It’s been three weeks since I last posted. I know.

From:  Beau
Date:    12/16/2009 12:02 PM
To:         Dr Fro
Subject: The wire I’m sure you’ve seen this, but funny nonetheless….

Barksdale Recruit

Click to enlarge:

12/19/09 – We have a $60 tournament at 2pm at my house in Dallas.  Cash game to follow.  Have a few tables full right now, but let me know if interested.

12/28/09 – We have a $1,000 minimum buy-in cash game, $1-$3 blinds.  We have 8 players now, and we can accept a couple more.  Juicy.

I, like many people are frustrated with the current BCS system. In my mind, the system is supposed to take the college football regular season and use that to come up with just two teams deserving of playing for the national championship. Some years it works out that way (2005 with USC and Texas); most years, including this year, it does not.  This year Cincinnati, TCU, and Boise State played 37 meaningless games. They won all of those games, lost none, and yet get no chance to play for a national title.

Various people have suggested 4 team, 8 team, or even 16 team playoffs. I favor an 8 team playoff for the following reasons:

• It makes very few changes to the current bowl format
• It potentially increases revenues for the NCAA by adding two playoff games and 3 conference championship games and potentially increasing ratings for the major New Year’s day bowl games.
• It restores the importance of the major New Year’s day bowl games.
• It ultimately picks a championship based on what happens on the field.

The DHockster college football playoff plan:

 Eight team playoff:

 Automatic BCS Conference Bids:

 If you win a BCS conference with no more than 1 total loss, you automatically qualify for the playoff. (NCAA needs to mandate that the Pac 10, Big Ten, and Big East institute conference championship game so all BCS conferences are on equal footing. See Conference Championship Games below for a suggestion on how to do this).

 2009 automatic qualifiers: Texas, Alabama, Cincinnati

 This rule gives conference titles meaning, and yet doesn’t allow conference champions with two or more losses to skate into a playoff.

 Automatic Non-BCS Conference Bids:

 If you are a non-BCS conference school and are ranked in the top 12 in the final BCS ranking you get an automatic bid. No more than two non-BCS conference schools get an automatic bid. If there are more than two non BCS conference schools ranked in the top 12, the two highest ranked schools get the automatic bids.

 2009 automatic qualifiers: TCU, Boise State.

 This rule gives the traditionally weaker conferences a shot at winning it all. To get into the top 12, a non BCS school usually has to be undefeated and have a least one or two legitimate non-conference wins on their schedule.

 At Large Bids:

 The remaining bids for the eight team playoff go to the highest ranked BCS teams who haven’t already qualified with an automatic bid. This number will vary from year to year based on the number of schools who receive automatic bids.

 2009 at large qualifiers: Florida, Oregon, Ohio State

 Since you never know during the season how many at large bids there are going to be, you cannot count on getting an at large bid. Again, this makes winning your conference that much more important.

 Playoff Format:

 Based on BCS rankings, highest ranked plays lowest ranked, 2^nd highest plays 2^nd lowest, etc.

 2009 quarterfinal matchups: Alabama-Ohio State, Texas – Oregon, Cincinnati – Boise State, TCU – Florida.

 The four major bowls would be quarterfinal games, and could be played out two different ways: Either two on New Years Eve, Fiesta at 4 PM EST and Sugar at 8 PM EST, and two on New Years day, Rose at 4 PM EST and Orange at 8 PM EST, or one on New Year’s Eve, Fiesta at 8 PM EST, and three on New Year’s day, Sugar at 1 PM EST, Rose at 4 PM EST and Orange at 8 PM EST. The semifinals would be the first Saturday, at least one full week past new years day, and the final game would be the Saturday after that (or the following Monday night, if that worked better for TV revenue).

 All other Bowl games could remain as they currently are with no tie-in to the playoff. This format would preserve all the existing bowls, and would re-energize the New Year day bowls, as they would all have importance. Currently, with the national championship game several days or a week following New Years, some of the other BCS bowl games have lost significance, and therefore have lost some interest.

 Summary

 Under this system, the top 8 ranked teams in the BCS in 2009 qualified. 5 of the 6 BCS conference champions qualified, two undefeated non-BCS conference champions qualified and one team whose only loss was to the #1 team qualified. The only BCS conference champion not to qualify is #9 Georgia Tech, and they had two losses to Miami (#15) and Georgia (unranked). You could argue that they are as deserving as two loss Oregon and Ohio State, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Not giving a shot to a team with two losses is much better in my mind then not giving a shot to an undefeated team, as happens under the current system.

 Conference Championship Games

 The current system is inequitable as three conferences (SEC, Big 12, & ACC) have conference championship games (CCG’s) and three do not (Big Ten, Pac 10, and Big East). This means the conferences with CCG’s  have a disadvantage because they could lose an automatic BCS bid and possibly a bid altogether if one of their no loss or one loss teams losses a CCG. A conference champion without a CCG does not risk losing their bid because they do not play a CCG. To fix this, each of the conferences without a CCG needs to reformat their conference into a two division system, so that a CCG can be held between the two division winners. Here is how this could happen for each conference:

 Big Ten

 Currently there are eleven teams in the big ten. To have a conference championship game, they would need to add a twelfth team and divide the conference into two 6 team divisions. The obvious answer is to add Notre Dame to the Big Ten (for football only) since they are an independent who usually plays 4 or 5 big ten schools each season.

 Pac 10

 The Pac 10 currently has 10 teams. The easiest answer is to divide the conference into two 5-team divisions and play a conference championship game. An alternative would be to look to add two schools from the Mountain West or Western athletic conference and form a twelve team conference. This would require a lot more effort by the conference.

