Well, well, well.

Remember when I said these giant conferences would be bad for college football?

Remember when I said moving signing day to December was foolish?

Remember when I said players wanted the same ability to jump ship that coaches have?

Remember when I said the timing of the portal was bad?

Remember when I said money would ruin college football?

Remember when we used to be able to say, “That’s what is great about college football?”

Yea, those were the days.

I am wrong a whole lot, but I wasn’t wrong about any of those above statements. That is unfortunate because the results have been extremely bad for college football. And I didn’t even mention how a committee of suited chuckleheads will determine who makes the playoffs. A committee led by this clown.

 


First, he tells a fifth grade joke then calls Rece Davis, Rich. That is the head of the committee.

Needless to say, college football is a mess.

Where to start?

How about the Lane Kiffin fiasco. This was another one I called when coaches started getting fired. No way was Kiffin staying at Ole Miss. Kiffin is a nomad. He doesn’t put down roots. He loves being the center of attention, whether it is on his daughter’s Tik Tok page or in the eye of the coaching carousel storm.

Kiffin taking the LSU job, while predictable, leaves Mississippi in an awkward position.The Rebels are clearly a playoff team, but the AD and school chancellor were not about to let Kiffin continue coaching in the playoffs. The decision is understandable, though it does torpedo the schools best chance at a national title in school history.

This wouldn’t be as big of a problem if the college football schedule made sense. Since the powers that be insisted on making December 3 the new main signing day, team’s looking for a new coach need one in place to try and salvage the current recruiting class. Not only are LSU and Ole Miss scrambling to maintain a solid recruiting class, but in Mississippi’s case they are preparing for a playoff run.

Admittedly, most coaches would not leave a team that is 11-1 and headed for a home playoff game. Of course, most coaches aren’t Lane Kiffin. Still, the college football yearly schedule is way out of whack. Signing Day should be moved entirely back to the first week in February. I get it. A lot of players are graduating early from high school so they can get on campus for spring ball. Too bad. For a zillion years we survived without freshman starting college a semester early.

While we are at it, the transfer portal shouldn’t open until the day following Signing Day. This way teams stay together until bowl season/playoffs are over. The only option outs would be from draft eligible players. The NCAA did do one thing right by limiting the portal to one window. My solution would still allow portal additions to get on campus for most of, if not all, spring practice. If classes matter at all anymore that could be ironed out. Clearly there are a lot of moving parts that need considered, but the reality is these aren’t student athletes anymore so much as they are athletes masquerading as students.

The other benefit would be coaching hires wouldn’t need to be rushed. In Kiffin’s case he could have finished coaching Ole Miss before going to LSU. He still would have time to recruit, put a staff together, and hit the portal. It also might limit the enormous number of midseason firings we saw. There wouldn’t be a rush to fire, which only creates a pall over the rest of the season. It also occasionally creates the whole “the players want the interim guy the school has no intention of hiring” like Penn State is going through.

One last thing that would really tie it all together would be moving the playoffs up. The Championship Game should be the Saturday after New Years. You could schedule some of the other top tier bowl games for New Year’s Day.

The schedule fix would greatly benefit college football. Stop early enrollment and quit pretending academics matter. It won’t affect the kids that are earnestly trying to get a degree. Compact the playoff schedule and everything would piece together perfectly.

Oh, we aren’t done yet. Now to the biggest problem creating a blight on the sport.

Mega conferences.

We are all currently parsing over the resume of 12-15 teams vying for a playoff spot. Who are the best teams? Are there any great teams? Who knows?

Mega conferences have made balancing schedules among conference teams next to impossible. Thus, trying to rank teams for the playoffs is difficult.

I think Ohio State is the best team in the country. How would I know for sure? The Buckeyes started the season with a disappointing Texas team and ended with rival —and average— Michigan. In between Ohio State played nobody. Penn State was surprisingly down this year, meaning Ohio State was never challenged by a truly good team. They will be  Saturday, when they take on Indiana in the Big Ten Championship Game.

But will they though?

Indiana did get a big road win at Oregon, but again because Penn State was down the Hoosiers didn’t play any other difficult games. As it was, Indiana almost lost to Penn State and an average as always Iowa. So, really, how good are the Hoosiers?

