SMQB breaks down the depressing numbers.  Conservative estimates point towards a loss of three possessions per game.  Not good.

Here's my two efforts at FanHouse talking about the proposed rule changes, and the problem with one specific change.  It could be worse than 3-2-5-e.  If so, it would behoove the powers-that-be to summarily reject this measure.

Ever the watchdog, The Wizard of Odds is all over this thing.

Finally, for the engaged citizens among us:

Michael Clark is the committee head. Here’s his email address: mclark@bridgewater.edu. Oh, and here’s his office number: 540-828-5406. Give him a call, write him and email, and tell him how hard this rule sucks, and will suck until it fails and is revoked next year.

Rivals.com has the goods for all but a handful of TBD's (Updated link)

Notable:

Alabama starts Feburary 24th 

Texas starts on February 27th 

Defending National Champion LSU starts spring ball on March 4th, as does Georgia

Michigan starts March 18th 

Oklahoma starts March 20th

USC starts March 21st, as does Florida

Notre Dame begins March 22nd

Ohio State starts March 29th 

(H/T: EDSBS) 

Heh...

So for the moment I hand it to Get The Picture and the San Diego Union-Tribune

Bowl Economics 101

Like much in life, this story mixes a little good with the bad.  As much as I'm a fan of the bowl tradition, there are simply too many and that dilutes the overall product.  My perfect world wish won't likely be granted, however, because those extra little bowls are moneymakers, honey pots for the networks and conferences in this dollars and cents game of survival.

There are a few conclusions to be drawn here. First, there appears to be a ceiling as to how much revenue the BCS games can generate. Second, the real money more and more comes from expanding the size of the field engaged in post season play. Third, as the last section of the article indicates, trying to come up with some sort of bowl/playoff hybrid would be extremely difficult at best and destructive to the bowls at worst.

All of which brings me back to a point I’ve belabored regarding college football playoffs, namely, where’s the money going to come from to cover the need for increased payoffs under an NCAA “everybody in D-1 shares” formula? The economics of the current arrangement practically mandate a large post season in order to generate the revenue the schools would expect. Yet many proponents of a smaller (4-16 team) playoff system insist without any evidence that it would easily generate more money than the bowls currently do (an assertion weakly made in the article, again without any support).

I just don’t see it.

I haven't discussed the fiscal logic behind the 'no playoff' approach to college football.  I simply don't know all that much at the moment about where the dollars flow in all of this.  But the more I find others who agree with me, the more I see that the money argument is just as powerful as the tradition one.  Even if I were way off base with everything I've argued, the economics of the situation remain, and they're not looking good for the pro playoff folks.  Is anyone else even talking about the overall economics of it?  I know I haven't, until now.  It's probably out of ignorance, as most fans are in the dark about how athletic departments and conferences and the NCAA and the bowls and the networks all make their money.

I encourage anyone who has some knowhow to comment here if for no other reason than to be informed.

Former USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow made an appearance on a Los Angeles radio station recently, talking for ten minutes about a broad range of topics.

Notably, he was asked about his departure from USC and his views about his successors.  It was a benign interview --- except to gossipy Daily News USC beat reporter Scott Wolf.  Wolf either personally heard the interview or heard it from someone else (hearsay) and posted the following on his blog:

Former USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow was interviewed on 570-AM today. Here's a couple quotes:

"(Pete Carroll) wanted to get things done a certain way and it worked out well for everybody. You know, it's just too bad because I think they probably have the talent to maybe be playing for that fourth national championship in a month.''

On offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin and assistant coach Steve Sarkisian:

"I know (UCLA defensve coordinator) DeWayne Walker may be better than both of those guys.''

Juicy smack talk from Chow about Kiffin and Sarkisian, isn't it?

I just so happened to hear about the interview and was curious to hear Chow's assessment of Vince Young, Jeff Fisher and many other things including his stay at USC so I found the audio and listened.  Turns out he was badly misquoted.

Here's a link to the page where you can download the entire ten minute interview and what follows below is the transcript (context!) of the controversial segment.  If you listen to the entire interview Chow comes across as nothing but diplomatic.

Host: Coach, here back in Los Angeles, USC, a couple of your proteges in Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian, taking over as offensive coordinators for the Trojans, they've uh, taken a lot of heat, and Joe mentioned especially after the UCLA game.  Any thoughts on those two guys and the job they've done since you left?

Chow: Nah, you know I don't get a chance to follow much, you know we're so busy doing what we're doing, um, you know LenDale keeps me informed of all that but I really don't, don't know.  You know I know DeWayne Walker maybe better than both of those guys and DeWayne's a heck of a football coach and that's why it wasn't too surprising when DeWayne did what he did with UCLA.

