Tag Archives: NCAA

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What to call college football's big game?

I might be breaking some new ground here, but a thought occurs to me regarding the Big Game set for Monday night to determine the best college football team in the country.

The game doesn’t have a catchy name. You know, like the Super Bowl?

My Oregon Ducks are going to play the Ohio State Buckeyes in the first-ever college football playoff championship game. It needs something catchy.

Let’s flash back for a moment to the first Super Bowl, played in 1967. It wasn’t even called the Super Bowl. It carried the clunky name of “AFL-NFL Championship Game.” The American Football League champs that year were the Kansas City Chiefs; representing the National Football League were the Green Bay Packers.

The Pack won 35-10 at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, which was about two-thirds full for the biggest game in pro football history.

The AFL and the NFL played three more interleague championship games before the leagues merged in 1970. But someone came up with the name “Super Bowl” in time for the 1968 game between the Packers and the Oakland Raiders.

I’m open for suggestions on what to call the college football equivalent of the Super Bowl.

Heck, college basketball has its March Madness and its Final Four; Major League Baseball has its World Series; college baseball has its College World Series; hockey fans know the title series of their sport simply as the Stanley Cup.

The NCAA has come up with a marketing winner with this college football playoff. It figures to smash TV-viewing records Monday night.

So … let’s give college football’s big game a name to make it — and us — all proud.

Oh, before I forget: Go Ducks!

 

Sports news

College football playoffs work against sportsmanship

Baylor University head football coach Art Briles speaks the truth about one troubling aspect of the NCAA college football playoff system.

It “changes the way you approach football games,” Briles said. Coaches and players become concerned with what’s called euphemistically as “style points,” resulting in teams running up the score on their opponents.

http://agntv.amarillo.com/sports/coachspeak-college-footballs-final-four

OK, Briles’s ox has been gored here. The Baylor Bears were thought to be one of the teams that would be included in college football’s version of the Final Four. They were bounced out by Ohio State, which scored a lot of “style points” by pummeling Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big 10 championship game over the weekend.

The Final Four comprises Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and the Buckeyes.

Allow me this disclosure: I am pulling with all the force I can for Oregon, which plays FSU in the Rose Bowl. I am a native Oregonian and my heart belongs to the Ducks. The other game — ‘Bama vs. Ohio State — will take place in the Sugar Bowl … yawwwwn.

I do get Briles’s concern about this selection system. It relies on human subjectivity, just as the old system did when the final polls helped select the national college football champion. The playoff teams are chosen by a committee of experts: coaches, ex-coaches, athletic directors, players.

This panel looks at the “style points” run up by teams and award them accordingly. This bothers Briles, who said coaches have to decide late in the game, if their teams are leading big, whether to “take a knee” and run out the clock or push for yet another score and risk embarrassing the other coach — who is likely a good friend — and the opposing players.

Is this system perfect? No. Did the playoff committee get it right with the selections it made? Probably.

I agree with Coach Briles about the concern over running up “style points.” That does not do a single thing, though, to diminish my joy at watching the Ducks trample Arizona in the Pac 12 championship game this past Friday.

Go Ducks!

 

Sports news

Another poll determines playoff

I’m trying to clear my head over this college football playoff poll business.

The NCAA decided to create a four-team playoff at the end of the regular season. Check. I got that part.

The governing agency I guess had grown weary of polls determining the top two teams in the country and the criticism the final pairing drew — usually from loyalists of other college teams left out of the Big Game.

So the NCAA came up with the playoff system.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaafb/college-football-playoff-rankings-oregon-over-fsu-sends-message/ar-AA7G4Is

But then had to wrestle with determining how to find the top four teams. Who picks them? It’s not a poll exactly. The selection comes from a committee of experts.

OK, now for full disclosure.

I kind of have a dog in this hunt. I’m a native of Oregon and the University of Oregon Ducks currently are rated the No. 2 team in the playoff hunt. They moved ahead of Florida State this week on the basis of their overall play against other ranked teams and the fact that the Ducks beat a very good Utah Utes team in Salt Lake City.

This playoff business, though, has me biting my fingernails each week.

Who’ll get the top nod? Who will the panel think did the best over the previous week? Can the panel of experts actually get it wrong and overlook a team that no one is seeing?

What happens from now until the end of the season? Well, your favorite team — whichever it is — has to win the rest of the way. That includes the Oregon Ducks.

Then comes the subjective analysis from the panel of experts — coaches, ex-coaches, ex-players, athletic directors, etc. — on who should be seeded in what order.

I’ll say it right now: Fans, alumni and boosters of whichever team finishes the regular season rated No. 5 in this poll of experts are going to raise a ruckus royale.

Some things, therefore, never change.

local news, Sports news

Text messages get WT coach in trouble

Let’s give Joel Hinton the tiniest benefit of the doubt and assume — if we dare — that he’s not a dummy.

He’s the former West Texas A&M University assistant football coach who has gotten entangled in a case of academic fraud involving two players on the WT team. One of the (former) players, Jose Azarte Jr., allegedly did school work for another player, star wide receiver Anthony Johnson.

