I hinted earlier about having more to say about college football and I reckon that it's time for me to get saying. Some very interesting things have been happening lately and I'm not sure what to make of a lot of it. And things are in such a state of upheaval that trying to figure out the results is a lot of guesswork. But there are also a lot of things hanging in balances that are still leveling. I'm going to be interested to see how things shake out this season.
But we will begin where we always begin: with the overall winning percentages.
The upheaval at the top of the winning lists when Michigan passed Notre Dame for the best winning percentage has continued its trickle-down effect for those in the next tier. This has particular impact on Alabama.
After the sudden reappearance by Alabama two years ago, last year brought them low again with a 6-7 record. And with their relatively poor record in the last decade-plus, they have fallen off the pace so badly that they fell behind Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio State in the all-time records and now Nebraska is within striking distance. Considering their seemingly-insurmountable lead over those schools just ten years ago, the speed with which they fell behind those three schools is surprising. NCAA sanctions took their toll, as did the improved strength of the rest of the SEC. But considering how badly they were flagging, it's not surprising that they were willing to dish serious dinero to hire Nick Saban. More on that later.
But the bad news for the Crimson Tide has been good for the Longhorns, Buckeyes and Sooners. They have taken the opportunity presented and made the most of it. But Oklahoma's ability to hold that position is entirely dependent on just what happens with their NCAA sanctions and whether they will forfeit their eight wins from 2005. More on that later.
Down below the all-time top 10, Florida State's ailing fortunes have robbed them of an opportunity to move past Penn State and into tenth spot. If they put things together, they could get back on pace, but Penn State is probably not going to be giving up the ghost easily. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next five years or so as Bowden and Paterno move toward the ends of their careers. Personally, I expect Penn State to pull it back together and get back on track and, if Florida State is going to pass somebody to move into the top 10, they will need to knock off someone else for the final slot. We'll see how that shakes out in the next 5-10 years.
One of the big storylines of the offseason was coming out of Alabama. The firing of Mike Shula just as Alabama was coming out from under NCAA sanctions was far from commendable. He was hired to run a clean program after the Mike Price/Dennis Franchione/NCAA sanction fiascos and he had to work around scholarship limitations in recruiting. So when they suddenly decide to cut him loose when he would have a full team to work with, it was less than impressive.
Honestly, everyone pretty well knew that Mike Shula was a stopgap measure while Alabama sorted things out for itself. He was there to keep things clean, try not to lose too many games, and fill time while Alabama finished their punishment. More than likely, canning him after last season was not the right thing to do, since I think he earned the right to coach the team when it has a full squad. But it might have been the correct thing to do, since they were essentially only doing what was inevitably going to happen anyway. But for it to be the correct thing to do, the new coach must perform significantly better than anything Mike Shula could accomplish.
The hiring of Nick Saban was also a bit on the problem side. Nick kept saying that he was not going to leave his job as coach of the Miami Dolphins right up to the day that he accepted a contract with Alabama for some 8 years and $32 million -- the richest contract in college football.
A lot of people say that Saban was being mercenary when he accepted the job. Personally, I think that, at some point, the dollar figure gets up to a point where he would be an idiot not to take it. If anyone is at fault here, it is Alabama for being willing to pay so much for a football coach. But Saban's pedigree is impossible to ignore with an overall 68.3% winning percentage at the relatively overshadowed schools of Toledo, Michigan State and LSU. On top of that, he gave a national title to LSU, which was perennially an afterthought in the SEC prior to his arrival. And with Alabama football's continuing inability to get out of their rut of mediocrity, the school and the boosters were willing to keep increasing the offer until they got the winner they wanted.
I can't tell just what is going to happen with Alabama and Saban. Both are locked in though, since the buyout on that contract is probably pretty nasty. All of Bama's eggs are in the Saban basket for six years, minimum. And, though Bama finally did get their man, it is not as though he jumped at the chance to get back into college coaching. In fact, it took a contract worth a total of $32 million for him to be willing to make the move to Tuscaloosa. I would not call that sterling proof of his desire to coach the Crimson Tide.
Saban, of course, is also well known as a coach who doesn't stick around all that long. He is always looking for the next job. But from Alabama, there is really no moving up. If he wins at Alabama, there is no upward mobility left in college football. He could move back to the NFL, but what for? If his general manager is a moron and his players stink, he gets blamed for it. At Alabama, if his team stinks, no worries: he will replace it entirely in 4 years. And he will do it with players that he himself chose and brought in. So even if things go wrong, he'll know that the ship he goes down with is his own. Besides, I'm not sure that an NFL team would be willing to match that contract or pay for the buyout. If you're not winning a Super Bowl in the NFL, you're a loser, plain and simple. For instance, Buffalo went to four straight Super Bowls and, by losing them, became emblems of failure. And the dollars that are being bandied about by Alabama would be used by an NFL team to get some on-field talent that would help their team more than a perfectly replaceable coach.