Scott Wolf, I doubt your veracity.

Chow's answer was completely different than presented in Wolf's blog.  It was so lacking in controversy that the two radio hosts at a UCLA-affiliated station skipped right over his supposedly controversial remark to ask about his reaction to Jim Harbaugh's hiring at Stanford.

Compounding the error, Mark Saxon of the Orange County Register reprinted as fact the Chow misquote.

Former USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow took a shot at the current play-calling tandem of Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian in an appearance on a Southern California radio show Tuesday.

"I know DeWayne Walker may be better than both of those guys," Chow said on KLAC/570. "DeWayne Walker is a heck of a football coach, which is why I wasn't too surprised he did what he did at UCLA."

 Do your readers and the journalism profession a favor next time guys and get your facts straight.  Chow did not say what you wrote he said.  Wonder why athletes hate journalists?  This is why.  Download a copy of the interview next time and listen, it took me less than ten minutes of my time to hear the entire thing and realize there was no 'there' there.

What makes this interesting is that the Register had the exact same quote as Wolf.  They need to acknowledge to their readers that they pulled their quote from Wolf (or some other place that ran with Wolf's misquote) and didn't listen to the interview.  Wolf would do just as well to acknowledge his mischaracterization of the interview.

This was basically an episode of a children's game called 'telephone' played out in real life.

Anyone ever play that game 'telephone' as a kid?  Everyone would sit around in a circle, and one person would start by whispering a message into the ear of the person next to them.  That person would then whisper what they heard to the person next to them and this would continue until it finally reached the origin.  Usually, the message would have been jumbled into something new and bizarre by the time it reached the first person, causing everyone to laugh.

The moral of the game was that a message can be lost the further away from its source it is taken.  And in this case, a false message was taken directly to Kiffin, which could have caused further animosity between the two.  Kinda reckless, no?

Kiffin said Chow's words didn't bother him much.

"Obviously, I worked with the guy for four years and DeWayne for a year, but what someone says about you really has nothing to do with how you go about your work every day," Kiffin said.

Nice work, professional journalist men.

***
BONUS shenanigans from Wolf's Daily News colleague Tom Hoffarth

Hoffarth spent some time last week on a witch hunt of sorts trying to figure out the lone voter who placed USC receiver Dwayne Jarrett No. 1 in his or her Heisman ballot.  Hoffarth ends up thumbing USC play-by-play man Pete Arbogast thanks to some ridiculously speculative deductive reasoning that puts us no closer to the truth than before.

The back story here is that Hoffarth has been grinding his axe against Arbogast for a while now.  Petty, but whatever.

Here's where Hoffarth can't nail down the basics:

Kari Chisholm, who runs the website StiffArmTrophy.com that predicts each year who'll win the Heisman based on asking current voters, said in an email that she did not know who voted Jarrett first, "but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Matt Leinart, White or Mike Garrett."

We would be.

2) What about others with some sort of ties to USC.
Chisholm has a list of who she has been able to confirm as current Heisman voters. From her list, we'll extract these USC-ties names:

Artie Gigantino, Fox Sports Net, former USC assistant coach; Lynn Swann, formerly of ABC Sports, former USC receiver; Pat Haden, NBC Sports, former USC quarterback;.

Doubt it, doubt it and doubt it.

She?  She?!

Check out Kari's site.  I'm sure 'she' will appreciate you not taking the extra two seconds of research to figure out your 'she' is actually a he.

Whose crazy idea is this?
This site is published by Kari Chisholm at Mandate Media, Portland, Oregon. We do internet strategy and web development for political candidates, campaigns, and causes. © 2005.

Click on the Mandate Media website and scan to the bottom right corner, there's a picture of your she.

Orange and Blue Hue is all over it.

Terrific read.

I'll save you the long-winded rambling guess I have at why.  But I will say I like the talk about the Dawgs not having any playmakers with their recent teams.  D.J. Shockley came the closest and he led them to a fine season.  But they need more of that and have never been able to lure it to campus.

Perhaps it's also a talent base thing.  I was talking to a friend recently who knows the ins and outs of the recruiting world and he was laughing at how the west coast schools struggled to produce quality defensive tackles.  They could find plenty of skill players and explosive playmakers, but they're mostly digging into the California soil and it just doesn't produce many quality DT's.

