Tulsa fullback Charles Clay.

Get to know him as Sunday night he reached the 1,000 yard receiving mark in Tulsa's 63-7 bowl victory over Bowling Green.  Just so we're clear here: he's a true freshman fullback.  There aren't many - if any - fullbacks at any level who can haul in 1,000 receiving yards in a season.  I remember seeing him play in the season opener against Louisiana-Monroe and being immediately impressed.

He led his team with eights catches for 92 yards that day and closed the season with 69 receptions for 1024 yards (14.8 average) and seven touchdowns.  Clay was also third on the team in rushing with 304 yards (5.3 average).

Not bad for a guy who by many accounts was only modestly recruited by the school he signed with, a class-filler type recruit. 

Last week was rare, huh?  No football.  Judging by the reduced writing pace set by myself and some colleagues, I think it was a chance for everyone to catch their breath a little and either get away from the game for a moment or digest the season a little bit.  For the Michigan and Florida faithful it's probably been a busy time filled with angst turning to anger or excitement.  But for the rest of us - we wait.

Tuesday marks the beginning of the 2006-2007 bowl season.  Coincedentally we're also smack dab in the Holiday season, this time of warmth, giving and good cheer.  It's appropriate that the bowls progressively and merrily march through December and early January, no?  They're festive.  You're festive.  I'm festive.  It all goes together unless you're all about Humbug in which case I just can't help you.

Some of you want to hear my bowl picks, I presume.  I've done horrible the last two years, however, so I'm a bit gunshy.  So whatever follows is my quickly assessed sentiment as of December 18.  I reserve the right to change my mind.  Las Vegas favorites in bold.

Poinsettia Bowl - TCU over Northern Illinois
Las Vegas Bowl - Oregon over BYU
New Orleans Bowl - Troy over Rice
Papa John's.com Bowl - East Carolina over South Florida
New Mexico Bowl - San Jose State over New Mexico

Armed Forces Bowl - Tulsa over Utah
Hawai'i Bowl - Hawai'i over Arizona State
Motor City Bowl - Central Michigan over Middle Tennessee State
Emerald Bowl - Florida State over UCLA
Independence Bowl - Alabama over Oklahoma State

Texas Bowl - Rutgers over Kansas State
Holiday Bowl - California over Texas A&M
Music City Bowl - Clemson over Kentucky
Sun Bowl - Oregon State over Missouri
Liberty Bowl - South Carolina over Houston

Insight Bowl - Texas Tech over Minnesota
Champs Sports Bowl - Purdue over Maryland
Meineke Bowl - Boston College over Navy
Alamo Bowl - Texas over Iowa
Chick-fil-A Bowl - Virginia Tech over Georgia

MPC Computers Bowl - Miami over Nevada
Outback Bowl - Tennessee over Penn State
Cotton Bowl - Nebraska over Auburn
Capital One Bowl - Arkansas over Wisconsin
Gator Bowl - West Virginia over Georgia Tech

Rose Bowl - USC over Michigan
Fiesta Bowl - Oklahoma over Boise State
Orange Bowl - Louisville over Wake Forest
Sugar Bowl - LSU over Notre Dame
International Bowl - Cincinnati over Western Michigan

GMAC Bowl - Southern Miss over Ohio
BCS Championship - TBD


Before we depart this entry, I have something interesting to add.  A while back I came across an interesting person on one of the various college football message boards.  He was a gambler of sorts, had worked in Las Vegas, I forget what exactly but it had to do with research or something similar for the sports books.  Anyhow, this person relayed a concept of his that I found interesting.  I only read it in passing, so this is a bit like that game telephone where sometimes the specific message gets lost.

What he said was that teams tend to perform to their preseason rankings during bowl season.  So if you had put together some kind of 1 to 119 preseason consensus about teams based on the various magazines, websites and polls, you could use that as reference in looking at some bowl games.

For example, Notre Dame was a preseason top five team this year but finished the regular season ranked below that.  However, as a bowl team perhaps they're more like the No. 2 or No. 5 or whatever ranking given to them before.  Now pair them up with LSU, another highly ranked team but perhaps a notch below the Irish and maybe Notre Dame bucks the prevailing logic, sidestepping the butt-whipping LSU is expected to give them.

Or in the Rose Bowl, USC was more highly regarded in the preseason than Michigan.  So perhaps USC dusts off that choke job against UCLA and beats the more highly ranked Wolverines. 

Anyway, that's my interpretation of what that person is saying, I probably got it wrong, but I found it interesting.  If someone can shed more light on that feel free to comment below or email me.

I'm sitting here at my brother's place in San Diego and can't help but overhear his various phone conversations with friends in excitement about the Poinsettia Bowl.  A friend, through business contacts, now has several tickets in his possession and is looking for some company to the game.

Enter my brother (a University of Illinois alum), who is now eagerly calling other friends to get a nonpartisan group together to check out Northern Illinois' battle against TCU in a few weeks.

Sounds like fun.

I haven't been to the _{San Diego County Credit Union} Poinsettia Bowl as of yet, but I scored tickets to the Holiday Bowl a few years back between Colorado and Washington.  The Buffaloes had the forgettable Koy Detmer at quarterback, and their big star in the game was snicker bar eating, trunk hiding, unborn baby and girlfriend shooting Rae Carruth.  Yeah...

Ralphie running onto the field was a highlight, to go along with the general excitement of the game.  I remember Husky bigbody back Corey Dillon taking a kickoff back for a touchdown.  Hey, he used to be fast back in the day, strange as it sounds.  The game was a good one, as expected, given that the Holiday Bowl has a strong tradition of exciting games, even when the matchups aren't all that compelling.

Anyway, the city really has a good time with the bowl, organizes a 5k race and downtown parade among other things.  Fans can party all over town, particularly in the beach cities or the Gaslamp area downtown, as well as checking out the Zoo/Wild Animal Park/Sea World and the beach/mountains/desert/Mexico/Orange County/Los Angeles all in the same general vicinity and Las Vegas a 4-5 hour drive away.

Fun times.

I'm sure the festivities are quite similar for the Poinsettia Bowl.

So although I've criticized certain new bowl games (Birmingham, Alabama?!), they're great events for the cities and their residents---at least when the cities and their residents can offer up things to do besides the game.

I love this blog.

Reading between the lines, it's starting to sound like they'll go with Virginia Tech against Georgia if those teams are available.  Much of their decision rests on whether or not the SEC gets two teams into BCS bowl games.

With Michigan and Ohio State running 1-2 right now it appears the Rose Bowl will fail to match up the champion of the Pac-10 and the Big Ten once again.

One of these years they'll get it right.  It was accidentally brilliant in 2003 when USC and Michigan met in a National Championship game that was also a traditional Rose Bowl battle.  Hopefully it'll work out next year, because there's something wrong with Rose Bowl games featuring Washington State and Oklahoma or Miami and Nebraska.