Texas A&M was in the top three for two months until losing last weekend to Texas. A three loss Texas. The Aggies did beat Notre Dame on the road, but played the bottom five teams in the SEC and three teams in a row who had fired their head coach prior to playing the Aggies. Samford, UTSA, and Utah State were the other out of conference games. Missouri was the second best win on their schedule. Gig ‘Em? I don’t think so. Not impressive.

Mississippi’s second best win is Tulane. Again, the Rebels were gifted with an extremely easy SEC schedule. They beat an overrated Oklahoma and lost to Georgia. Kentucky took them to the wire, lowly Washington State nearly upset them at home, and SEC bottom dweller Arkansas should have beat the Rebels.

Notre Dame played three tough opponents. They beat a slightly above average USC and lost to Miami and Texas A&M. I think Notre Dame is really good, but —say it with me— how would we know?

Five loss Duke made the ACC Championship when SMU lost a conference closer at California. Take a look for yourself at the idiocy of the ACC situation.

 

Crazy. Crazy stupid.

If Alabama loses in the SEC Championship, will the committee still include the Crimson Tide with three losses. The Tide have consecutive wins over Georgia, Vanderbilt, Missouri, and Tennessee. Not exactly murderer’s row, but far more difficult than A&M and Ole Miss. Now they are being asked to beat a good Georgia team again.

Then there is Texas. The Longhorns have a bad loss to a less than stellar Florida team. They weren’t visually pleasing in a few other wins and a season opening loss at number one Ohio State. However, Texas has three top ten wins against Vanderbilt, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M. Texas will be out of the playoffs, but what if they would have played Ohio U instead of Ohio State?

If the playoff committee goes a certain way, teams will never schedule tough out of conference games. Another great part of college football will go by the wayside.

All of these irritating inequalities wouldn’t be an issue if we went to —or back to— ten team leagues. Bring back the Pac-12, SWC, and Big East. Ten team leagues would allow teams to play everyone in the conference. Then if a team is having an unexpected down year it will be even for everyone. This would create a true conference champion, and —perish the thought— eliminate the need for conference championship games. Here, again, is a visual of a good conference set up.

 


That is a pipe dream because money talks and common sense walks. Teams and conferences climbed into bed together, not for a good time but for money. Lots and lots of money. Same with the championship games. They are big money makers. Look at the stupidity we have this year.

  • SEC: rematch with only negative consequences to the team that won the first matchup.
  • Big 12: See SEC.
  • ACC: Virginia, who avoided all of the other top 5 teams in the league vs a 5 loss Duke.
  • Big Ten: Only legitimately interesting championship game.

One out of four ain’t bad. That makes you an all star in the analytics driven world of MLB. Not so great for TV ratings.

Sure, the mega conferences have had negative consequences that far outweigh any benefit. Who cares about that when there are wads of dough to be grabbed?

Where is college football right now?

Instead of gearing up for bowl season and playoff football among the powerhouse teams of the sport, we are worrying about Signing Day tomorrow and who is hitting the portal. The sport, because of its horrific schedule, has been hijacked by a coach who was sleazy, is sleazy, and always will be sleazy. We don’t know if there are any great teams because mega conferences don’t come close to allowing for balanced schedules. Consequently, the big boys have mostly played little boys and we are left wondering. Finally, the CFP committee is left wondering, too. That is not good for anyone, because they already were clueless.

All of that, and I didn’t even cover the shambles of NIL. A system that, if implemented correctly, would have allowed star players to make money for their name, image, and likeness. Instead we essentially got pay for play. And the hypocrite adults in the room think it’s fine for Lane Kiffin to seek another opportunity or have super agent Jimmy Sexton hold schools hostage to get his coaching clients a hefty raise, but fight tooth and nail to keep players from getting their chunk.

College football.

It is a mess.

This is the scene in college football now.

 


Can’t someone just fire up a fight song, show me a mascot dancing, and get me revved up for the big game?


Tweet of the Week

Some good Kiffin stuff to choose from. I will go with this one here.