 Big East

 The Big East currently has 8 teams in the conference. Since two divisions of 4 doesn’t make much sense (each team would still play everybody in both divisions), The Big East would need to add two teams to be able to divide into 2 5-team divisions. If Notre Dame joined the Big Ten, this would leave 2 independent schools left in Division 1-A: Army and Navy. They would be a great fit for the Big East. They are not only a geographical fit for the conference but including two schools with the history and prestige of Army and Navy would add to the conference. While Navy has been a good team over the last few years (beating Notre Dame 2 of the last 3 years), adding both these schools to a BCS conference may help both schools strengthen their recruiting and improve their teams.

I went to the Big 12 CCG at Cowboy Stadium on Saturday night.

The Stadium

We had great seats, on the 40 in the club section (the only section selling beer). I liked the stadium quite a bit. The infamous TV hanging over the field was no big deal, and I rather enjoyed it for replays. We got a good and affordable parking spot. My only beef was that the city of Arlington does a terrible job with post-game traffic. This is true of Rangers games, too.

The Play

Had Colt McCoy not been saved by the grace of good officiating, he and Mack Brown would go down in history as the Bill Buckners of college football. UT has won 17 straight games, but lets not forget that the last loss (to Tech) was more to do with clock management than anything else (i.e., UT should have snapped the ball much later on its last two plays, which would not have left Tech with enough time for a game-winning drive).

If there is any area with which I disagree with coaches the most, it is clock management. I’ve already discussed several examples already this year, so I won’t bore you with any more examples. I think teams should hire a guy – a geek-type, not an “Xs and Os” type – to sit in the booth and be charged with clock management. He’d be worthless in most games, but a couple times a season, he’d be yelling in the coaches’ headphones that they need to do something different than they are doing. (You could charge the guy with other tasks if you want, such as decisions on 2-pt or 1-pt conversions and punt vs no-punt). It’s not just Mack Brown and Les Miles, most coaches struggle with game theory, including clock management. (We should give Brian Kelly a virtual high-five for his brilliance in this area against Pitt.)

If you saw the game on TV, you had about 1 second between the supposed end of the game and the realization of the possibility that it would be reviewed. In person, that was about a 10-second gap. For 10 seconds, I stood still with my jaw on the floor watching the Nebraska players celebrate wildly. All I could think about was that 2 years in a row, we were complete goats in managing the clock. Once they said they’d review it, I knew we’d get another chance, but I was scared of the blocked kick. Once the kick got past the line, I knew Hunter was going to be money. I was surprised to see on TV how narrowly he missed the upright.

The Game

For all the excitement of the ending, it was not the most exciting game overall, to say the least. I thought Mack Brown put it well when asked about winning ugly. He said that if it had been an SEC game, we’d be told that it wasn’t winning ugly but that we just don’t appreciate the beauty of a good defensive game.

I haven’t heard or read much about what I thought was the most interesting part of the game: UT receivers could not catch the ball. That is not great defense by Nebraska. No, it is guys who are wide open but can’t catch the ball.
Suh is a stud, and I have not seen such DL dominance in my life. He should get the Heisman.

It is uncanny how many different ways UT finds to stick a dagger in NU’s heart. The worst ones were 96, 99, 02 and 07, and the worst of those was 07 when NU just needed to run out the clock, and we caused a fumble and kicked a FG to win the game.

Dumb People

People say that Mark Ingram should now get the Heisman due to Colt’s performance. OK, but should it go to Anthony Dixon who led the SEC in rushing (that is, in league games, which is the apples-to-apples comparison)? Also, while the voters are biased toward great players on great teams, shouldn’t be the opposite? I mean, isn’t a lot harder to run with Mississippi State’s O-line than with Alabama’s?

A guy at the gym said that the official’s incompetence cost TCU a shot at the BCS championship. First, it was the right call. Second, Cincinnati finished ahead of TCU in the BCS!

Ivan Maisel said UT stank against NU (but we held them to 106 yards!) and “couldn’t put A&M away” (even though we beat them by 10, which I believe qualifies as putting them away.) He doesn’t believe UT should be in the Championship based on our performance against NU, although the performance was damn similar to Alabama’s against Auburn one week ago.

For completeness’ sake, I’ll re-mention Colt McCoy and Mack Brown in this section, as they were pretty stupid to have ever had the game clock get that close to 0:00.

‘Tweener Shower

I loved the ‘tweener shower in college. Picture this:

You have been drinking all day or at least all afternoon. Maybe you went water-skiing or maybe you just sat on the front porch of your house. Either way, it is not even dinner time, and you have a full-on buzz going. Things are going pretty well. It’s been a great day so far, and the evening is going to seriously rock. You gotta shower up because you smell like sweat and beer, and you need to have you’re A-game on since you are going to have sex with every girl on 6th Street tonight. In fact, you have a beer in the shower with you. Why not? You are a freaking rock star. The shower takes a while. Maybe it is because you are playing air guitar with the shampoo bottle while singing Foreigner at the top of your lungs. You sound great, so you sing louder. You are the center of the universe.

In this metaphor, the day-long drinky day of waters-skiing is the 13-0 season. The shower is the time between the season and the Championship Game. The Championship Game is the night out.

Unfortunately, the night out rarely works out as planned. Girls aren’t interested in you. You are slurring and not making sense. You get split up from your friends and are alone. You are out of cash and the ATM machine is broken. You walk home. You see the problem is that you expected the night to be great (because you were drunk), but the night was set for disaster because you were drunk.