Unfortunately, if Saban can't deliver big quickly, he will be in hot water in no time. Alabama is not paying Nick for 10-3 or 12-2 records, they are paying him for 14-0. They are paying him for wins over Auburn every year. They are paying him to win the SEC more than half the time. They are paying him for national titles. They are paying for Bear Bryant.
I had long thought that SEC schools need to get their titles in now, while Alabama is slumbering. And they have succeeded, with Florida, LSU and Tennessee taking advantage of the lull. Now the Tide might be rising. But the rest of the SEC is going to make darn sure that Alabama has to go through hell and back if they want to get back to where they were. And that is going to cost all the teams in the SEC in ways that aren't counted in dollars.
After 70 years in the Orange Bowl, the Miami Hurricanes are leaving the venerable old dump behind for a new home at Dolphin Pending Corporate Sponsorship Stadium. It's a shame, since the Orange Bowl was a legendary location in the history of Miami, college football, and football in general. Super Bowls, bowl games, national championships, and a record 58-game home winning streak have all been part of the place. It was falling apart, in was in a terrible neighborhood, attendance was awful and nobody was ready to fix it.
It's a shame in a lot of ways, but not unexpected. As much as people talked about how loud it could be in big games, it still only averaged about 41,000 per game. Consider that they would be sold out of their 74,000+ seats for the one or two big games a year, and you can see how few people made a habit of going to the games there. So nobody is going to miss it all that much. However, considering that they are now going to be way out in the middle of nowhere for their home games at Dolphin Stadium, I doubt their new digs are going to solve their attendance problems.
But as much as I know the place is a pit, I'm going to miss the old girl. It's one of those pieces of history that ain't all that great these days, but deserves respect and even veneration for all that it did and all that it was. And now, as it fades into history, we can do naught but speak wistfully of what it used to be.
Oklahoma was recently thrown into some serious hot water, thanks to some players that were getting paid for work that was not work. As in, they didn't have to show up for work at all. This isn't the first time that this has happened at a school, but it seems that this episode was particularly bad and the NCAA put the screws to the Sooners. They may even have to forfeit games over it, which is a rare punishment.
This is bad, since it would hurt at a time when Oklahoma is looking to move up in the all-time list by passing Alabama. But, in some ways, this may not be awful for Oklahoma. The year they are losing games for wasn't all that great with an 8-4 record, and it gives the kids and the boosters a nice little "shot across the bow". They got their warning and, if they heed it, they will keep their noses cleaner for it. And considering just how bad things got once before at Oklahoma, this really is a minor burp that should be taken as a little refresher course on keeping their butts out of trouble.
USC, however, is another matter. Oklahoma fans are mightily pissed that they are getting the beat down and USC is getting off without so much as a slap on the wrist after Reggie Bush somehow didn't notice that his family moved into a multimillion-dollar home given them for free from a sports agent. One would assume that Reggie noticed that his room looked different.
The problem here is that Reggie Bush is not talking to the NCAA and the NCAA can't force him to do so, since he is in the NFL and out of their jurisdiction. So it seems that USC and Reggie Bush are not going to be punished in any way, despite the fact that -- according to some reports -- that was just the tip of one serious iceberg of violations. And if even half of the allegations in some reports are even remotely true, we're looking at some serious damage to USC if the NCAA can prove any of it. As in, the death penalty would enter into discussions and be taken seriously.
Now, first off, since these are unconfirmed rumors, it would be hasty to pass judgment on USC, its administration, coaches or players. There are several conclusions that could be drawn from these and other rumors that seem to swirl a great deal around the Trojans, but I am not ready to crucify them over mere rumors, nor am I ready to relate gossip that could be idle talk. For all I know, almost all of it could be entirely false.
But if some of these allegations are true, then USC might be better off just taking the punishment now. Why? First, because they would get more lenience from the NCAA by self-reporting early rather than allowing the NCAA to find all the dirt themselves. Second, because every kid who gets away with something sets an example for the kid who wants to get away with something more; if some All-American got $1,000 last year, this year's starter is going to want $1,500. Third, it only takes one disgruntled kid who didn't think he got enough playing time to blow the whistle and admit some of the things he was doing -- and maybe even some things he wasn't doing -- just so he can get back at the team that killed his football career. And with all those high school All-Americans on the team, that's a serious risk. USC had best tread lightly through the next few years.
Minnesota fired Glen Mason. Stupid, stupid, stupid. No, he never got Minnesota to the Rose Bowl, but he delivered more than half the bowls that Minnesota attended in their history, routinely turned out a team that was at least dangerous for opponents, delivered long-awaited wins against Ohio State and Michigan, and got the Gophers into the polls and into the awareness of college football again. But they had a rough season capped off by an abysmal collapse in a bowl game and they canned their coach.
Glen Mason may not be the greatest coach on earth, but he was pretty good. And he delivered football to Minnesota again, giving them to get the impetus to build their own on-campus stadium and expect wins every year. But just because he couldn't deliver more in a state that is relatively thin on football talent doesn't mean that he's not delivering the best that the Gophers can expect on a regular basis. Just ask an Indiana fan how many bowls they've been to since Bill Mallory got the axe.
Winter is cold in Minnesota. Autumn is about to get a lot colder.
