Ich bin ein Eagles Fan

OK. If you stuck a gun to our head and told us we had to choose between college football and the NFL, we’d still probably go with the amateurs over the pros. But that once yawning gap that existed some 10-15 years ago when organizations, players, coaches and GMs all struggled with the intricacies and implications of free agency and the salary cap and which resulted in a sub-standard quality of play out on the field is closing fast as the overall level of play in the NFL is as good as it has ever been (yes, the 0-16 Lions stink but to illustrate our point, they would beat the stuffing out of the 0-14 ’76 Tampa Bay Buccaneers who set the standard for futility).

Oh, and one other thing has been setting the Leauge apart: yesterday. Good lord. Nearly half (7) of the 16 games played yesterday had playoff implications. Not merely seeding implications but lose-and-you-go-home… win-and-you’re-in/maybe-in implications.

The NFL schedule makers did a fine job of lining up as many intra-divisional match ups as possible so that you had 3 games (Chargers/Broncos, Philly/Dallas and Miami/NY Jets), heated divisional rivals all, that were also defacto play-in games for all six participants. Excuse us, meaningless regular season play-in games. And what really could be more exciting than seeing America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, culminating another December meltdown at the hands of their hated rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, 44-6?


As we mentioned before, our mixed feelings about the Chargers’ miraculous come-back against the Broncos, owners of their own epic December collapse, (no team has ever started off 4-8 and made the playoffs and no team has ever had a 3 game lead in its division with three weeks left and lost it) is decidedly a little less mixed as the opportunity to play at least one more game, at home no less against the Indianapolis Colts, trumps the certainty that head coach Norv Turner will be back next year and the uncertainty that the seemingly perpetually immature Chargers have yet to really learn their lesson as despite sleepwalking through the first 3 quarters of the game just 2 weeks ago (after a night of partying?) find themselves, once again, in the playoffs.

Boy O boy, all that excitement from yesterday has totally got us geeked for….. the Papajohns.com (We thought they made pizza) Bowl (N.C. State vs. Rutgers) and the Alamo Bowl (Missouri vs. Northwestern) today and the slew of all the other totally meaningful, relevant and sexy bowl match ups we get to endur… er, enjoy until the the Grand-who’s-yer-Daddy of ‘em all, the BCS championship game to be played sometime in mid-January.

P.S. We'll take a break from our usual end-of-the-year slamming of our college football sweetheart to admit that the Mizzou/Northwestern affair could be a pretty high-scoring and exciting affair.

The "Tiffany Network" gets Its Man

In the grand tradition of college football, “back-ins”, this is perhaps one of the most fortuitous. We’ve seen some dandies lately…. Nebraska backing into the BCS title game after getting whipped by Colorado in their final regular season game in ’01 and Oklahoma doing the same two years later after getting crushed by K-State in the Big 12 title game.

Ohio State in a supposed rebuilding year, finished up their one-loss regular season this year by beating Michigan which put them in the 5 hole in the BCS standings on November 19th. Nice season. The Buckeyes were eyeing a trip out to the Rose Bowl to renew some classic 70s match-ups with USC. Of course, zany antics and hilarity ensued in the subsequent weeks and when the Bucks regained consciousness after their tryptophan-induced coma, they found themselves in the title game against LSU. (Yep, there’s a system that works).

Anyway, after Michigan… ummmm…. after Lloyd Carr stepped down as the Michigan coach it became painfully obvious that they weren’t used to hiring head ball coaches. The last time they actually went through the head coach hiring process is when they brought in Bo Schembechler from Miami (OH) nearly 40 yrs. ago. Subsequent hires, Gary Moeller and Carr were all “company men” that had been in the Michigan program for years.

Michigan clutzed around with Les Miles of LSU and Greg Schiano of Rutgers before backing-in to Rich Rodriguez the now former West Virginia coach and the guy they should’ve been going after all along. This is significant for no other reason than Rodriquez is the man primarily responsible for socializing the college football world to the “spread-option” offense that is currently the rage. Irony being, Michigan, itself, couldn’t stop this offense when playing App. State and Oregon in its first two games of the season.