 

 

The Weekly Shiny Penny

Often times the Twitter world is a cesspool. Other times you find pure gold. This is pure gold. My guess is even Kiffin got a kick out of this.

 


A Penny For My Final Thought…

The college football coaching carousel stopped spinning for most teams this past weekend.

LSU got their man. Their man is no doubt already planning his exit strategy. It’s what he does.

Florida and Auburn both got their men. So did Arkansas.

Oklahoma State and Colorado State filled their vacancies.

Michigan State fired their old coach and hired their new coach in less than 24 hours.

Kentucky is about to do the same.

Virginia Tech got their guy, too. A guy named Franklin.

UCLA hired Bob Chesney, a perfect fit for Penn State.

Speaking of Penn State…

AD Pat Kraft figuratively pounded his fist on the table and stated that he was at Penn State to win national titles. He said this directly after firing a guy that had Penn State within a play of the national title game. Not that Kraft was wrong for firing Franklin, who was all talk and not nearly enough walk.

Kraft could —and should— have waited until season’s end to make the move. Instead he fired Franklin halfway through the season with the thought being it would give Penn State a leg up in finding his replacement. Now Penn State is the last domino to fall in place. One day before Signing Day and Penn State is rudderless. Not ideal.

Penn State’s recruiting class has completely evaporated. Even if they somehow bring in that big name fans have been anticipating, next year will almost assuredly be a transition year. And they still risk losing more players to the portal.

Meanwhile, not a peep from Kraft. Not even an obligatory “things are progressing with the search” BS statement. Simply radio silence. It hasn’t been a good look. It became worse this weekend as opening after opening got filled. A sure fire national championship type coach isn’t walking through that door. Kraft should have chosen his words more carefully. Simply put, he should have just said a change in direction was needed. Kraft backed himself into a corner and started painting.

The question remains who will Kraft hire.

By waiting this long, one could surmise that Kraft had his eye on someone still coaching on Championship Weekend.

On Sunday the rumor was Tennessee coach Josh Heupel, but he isn’t still coaching. Heupel could have been hired Sunday.

By last evening all eyes were on Provo, Utah. BYU head coach Kalani Sitake was the guy. Really good coach, but odd choice. The man has never left Utah, minus a year at Eastern Arizona. He played his college ball at BYU and coached at Southern Utah, Utah, and BYU. He clearly loves it there and loves his alma mater. However, as the saying goes, everyone has a price.

The evening started with it looking like a pretty good bet Sitake would become the next Penn State head coach. Later last night that rumor started to crumble.

 


Yes, you are reading that correctly. The Crumbl Cookie CEO is a huge BYU donor, and he is doing all he can to keep the beloved Sitake in Provo.

If Plan K falls through for Kraft, who is left. I would say there are five names left, plus who knows how many unknown names we aren’t even thinking about.

  • Kalen DeBoer- Is he really happy coaching in the gigantic shadow of Nick Saban, knowing he will never live up to that standard.
  • Manny Diaz- He was loved as DC in Happy Valley. Clearly wasn’t high on Kraft’s list, but that list has been burned to ashes.
  • Brian Hartline- Great assistant in a winning program. Would be weird to see a guy who bleeds scarlet and gray coach for the blue and white.
  • Brian Daboll- Hey, who knows? He does have Penn State ties.
  • Terry Smith- Bad idea, and clearly Kraft could have hired him if he really wanted him. Smith did a solid job as interim coach. The Paterno acolytes, led by Scott Paterno, have become predictably unbearable about wanting someone with ties to Joe. That is why Smith’s name won’t go away.

This has not been Pat Kraft’s finest hour. He made a poor choice of words and followed that by handling the search poorly, to say the least.

Penn State fans should not despair just yet. As a USC fan I must admit that I hated the Pete Carroll hire, USC’s third or fourth choice at the time. I was wrong about Carroll, USC got lucky, and the rest was marvelous history for the Trojans.

Maybe Penn State is on option seven right now. Maybe the eventual hire will make you cringe. But nobody will know until the person gets the ball rolling. And maybe, just maybe, that ball will get rolling down the hill into the Valley for a happy ending.

Just my two cents…