Amidst all the talk about Florida speed and Florida quickness and how much faster everyone plays in the SEC and what their 40 times are, there has been a little change that some people might not have noticed. In all the talk about the spread offense and more passing, there has been a minor twist on the formation, creating something called the spread option. This, in itself, doesn't seem all that remarkable. But it is because it seems to be bringing back Big Man Football.
Now you may be saying to yourself that the spread option is nothing like the old days of "3 yards and a cloud of dust", where teams would hand off to the fullback over and over again and slowly push the other team down the field with battering ram rushes straight into the pile. But, if you look at it, the days of "3 yards and a cloud of dust" didn't revolve entirely around fullback rushes over and over again... blah-biddy-blah... straight into the pile.
The olden days of Big Man Football revolved around the running game, but it also revolved around misdirection and speed. The wishbone, T-formation, I-bone, veer, single wing, wing-T, flexbone, option, triple-option and others were all designed to prevent the defense from knowing where the ball was going. The idea was to be able to attack the edges of the defense so that it could be outraced to the edge of the field and big yardage could be gained. But the threat of the big gain on the edge would mean that the defense needed to spread out and leave the middle of the field open, where fullbacks could bash a few heads for tough yards, then wear down the defense so that the offense could then get big yards with straight ahead rushes.
Properly run by good players, any of the old-style running games were intended to force the defense to defend everyplace along the line. And, as the old saying goes, "He who defends everything defends nothing." For instance, within one second of the snap, a wishbone team could have the ball in the hands of any one of four players running in any direction across or toward the line. Not to mention the possibility that the wishbone team could run the option play, in which the defense has to essentially stop two players at the same time. The other formations I mentioned could do the same thing with about 3 or 4 players, with some of the formations allowing a potential ballcarrier to already be at a full sprint at the snap of the ball.
The modern spread-option game is a little different than the old style game, but it is still very similar. It is, in essence, either an option game or a variation on the wishbone, only these have a shotgun snap and more receivers. The threat of the pass opens up the middle as much or more than the old toss sweep. The shovel pass version of the option, in which the quarterback pitches the ball forward instead of backward, was a change I had been expecting for a while and I was surprised that it took people so long to do it. I assume some coach is soon going to be running a man in motion on every play so he can threaten the reverse (like the Delaware wing-T), making the potential threats more numerous.
The only current weakness of the spread option is a lack of a true power game, but that will probably be rectified in the near future -- presumably by adding a fullback on the other side of the quarterback from the tailback, or even putting a fullback in front of the tailback in what I will refer to as a shotgun-I formation. Even I can envision a bewildering variety of plays from a shotgun two-back set with a mobile quarterback -- to say nothing of the uses of tight ends and receivers in their different alignments.
The most effective practitioner of this form of offense was the 2005 Texas Longhorns. With Vince Young at quarterback, their flexibility in the run game opened up the passing game. Teams needed to load the line to prevent the running backs and quarterback from getting loose, leaving fewer defenders available for the receivers. Vince Young was not known as a particularly strong or accurate passer prior to his senior year, but he was strong enough and accurate enough to get it to the guy who was open -- which is really all any quarterback is supposed to do.
But enough digressing. Vince Young was a terror on the field not only because he was fast and a good passer, he was also big. Very big. And very strong. And it was tough to bring him down. Same thing with his running backs. And everyone else on offense. If you watch the Rose Bowl game between Texas and USC, Vince Young looked like he could have eaten USC's linebackers and still had room for smoothie. And he and the rest of the Texas monsters were taking their toll on the smaller, faster Trojans as the game went on. And when it is getting late in a hard-fought, close game, when everyone on both sides is getting tired, the team that relies on speed is going to get slower. The team that relies on size ain't going to get any smaller.
Teams have been making the move to get more speed on the field for a while, but it's getting to the point where there is only so much speed to be had. Miami(FL), for instance, has been relying more and more on the quickness and speed of their smaller defensive players -- which is a nice way of saying that they are undersized. You can run as fast as you like on the field, but eventually you have to hit somebody. Or get hit yourself. Miami had a ferocious defense thanks to using smaller but much faster players to go around the big offensive linemen. But now the big offensive linemen are faster than they used to be, so the speed-only player has to go farther to get around them. This means that the undersized, fast defender who is only marginally faster than a blocker has to either get taken out by going straight ahead into a wall or take himself out of the play by trying to go around the long way. Miami has been able to keep pace in the ACC only because the teams they play are trying to play speed games against them, rather than just bashing straight ahead until Miami cries, "Uncle!"
What this means now is that teams can get a physical advantage with big players who are fast enough to do their job. In the case of offensive linemen running a spread-option game, this means bashing the guy in front of you long enough to open a hole for a running back or quarterback to run through. Texas used that offense to shove USC around. The misdirection/power running game Florida used in the Fiesta Bowl had more in common with Darrell Royal than Jimmie Johnson. The entire SEC hardly does anything but hand off anymore. And as more teams learn the spread-option game and variations on it, Big Man Football is going to make its return to the gridiron.