As another New Year’s Day Bowl Season goes by, a few thoughts need to be shared.

Many college football traditionalists decry the idea of a playoff system, but let’s be honest, the Bowl Championship Series has already destroyed tradition. New Year’s Day now is a shell of it’s past, as the three top teams this year aren’t even playing on January 1st.
The “Granddaddy”, the Rose Bowl, is more like the Hollywood Bowl, a half shell of its previous self, as only once in the last 4 years has the winner of the Big Ten played the winner of the Pac-10. All the reasons for not having a playoff don’t hold up to scrutiny, so let’s drop the ridiculous pretext that 2 teams each year couldn’t play more one more game, because “it’s asking too much of these fine student athletes.”

This year’s bowl games further exposed the weakness of the BCS, as conference tie-ins have created lousy match-ups, like Utah/Pittsburgh and Auburn/Virginia Tech. Watching Utah, I’m still not sure if they’re a Top 10 team, as Pittsburgh would have had a hard time attaining a winning record in a quality conference and the only other decent opponent the Utes played in 2004 were the up and down Aggies of A&M.

The best match-up of New Year’s Day was Texas/Michigan. Both teams mirror each other, as they are legendary football schools, with questionable coaching. Both Mack Brown and Lloyd Carr are excellent recruiters, but get less out of their talent than almost anyone else in their respective conferences. Thus, this made for a great strategic chess match of who would mismanage the play-calling and clock management more. Carr won this dubious victory, by letting Texas run the clock down for their chip-shot field goal, despite having 2 time-outs and an offense that had run wild against Texas defensive coordinator Greg Robinson’s defense.

On the subject of Robinson, why does this guy continue to get jobs? Everywhere he goes, his defense gets torched. (see Denver and Kansas City the past 6 years) The NFL seems to finally wise up to his blitz-crazy schemes, so he drops down to a college coordinator job and once again, his incredibly athletic defense gets burned time after time.

Both Carr and Brown have excellent career records, but considering their talent levels, they are still lacking. It seems like every starting quarterback at Michigan ends up starting sometime in the NFL, (Harbaugh, Grbac, Griese, Brady, Henson, Navarre) but the Wolverines still can’t go through one regular season without slipping up against an inferior opponent. Only Miami have had the level of talent that the Longhorns have had over the past 5 years, but this year is the first time they’ve played in the BCS, which they just squeaked into.

In contrast to Carr and Brown were the coaches on display at the Florida Citrus Bowl, LSU’s Nick Saban and Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz. Both are former NFL assistants who maximize their team’s talent. Throw-in Bob Stoops and Pete Carroll and this would be your list of the top coaches in the college game the last 3 years. When Iowa hired Ferentz six years ago, Hawkeye fans were livid, as they felt the Iowa athletic director had blown hiring former Iowa player, Bobby Stoops, who ended up signing with Oklahoma. Amazing how this worked out for both schools. Ferentz, unlike the other 3 coaches on the top list, has not worked with Top 5 recruiting classes, more like Top 40 classes.

Iowa's last touchdown pass of the Citrus Bowl will be put next to Doug Flutie and Kordell Stewart, as the greatest hail mary’s in college football history. Iowa managed to win 10 games this season, despite playing most of the year with a walk-on running back, after the first 4 backs on the roster went down with knee injuries. With three straight seasons of 10 win seasons (30-7 overall) putting them in the final Top 10 poll each year, it’s hard to rate anyone above Ferentz on the college scene.

Lately, the Big 10 has taken a bashing for being weaker than some of the other top conference’s, but a lot of this has to do with them being big TV draws, thus playing in Bowl games versus higher ranked teams. Did you know the only Big 10 team that was favored in their bowl game was Purdue, but despite this the league went 3-3* straight-up and 4-1 ATS. (*corrected from earlier post) You could have made a lot of dough betting the money line on the Big 10. The only bowl game where the Big 10 generally plays an equal team is the Alamo Bowl against the Big 12, a game in which they’ve won 7 of the last 9.

Is there any job easier on the planet than being the director of a Bowl game? These guys travel around the country “scouting” the best teams in the country, during the season. Scouting means they have big expense accounts, sit in luxury boxes during the games and play golf during the week.

The worst part of all bowl games is when the sideline reporter interviews the corporate sponsor of the bowl. Akin to watching corporate CEO’s bring big checks up to Jerry Lewis during his telethon, these self-serving displays are sickening. During the Capitol One Citrus Bowl, it sure would have been refreshing if ABC’s sideline reporter would have asked Capitol One’s spokesman "why do you charge 21% to some of their customers and have $35 late payment penalties." Or how about "why is that you’re commercials are the worst on TV, besides Eastwood Insurance’s surreal nightmares."

Has there ever been a season where more major college jobs opened up? In regards to Urban Meyer being the new coaching wunderkind, I think he made the right decision, as it would have taken him a few years to install properly his spread offense in South Bend. At Florida, though, his talent level is so good that quarterback Chris Leak running the spread formation, might win the Heisman. There is a reason that a lot of coaches shied away from the Fighting Irish job and that’s because of the immense scrutiny the position has, plus the recruiting struggles the school faces. (South Bend is one of the last places I would want to spend 4 years at.)

Despite the past few years in Cleveland, Butch Davis would have been the guy I would have coveted if I were filling the job at LSU or Notre Dame. Neither Charlie Weis nor Les Miles are prepared for the giant step up in pressure these jobs entail. At least Miles has a load of talent to work with at LSU. The hiring’s of Tyrone Willingham (Washington), Dave Wannstadt (Pittsburgh), Terry Hoepner (Indiana), Ron Zook (Illinois), and Walt Harris (Stanford) were about as well as these schools were going to do.

If I were a school like Syracuse, the guy I would hire would be Rick Neuheisel. Sure Ricky’s had some problems in the past, but nothing so egregious that a tough morals clause in his contract wouldn’t solve. The whole gambling on the NCAA tournament pool situation was very hypocritical of the NCAA, as he had no inside info on the thing and most everyone else in college sports has their own pool. Sure the massive amount of money he wagered in the pool was eye-catching, but it wasn’t on a Bill Bennett level.
FREE RICKY NEUHEISEL. It’s not like he’s Jackie Sherrill.