Good luck to the Longhorns tonight. They've beat no one, played no one, and might easily get their butts handed to them tonight in the Holiday Bowl.
Game prediction: Texas 38 ASU 35
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
First Week of Bowl Games
The picks:
Navy over Utah
Memphis over Florida Atlantic
Cincinatti over Southern Miss
Nevada over New Mexico
BYU over UCLA
Boise State over East Carolina
These are straight win picks - I don't know the spread. Perhaps my luck will change...
Navy over Utah
Memphis over Florida Atlantic
Cincinatti over Southern Miss
Nevada over New Mexico
BYU over UCLA
Boise State over East Carolina
These are straight win picks - I don't know the spread. Perhaps my luck will change...
RR to AA?
Rich Rodriguez is going to Michigan. All I can say is thank God, perhaps ESPN will quit making up stories about Les Miles leaving LSU for Ann Arbor. It's one thing for Kirk Herbstreit to announce on the day of the SEC Championship that Miles is leaving - and be completely wrong. It's another thing for ESPN to report, two days after he signs an extension with LSU no less, that Miles lied when he denied he was leaving, and will in fact be going to the Wolverines. Would you be surprised if Stuart Scott came onto SportsCenter tonight and declared that Rich Rodriguez's real name is Les Miles, and that the embattled Tigers coach is in fact going to be Michigan's head coach?
Furthermore, there has been great praise from media darlings about Michigan pulling off a great hire. Whether this comes to fruition is not can be debated. Personally, I think you are looking at a situation like what you have in Florida - you can expect the spread offense to work in most cases, until you match up with a team with the same talent and speed as you have. Florida finished this year 9-3 under the vaunted attack of spread option guru Urban Meyer. His National Title from last year was the result of his defense (a defense recruited by Ron Zook, by the way). The Wolverines may find out that the "greatest hire in Michigan history" might become the next Bill Callahan of college football.
Still, you gotta give the folks in Ann Arbor credit. Not many schools are willing to plunge into the athletic department of another instiution so brutally as Michigan has with regards to West Virgina in the past 8 months. They have taken their highly regarded football coach this week, and just a few months back, lured John Beilien from the bench of a budding Mountaineer basketball program. My how the college world has turned, when folks in Michigan are picking through the boondocks of Morgantown for the next great coach.
As for fans of West Virginia who feel betrayed, angry, upset, hurt, cheated, or any of the like - I have one word for you. Pittsburgh. You might be losing a coach able to manage a high score spread attack, but when it comes to the biggest of big games, he'll always come up short. In the illustruous West Virginia career of RR, the best win of his program was - Louisville in 2005?
Come to think of it, has Michigan dropped the ball with this hire? I bid they have indeed, and RR will be back coaching his flag football offense in a subrate conference befor the end of this decade.
Furthermore, there has been great praise from media darlings about Michigan pulling off a great hire. Whether this comes to fruition is not can be debated. Personally, I think you are looking at a situation like what you have in Florida - you can expect the spread offense to work in most cases, until you match up with a team with the same talent and speed as you have. Florida finished this year 9-3 under the vaunted attack of spread option guru Urban Meyer. His National Title from last year was the result of his defense (a defense recruited by Ron Zook, by the way). The Wolverines may find out that the "greatest hire in Michigan history" might become the next Bill Callahan of college football.
Still, you gotta give the folks in Ann Arbor credit. Not many schools are willing to plunge into the athletic department of another instiution so brutally as Michigan has with regards to West Virgina in the past 8 months. They have taken their highly regarded football coach this week, and just a few months back, lured John Beilien from the bench of a budding Mountaineer basketball program. My how the college world has turned, when folks in Michigan are picking through the boondocks of Morgantown for the next great coach.
As for fans of West Virginia who feel betrayed, angry, upset, hurt, cheated, or any of the like - I have one word for you. Pittsburgh. You might be losing a coach able to manage a high score spread attack, but when it comes to the biggest of big games, he'll always come up short. In the illustruous West Virginia career of RR, the best win of his program was - Louisville in 2005?