Yet year after year a great many decent defensive tackles end up in the SEC or at Texas.  They just grow in some places and not in others.  Perhaps the same is true about the explosive skill talent needed to put a team over the top.  It just might not come from Georgia all that often.  And so while the west coast schools bemoan their lack of quality players for their defensive interior, Georgia fans wonder why Kregg Lumpkin can't be a little faster, a little more instinctive and/or pray that New Jersey native Knowshon Moreno is that guy.

Ever notice that many of the top quarterbacks at the Florida schools are imports?  Ken Dorsey, Chris Weinke, Chris Rix, Chris Leak, Kyle Wright etc?  There aren't many quality home grown quarterbacks.  Drew Weatherford and Xavier Lee went to Florida State but are starting to look like busts.  We'll see how Tim Tebow fares and whether John Brantley ever goes to a Florida school or holds onto his Texas commitment.

Texas hand picked talent from its own talent-rich state for nearly a decade under Mack Brown but couldn't play for and win a championship until the state produced a football God in Vince Young to put them over the top.

That's just how it is sometimes, especially for schools who rely so heavily on local talent.

So I did the egregious - I forgot to mention DawgSports as yet another member of the suddenly growing island of college football bloggers and fans who do not seek a playoff.  There has to be a better way to word that.

Worse, he sorta not really nominated me for one of those nebulous college football blog awards.  Apparently Le Playoffs is a modest hit.

In my view, CFR's piece "Le Playoffs" effectively answered the arguments even of articulate playoff advocates like The Lawgiver, so CFR's effort gets a nod here for appealing to my head, even though my formal nomination went to a piece that appealed to my heart.

So to Kyle, my apologies.  There's really no excuse, I've read a few of your fine entries that hold the line against a playoff and somehow you slipped my mind.

Anyway, to my readers, we'll get back to the everyday nitty gritty of college football quite soon.  Not everything has to be about playoffs, I know, but it's important nonetheless to bare some teeth every now and then and make it known that the playoff solution isn't universally appealing.

So the handful of anti-playoff folks like myself need a nickname... Coalition of the Villain?  Eh.  Comment or send me emails with ideas.

In the meantime check out this entry from Georgia blogger Get The Picture.

He takes a different tack about the issue, talking about a lot of the downwind stuff that isn't being considered at all when people call for a playoff.

So there you have it. Wave your magic wands and fix these issues. Like I said, it’s so easy…

Heh.

Unintended consequences.

It takes a great deal of energy to move a giant boulder.  But once it's moving, it's also difficult to halt.  When college football decided to ditch its old system, many felt the Bowl Coalition would be the last stop, a successful compromise to establish a more realistic championship game.

Oops.

Instead we then created the BCS and modified it ceaselessly, each time finding no greater success than the day we started.  That's kind of how it goes.

This blog makes a good point that if we start out with a limited playoff (four or eight teams), who is to say that boulder stops there?

Most proponents of a playoff talk about a small scale proposal - usually, anywhere from four to eight teams. The virtues of this approach are that it does the least amount of harm to the results of the regular season, minimizes extra travel and keeps the extension of the season to as short a period as possible. What nobody talks about is how things would stay compressed. I like to point to the history of NCAA men’s basketball as an illustration of what occurs over time. When the NCAA started the tourney in 1939, there were only eight participants. Today, the field is over eight times that size. Because of that, the regular season has been reduced dramatically in its meaningfulness. How do you propose to prevent that from happening in football?

That is but one unintended consequence to consider.  We have to be very careful what we wish for, and there's simply no caution evident in the marketplace of ideas (sans a few places like here, Baseball Savant and Get the Picture).

Please provide a valid email address in the comment form above when responding so I can contact you, thanks.  Also, if you have already won, please refrain from answering other questions so others have a chance for a prize.

We're almost through today's series of trivia questions, and this one is for the last We Are Marshall poster.  The final question will be released (tentatively) at around 9 p.m. Eastern, assuming we have an appropriate and on time answer for the following question:

Name Marshall's five winningest coaches (by wins, not win percentage) and their win total.  Also, what was the career coaching record at Marshall for coach Jack Lengyel?

Finally, a head's up about the final question.  I will be using a different reference/resource than the one needed to answer the previous three questions.

Update: Mark is our big winner for question No. 3 tonight.  Marshall's five winningest coaches are Bob Pruett (94 wins), Cam Henderson (68 wins), Jim Donnan (64 wins), George Chaump (33 wins) and Boyd B. Chambers (31 wins).

Jack Lengyel had a record of 9-33-0 at Marshall from 1971 to 1974.

Onto our final trivia question... 

Please provide a valid email address in the comment form above when responding so I can contact you, thanks.  Also, if you have already won, please refrain from answering other questions so others have a chance for a prize.

What two schools has Marshall beat most often (most wins)?