Johnson then submitted the work as his own and got caught.

Where does Hinton fit in here? He apparently sent text messages to the players, which then were intercepted by someone — who then ratted everyone out.

Text messages got the coach in trouble.

Hinton is a young man. I will presume that he’s telecommunications-savvy, given that most 20- and 30-something Americans are these days.

Doesn’t this individual know that text messages, emails and almost any form of communication on social media can get seen by, oh, every human being on this planet of ours?

WT says Hinton is no longer associated with the school. It won’t say whether he got fired or quit on his own. Just that the he’s gone.

***

The investigation into this matter ought to be comprehensive. It ought to reveal to what extent this kind of thing has gone on at WT. It ought to disclose whether it’s happened with other athletes in other sports. Indeed, this kind of thing gives the NCAA governing body a chance to peel the skin off this onion all across the land.

Has cheating occurred? Sure it has. This isn’t anything new, if it’s proven to have occurred. Let’s presume that the school and/or the NCAA prove it happened. What then?

I’m rather old-fashioned about some things. There should be no tolerance at all for this kind of malarkey. It involves student-athletes who are attending class with the help of scholarships. They’re getting an education paid for by the school, even though the scholarship rewards them for athletic — not necessarily academic — prowess.

As for the coach who sent the text messages related to this matter, the young man needs a refresher course in what not to say on social media.

I’d start with keeping self-incriminating messages off the grid.

 

 

Sports news

Powerhouses vs. Cupcakes

I truly get that upsets can and do happen on college football fields.

Still, it was a bit shocking to read early Saturday that Lamar University was going to take the field against Texas A&M University in a game played at Kyle Field, home of the Twelfth Man.

Why the shock?

Well, for starters, Lamar is just three years into a return to college football. It shelved the program in the 1980s over lack of money, enthusiasm and ability to win games. I was in Beaumont at the time and I remember the demise of the program.

http://collegesportsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/09/five-thoughts-from-texas-ams-big-73-3-win-over-lamar.html/

So, to get a revenue boost for its athletic department, Lamar University scheduled the Aggies, one of the better teams in the country and the school that produced last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Johnny “Football” Manziel.

I do not understand why schools need to overmatch themselves in this fashion. The Aggies put a serious beat-down on the Cardinals, winning 73-3.

What does a beating like that do to a college athlete’s emotional structure? I’ve never heard that issue discussed. Perhaps there ought to be some conversation about it.

I get why they play the game at the powerhouse’s home field. The visiting team gets a cut of the revenue generated and they take the money back supposedly to invest in the future. The money pays for better equipment, scholarships, those kinds of things.

I also know that — on occasion, but it’s very rare — the visiting Cupcake surprises the dickens out of the host Powerhouse. Do you recall when Appalachian State went to Ann Arbor, Mich., a couple of years ago and upset the mighty Wolverines in The Big House? It’s a rare event. To be sure, Lamar wasn’t the only college football to get hammered into the turf Saturday.  

Sure, upsets do occur. It’s also possible — although not likely — that the sun could rise in the west.

The kind of score that we saw run up against Lamar by the Aggies, however, doesn’t do much good for anyone.

 

 

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Ducks facing dreaded SI jinx

I’m sweating bullets.

My University of Oregon Ducks are rated as the second-best college football team in the country, right behind Alabama’s Crimson Tide. So what happened to the Ducks this week? Their Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback, Marcus Mariota, ends up on the cover of the nation’s premier sports magazine.

Why the heavy perspiration? It’s that dreaded Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx. Players and teams fairly routinely end up on the cover — only to tank it the next time they compete.

The Ducks are facing next Thursday what looks like their most difficult opponent. They travel to Palo Alto, Calif., to take on the Stanford Cardinal, the No. 5-ranked team in the country and a team that a year ago went to the Ducks’ crib in Eugene and smashed its way to a 17-14 upset victory.

I say “smashed” because that’s the kind of football the Cardinal plays. Stanford is big, tough and it just loves to keep the football out of the other team’s hands, which for Oregon is terrible. The Ducks faced Ohio State in the Rose Bowl a couple of seasons ago and the Buckeyes beat the Ducks 26-17 by doing what Stanford is so good at doing.

I’m not going to be a Gloomy Gus here and predict the Ducks will lose next Thursday. They have been virtually unstoppable all season long. Their go-go offense has run up a lot of points on some good teams.

It’s that SI jinx, though, that has me worried. Will it bite the Ducks in their tails?

The story is quite flattering. It says the Ducks have reinvented the West Coast Offense. Mariota is considered a leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy. The Ducks just might be heading for the national championship game.

Quick, let’s hide all copies of the SI issue from the Ducks. Don’t let ’em read it.

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Emphatic ‘no!’ on paying college athletes

I saw a Time magazine cover yesterday at work, with a picture of Johnny “Football” Manziel on its cover and a headline that says it’s time to pay college athletes.