Come to think of it, has Michigan dropped the ball with this hire? I bid they have indeed, and RR will be back coaching his flag football offense in a subrate conference befor the end of this decade.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
It's Been a Month - Sorry
It’s been awhile since anything of merit has caused me such distress that I felt the need to comment on it. Since my last post, college football has completely blown up in our faces. At this point, picking Bowl Games would be an absolute sham, because based on the way this season has gone, there is no way to possibly accurately guess who might win. That being said, I fully intend on getting those picks posted online this week.
What I would prefer to discuss revolves around the University of Arkansas football program. Specifically, the hiring of new head coach Bobby Petrino. My allegiances to Texas aside, the Razorbacks have made a huge mistake. Let’s forget his miserable 3-10 record with the Atlanta Falcons this year, and dive into the character of Bobby Petrino the man, and what he is committed to.
Follow this career path for the new coach in Fayetteville. In July of 2006, Petrino, a hot commodity following 4 successful years at Louisville, signed a 10 year 25.5 million contract extension to stay with the Cardinals through 2016. Fast forward a grand total of 6 months, about 5% of his promised tenure, and Petrino bolted Louisville to return to the NFL and the Atlanta Falcons. Between December 2006 and December 2007, and 13 NFL games, Petrino decided that the NFL wasn’t for him, and just yesterday he left his 5 year dear with the Falcons on the table and bolted for Arkansas.
Question - Is the man the Razorback nation thinks will lead them to the top of the SEC? This guy commits to coaching stints about as well as Rosie O’Donnell commits to her diet. Honestly, are there people in Arkansas not worried that Petrino may take the vacant Michigan job next week?
At some point in the near future, collegiate athletic directors and the NCAA should find a way to make these carousel coaching changes stop. How this can be done, I am not sure. It seems odd to me that universities who are left high and dry by coaching changes don’t exert some influence with university attorneys to force a coach’s hand. In some way, I wish they would force coaches to pay the length of their contract should they decide to leave early. The hypocritical part that gets me going is the way the schools and the NCAA treat student athletes in comparison - if a freshman at Texas A&M decides sheep humping isn’t for him, a transfer to UT or OU would require a mandatory 1 year red shirt year and a loss of a season of eligibility. Perhaps a similar rule for coaches should go into effect.
Now I am no sympathizer for the National Football League in any way. Yet you can’t help but feel for the Atlanta Falcons in this situation. Owner Arthur Blake must be sipping on the Jack Daniels, wondering what he did so wrong in the last year to impose this evil Santa Christmas. First, his expunged star QB, the former face of the franchise whom he poured millions of dollars into, is sentenced to jail for 23 months. Follow that up with his current crop of players flashing “Free Vick” t-shirts and posters supporting the dog beater on a nationally televised game, making sane folks like me wonder what is wrong with those players. Oh, and don’t forget about the 10,000 fans who bothered to show up for the football game, many of whom were sporting Vick’s #7 jersey in support of their fallen hero. (On a side note, if a white guy came to a baseball game wearing a wearing a Mark McGuire jersey, he’d be crucified for supporting the steroid pumping embarrassment of MLB. A black man sports a Vick replica, and he’s recognized as staying loyal. You figure it out.) Follow this up with the Falcons head coach quitting on the team the next day, and you can understand the feeling of despair coming out of the ATL.
Hopefully, NFL owners have figured it out in the wake of Petrino-flight and Saban-bolt. DO NOT HIRE COLLEGE COACHES FOR PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL. The Dallas Cowboys hired Jimmy Johnson from the University of Miami in the early ‘90s, and now every owner thinks they can pull the hot name from the college ranks and make the Super Bowl. Keep in mind, the Cowboys’ great coach Johnson was aided in his success by a trio of Hall of Famers in Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin. In the wake of Johnson’s departure from Dallas, the Cowboys won 3 more division titles, reached 2 NFC Championship games, and won the Super Bowl. Perhaps it wasn’t the innovative musings of the collegiate trained Johnson that brought the early ‘90s dynasty to Big D.
The point is, NFL owners should recognize collegiate coaches as egotistical maniacs, who want their program to be all about them, their rules, their schemes, their players, their curfews, their feuds, their graduation rates, their offenses, their defenses, their mandatory team volunteer activities, their pep rallies, their wind sprints, their spring practices. Collegiate coaches cannot take those dictator attitudes into today’s modern game - when they do, they feel lost, can’t win, and bolt home. It’s a pretty common occurrence these days. Perhaps the NFL can figure it out…
Here’s hoping Petrino gets what he deserves in Arkansas - a 3-9 season next year.