That said, we may end up having the loser of Ohio State/Michigan playing Cal or USC just the same.  Correct me if I'm wrong on that because I'm unfamiliar with this year's bowl allocation terms, so that matchup might not even be possible depending on what order the bowl committees choose available teams.  It would certainly bring back some of the tradition but in all likelihood the true Big Ten champion will be playing in the Fiesta Bowl, robbing an otherwise great matchup of some of its prestige.

*Mythical* national champion, of course.

Earlier today I predicted the BCS conference champions, now it's time for the national champion.  To be consistent, it makes sense to narrow the field to any of the conference titleists assuming some non-BCS team doesn't insert itself into the title picture.

Those expected conference finalists are:

ACC-Miami
Big East-Louisville
Big Ten-Ohio State
Big 12-Texas
Pac 10-California
SEC-Auburn

It's a bit innane to single out specific games where all these teams will trip up and anticipate voter behavior, so I won't do that to you.  I can look at that list, however, and tell you that Louisville and California are not strong contenders given the various biases inherent in college football that make it difficult for teams like those to play in a title game.  That said, I don't anticipate them being that good so as to make a legitimate case, anyhow.

Texas has history working against it with the frosh quarterback(s), so they're not a strong possibility, all things considered, particularly in having to win a title game.

That leaves Notre Dame, Miami, Auburn and Ohio State.

I believe USC will trip Notre Dame up in November, if the Irish haven't already recorded a loss before then.

Miami should be very strong but with a questionable run game and Kyle Wright not (yet) as good as he should be, they're bound to look a little weak in voters' eyes and might not be able to put together a strong title game performance.

Which leaves us with two teams, Auburn and Ohio State.  Sounds like a great championship battle, doesn't it?

Ohio State is my preseason No. 1 team this year so you know where I stand with them.  If they can survive a rough Big Ten slate it'll mean they've capably patched up their new faces in all the places defense.  They're 1-0 in championship games, and nobody plays close games better than them.  In what could be an epic game, I'm predicting a Buckeyes national championship at the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, scene of their last championship in January of 2003.

***
Please take this with a grain or two of salt, the only definitive answers will come once the season is played.

Today is the first day in that championship quest.  Welcome to college football 2006!

This should be fun...

Origin: Stewart Mandel (bread + crumbs)

This list is not comprehensive but we have to start somewhere so here goes.

If college football had a commissioner, and I were in fact that person (head for the hills!), here are various policies I'd chase/enact:

---Comprehensive Schedule Reform: First legislation item signed would be that D-IA teams may only play other D-IA teams.  The day of the cupcake is over.  I would also strongly encourage every BCS conference team to play other BCS foes or quality non-BCS teams in out-of-conference play.  Games between powerhouse schools (USC/Notre Dame, Ohio State/Texas) would be incentivized with cash from NCAA coffers.

---Comprehensive Poll Reform: I'd work with the Associated Press to assemble a more engaged, talented group of voters for its poll.  I'd use NCAA money to send necessary information to all voters and pollsters such as full DVDs of all available games, or at least significant portions of the games, plus copious statistical information, quotes and stories of all games played each week.  Pollsters would be given several days to digest the material and not be allowed to send their ballots until Wednesday morning at the earliest.  Poll release would tentatively be scheduled for Thursday at noon Eastern time.

---Clarification on Postseason Play: No playoffs.  Ever.  The Rose Bowl would entertain only the Pac-10 and Big Ten champions.  If that were to disrupt a BCS championship game, tough.  Also there would be a reduction of bowl games.  There are simply too many bowl games right now and I'd work to phase out a few a year until the number settled at around 15-20 games.

---Football Saturday: I saw this somewhere else and I like the idea; like the NFL, college football games would start at similar times.  For example, all morning games would begin at say, 11 a.m. Eastern, and then the next round of games wouldn't kick off until 3 p.m., followed by more games at 7 p.m. and then a late flurry of 11 p.m. games.  One could channel-click at home with ease knowing each game watched would be at a similar junction as all other televised games.

---Preseason: I would allow every team one local exhibition scrimmage (minimal contact) against a nearby foe that wouldn't count on the schedule.  No fans or media would be allowed, but it would help teams smooth out a few rough patches before their first official game.  I would also bring back the various preseason classic games, which would count on the schedule.  It would be a great opportunity to schedule quality OOC games on opening weekend and help promote the sport.

---Eligibility: Players will have five years of eligibility, period.  There will be no redshirts, but players can apply for a 6th year of eligibility if faced with unusual injury, personal or family circumstances.  Transfers would no longer lose eligibility but must continue to sit one year before being allowed to play in games.

---NCAA Reform: The rule book would be burned.  A committee would be formed to greatly simplify the NCAA's mission to a few basic principles (think the U.S. Constitution---brilliant and concise, with delegation).  The majority of rules should be created to maintain 1)academic integrity and 2)fairness throughout the game.  Nearly everything else would be superfluous.  The NCAA would make many more rulings on the issues that come before it, making its mistakes but also setting precedents that will help clarify what is right and what is wrong.  Most people understand how our courts make their decisions and can reasonably anticipate how a judge or jury will react to a case.  In college football, it's almost the exact opposite.  The NCAA is simply too inconsistent and dark and distant.  Time to bring it into the light and create consistency in its rulings.

---Other Concerns: I would encourage a reduction in the number of D-IA teams.  We're at either 117 or 119 teams right now, which is ridiculous.  Ideally D-IA football should have anywhere from 80-100 teams.  Dropping a few D-IA teams would strengthen the quality of lower division football, making it more watchable and popular while also scraping away a handful of persistent losers from the D-IA ranks.  I would encourage the various conferences to find a way to reduce their numbers into something more like 10 teams.  Thus, round-robin play could be institutionalized and we wouldn't have to fret about certain teams playing conference title games and others not doing so.  Finally, I'd make it so that teams participating in 6-3 type games would both be credited with a loss.  That's not fun for the players, and it's not fun for the fans.

Last night, I watched the Sun Sports replay of the 1987 Orange Bowl between Oklahoma and Miami.

The game would pit Oklahoma's wishbone offensive machine and dominant defense against Miami's team speed on both sides of the ball.  Both teams were loaded with talent, but Miami clearly had the upper hand.  The Hurricanes completely throttled the Sooners' offense with their small, speedy linebackers and big, athletic defensive interior.

Miami boldly sat on the ball most of the second half, content with its 17-7 lead.  By the time the game reached 20-7 midway through the 4^th quarter, Miami relaxed and Oklahoma was finally able to move the ball after recording just 180 yards of offense to that point.  The Sooners would record a late score on a fumblerooskie play, putting themselves within six points.  Again, Miami maintained its swagger and calmly iced the game to win 20-14 for Jimmy Johnson's first national championship.

I mentioned this game to Heisman Pundit today, and he added a few relevant thoughts:

---Although Miami's defense was able to thoroughly dominate the Oklahoma offense, it is not a knock on what Oklahoma could do.  The wishbone remained an effective offense up to that point in college football history, particularly for teams with the kind of talent that could be found at a place like Oklahoma.

