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Bowl Results, Christmas Fruitcake, and Other Conundrums
by David Whitney - Saturday Jan 03, 2009 Johnny Carson, the late "Tonight Show" host, used to contend that in all the world there was really only one Christmas fruitcake, which was perpetually "regifted" to some other poor soul because we all really hate fruitcake, and no one quite knows what do to with one when they get it.
I can't help but feel the same way about a slew of bowl results leading up to next week's national title game. There are myriad interesting results, a dozen ways to read the supposed tea leaves, but utimately I'm not quite sure what to do with what I've seen.
From a conference perspective, bowl season is a bit of a fraud because most teams enter it either on a high driven by a season of overachievement, or on a low driven by lofty expectations gone awry due to injury, bad breaks, or bad polls. That means you have team after team that sees their bowl as either a reward for an unexpected season, or a consolation prize for what might have been, driving an emotional component into a game that, short of the BCS title game itself, has little practical consequence. Utlimately, few teams go into their bowl games with equal motivation.
There are, to be sure, some results that don't escape interpretation. The Big 10 lived up to its lack of expectations, posting only a single postseason win going into the final week of bowl season - and that coming only by virtue of a middling Iowa thumping a vastly overrated South Caroina team. Meanwhile, losses by Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, to say nothing of the scorching USC laid on hapless Penn State in Pasadena, left the rest of the Big 10 looking to Ohio State for at least some measure of redemption against a Texas team that is still thinking it should be playing against Florida. And does it say something about the Rose Bowl and its mandatory Pac 10-Big 10 matchup when it gives us one of the worst games of the bowl season?
Notre Dame and Charlie Weis finally found a way not to look foolish, being matched up against a Hawaii team that can't figure out a way not to lose a custom-cut home bowl game against one of the nation's least feared offenses by double-digits. The only thing worse than the game is the press train that will inevitably herald the 7-6 Domer's performance as the hallmark of its return to greatness. Yawn.
As for the rest of the bowl season, however, there are results that can only be evaluated if tempered with exterme caution.
From the west coast, the Pac 10 gained a measure of vindication for a season's worth of villification with a 5-0 mark, with USC leading the charge against the Nittany Lions and starting their post-game party with about two minutes to go in the first half, leading 31-7. Mike Stoops apparently saved his job with a 31-21 thumping of BYU. On the other hand, however, the Pac 10, with the help of the Big East, turned in one of the all-time bowl clunkers as Oregon State yanwed past Pittsburgh and its (alleged) offense in the Sun Bowl in a 3-0 game so despicably unwatchable that it made the prospect of cleaning prison bathrooms almost a more attractive alternative. Was Pitt's defense really that good, or was Oregon State's offense really that bad? Or, more honestly, did either team really care?
But for the conferences represented in next Thursday's BCS matchup, the jury is still decidedly out. The Big 12 has gone 3-2, with south division members Oklahoma State and Texas Tech holding the collars. The Cowboys' high-octane offense went punchless as Dez Bryant went down with injury and the defense didn't realize the game had four quarters as Oregon rolled to a 42-31 win. Texas Tech stormed to an early 14-0 lead over Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl, but found itself unable to stem a furious comeback by the Rebels en route to a 13-point loss. The game turned what was shaping up to be one of the greatest seasons in Tech history into one ending in double-digit losses in two of its final three games, and probably still leads Texas coach Mack Brown into punching the wall in frustration in wondering how his Longhorns cost themselves a national title in the famed last-second loss to those same Raiders.
For most who follow college football, however, there's some hope that one can see in these results some fraction of insight into the pending Oklahoma-Florida matchup that, for some reason, won't take place until January 8th. Yet none of those results tell us much more than we already knew.
On the one hand, Utah's stunning 31-17 thumping of Alabama in a Sugar Bowl game that wasn't that close might make one rethink the three-quarter fight Florida had with that same Crimson Tide before pulling away in the SEC title game. On the other, however, one can't help but suspect the Tide was still smarting after watching a season with a five-week ride at #1 slip away, and with little left to play for but pride against a Utah team looking to finish a perfect season and stake its own claim for national respect.
Tech's aforementioned loss to Ole Miss put a sweet end to a season that saw Houston Nutt post a win in the Swamp, but were the Red Raiders mentally in the meaningless consolation prize that came after its BCS swan dive following its blowout loss to Oklahoma? And does that 13-point win, in turn, tell us anything of value about the Big 12 in general, or relative to the SEC in particular?
With two losses, the credibility of the Big 12 South - fairly or unfairly - rests in the hands of Oklahoma and Texas. Should either lose, the conference division that held three spots in the top 10 over the broader course of the season will be no better than 1-3 in the postseason. Should both lose, it will put an unmistakable black eye on the conference that, arguably for the first time, was spoken of on a par with the venerable SEC. Should both win, there exists at least the chance of an AP-BCS split national title.
For Oklahoma, there couldn't be more pressure - the pressure of a potential fourth straight BCS loss; the lingering stigma of whether the Sooners and their Heisman winner belong in the title game over a Texas team that beat them head-to-head, the doubt over whether their Playstation offense that rolled up 60 points plus in each of its final five games was the product of brilliant play or papier-mache defenses. For Texas, their fight against Ohio State serves as small consolation in a season where one play in one game ultimately determined the Longhorns postseason travel plans.
In the end, the bowl season leaves us with a tantalizing tease of results that tries to make us believe we know more than we really do about the conferences from which their participants originate. And using those results to try and figure out more about the one game among them that means the most is like trying to find someone on that list who *really* wants that Christmas fruitcake.