And after being eyed suspiciously by much of college football as being “gimmicky”, the fact that Michigan has hired its guru is now a tacit acknowledgement of the full acceptance of the spread-option offense.

Let’s face it… Michigan is the CBS of college football. They are the embodiment of the stodgy, gray-flannet suit establishment of college ball. And like CBS, Michigan’s presumed dominance has been taking some hits of late – the program was showing its age and subsequently the ratings… and rankings were beginning to slip.

This is a great hire. This will inject life back into the program and rejuvenate the rivalry against Ohio State that had become rather one-sided of late with head coach, Jim Tressel being the man, for all intents and purposes, that forced Lloyd Carr into his resignation.

Ohio State, another “establishment” program though far more forward-thinking than Michigan, has had trouble themselves with this offense losing in the BCS title game to Florida last season and Ron Zook’s Fighting Illini this season.

With the Michigan/Big 10-type athletes Rodriguez will have, its going to take a couple of years to fully implement this offense but it will be fascinating to see how the Big 10 and the rest of the nation will now respond to the “nod” given by college football’s “Tiffany Network” to the glitz, hype and flash of the spread-option offense.

In With A Bang.....

Not sure this was post-worthy because we don't know whether it’s a trend or just a curious coincidence… but we'll talk about it anyway.

Over the past 19 years there have been 8 coaches to win a national championship within the first 3 years of taking over at head coach of their respective college teams, and in 6 of those cases, that coach never won another one (the exceptions are Urban Meyer who won it just last year so we will have to wait and see and Pete Carroll at USC who won it in his 3rd and 4th seasons. The rest of the lineup is as follows:

Lou Holtz – Notre Dame ’88 (3rd Year)
Gene Stallings – Alabama ’92 (2nd Year)

Lloyd Carr - Michigan '97 (3rd Year)
Bob Stoops – Oklahoma ’00 (2nd Year)
Larry Coker – Miami ’01 (1st Year)
Jim Tressel - Ohio St. ‘02 (3rd Year)

Obviously, each data point has a different backdrop and context from the others…. Holtz continued to field national championship caliber teams after ’88, though the last 3 years were mediocre (23-11-1) by Tying Irish standards. Stallings also, had very good on-field success after his lone championship, though he stepped down in ’96 after an exhaustive 2 yr. investigation of the ‘Bama program which did result in sanctions. Michigan coach Lloyd Carr, though, has not only not won another national title but is perceived now as heading a program in gradual decline.

Also in the 90s one has examples conversely of this alleged phenomena where ironically it was two ball coaches that had been at their respective schools for years before winning their first championships in the persons of Bobby Bowden at Florida St. and Dr. Tom Osborne at Nebraska. In fact, those two pretty much owned the decade by combining for 5 National Championships.

Things get a little juicier with this next set. Tressel won in his 3rd year and had a chance to win the title again last year before being upset by Florida and Urban Meyer, a 2nd Year guy himself. No shame, that. Larry Coker is the poster-old man for this post. After winning the championship in his very first season with the ‘Canes, his win totals declined thereafter until he was dismissed after last season. And though by no means is he in the hot seat, Sooner Nation, is getting a little anxious for Bob Stoops to get back to the BCS title game. (Ed. update: Last week's loss to Colorado is not going to help matters any).

Again… not sure if there are enough data points to lead to anything more conclusive than perhaps that each of the above won primarily with the last guy’s recruits.

We would be remiss if we did not hand out an Honorable Mention-type award as well: Kirk Farentz of Iowa has seen his win totals in steady decline after winning the Big 10 title in both '02 (4th season) and '04 (6th season). And both Ralph Friedgen of Maryland and Chuck Amato who was fired as HC at NC State shared similar career arcs starting at the beginning of the decade in the ACC.

It will be interesting to see how Tressel, Stoops and Meyer, coaches who man one of the 6 or 7 mega-programs in the nation, fare in the coming years.