In fact, Oklahoma had the nation's No. 1 offense, recording 493 points (41.1 points/game) and topping 50 points an amazing five times (71 points, 69, 65, 59 and 56).  Their defense was no pushover either, having recorded two shutouts.

---Miami's matchup with Florida State earlier in the season was arguably the true national championship game.  Miami would win 26-25 in the first Wide Right game.

***
Notable:

---Miami's lone defensive shutout in 1987 was against Notre Dame, a 24-0 victory.

---Oklahoma went 33-3 between 1985 and 1987, with all three losses at the hands of the Hurricanes.

---The Hurricanes' coaching staff included Dave Campo (defensive backs), Butch Davis (defensive line), Dave Wannstedt (defensive coordinator/linebackers), Art Kehoe (offensive line) and a greenhorn graduate assistant named Tommy Tuberville.

See link.

I do not have the NFL Network.  Do any of you?

It's been nice to have every bowl game available through basic cable... not sure I'm pleased with this change.

1)The Houston Texans have signed a contract with North Carolina State DE Mario Williams, effectively making him the #1 selection in Saturday's NFL draft. Who knows where Bush goes...

2)Another Yahoo! Sports story: Bush allegations now date back to November of 2004.

Reggie Bush is now clearly implicated in this story, as a knowing witness to the business deal between his father LaMar Griffin and the New Era group.

[Landlord Michael] Michaels' claims, which he has promised will be backed up by corroborating evidence, moves the timeline of Bush's potential ineligibility back to the Trojans' 2004 undefeated BCS national championship season.

In a statement released to Yahoo! Sports on Friday, Michaels' attorney, Brian Watkins, said that in October 2004 Michaels was approached at a San Diego Chargers football game by Bush's stepfather LaMar Griffin about investing and partnering in New Era Sports & Entertainment, a new sports agency.

In November 2004, Michaels then met with Griffin, longtime Bush friend Lloyd Lake and Bush himself to discuss the plan where the USC running back would be the firm's central client when he turned pro in the spring of 2006.

"In November 2004, in San Diego, Reggie Bush, recruited by his stepfather to validate Mr. Griffin's company, convinced [Michaels and Lake] of its viability," Watkins said in the statement.

"There was the representation that Reggie would come with his stepfather," Watkins told Yahoo! Sports on Friday. "Reggie ratified that."

Michaels said that soon thereafter Griffin asked him to pay off $28,000 of Griffin's personal debt, which Michaels obliged.

BCS officials are now considering whether to vacate USC's 2004 BCS national championship if Bush is found to have been ineligible for any part of that season.

BCS officials told Yahoo! Sports on Friday that if Bush is ruled ineligible by either the Pacific 10 Conference or the NCAA for even one game during the 2004 season, the BCS will discuss amending its rules to allow it to force the Trojans to vacate the national championship.

At this point I don't know what to say.

Allegations are allegations and we need to treat them as such until investigations occur and Reggie Bush and his parents the Griffins attempt some kind of rebuttal, but this is pretty damning.

Bush's link to the NCAA violation allegations is now more concrete.

What's surprising is that the USC Athletic Department has yet to be linked to this in any serious manner aside from an anonymous/sourceless allegation made by ProFootballTalk.com that USC players knew something was wrong and therefore the USC coaches should somehow have known and reported a possible violation to the NCAA.

We'll see if that allegation goes anywhere.

This week is perhaps the worst week in USC athletics history.

The Bush housing allegations began on Sunday night when the Yahoo! Sports piece was first published.  Monday is the height of the news cycle so this story was certain to get played all week.  Then, various allegations and facts about the story have continued to flow from the various media enterprises throughout the week, peaking with today's allegation that Bush may have been ineligible as early as November of 2004.

Combine the Bush housing scandal with Wednesday's sexual assault allegation and arrest of backup quarterback Mark Sanchez, today's news that Bush will not be chosen #1 in the NFL draft as had been anticipated for months and tonight's ESPNClassic's re-airing of the 2006 Rose Bowl loss to Texas, and the USC community cannot be feeling any worse about itself.

This week has been so bad for USC, even some of USC's bitter rivals are sounding almost sympathetic given the string of events.

Wow.

Mercifully, the weekend and the NFL Draft are upon us, giving USC but a brief respite in the crazy news cycle before things heat up again on Monday.

***UPDATE***

Yahoo! Sports is also reporting that agent David Caravantes---alleged to be a member of the New Era group and also alleged to have threatened to extort Reggie Bush and the Griffin family---says he has nothing to do with Reggie Bush:

David Caravantes told The Associated Press on Friday that he is unaware of the investigation, adding: "I have had no involvement with Reggie Bush. The truth will come out."

Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFLPA, confirmed Friday that the probe of Caravantes has begun...

..."I wasn't even aware of the money asked of the Bush family until yesterday," Caravantes said. "They (New Era) recruited me."

Stay tuned...

Or something.

From this: 

Sweet little tidbit...
WVU football office answers phone,"Hello, Sugar Bowl Champs"

How small-time.  Every Georgia fan's stomach has to just curl at the thought of that.

I feel their pain.

BCS officials begin "low key" meetings this week in Phoenix---no major changes to the current format are expected.

Other details:

• Possible changes to the number of at-large teams eligible for BCS play thanks to the extra BCS game and two additional BCS bowl slots
  
• Fox representatives will also attend the meetings, as they will televise all non Rose Bowl BCS games
• Fox will determine the name of the new BCS championship game
• Sugar Bowl officials expect to return to New Orleans and the Superdome after playing in Atlanta last year when the game was displaced by Hurricane Katrina
  

I just had a Sheila Brovlovski whah?! whah!? whah?! moment when reading this:

New bowl games pending (H/T: Pitt Sports Blather)

The NCAA is considering adding four new bowls to its already glutted 28-bowl lineup. If all are approved, 64 of the 119 Division I-A schools (54 percent) will be guaranteed postseason berths

The new bowls are:

-The BCS national championship game
-The Birmingham Bowl (Legion Field/UAB)-CUSA vs. Big East/MAC
-The New Mexico Bowl (Albuquerque)-Mountain West vs. WAC
-International Bowl (Toronto)-Big East vs. MAC

I'm the biggest bowl honk around, but the number of bowls at this point is so far beyond the absurd.  It makes it hard to defend the bowls, in fact, when the people organizing them make like undisciplined lottery winners blowing the winnings and heading to financial ruin.

Jerks.

Raise your hand if you want to spend a fun family weekend in Birmingham in early December?  Albuquerque's beautiful but do we really need a bowl game there?  And why in the world are we calling it the International Bowl?  That just plays into the "American Idiot" myth.  Yes, Canada and Mexico are foreign nations, but if one of their major sports held a postseason game in the States and called it an "International" game I'd laugh my tail off at them.

Birmingham, AL, home to the Riverchase Galleria, a "shopping and dining city under glass with the world's longest skylight"---sign me up

[Ed.---Advance warning, this entry is extremely long]

What is "Physical Genius"?

