Category: NCAA Football

Pac-10 Suspends Officials, Apologizes to Oklahoma

“The Pacific-10 Conference, finding merit in Oklahoma’s complaints about the officiating in its loss to Oregon, on Monday suspended for one game the officiating crew and the instant replay officials who worked the game and issued an apology to the Sooners.”

— SI.com

If you aren’t familiar with the incident, officials awarded the ball to Oregon on an onside kick when the replay clearly showed that an Oregon player had touched the ball before it went 10 yards. Helped by yet another bad call and blown review, Oregon went on to score their second touchdown in 72 seconds and made the extra point. That put the Ducks ahead 34-33 after being down 33-20. They won the game when a last second Oklahoma field goal was blocked.

NCAA Redux

Malcolm Gladwell continues the discussion about the NCAA; an excerpt:

I made this point before, briefly. But it’s worth restating in more detail. McElrathbey is an athlete. He is also a student, a brother and, now the legal guardian of his younger brother. The NCAA’s formal mandate is to govern students in their capacity as athletes. But here, in forbidding McElrathbey from accepting outside donations to help him take care of his little brother, the NCAA has extended its jurisdiction to govern McElrathbey in his capacity as a brother and legal guardian.

I think that’s outrageous.

In College Football, Big Paydays for Humiliation

An interesting article in Wednesday’s New York Times about lower ranked colleges playing the big boys for cash, especially now that they’ve added a 12th game to the college season. “Troy State of Alabama will receive $750,000 from Nebraska to play in Lincoln this season. Louisiana-Lafayette will get the same amount from Tennessee next year.”

From the folks that thought up the BCS

Apparently the nation’s Division I-AA football programs are tired of being the little brothers of college football.

Division I-AA is made up of schools who offer a total of 63 full football scholarships per year. Division I-A schools are allowed 85 scholarships. Because of this (and other factors), Division I-AA schools have a harder time recruiting many great high school players. The level of football is good, but not as great as at most Division I-A schools.

So, it seems to me that calling the divisions I-A and I-AA makes sense. But apparently it offended some of the schools in question. They asked the NCAA to change the names of the two divisions. Yesterday, the panel voted to change the terminology. The former I-A classification will be the “Football Bowl Subdivision,” and I-AA will be the “NCAA Football Championship Subdivision.”

Sounds to me like a typically bureaucratic bungling — taking something straightforward and making into something that’s going to be eternally confusing.

[Post by reader Jill. They could have named Division I-A “The Only NCAA Division That Decides Its Champion Off the Field,” but that would have been a little wordy I guess.]

NCAA — Never Correct Always Asinine

In other news about how stupid the NCAA is, it denied appeals by McMurry University (Division III) and by the College of William and Mary (Division I-AA) to be removed from a list of schools subject to restrictions on the use of Indian mascots, names and imagery at NCAA championships. This also means those schools will not be allowed to host NCAA championship events.

But Florida State is still allowed to have a “Seminole” in full costume ride his horse on the field and for the band to play songs called “War Chant” and “Seminole Uprising” during games.

I’m sure revenue had nothing to do with this decision.

[Post by NewMexiKen reader, and official daughter, Jill. The McMurry mascot is Indians; William and Mary is The Tribe.]

Someone I’ll miss

Keith Jackson, the storied voice of college football, is calling it quits, declining offers from ESPN officials to keep him at ABC Sports.

“I’m finished with play-by-play forever,” Jackson said yesterday by telephone from his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif. “I’m going out to learn to be a senior citizen and find a president I can vote for and believe in.” He added, “I’m not angry, I’m just going off like an old man and sitting by the creek.”

The New York Times

Jackson is 77. He said, “I don’t want to die in a stadium parking lot.”

Whoa, Nellie!

Since I firmly believe Marv Albert should do every big NBA game, Pat Summerall every big NFL game and Keith Jackson every big college football game, no matter how old they are, and only because it feels like a bigger game when any of them is involved, I feel totally comfortable saying this: Listening to Jackson is like driving with my mother at night. In other words, maybe he can’t really see anymore, and he might drive over a few curbs, and maybe he’ll even send a pedestrian diving behind a parking meter … but it’s always exciting, and you always get home safely in the end.

Bill Simmons at ESPN.com, in a live-blogging the Rose Bowl column with multiple laugh-out-loud lines.

Best line of the day, so far

“A slipshod final play, where a crisp one might have allowed for a tying field goal try, left [Matt] Leinart looking dazed and diminished, like a boxing champ who got KO’d in the last round. I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy. Then I remembered his sickeningly charmed life and snapped out of it.”

Robert Weintraub at Slate in a very good summary of the game titled “Don’t Mess With Texas.”

Vince Young

NewMexiKen is told 5-year-old Mack thinks USC made a bad choice going for it on fourth down and two at the Texas 45-yard line with 2:09 left. I disagree. By then everyone knew USC couldn’t stop Vince Young. 45 or 20, it made no difference.

As Joel Achenbach puts it: “The Southern Cal defenders had nothing left, and essentially just applauded, like a good audience, as Young waltzed into the end zone for the national title.”