What I would prefer to discuss revolves around the University of Arkansas football program. Specifically, the hiring of new head coach Bobby Petrino. My allegiances to Texas aside, the Razorbacks have made a huge mistake. Let’s forget his miserable 3-10 record with the Atlanta Falcons this year, and dive into the character of Bobby Petrino the man, and what he is committed to.
Follow this career path for the new coach in Fayetteville. In July of 2006, Petrino, a hot commodity following 4 successful years at Louisville, signed a 10 year 25.5 million contract extension to stay with the Cardinals through 2016. Fast forward a grand total of 6 months, about 5% of his promised tenure, and Petrino bolted Louisville to return to the NFL and the Atlanta Falcons. Between December 2006 and December 2007, and 13 NFL games, Petrino decided that the NFL wasn’t for him, and just yesterday he left his 5 year dear with the Falcons on the table and bolted for Arkansas.
Question - Is the man the Razorback nation thinks will lead them to the top of the SEC? This guy commits to coaching stints about as well as Rosie O’Donnell commits to her diet. Honestly, are there people in Arkansas not worried that Petrino may take the vacant Michigan job next week?
At some point in the near future, collegiate athletic directors and the NCAA should find a way to make these carousel coaching changes stop. How this can be done, I am not sure. It seems odd to me that universities who are left high and dry by coaching changes don’t exert some influence with university attorneys to force a coach’s hand. In some way, I wish they would force coaches to pay the length of their contract should they decide to leave early. The hypocritical part that gets me going is the way the schools and the NCAA treat student athletes in comparison - if a freshman at Texas A&M decides sheep humping isn’t for him, a transfer to UT or OU would require a mandatory 1 year red shirt year and a loss of a season of eligibility. Perhaps a similar rule for coaches should go into effect.
Now I am no sympathizer for the National Football League in any way. Yet you can’t help but feel for the Atlanta Falcons in this situation. Owner Arthur Blake must be sipping on the Jack Daniels, wondering what he did so wrong in the last year to impose this evil Santa Christmas. First, his expunged star QB, the former face of the franchise whom he poured millions of dollars into, is sentenced to jail for 23 months. Follow that up with his current crop of players flashing “Free Vick” t-shirts and posters supporting the dog beater on a nationally televised game, making sane folks like me wonder what is wrong with those players. Oh, and don’t forget about the 10,000 fans who bothered to show up for the football game, many of whom were sporting Vick’s #7 jersey in support of their fallen hero. (On a side note, if a white guy came to a baseball game wearing a wearing a Mark McGuire jersey, he’d be crucified for supporting the steroid pumping embarrassment of MLB. A black man sports a Vick replica, and he’s recognized as staying loyal. You figure it out.) Follow this up with the Falcons head coach quitting on the team the next day, and you can understand the feeling of despair coming out of the ATL.
Hopefully, NFL owners have figured it out in the wake of Petrino-flight and Saban-bolt. DO NOT HIRE COLLEGE COACHES FOR PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL. The Dallas Cowboys hired Jimmy Johnson from the University of Miami in the early ‘90s, and now every owner thinks they can pull the hot name from the college ranks and make the Super Bowl. Keep in mind, the Cowboys’ great coach Johnson was aided in his success by a trio of Hall of Famers in Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin. In the wake of Johnson’s departure from Dallas, the Cowboys won 3 more division titles, reached 2 NFC Championship games, and won the Super Bowl. Perhaps it wasn’t the innovative musings of the collegiate trained Johnson that brought the early ‘90s dynasty to Big D.
The point is, NFL owners should recognize collegiate coaches as egotistical maniacs, who want their program to be all about them, their rules, their schemes, their players, their curfews, their feuds, their graduation rates, their offenses, their defenses, their mandatory team volunteer activities, their pep rallies, their wind sprints, their spring practices. Collegiate coaches cannot take those dictator attitudes into today’s modern game - when they do, they feel lost, can’t win, and bolt home. It’s a pretty common occurrence these days. Perhaps the NFL can figure it out…
Here’s hoping Petrino gets what he deserves in Arkansas - a 3-9 season next year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)