A concept of mine it is not, but I love it just the same.  Rather, it belongs to one Malcolm Gladwell, one of the more interesting writers and thinkers around.  Gladwell's the author of two much-hyped books: The Tipping Point and Blink.  Both are concept-driven books, although the principles behind them are entirely organic.  CFR loves concepts, so you had to know I'd sink my teeth into this topic.

Gladwell lays out his concept of Physical Genius in a New Yorker article he penned in 1999.  I stumbled upon it recently thanks to an entry about Vince young at Texas blog Burnt Orange Nation.

***My advance apologies to Mr. Gladwell and anyone else with a better understanding of the concept if I butcher it along the way***

The best way for me introduce Physical Genius is to throw some of the athletic names out there Gladwell asribed to it: Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Tony Gwynn, Gred Rusedski and Jack Nicklaus.  In other words, some of the very best to ever play their games.  It applies to athletes and non-athletes alike (Gladwell joyfully documents the genius of musician Yo-Yo Ma and a particular neurosurgeon named Charlie Wilson), but for the sake of this discussion, we're narrowing the field to college football figures.

As is obvious above, one of those college football athletes is Vince Young.  I'll add my own thoughts about him later on in support of BON's petition, but I'd also like to offer two other candidates for status as Physical Geniuses (PG's)---Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll.

January 4^th and the Rose Bowl was a significant and particularly rare intersection of three unique PG's at work, college football's equivalent of Halley's comet, perhaps.  But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Gladwell begins with some intentional vagueness in attempting to describe Physical Genius:

[PG's] all have an affinity for translating thought into action.  They're what we might call physical geniuses...

...The puzzling thing about physical genius, however, is that the closer you look at it the less it can be described by such cut-and-dried measures of athleticism.

He then enters a neurological dissection of why Tony Gwynn was so good at the impossible act of hitting a baseball.  Here is our first good piece of meat to chew on:

"Very good hitters base their decisions on past experience with certain pitchers, with the count, with the probabilities of certain types of pitches, with their own skills, and use very early cues in the pitcher's delivery to begin the swing," Janet Starkes, a professor of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, says.

What sets physical geniuses apart from other people, then, is not merely being able to do something but knowing what to do--their capacity to pick up on subtle patterns that others generally miss.  This is what we mean when we say that great athletes have a "feel" for the game, or that they "see" the court or the field or the ice in a special way.

Sounds simple, right? Enter Reggie Bush.

I remember watching recruiting highlights of his a few months before he committed to USC, and I was floored.  I'd seen plenty of tapes of recruits scorching high school opposition; even the stars at D-I bottom feeder scools have great highlight tapes.  However, this one was different.  Bush's speed was something to behold, but what really got me was his vision.  He was seeing things on the field better than all but a handful of players I've ever watched.  He could effortlessly put the moves on a defender, but it was apparent he was more apt to set a guy up, anticipating someone's reaction to his own momentum and finding a way to get around that defender and everyone else who would try and stop him.

We college football fans saw plenty of that over the next three years.  There were and are players faster than Bush, there are guys bigger than Bush, and guys with better moves and more elusiveness, but nobody is better than him at lining defenders up like chess pieces and navigating a course through all of them.

Think back to that famous run against Fresno State last November that probably won him the Heisman Trophy.  It was a mirror-image of the one O.J. Simpson had running through the UCLA defense in 1967.  Simpson's run has been replayed a million times over the years but never replicated---until Bush did the same exact thing.

his 8.7 yards/carry last year was no accident, but rather the sign of a rare player, one who could make common the most difficult of tasks for any back: the long run.

Gladwell continues-

This is the hard part about understanding physical genius, because the source of that special skill--that "feel"--is still something of a mystery. "Sometimes during the course of an operation, there'll be several possible ways of doing something, and I'll size them up and, without having any conscious reason, I'll just do one of them," [neurosurgeon Charlie] Wilson told me...

...When he talks about his extraordinary success as a surgeon, he gives the impression that he is talking about some abstract trait that he is neither responsible for nor completely able to understand.  "It's sort of an invisible hand," he went on.  "It begins almost to seem mystical.  Sometimes a resident asks, 'Why did you do that?' and I say "--here Wilson gave a little shrug--"Well, it juts seemed like the right thing."

When I read this passage, the first person I thought of was Michael Jordan.  Specifically, his NBA Finals game against the Portland Trail Blazers when he made six three-point shots, and after the sixth one retreated from the line, turned towards the announcer's table and friend Magic Johnson and shrugged, palms out.

I've compared Bush to Michael Jordan before, but for different reasons.  However, the traits of Physical Genius probably vary little from one PG to another.  Wayne Gretzky's an original, but he probably varies little from Jordan in his performance capabilities.  The same holds for Bush, Young and Carroll.  All are cut from the same cloth.

Another trait Gladwell sees in PG's: compulsiveness.

To better explain this compulsiveness, he describes another neurosurgeon who was also a carrier-based pilot in the Vietnam war.  He was successful as a pilot, and as a neurosurgeon, because of his habitual ability to be a stickler.

[Neurosurgeon Don] Quest talked about what it was like to repair a particularly tricky aneurysm compared to what it was like to land at night in rough seas and a heavy fog when you are running out of fuel and the lights are off on the carrier's landing strip, because the skies are full of enemy aircraft.  "I think they are similar," he said, after some thought, and what he meant was that they were both exercises in a certain kind of exhaustive and meticulous preparation.

In other words, PG's often have compulsive personalities---they want to get things right and prepare diligently.  By all accounts, Bush is very much a practice warrior, and the man leading his practices runs one of the most unusual practices in all of D-I, coach Pete Carroll.

Carroll's practices are high-paced and concept-driven.  Guys aren't merely repeating drills but playing through to their purpose: there are competition Tuesdays and turnover Wednesdays.  The energy and commotion is legendary, but it also creates a chaos that demands a certain mental discipline to thrive in.  Because he can think quickly through a variety of situations, he demands the same of his players.

Vince Young fits in here as well.  Although I've never gotten the vibe that he's big on practice, his attention to the game and to details has sharpened immensely in the last year and a half.  When Texas began tinkering its offense to more adequately fit his physical gifts, he began to really hit the playbook and meet regularly with the offensive coaches.

He carried those habits into the offseason and up to this very day.  The proof is in the pudding: last year he completed oone of the greatest seasons by a passer/runner in college football history, led of one of the greatest offenses in college football history and won a stunning national championship victory over a team among the all time greats in college football and featuring two PG's of its own.

More on the personality traits-

Charles Bosk, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania... concluded that, far more than technical skills or intelligence, what was necessary for success [as a surgeon] was the sort of attitude that Quest has--a practical-minded obsession with the possibility and the consequences of failure...

...What this attitude drives you to do is practice over and over again, until even the smallest imperfections are ironed out.

This is where I'm a little more cautious about Young.  The Texas people will have to make a case for Young in their replies to this entry.  I said above he's improved his preparation habits, but I don't get the vibe that he's necessarily obsessive about them.