It truly was a game that lived up to its hype.

And the award for most premature awards goes to …

As NewMexiKen wrote here 13 months ago:

How come these [college football] awards are given before the bowl games? When first established, many of the bowl games were just post season fun. Now, with the BCS especially, the outcome of these games is critical for a team. Why determine awards before the most important game of the season?

Or, in other words, don’t you think Vince Young would win the Heisman if the voting were today?

If you like our football team, you’ll love our chem labs full of Asian students

A fascinating and amusing report on Those Weird College Ads from Mike DeBonis at Slate. He begins:

The 56 universities represented in this year’s bowlapalooza also have the chance to sell themselves to a national audience.

And no, they don’t let their football teams speak for themselves. America’s colleges and universities try to make an impression with “institutional spots”—trade parlance for the promotional television commercials they use to sell themselves. The ads typically run for 30 seconds during halftime. As state-school spokespersons are quick to point out, colleges don’t pay for the airtime—the slots are provided at no cost under most college-football television contracts.

The standard mise-en-scène of the institutional spot will be familiar to any dedicated college-sports watcher: campus greenery, one-on-one pedagogy, chemistry labs, black gowns and mortarboards, and laughing/hugging students of as many colors as possible.

And the award for hard-to-beat:

The season’s most memorable institutional spot won’t be playing during a bowl game. Notre Dame will introduce a new ad for the Fiesta Bowl, but the school will have a tough time encapsulating the smug Golden Domer attitude any better than it does in “Candle.” A girl lights candles at her church, ostensibly for many years, until a thick letter arrives from the Notre Dame admissions office. A glance to the skies confirms just who’s responsible for her shot at a “higher education.” Prayer for personal triumph: It’s not just for end zone celebrations anymore.

It’s show time

An interesting report on bowl games and television ratings from Sam Walker at WSJ.com . It begins:

As college football’s bowl season begins in earnest, it’s time to have a look at the latest rankings. The nation’s top team isn’t USC, it’s the Oregon Ducks. Notre Dame isn’t as strong as it seems, Texas is a big disappointment and West Virginia is a doormat.

We aren’t talking about their performances on the football field, of course. This ranking is a measure of something that’s much less obvious to the public but just as significant to these schools in the long run: how many people watch their bowl games on television.

Link via The Sports Economist.

Heisman factoid

Two schools have had 20 percent of the Heisman Trophy winners; seven each at USC and Notre Dame.

USC: Mike Garrett (1965), O.J. Simpson (1968), Charles White (1979), Marcus Allen (1981), Carson Palmer (2002), Matt Leinart (2004) and Reggie Bush (2005).

Notre Dame: Angelo Bertelli (1943), Johnny Lujack (1947), Leon Hart (1949), Johnny Lattner (1953), Paul Hornung (1956), John Huarte (1964) and Tim Brown (1987).

In all, 70 men have won the Trophy; one of them, Archie Griffin of Ohio State, won it twice.

Sports talk

These two items via Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times:

Here’s what another former Trojan had to say about [Reggie] Bush:

“Best college football player I’ve ever seen, and I’ve watched college football for 25 years. I’ve spent over 25 years affiliated with the USC program in athletics, all the way back from my ball-boy days and stuffing envelopes in the sports information office to being an All-American and first-round pick.”

Speaking those words on his Sirius Satellite Radio show was Keyshawn Johnson, born July 22, 1972.

Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News, on the outcome of the Rose Bowl game: “First team to 50 — loses by 14.”

If I were emperor

I would command a 16-team Division I-A football playoff system and today would be the first round:

USC vs. Texas Tech
Texas vs. UCLA
Penn State vs. TCU
Ohio State vs. Alabama
Oregon vs. LSU
Notre Dame vs. West Virginia
Georgia vs. Virginia Tech
Miami vs. Auburn

How cool would that be? As it is, there are no Division I-A games scheduled today.

(My schedule is based on BCS rankings with a few modifications for teams in the same conference.)

Old-timers’ game

With the football teams of Joe Paterno, 78, and Bobby Bowden, 76, set to square off in Miami on Jan. 3, Orange Bowl slogan writers have reportedly winnowed their list to “Win One For The Geezer” and “One For The Aged.”

Sideline Chatter

Sideline Chatter also reminded me of this:

Oregon — only loss was to USC.
Notre Dame — lost to USC and lost to Michigan State.

Guess which one got the premier bowl game.

College Football’s Billy Beane?

Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt has already gotten to the cover article in today’s NY Times Magazine:

Michael Lewis writes in today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine about Mike Leach, the innovative coach of the Texas Tech football team. As Lewis describes it, Leach takes a totally different view of football and is on the cusp of revolutionizing the game.

It is a very interesting article, and beautifully written. …

Like Moneyball, even though I am suspicious of parts of the argument, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

NewMexiKen hasn’t read Lewis’ article yet but one wonders if Leach is all that much of an offensive innovator, to wit: Texas 70-3, USC 66-19.