Update: Someone? Anyone?  I hear crickets chirping.  All the prizes go to Buckeye Dan if we don't hear from you.  I guarantee he has the necessary information in front of him to answer everything correctly, the resources are out there.

Update: Patrick got the correct answer (the first time): Charleston (WV)- 25, Morehead St. (KY)- 26

My apologies for not getting back sooner, I had to step away for a few hours.

I'll post question No. 3 (of four) at say, 7 Eastern?  So everyone has a fairly equal chance to reply at the same time. 

Maybe I'm on a small island here, maybe I'm not.  But at least one other person is sitting on that island and he's just as vehement about the issue: Baseball Savant.

Here's his latest.

There's a bit more elaboration on one game samples, the flaws of an eight team playoff, the plus-one mess, etc. 

Please remember to supply a valid email address when you fill out the comment form above.

1)What is Marshall's all-time record against West Virginia? and 2)What was the year/score of the closest game between the two?

Fire away.

Update: Buckeye Dan has the correct answer.  Marshall is 0-6 against West Virginia, with the closest game being the 17-15 battle on 10/28/1911.

Next question in a few minutes. 

College football to NFL: you're welcome.

Invincible (watch the vid).

That Reggie Bush kid ain't too shabby, either.  We have the better game, we supply the great athletes, you get all the revenue and attention.  Yeah I don't know but whatever, we have Saturdays and a meaningful regular season, we win.

Update: The video originated at Burnt Orange Nation.  I saw it on the FanHouse originally.  Sometimes these things take a while to track back. 

Alright, so a lot of hardware has already been handed out, but ESPN's doing its black tie awards show thing tonight at 7 Eastern if you're interested.

For once there's no Thursday football and I'd love to see CSI and The Office live, so there's a bit of a dilemma here.  I have the recorder, but I'm already exceedingly backlogged with taped shows.  Damn you college football, heh.

Also, Saturday is the Heisman Trophy presentation.  If I'm around I'll live blog.  I'll also release my ballot (not that I'm a voter; anyone care to help me with that?) sometime between now and then.

UPDATE: Story and video from ESPN.  Brady Quinn won the Maxwell?!  So much for that award somehow having legitimacy over the Heisman.

***
The latest from Stiff Arm Trophy:

1. Troy Smith
2. Darren McFadden
3. Brady Quinn

***
Heisman Pundit's off to NYC for the ceremony... 

So, after all that BCS kvetching the system got it right.

Michigan is the rightful No. 2 team in the land but they also played Ohio State in the season's final game.  There's just something bad about all but a handful of rematches in sports and the BCS Gods smartly avoided that one.

We also get a traditional --if uninspiring-- Rose Bowl.

And we have suddenly annoying but damn good coach Urban Meyer on the brink of a championship in his second season.

Plus: the USC haters get to relax for at least one season as they coughed away a gimme against UCLA.

Things aren't so bad.

Best of all, it's now bowl season.  Let the good times roll. 

Yes, I'm revisiting this topic.  I'll take a look at the previous suggestions in a moment, but this is one more opportunity to solicit ideas on a contest to win any of four prizes related to the upcoming movie We Are Marshall.

Fire away.

The contest will have four winners, three of whom get a movie poster and a fourth winner who gets a football.

The only snags to this contest, from the folks at Warner Bros themselves:

1)Prizes can only be shipped to those in the USA and Canada.
2)Prizes cannot be shipped to P.O. Boxes

This time from the Orange County Register's Mark Whicker.

"It's Still the Earlier You Lose, the Better"

On Nov.18 the Wolverines awakened as the second- ranked team in the BCS standings. They also awakened in Columbus and had to play top-ranked Ohio State. And they did.

No one had scored 17 points on the Buckeyes, but Michigan scored 39. No one had gained more than 350 yards on the Buckeyes, but Michigan gained 397. No one had beaten Ohio State and no one has yet, because Michigan fell short, 42-39.

Still, the Wolverines had an onside kick at the end, for a chance to win, and went home hopeful they'd get a rematch Jan.8 for the BCS title.

Maybe it's because the Big Ten outside of Wisconsin doesn't have a single team capable of beating Michigan or Ohio State, so they've cruised through their seasons with superb defensive numbers?  And when these two teams met both were caught a little off guard about the others' offensive capabilities?

That game was not as close as Whicker portrays it.  Ohio State went up fairly big, coughed the ball up a few times late and held on after playing prevent to ice the clock on that game.  Where's the intellectual honesty?

USC beat Cal and Notre Dame and slipped past Michigan for the No.2 spot, and Saturday the Trojans can earn the title game by beating UCLA.