That is not a fear of mine with Bush or Carroll.  During the Heisman Trophy ceremony last year, there was a feature about Bush's training with NFL back LaDainian Tomlinson.  Tomlinson's among the NFL's best, and is also a practice nut.  He took Bush under his wings and worked the kid to exhaustion.  What that did was open Bush's eyes to a different level of preparation than he had known, one that a great back like Tomlinson had dedicated himself to.

It also built Bush's stamina and strength and transferred upon him a certain mental sharpness that elevated his play as evidenced by his remarkable improvement between his sophomore and junior seasons.  Bush couldn't have survived long in those workouts had he not also been dedicated to his own vigorous workout habits.  In that sense, his attitude is an internal one.  He's learned a different level of preparation, but he was already a guy similarly programmed to Tomlinson, who himself is similarly programmed like a Gretzky or Jordan.

As for Carroll, he is obessive about one thing above all else: the ball.  That's one of USC's silly slogans---"it's all about the ball".  Thing is, Carroll lives that reality.  He has created an entire program in that image, taking care of the football and more importantly, taking it away from his foes.  Not once has his team deviated from a superior brand of ball management.  His turnover margin numbers in his five seasons at Troy have been the following:

+16,+18,+20,+19,+21

Consistent, and remarkable.  No other coach or program is within several area codes of those numbers.  If there's one thing about turnover numbers it's that they tend to jump around.  There's even a section in the great Phil Steele preseason preview magazines titled "Turnovers=Turnaround" in which Steele documents how teams that are either +10 or greater or -10 or greater in turnover margin tend to rebound the next season with a reverse number that corrolates to that team's record swinging violently upward or downward.  Steele makes himself and a lot of followers a lot of money with that concept.  But Carroll's found a way to break that cycle and nobody else has.

If college football coaches are obsessive/compulsive (most are), than Carroll is king of the compulsives.

If the preceding helped to hash out some of the more nuanced physical attributes of Physical Genius, what follows dives headlong into the mental aspect.

Without further interruption, take it away Mr. Gladwell:

This kind of obsessive preparation does two things.  It creates consistency...more important, practice changes the way a task is perceived.

That perception involves the athlete breaking down the game situations before him into bite-sized pieces.  Gladwell borrows a psychological term to define that process: "chunking".

Our athlete example this time is hockey player Wayne Gretzky, the sport's greatest offensive force.

Like master chess players, he wasn't seeing all eleven other players individually; he was seeing only chunks.

From Peter Gzowski's "The Game of Our Lives" a book about the 1980-1981 Edmonton Oilers team:

What Gretzky perceives on a hockey rink is, in a curious way, more simple than what a less accomplished player perceives.  He sees not so much a set of moving players as a number of situations...

...Moving in on the Montreal blueline, as he was able to recall while he watched a videotape of himself, he was aware of the position of all the other players on the ice.  The pattern they formed was, to him, one fact, and he reacted to that fact.

When he sends a pass to what the rest of us appears an empty space on the ice, and when a teammate magically appears in that space to collect the puck, he has in reality simply summoned up from his bank account of knowledge the fact that in a particular situation, someone is likely to be in a particular spot, and if he is not there now he will be there presently.

Are alarms going off in your head right now recalling Vince Young's superb option run and pitch to Ramonce Taylor that turned into a Texas touchdown in this year's Rose Bowl?

I could provide many more examples but I'll save the bulk of the discussion for the last, most important part---the creative element of physical genius.

Towards the end of his essay, Gladwell returns to genius surgeon Charlie Wilson.  Wilson had added tennis to his list of interests at one point in his life, and worked hard to become good at it.  By Gladwell's account he was a quality player and put in the necessary effort, but couldn't beat some of his neurosurgery colleagues.  It frustrated him to no end.

And yet, for all his focus and determination, he could not respond effectively to an old man shuffling toward the ball twenty feet across the net from him.  "A good player knows where the ball is going," Wilson says.  "He anticipates it.  He is there.  I just wasn't."  What Wilson is describing is a failure not of skill or of resolve but of the least understood element of physical genius--imagination.  For some reason, he could not make the game come alive in his head.

Kind of like SEC football, lacking in imagination.  Kidding, kidding.  Alright back to Gladwell:

When psychologists study people who are expert at motor tasks, they find that almost all of them use their imagination in a very particular and sophisticated way.  Jack Nicklaus, for instance, has said that he has never taken a swing that he didn't first mentally rehearse, frame by frame.  Yo-Yo Ma told me that he remembers riding on a bus, at the age of seven, and solving a difficult musical problem by visualizing himself playing the piece on the cello.

You get the idea.  These Physical Genius types are superb at visualizing---they can create outcomes in their mind and then replicate them or recognize them when they occur in real life---and then react forcefully to them.

If you think of physical genius as a pyramid, with, at the bottom, the raw components of coordination, and, above that, the practice that perfects those particular movements, then this faculty of imagination is the top player.  This is what separates the physical genius from those who are merely very good. 

Michael Jordan and Karl Malone, his longtime rival, differ not so much in their athletic ability or in how obessively they practiced.  The difference between them is that Jordan could always generate a million different scenarios by which his team could win, some of which were chunks stored in long-term memory, others of which were flights of fancy that came to him, figuratively and literally, in midair.  Jordan twice won championships in the face of unexpected adversity: once, a case of the flu, and, the second time, a back injury to his teammate Scottie Pippen, and he seemed to thrive on these obstacles, in a way Karl Malone never could.

There's a lot to take from this last part, so let's break it into smaller chunks.

1)Although Gladwell harps at the propensity for bullheaded practice and repetition among PG's, they also have the capacity and willingness to deviate and create.

It isn't that [Yo-Yo] Ma doesn't achieve perfection; it's that he finds striving for perfection to be banal.  He says that he sometimes welcomes it when he breaks a string, because that is precisely the kind of thing (like illness or an injury to a teammate) that you cannot prepare for--that you haven't chunked and, like some robot, stored neatly in long-term memory.  The most successful performers improvise.  They create, in Ma's words, "something living."

2)Creativity is often revealed in how one compensates for adversity, how one adjusts and overcomes when things break down.  It is one's ability to "tap dance" that is a significant measure of Physical Genius, in other words.

Several Reggie Bush plays stick out in my mind as evidence of his ability to improvise.

1)In just his third college game, USC was playing Hawai'i at home.  Bush took a screen pass and darted to his right, only to encounter about five Hawai'i players.  I cannot begin to accurately describe what happened next, but it went something like this...

Bush jukes one defender into the sidelines, cutting inside and then hop-stops, facing one defender to the right, another to the left, another immediately to his left side and another a few feet back to his left backside.  He was literally boxed in.  In the next moment, he lunges forward.  The defender to his immediate left lunged to tackle him and he hops backwards nearly into the arms of a defender he'd just run by, watching the two men in front of him tangle themselves up.  Suddenly he's out of the box and completely reverses himself to the opposite side of the field to plenty of open space.

