and Temple and Bill McCartney, the architect of the great Colorado teams from the late 1980s-early 90s.

College Football Hall of Fame Announcement

I am off to the NFF announcement of the next class of players and coaches elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.  I am looking forward to hearing from a couple of the new enshrines--as they always bring some in for the announcement--and to see the list.  Every year a great group of players get in and it is amazing to think that some of these guys had to wait.  But unlike any other sport college football has an enormous number of great retired players and they cannot all get in.  And remember that some chapters of the National Football Foundation are bigger and more powerful than others and get the vote out.  I will update you all later today.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Big Ten Gets It Right

The Legends and Leaders idea was a failure from the start.  Only the biggest fans could sort out the standings without looking at them and the desire to have Michigan and Ohio State play in the regular season and then meet in every other conference title game was misguided.  Not only is that type of thinking usually fail--see the ACC with Miami versus Florida State-but you do not preserve the beauty and importance of the regular season rivalry. Once again the SEC got that right by making games like LSU-Alabama and Florida-Georgia meaningful as rivalries and for their impact on the conference divisional races.
But I give the Big Ten credit for righting a wrong.  The new divisions are designated geographically and will make it easier for newcomers Rutgers and Maryland to develop rivalries with each other and probably Penn State.  Meanwhile the notion that the East is difficult because of the presence of Michigan, Ohio state and Penn State and the West is easier is absurd.  First of all, many of the same experts lamenting this predicted that Penn State would be dreadful for ten years.  So since they were wrong on that one they now feel that Wisconsin has it easy despite the fact that they did not win anything last year and that Nebraska and Iowa and Northwestern etc will all be pretty good in the near future.  We have seen in other conferences that the fortunes of divisions change. The SEC West is a beast now while the East was considered the tougher division 7-10 years ago.  The old Big 12 power base shifted from Kansas State and Nebraska in the late 90s to Texas and OU in the 2000s.
The key for the conference is to reestablish itself as the preeminent one on the field.  It can deliver plenty of television sets but can it deliver national championship contenders?