I don’t need to read the article thoroughly to know I’ll disagree with it. Its premise is wrong on its face — in my humble view.

Manziel, of course, is the Texas A&M University Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who endured a half-game suspension as his “punishment” for getting paid for autographs he signed. Manziel has become the poster boy for this ridiculous assertion that college athletes need to be paid for their services.

What utter nonsense.

They get paid already. Handsomely, too. The payment comes in the form of a free college education. Manziel is a blue-chip athlete who received a full-ride scholarship to Texas A&M. Did he get that scholarship because of his academic prowess? No. He’s being paid for his football skills, which put more than 80,000 people in the seats at Kyle Field and fills other stadiums to capacity wherever else the Aggies play football on any given Saturday.

How much would Johnny Football be paying if he wasn’t compensated? He’s pay about $8,000 annually in tuition and another $8,000 per year for room and board. I haven’t even calculated the cost of books, lab fees and other ancillary expenses that go with getting a college education.

Manziel gets paid. So do any of the scholarship athletes who compete in any college in the nation.

Pay these people? You must be kidding.

I remain wedded to the notion that student-athletes should have to toe the line. They should go to school, crack the books, study hard, work with tutors to help them get through those periods when they’re away from school participating in athletic events — and then play their guts out when the whistle sounds to start the game.

Mr. Football and his fellow scholarship athletes do not need more payment for demonstrating their athletic prowess.

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Hilarious ‘punishment’ for Johnny Football

I laughed out loud a little while ago when I heard the news: Johnny “Football” Manziel will be suspended for the first half of Texas A&M’s game with Rice for breaking a rule prohibiting players from getting paid for autographs.

Why even have any punishment if that’s all he’s going to get?

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/johnny-manziel-texas-aggies-suspended-first-half-rice-082813

Manziel won the Heisman Trophy this past season as a freshman. He’s been a sensation at College Station. Manziel may be one of the exciting football players in the past half-century.

But then he got ahead of himself, apparently, when he signed autographs and reportedly got paid for his signature. The allegations have prompted debate over whether college athletes should be paid. My view? The free college education that blue-chip athletes get at these schools is payment enough, thank you very much.

My thought was that Johnny Football would get much more of a punishment than he got. Maybe half a season. But half a game?

The NCAA enforcers cannot possibly be serious.

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WT set for crucial season opener

Few times in the football history of West Texas A&M University has an opening game had as much significance as the game that’s coming up Sept. 12 at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

The Buffs will take the field against Chadron State. They will have to deal with the shadow of a man who’s no longer a part of the program. Former Coach Don Carthel got canned two weeks ago over an ethics violation.

The interim coach this year will be Mike Nesbitt, who I believe could be an early-season favorite for Division II national coach of the year if he holds his team together.

Carthel’s firing couldn’t have come at a worse time. The team was finishing its preparation for a season most observers believed — maybe they still do — would be full of glory for the Buffs. I’m still uncertain as to whether the violation rose to the level of punishment that WT’s athletic department levied against Carthel. The coach took players to a baseball game, received reimbursement from the athletes and then fibbed about the timing of the reimbursement.

Boom! Like that he was gone. What’s done is done.

Nesbitt has taken over. He’s saying all the right things to local media, about how his team is “focused” and is getting ready for the season — as if he’s going to say anything to the contrary. You never hear coaches talk of turmoil upsetting team chemistry or causing emotional heartache. The stated public view is always the same: We’re soldiering on.

So we’ll see in short order whether the Buffs are as focused and dedicated to the task at hand as their coaching staff is saying. Texas A&M-Commerce comes to Kimbrough Stadium on Sept. 21 to begin the Lone Star Conference season.

The WT brass still has some explaining to do regarding Carthel’s firing. I hope it comes clean. Meanwhile, the players and the coaches who remain deserve the support of a fan base that had returned to the Buffs’ side when Carthel’s teams began winning so many football games.

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It’s about pressuring others to lie at WT

West Texas A&M University President Pat O’Brien has let it be known what brought about the sudden firing of the most successful football coach in the school’s history.

Former Buffaloes Coach Don Carthel “pressured” a couple of student-athletes to lie about when they reimbursed the coach for tickets to a big-league baseball game this past summer.

Here’s what O’Brien said on a Facebook post in the past few hours:

“The issue is not the purchase of the tickets but the lying associated with the purchase. Please refer to NCAA Article 10.1. The major issue is not that Don lied but he pressured two students to lie. We are not in the business of teaching students to lie.”

Carthel issued a statement this week in which he told how he took a couple of his players to see a Texas Rangers game in Arlington while visiting the area for a Lone Star Conference “Media Day” event. The athletes repaid Carthel for the tickets after attending the game, but the coach told the WT brass the kids repaid him beforehand. I guess he asked the kids to back his story up if the brass questioned them about Carthel’s version of events.

They did and the coach is gone.

End of story, right?

Probably not. There’s got to be more “there” there. Still waiting for a full accounting of cost Carthel his job. My hope now — for the sake of the team that’s about to start its 2013 season — that it all comes out in short order.