The Highlight [scan down the list to "2003 POY #10-Matt Leinart Block" It's a terrible replay angle but that's all I can find]

2)In a game USC nearly lost, Bush returns a punt against Stanford with USC down 28-24 in the 4^th quarter.  Again, hard to describe.  Watch the replay below, it involved a lot of spinning and creative cuts.  The return had a hint of desperation given USC's predicament and was a sign to me that he was a guy who could  improvise when things got tense a la Michael Jordan.

The Highlight [scan down the list to Reggie Bush-Stanford 2004]

3)Reggie Bush's first touchdown run against Notre Dame this year.  Bush took a carry, paused for a moment, then ran through a gaping hole to his left.  Suddenly, as he cuts upfield, a defender stands in wait a few feet in front of him.  Bush didn't juke him, he didn't try and outrun him...he simply hurdled him.  Four seconds later and Bush has a touchdown.

I've TiVo'd that play a million times and still do not understand why or how it came upon him to hurdle the defender.  I don't know why the defender went to the ground, or how Bush knew he'd do that.  But he did... he did.

For proof of his creativity (if those highlights didn't already do it for you), we turn again to the ubiquitous Heisman ceremony presentation.  In one of the segments about Bush, ESPN compared him to PG candidate Gale Sayers.  At one point his coach, Pete Carroll, said they had to find video of Sayers to show to the freshman Bush, and said something to the effect of "the thing that stands out about Reggie is his creativity, he's a creative runner like Gale".

One can't help but wonder if 1)Gladwell watched that Heisman ceremony and if he did 2)had a knowing smile while watching it. 

As far as his reactions to adversity, Bush clearly passes with flying colors.  He carried USC to several wins each of the last two seasons, and as noted before on here, played himself into literal exhaustion several times this season.

Enough about Bush though, let's take a look at Vince Young's creative side.  His brilliant option pitch in the Rose Bowl is an obvious highlight, but what's not so obvious is the genius of his throwing motion.

Please, pick your jaw back up from the floor, and let me explain.

Everyone and their uncle has mocked Young's throwing motion, and for good reason---it's not a traditional motion and comes across more as a flick than as a throw.  If you've seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite his motion is almost a mirror-image of the way Napoleon's annoying Uncle Rico throws a slab of steak.

But so what, it works!  Not only does it work, Young's nearly perfected throwing that way.  It allows for a stunningly quick and powerful release, yet one that's also unexplainably accurate.

The one concern would be that the ball's trajectory out of his arm will be cause for a lot of batted balls, but we simply have not seen that at the college level.  Don't forget Young's played behind some very tall linemen in his time at Texas, so if that were to be a problem it would have surfaced by now.

So why is the motion genius?  Because it's supremely effective and 100% original.  Nobody throws like that.  It's a creation of his own mind on to best throw the football.  Once again, Gladwell:

Ma says he spends ninety per cent of his time "looking at the score, figuring it out--who's saying this, who wrote this and why," letting his mind wander, and only ten per cent on the instrument itself.  Like Jordan, his genius originates principally in his imagination.  If he spent less time dreaming and more time playing, he would be Karl Malone. 

Young's clearly spent some time daydreaming and not just playing and it's clearly to his betterment.

Think Vince Young is the only PG with a completely unorthodox throwing motion?  Think again.  We don't even have to leave Vince's home state of Texas because PG candidate and Houston Astro pitcher Roy Oswalt has caught similar flak for his funky delivery.  From last week's ESPN the Magazine feature on Oswalt titled "The Simple Life" by Buster Olney:

Young Roy had seen enough to know that most pitchers start their delivery with one foot parallel to the rubber.  This made no sense to him.  He was trying to drive himself toward the batter, like a sprinter breaking out of the blocks.  Sprinters, he thought, don't plant their feet parallel to the starting line; their feet are pointed forward.

So that's how Oswalt designed his pitching mechanics, with his back foot, his right foot, angled slightly forward.  He raises his left foot, pauses slightly, then hurls his body at the batter, more like a javelin-tosser than a sprinter in the end.  Nobody else in the majors uses mechanics like these, and no pitching coach would teach them unless he was considering a change of profession.

But batters have confessed that Oswalt's motion can be unnerving, this wiry six-footer leaping at them like a mugger.  He throws 95, and the ball ambushes them.  "I can't think of anyone who can keep the ball on a low-line trajectory as well as Roy does," says Roger Clemens.  "Good plane with late life.  Nice combo."

Not everything's by the book in the path to genius.

The other aspect of Young's PG candidacy is his demeanor.  Other than Joe Montana, I have never seen a player more calm or at peace on the playing field than Young.  When I see him in the pocket, he's never rushed.  When he's running in the open field, it looks like he's about to take a gentle yawn in the middle of his runs he's so effortless and nonchalant.  That calm is the mark of a player who is ready for plays to break down, forcing him to improvise and become unfettered from the "chunks" that dictate conventional play.

I remember watching the Texas/Ohio State game last year, and there was a play where Ohio State had swarmed the Texas pocket.  The Buckeye defensive line forced Young to step forward, but he kept looking for a receiver until a linebacker was literally on top of him, trying to drag him down.  I thought to myself "this guy is in absolutely no hurry... this is amazing" before he finally got rid of the ball.

Before I go further, I'd like to thank Burnt Orange Nation for writing about this topic.  However, I felt they could have made a much stronger case for their Godsend quarterback.

Their entry boiled down to an impressive introduction to Gladwell's concept, and then analyzing his two factors for PG---physical and mental.  They heavily sidestepped the mental aspect, other than to criticize the NFL's Wonderlic test.  BON also somewhat sidesteps the NFL quarterback issue, but makes a superb case for their thesis of Young as a PG runner.

Anyone who has seen both Michael Vick run the football, then, might wonder why this is so. He is clearly the quickest and fastest runner at the quarterback position. Why does Vince Young excel at running, despite being, by all accounts, not quite as quick and not quite as fast?

This is where the experience of Texas fans can kick in. We have seen him make these runs for three years. He has an inexplicable knack for avoiding defenders, making cuts, and finding holes to run through. He does not just run fast and move quickly. He makes head-shakingly great runs, the success of which go far beyond any physical greatness he has. There is something more going on. It may be that Vince Young is a physical genius as a runner. Pete Carroll might think so, for one.

I've spoken before on here about how both Young and Bush are can't-miss NFL players.  They're simply too gifted, too much budding PG's to do anything but thrive in that league once they get acclimated. 

However, I also view them as "transition players".  Neither player fits a conventional mold. 

Bush's closest comparison is Marshall Faulk, but Faulk isn't as athletic and the league took a long time to figure out how to make great use of his skills.  Young has no comparison.  HP has called Young the true revolution and the more I think about it the more I agree.  But Bush is also a revolution.  He's going to make a case for nimble, lighter guys to play all over the offense, and colleges are already using his skill set as a way to recruit, telling players they'll be used like Reggie Bush.  Soon that kind of player may saturate the backfields of upcoming NFL drafts the way future DE's and rangy receivers may start taking snaps at quarterback instead of being converted to other positions early in their career as next generation Young-type quarterbacks.