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The Dark Side of College Football
by David Whitney - Monday Dec 01, 2008 College football walks a treacherous line between amateur sport and professional spectacle, entertaining millions and earning millions for the media that covers it.
This last week, it sank into theater of the absurd.
No one with even a casual relationship to college football could escape the proselytizing over the all-too-well publicized trifecta of leaders in the Big 12 South. But worse in the media feeding frenzy was the way coaches were suddenly turned into hucksters, and sports information directors were turned into spin doctors and lobbying agencies. Play charts were replaced with Blackberrys, signals replaced with instant messages to key media types reminding them of this result or that result from weeks earlier.
It was, in a word, pathetic. Yet it was the virtually unavoidable consquence of the mire the college football postseason has become.
Mire?
Yes. Mire. It took the Big 12 and a three-way divisional tie to expose it, but it's been there, smoldering, waiting to happen, like a sort of athletic hot-potato no one really thought would ever happen, but it has. Now, no one comes out looking very good in the process. Not the coaches, who were forced into the role of pitchmen for their teams. Not the media, who seems anything but objective in their recitation of possible outcomes. And, lastly, certainly not the pollsters, who in this last week implemented what could be termed aberrant political behavior intended to create a specific result rather than an orderly, good-faith selection of teams. BCS analyst Brad Edwards pointed out the "curiosities" in polling with his own analysis:
"Whether you side with Oklahoma or Texas in this debate, it's hard not to be disturbed by what happened in the polls on Nov. 30. Certainly, voters have every right to change their minds from week-to-week, but in this case, there seemed to be a much larger agenda at work.
In any normal week, there would be no rational explanation for Oklahoma (winning 61-41 at No. 12 Oklahoma State) and Florida (winning 45-15 at No. 20 Florida State) both losing points in the polls and getting jumped by a team that had a similar victory margin in a home game against an opponent with a losing record."
His conclusion?
"Regardless, it's clear that the polls have gotten out of control.
Edwards words should make everyone in the BCS in particular and college football in general squirm in their seats. He makes a not-too-telegraphed point that the pollsters weren't just polling, but that some of them were working to manipulate the outcome of the polls in a specific way. The broader issue for the integrity of the BCS, such as it is, is that if the outcome of the polls might be manipulated merely to put Team X in Slot Y for the puposes of responding to athletic politics, what would keep more sinister motivations from trying to accomplish the same thing?
Its an even worse situation for the coaches, turning from coaching to salesmanship. Mack Brown, Bob Stoops, ESPN, an airplane pilot out of Texas, and, indirectly, the best Oklahoma State team in twenty years became the focal point for one of college football's biggest controversies in years. Brown was on during the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game to plead the case for his Longhorns, which immediately raised eyebrows in Norman because Bob Stoops was nowhere to be seen during the Longhorns thumping of rival A&M on Thursday, not knowing Stoops declined the opportunity.
And while the games played on as almost an incidental sideshow to the media circus, analysts dissected polls and computers, ESPN talking heads talked, writers wrote, but for what? What, indeed?
The fight over the right to play a reeling three-loss Missouri team that just lost its most bitter rivalry game to Kansas for something called a "conference championship game" - the manufactured obstacle to the desired goal of the BCS championship.
Yes, we all know that Oklahoma eked out a razor-thin "win" over Texas to head to the Big 12 title game. But this is not about the relative merit or supposed correctness of that outcome. What it is about is how this ridiculous process exists for no other reason than to accomodate these perverse appendages that have been grafted onto modern college football - conference championship games. No matter which team won out in the OU-Texas-Tech maelstrom, they face a no-win proposition of playing as a prohibitive favorite against a team that is arguably one of the biggest national disappointments. The only thing the Big 12 South represenative could do is either win, which everyone expects, or lose, and turn the entire conference into a laughingstock.
What can possibly be gained in this so-called Big 12 Championship? A Missouri win over any of the three possible South representatives would and still could make a mockery of one of the most competitive seasons in any conference in recent memory. And would anyone really believe that the Tigers were the "best" team in a conference where it lost at home to 9-3 Oklahoma State, or dropped a 20-point decision to Texas in midseason? And will anything less than a dominating performance by Oklahoma against Missouri do anything other than stoke the flames of resentment among legion Longhorn fans, now convinced of the injustice that has been foisted upon them? Worse still, if Missouri does upset Oklahoma and claim the automatic BCS berth, who among the remaining Big 12 South contenders would claim the conference at-large spot? Texas, who just missed out on the title game spot themselves, or Texas Tech, who beat the Horns just a few brief weeks ago? Mack Brown spent the better part of last week arguing that head-to-head is the only thing that matters; but his argument in this scenario could well work to haunt him.
It is true that the BCS did not ask to be made into the tie-breaker for the Big 12. But that the BCS exists at all as a means to determine bowl assignments and championship participation invites itself into the prospect of precisely this type of fiasco. If ever there were a case for dismantling the BCS and its faux championship-by-anointment theology, this is the year. But so long as ESPN serves as the prevailing, multi-million-dollar media gorilla running the game both as its broadcaster and chief analyst, its unlikely to go away.
This is college football's dark side, with coaches and pollsters at their most cynical, their most uncivil, with fans and players hung out to dry in the process. But worst of all, the BCS is now compromising what any sport holds most dear - the integrity of the game whose champion it decides.
And that's the saddest result of all.
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