This means the new system is basically the old system. It's not who you lose to. It's when you lose, the earlier the better.

If you live in a bubble, maybe, that's how you could interpret it.  Michigan is no longer the clear-cut No. 2 team because since USC lost to Oregon State, they vastly improved by taking down Oregon, California and Notre Dame with decisive margins.

Their surge has been about who they beat, not when they lost.  And they've also moved up in the rankings as other teams lost---blame Rutgers, Louisville, West Virginia, Notre Dame, California and several others for losing and helping USC arrive to where it is, not the system.

I have many troubles with the polls, but I don't take the voters for imbeciles.  They have a task, and a limited amount of time to do it, and do the best they can.  It is up to the organizers of the various polls to help the voters make better decisions.  Criticize the specifics of how we're doing this, not the generic 'system'.  College football isn't as Orwellian as we think, but the many critics out there can do a much better job of critique than what's been put forth as of this time.

USC's victims had 65 victories over Division 1-A teams. If USC wins Saturday, that number grows to 71. Michigan's number is 62. But it isn't Michigan's fault that most of the Big Ten reeks.

Correct, it isn't their fault.  But the Big Ten's fluffy softness is also why their defense looked so damn good before heading into the Ohio State game.  Why bring up their pre-Ohio State stats and then undermine them a few paragraphs later?  That was a silly argument to begin with.

Many voters continue to put Michigan No. 2 in their polls.  There's a real dilemma out there and it's forcing the voters to do some evaluation of Michigan, USC and Florida instead of simply holding firm with last week's totals.  How is this not a good thing?

Perhaps they'll go with a Michigan/Ohio State rematch after this weekend, perhaps they won't.  But if they were so helpless and the system so flawed, the rematch would already be a guarantee.  I can't stress enough we have to let the season play out before freaking out about things.  Perhaps USC loses and makes this all moot.  We don't know yet.  Perhaps Florida posts a 62-0 shutout of Arkansas.  We simply don't know yet, so hold the fire.

In the end the 'system' is a series of choices.   It's freedom and independent thought at work, however flawed its outcomes may be.  I'd rather have the old way, but the current way is much better than the playoff many of us desire.

But this BCS situation is so horribly contradictory that ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit actually makes sense when he says that Michigan is the second-best team in the nation but USC deserves to play Ohio State.

The reason is the rematch scenario doesn't work. It's sort of like the invasion of Iraq. Once it happens, then what do you do?

So let me get this straight... if the system's so bad and the voters responsible for its outcomes so inept, how is it that they're already beginning to self-correct and place USC ahead of Michigan, thus avoiding a possible rematch?

If Ohio State were to beat Michigan again, enraged Trojans fans would be torching their own Lexi.

Yeah, not so much.  I think those five consecutive Pac-10 titles, two national titles and nearly a third last year have them pretty fat and happy.  It's the same reason Texas fans have taken this season in stride.  They got their ring, they're good for another 35 years.  USC fans didn't torch their Lexi in 2003, either.  Oh, to have a short memory...

Carroll also has the right handle on the BCS. Since it's a counterfeit system that in most years proves nothing, why even pay attention? Just get on the plane, get off when it lands and play football. This time USC's goal is to make everyone forget Michigan should have been there.

And as I've argued on here before, any other system is just as counterfeit.  Learn to think, people.

If the BCS 'proves nothing', it at least gives us a reasonable opportunity to match the nation's top two teams in one final game.  He's right about one thing, however, in that we continue to have this great game where teams can simply get off that plane and play some football.  That's what it's about, not the titles.  The season is the reason, the game the name.

I have Michigan No. 2 right now, but not by much.  All three schools, Michigan, USC and Florida can all make compelling cases to be in the BCS championship game.  We should be arguing that, not this unserious hyperventilation without contemplation.  I have mixed feelings about a rematch, so I don't want my writing here to suggest I'm leaning one way or the other.  But I leave it as a possibility, as Michigan's proven to be a top rate team this year and I don't want to simply disregard them over USC or Florida.

Go Crazy! Go Crazy! Go Crazy!

It's rivalry insanity today.  Just try and not shoot your neighbor or anything like that if things don't go well.  That would be bad.

Hang out here and at the FanHouse to follow the day's goings-on.

Football?

Football.

Oh, and I just found this:

Unless Herman Moore's on your team, any preponderance of jump balls thrown is a red flag your OC is teh suxor.

Oh, and and equally simple wheel for Drew Weatherford/Xavier Lee---fumble, stupid interception, incomplete pass, dump pass.  H/T: Vince Mullins.

Man Law