Transition players can be considered ones that mark the beginning of a new era---think Magic Johnson and the oversized point guard, or Michael Jordan and the oversized combo guard/forward lineups created when he teamed up with Scottie Pippen.  Just the same I expect Bush and Young to mark a new era within the NFL, or at least become highly regarded players at the tops of their respective positions.

Onward to Pete Carroll.

Because he's not an athlete, I won't bother to show highlights documenting his physical gifts.  That's alright, because his mental gifts make a strong case for his status as a physical genius.

I've already discussed his practice demands, but there's more to the man than the practice field.  Carroll has a very active imagination.  Few football fans realize that he helped develop the modern Tampa/cover-two defense while serving as Monte Kiffin's defensive coordinator at North Carolina State from 1980-1982.  It is now one of the NFL's two most prolific and dominant defenses, making a home most notably in Tampa Bay and Indianapolis.

His defensive creativity has been on full display at USC in recent years.  Playing in the pass-happy Pac-10, he's employed a matador style, suckering opponents into unloading their playbooks and tossing the ball across the soft middle of the field.  His defense is designed to take away the deep zones and keep everything in front to control long gains.  It has the effect of keeping his defense on the field for a long time and surrendering many passing yards.  However, like a shark Carroll has set a trap in his defense.

With each passing play, with each passing possession, his defense sees more and more plays, letting his players connect the dots and start reacting to the chunks of data in their heads on how to prepare for opponents.  Eventually, they start jumping routes, batting down passes or intercepting the ball.  Carroll also uses math to his advantage.  He's recognized that so long as he has more talent on his defense than his opponent has on offense, he will win a lot of the short field battles.

The result is that opponents find it exceedingly difficult to score from about the 30 yard line in against his defense.  A shorter field means less room to operate an offense, and that's when his attack springs to life, taking risks despite having their backs to the goal line.

No coach willingly surrenders any field position if he has to, but let's just say Carroll has a backup plan for when things break down thanks to the creative scheme he's helped develop.  In other words, his defense is at its best when it faces adversity, when they are most threatened.

The best recent example of his defense facing adversity was the aforementioned Rose Bowl.  Vince Young's performance is well-documented, but what few people realize is that Carroll's defense had nearly done the miraculous that game.

The Trojan defense had limped into the Rose Bowl, missing a handful of starters with season-ending injuries and having several players suit up for the first time in several games.  Most weren't truly ready but went out there anyway (two of them had surgery immediately after the season ended).  Young managed a lot of yards that night, but with 5:00 left in the game, USC had held Texas' great offense to just 26 points.  I don't know how they did it.  Those last 5:00 they couldn't hold Young back any longer, but the miracle was keeping Texas' scoring machine at bay for that long with what little they had to offer that game.

It's not exactly Michael Jordan with the flu, but USC's defense really had one of those great efforts when things weren't going their way type days.  And all the credit in the world for that goes to Carroll.

My final Carroll anecdote relates to improvisation, and the world of possibilities.  I remember after this year's USC/Notre Dame game, someone had asked Carroll either on television or in one of the papers about what he was thinking about towards the end of the game when USC was on the ropes, its winning  streak hanging in the balance.  He said he wasn't worried or anxious, his mind was only thinking about the possibilities, trying to figure out what his players would do to win the game.  In that sense, Carroll is much like Ma, looking as a coach to create "something living".  He's done so by recruiting players like Bush and creating an environment for his players to do great things with games on the line.

In concluding this marathon of a blog entry, I'll deviate a bit from Gladwell for my own football thoughts.  This entry was about Gladwell's Physical Genius, but it was also about the unique talents of Reggie Bush, Pete Carroll and Vince Young.  We were all a little fortunate as college football fans to see those three collide on January 4th in Pasadena's Rose Bowl for this year's BCS national championship.

A casual observer reading this entry before the game would probably have chosen USC as the game's winner.  They had the PG numbers advantage over Texas, 2-to-1.  The game was a home game for all intents and purposes.  They were the team with the 34-game winning streak.  They were the defending champs.

And they lost.

Here's a simple guess as to why: Vince Young had the ball in his hands on every offensive snap for Texas.  Pete Carroll could control who got the ball, but he was not on that field.  Reggie Bush would total 24 touches of his own, but yet he could not influence the game the way Young could simply because of his position.  So at the end of the day, two great Physical Geniuses had their fate handed to them by one single Physical Genius.  He had the ball the most often... he had it last.

I repeat: college football + playoffs = bad

Here's an excerpt from this week's Baseball America chat with college editor Will Kimmey:

Q: Budman from Berkeley asks-Why don't the Pac-10 and Big West have conference tournaments like pretty much every other conference in the country?

A: Will Kimmey- Because in my estimation, their league members are smarter and realize the value of an entire season vs. what a team does in one weekend in determining an automatic bid. Baseball's a marathon and it always seems wrong when teams such as the 2005 versions of UNC Wilmington and Troy won their conferences by a strong margin but lost in the league tournament and missed the NCAAs. They proved over the long haul they were the best in their leagues and got slighted because of one bad weekend. I know the NCAA tournament is about inclusion, and league tournaments do give teams with even mediocre seasons a carrot to play hard and be a miracle team, but I'm against that set up. Here's my applause for the Big West and Pac-10 being bold and rewarding the true league winners.

One and done tournaments can and do slight elite teams who have a bad game at the wrong time.

In any distribution there are going to be quirks and odd outcomes, it's up to the crafters of tournaments to design them in such a way as to smooth out those quirks and deliver an outcome that is reliable and gives more power to a team's true abilities than the random but powerful hand of fate.

As I've said before, the NBA has the best postseason tournament model and its champion has great legitimacy.  Random luck can sustain a team through one game, or maybe two, but over the course of a seven game series the better team tends to win out.

The NFL's tournament is a terrible format but because the league is so even the outcome is fairly legitimate. Baseball's playoffs are designed well but the champions are quite often of questionable legitimacy, due in part to the nature of the game.

Other than the NFL, all these tournaments have a series of games between teams. It is these series that help their tournaments go from disasters to semi-legitimate championship tournaments. If the playoff proponents of college football cannot get behind a series of games between teams (at minimum a best-of-three) they're being incredibly shortsighted and best to be viewed as a band of braying sheep or howling monkeys without truly tangible, well thought out solutions to what they see as a problem. Reminds me of how minority parties tend to behave in this country's political system.

The problem is, of course, that college football involves student athletes. The cynics will tell you that there isn't much "student" in student-athlete, but regardless, any "series" type event is going to take the student-athletes away from their classes for an unusual amount of time and be met with a lot of skepticism and apprehension. Any non-bowl postseason, particularly one of extended play such as a playoff or collection of series further distorts the college aspect of college football.

In that sense, the solution may just be that there isn't a solution other than to 'keep on keeping on'. College football's made it this far crowning mythical national champions, and most fans aren't losing a lot of sleep over it. The regular season has made a lot of us fat and happy and it's uniqueness has helped distinguish college football from a lot of other sports and given the sport a tremendous following.

