It is a December ritual. Every year as the holidays approach, we offer the readers’ Christmas gift to the columnist: The Easiest Column of the Year. It’s their input that drives it, though yours truly always reserves the right to the last word.
This year? Yeah, plenty of input, because in explaining my method for getting rid of the College Football Playoff committee and its selection process in the Saturday paper, I did the same thing as those selectors. I goofed.
From Charlie Benz of Orange: “Did you leave out Alabama just to see if anyone was actually reading your column?
“By the way, I like your idea.”
From Tom Booker, no hometown listed: “Interesting concept with regard to the 40-team Division 1 Super League. But, I wonder how a team like Indiana University would react to the team selection methodology.”
From Steve McNeely of Pasadena: “Hi Jim…enjoyed your piece today restoring sanity to college football. The college game has been ruined by money grabs by the conferences and NIL… it’s just “semi-pro” preparing for the draft for those fortunate(?) few. Your suggestion is very similar to one suggested in the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) a couple weeks ago. That suggestion geographically divided the country into eight regions with eight teams in each region…think “PAC 8” etc.
“Anything is better than what we have now. You are totally right, the NCAA has lost its way. But sorry, my vote for commissioner would go to Nick Saban. And speaking of Alabama, I assume it was a typo in your article as The Tide was omitted… and your Tier I only had 9 teams.”
And from Thomas Tomlinson of San Clemente: “While I enjoyed your commentary article today on potential changes to CFP, I noticed that the #1 Indiana Hoosiers were not in any of your proposed tiers.
“Why is that? Did you leave them out intentionally or was it simply a mistake? …”
Yep, those fans of the Hoosiers and Crimson Tide now know how Notre Dame partisans felt on selection Sunday.
The difference here: The committee left Notre Dame off on purpose (and in these eyes the Irish were hosed, but maybe that’s just the residue of a Catholic school education). The omission here? Transferring scribbled notes on a legal pad to this publication’s word processing software seems to have become more of a challenge than it should be.
(Memo to self: Feel free to introduce the concept next time, but from now on avoid lists at all costs.)
The online version of Saturday’s column was revised as soon as I realized my mistakes, but if you’re a print subscriber you were stuck with the version that omitted Alabama, 31-9 over the last three seasons, good for Tier I of my proposed 40-team Super League, and Indiana, 27-11 the last three years – putting them in Tier II – and, as Mr. Tomlinson noted, indeed No. 1 this season at 13-0.
The updated Tier I: Ohio State (37-5), Oregon (36-4), Georgia (36-5), Notre Dame (34-7), Texas (34-8), Ole Miss (32-6), Michigan (32-8), Alabama (31-9), SMU (30-10), Missouri (29-9). Tier II: Penn State (29-12), Washington (28-12), BYU (27-11), Miami (27-11), Tennessee (27-11), Indiana (27-11), Texas Tech (27-12), Louisville (27-12), Texas A&M (26-12), Oklahoma (26-12).
Tier III: LSU (26-12), Clemson (26-13), Iowa State (26-13), Iowa (26-13), Duke (25-14), Kansas State (25-14), USC (24-14), Utah (23-14), Arizona (23-14), Illinois (23-14). And Tier IV: Georgia Tech (23-15), Maryland (24-21), Arizona State (22-16), North Carolina State (22-16), Minnesota (21-17), Florida State (20-18), Nebraska (19-18), and three from among Rutgers, Syracuse, West Virginia and Cal (all 19-19).
Tiebreaker, anyone?
As for other reader comments over the last few weeks …
• Bruce Smith implored me to do a column on Harding University’s football team, a Division II program based in Searcy, Ark. “The team is a running team and (two Saturdays ago) established themselves as the team with the most running yards ever across all NCAA divisions. I am not the biggest football data person, but I think the formation they are running out of is the same as the Colton High team ran in the late 90’s and the University of Texas ran quite successfully in the 1960’s.”
Sort of. The late Don Markham, who won CIF Southern Section championships at L.A. Baptist, Colton and Bloomington, ultimately perfected a double-wing scheme that produced yards and points in bunches and overwhelmed opponents. Texas assistant Emory Bellard devised the Wishbone in 1968 and changed college football. Harding’s offense is more of a “flexbone,” and the Bisons (15-0) have rushed for 6,697 yards, averaged 45 points a game, and will face Ferris State for the Division II championship this Saturday.
• Regular correspondent Mike Murphy of Highland noted Justin Herbert’s reluctance to talk to an ESPN on-field interviewer following last Monday night’s Chargers overtime victory over the Philadelphia Eagles and wrote:
“Why didn’t the network coordinators in the booth tell her to talk to Cameron Dicker, who had five field goals including one that tied the game with 12 seconds left in regulation and then hit a 54-yarder to win it in OT. That’s 16 of the 22 points he accounted for, including the PAT on the first period TD. Or, why not corral Tony Jefferson, who intercepted the pass near the goal line in the closing moments of OT that could have won the game for Philly. They deserved the recognition.”
• Frequent correspondent Bob Munson of Newbury Park reacted to my suggestion two Saturdays ago that the Rose Bowl be perpetual host of college football’s national championship game: “RU kidding? The CFP doesn’t want their final game in the (dilapidated) Rose Bowl. That’s like playing in the 1932 LA Coliseum.”
(I wasn’t there in ’32. I’m assuming he wasn’t, either.)
• In a separate email Munson also suggested that college football go back to a four-team playoff, and his choices are “Ohio State, Georgia, Texas Tech, and a coin flip between Oregon and Texas A&M. Yeah, that’s right, a coin flip.”
But his reasoning for cutting the field is sound: “… (All) these players were promised “the college experience” when they were recruited. You don’t get this if the regular season ends on Nov 29 and the final playoff game is Jan 19.”
• Jeffrey Runtz of Chino Hills checked in recently on the UCLA/Rose Bowl debate: “After reading today’s column I anxiously await a Rose Bowl Stadium positives column. … Many bench seats have been converted, including my season seats. Concessions mean little to me. I tailgate and so have enough to eat before I go in. And who thinks restrooms at halftime will be readily accessible? Traffic? Park better. I park in Lot H. Oftentimes I can leave my seats as (the) final seconds tick off and be pulling into my Chino Hills driveway in a little over one hour.”
And in response to another letter writer unhappy with the Bruins’ number of night kickoffs, he added: “… (Have) you noticed crappy teams get late starts? If UCLA had a better product TV would accommodate them with better start times. A move to SoFi will fix nothing.”
Maybe Bob Chesney will.
• In response to my commentary on the peripatetic Lane Kiffin, David Wilczynski of Manhattan Beach, a professor of computer science at USC, wrote: “When Kiffin first came to USC after being booted out of Tennessee, the LA Times had a major piece about him and a sidebar of quotes from people who knew him. The first one, from a Sports Illustrated writer, said, “I’ve known a lot of creeps during my career, but if being a creep was a competition like the Indy 500, Lane Kiffin would have the pole position.”
I can’t top that one.
jalexander@scng.com