This entry is inspired by the movie High Fidelity.  My apologies in advance.

The movie High Fidelity was on TV twice last week, and in keeping with the John Cusack theme on here, I'm inspired to connect a movie in some way to college football via the CFR blog.  For those who haven't seen it, the movie stars John Cusack as a music savant and record store owner who has a midlife crisis and undergoes this drastic revisitation of some old relationships he's had.  The interesting thing about him is that he's got a "Top Five" list for practically everything; breakups/exes, favorite songs, things he likes about the current girlfriend and so on.  Towards the end of the movie he goes about making a mixed tape to play for his current squeeze, and get into the art and nuance of it all, including what songs to choose, what order to put them in, and the reasoning behind those choices.

At that point my mind started to wander, thinking about a much less serious or profound mix tape for college football.  To make things easier, I narrowed my thoughts down to "Mixed Tape for College Football of the Early and Mid 2000's".  It's specific, and covers a time period all but the youngest college football fans are familiar with.  It's contemporary and still fresh in our minds.

What follows is the list of "tracks" I'd have on my college football of the early and mid 2000's tape.  Feel free to contribute your own tracks, this is by no means comprehensive or thoroughly combed over.  It's meant to be lightly thought-provoking and interactive.  Here are the tracks:

• Oklahoma/Florida State BCS title game

A surprising outcome, and marked the beginning of an Oklahoma resurgence under Bob Stoops to start this decade off.  Oklahoma completely throttled the Florida State offense, nearly pitching a shutout and killing the Heisman credibility of Seminoles' QB Chris Weinke (who narrowly beat out Oklahoma's Josh Heupel for the award).

• Miami/Ohio State BCS title game

The Buckeyes stunned the world.  It was a dramatic game, including the appearance of a miffed Maurice Clarett, the horrible knee injury to Willis McGahee and that oh-so-controversial pass interference call.  Cemented Ohio State's legacy as the "Luckeyes" with yet another close victory in their 14-0 season.  Also stopped the Miami mini-dynasty.

• USC/Oklahoma BCS title game

A visually stunning performance.  Oklahoma scrapped its way to a touchdown on a few busted plays, and then the USC offense and defense woke up.  That USC team was perhaps the best single-game football team in many years, if not the game's history.

• Texas/USC BCS title game

Vince Young.  Reggie Bush.  Matt Leinart.  The Rose Bowl.  A thoroughly dramatic affair, one that wasn't resolved until the final :19 seconds.  Even then, USC got its offense past midfield in a desperate final push.  Like Ohio State, Texas put a halt to USC's 34-game winning streak.

• Mike Price and the Alabama coaching carousel

The head coach job at Alabama is one of the game's most prestigious positions.  It's also a tough position of late, as the fans are title-starved and frustrated with the burdens of NCAA sanctions and the rise of bitter rival Auburn.  Almost immediately after his hiring, Price went on some kind of hyper-testosterone golf trip that involved strippers, credit cards, alcohol and God know's what else.

This wasn't far off the resignation of Dennis Franchione, who left the Tide high and dry for Texas A&M.

• Alabama recruiting mess

Ahhhh, Albert Means.  This story was the vindication of all that is wrong with recruiting and SEC fans' hyper-involvement in the sport.  It's now been revealed that Tennessee coach and Alabama rival was one of the NCAA's main informants in bringing Alabama down.  This story is of high symbolic value to many who follow the game.

• Offensive revolution
  

Love 'em or hate 'em, these schemes are here and are all the rage.  Spread, Norm Chow offense, sophistication, all that.  I don't deny that the game is in constant flux and defenses will adjust and then offenses will re-adjust---simply noting that the offenses are here now, and doing good things.  Money talks: the spread and offensive-driven coaches are getting hired.  Mike Price before his little inbroglio.  Steve Spurrier again.  Urban Meyer.  And that's just in the SEC.  Last year's Rose Bowl featured two of the 15 best offenses in NCAA history.

• 2003 BCS Fiasco

Yes Virginia, split titles were not done away with despite the creation of the BCS.  Don't think that created much of a divide?  One word: Onepeat.

• Mike Williams

Although he hasn't become a revolutionary player, his personality and on-field dominance caught peoples' attention.  The one-handed grab against Oregon State is forever replayed.  Symbolic of USC's resurgence.

• Maurice Clarett

He played one year of college football.  One!  And yet he's talked about to this very day.

• Reggie Bush

If you follow recruiting, you know every single program pitches to backs, quarterbacks, receivers, whoever can run, that they'll give him a "Reggie Bush" role.  He's become the symbol for offensive versatility and explosiveness.  Two titles, and a Heisman trophy and will probably be the #1 pick in the upcoming NFL draft and a good kid to boot.  Not bad.

• Joey Harrington and the billboard

His Heisman campaign fizzled, but the promotional billboard in New York City generated tremendous buzz and gave Oregon a little more national attention.

• Oklahoma's ownership of Texas

Until last year, of course.  Before Vince Young was Vince Young, Texas was Oklahoma's gimp.  The Red River shootout had become the symbolic divide between the two programs and their coaches, Bob Stoops and Mack Brown.  Stoops was the winner, the self-assured and proven coach who could back up his team's hype with a BCS title and several BCS title game appearances.  Mack Brown was the great recruiter who couldn't get it done.  Or so they wrote.  Few will forget the play where Texas was backed up in its end zone, Chris Simms set to throw a pass and Oklahoma safety Roy Williams going superfreak and literally flying in the air to get a piece of the ball, redirecting it to teammate Rocky Calmus who caught it and walked in for the demoralizing defensive touchdown.

That's my list, what would you add?

In today's blog entry, Heisman Pundit has reproduced a letter written by a USC assistant coach to the President of the Tournament of Roses Committee dated Dec. 10, 1935.  It's an early record of the Big Ten/Pac-10 connection that would emerge for the  greatest of all bowl games, the Rose Bowl.

Wow!  I love stuff like that.

HP also adds an interesting news clipping from 1936 and a letter from the USC coach about meeting Michigan coach Fielding Yost.

I never knew HP had those types of items in his collection.  Hmm... learn something new every day. 

Here's an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution dated July 31, 2005 titled:

Commentary: You want my vote?  I vote for the old, simpler bowl system.  By Furman Bisher, Cox News Service.

I'm feelin' kinda Fisky, so let's take a look at this.

ATLANTA — Well, I should have felt honored. Where else but in America is an old dude such as I invited to pass judgment on college football teams?

Nice gig.

Where else, of course, for only in America do colleges mix football with education. In fact, during the autumn months you can barely detect education beneath all the clamor of football, which hangs over the campus like a gathering storm.

You clearly enjoy your role as writer and social critic.  Clamor, gathering storm... oh, the imagery.

Once upon a time, college teams were invited to play in bowl games, reserved only for top-grade teams with the craftiest athletics directors. Bowl sponsors went for the teams