That Just Happened

I was surprised that Oregon State seemed kind of flat at the start of the second half. Their crowd was kind of dead at the beginning of the third quarter as well, even as soon as USC got the ball.

Of course Craig James was trying to explain how this shows that the Pac-10 is actually pretty good. Right.

The OSU offensive line did a great job of neutralizing the USC front 7, and then Jacquizz hid behind them and cut off their blocks.

That was fun.

That was fucking beautiful. The race is wide ass open now.

OU’s No. 1 now. That’s how it works, see.

College Football is the best. Would anyone care if we had a 16 team playoff?

Amazing that little fella ran on the trojans like that. Nothing like a smokin hot beaver to tear up a good trojan.
Alabama goes to Athens and wins between the hedges, and sooners (its 1:07 am and OU still sucks) are numero uno for sure (assuming they handle frogs). All goes well the next weekend, and we are in the Cotton Bowl full of beer and Fletchers watching the Horns play the No. 1 team in the nation.

Jacquizz Rodgers:USC::Quentin Griffin:Texas

“OU’s No. 1 now. That’s how it works, see.”

Till TCU upsets them again. . . .

Granted, I only caught stretches of the game due to my presence at a Drive By Truckers concert, but in the little I saw, I am really wanting to write a Cover 2 bitch and discussion article. Maybe, I’ll get some time today.

Norm Chow:Pete Carroll::Vince Young:Mack Brown

“Nothing like a smokin hot beaver to tear up a good trojan.”

Classic.

Mike Stoops:Bob Stoops::friendship bracelet:Greg Davis

Anything can happen any day in CF. Wow.

I hope UT was watching this game…

That was definitely not lost on me.

Oh, and it is blon of EDSBS fame!

College Football is the best. Would anyone care if we had a 16 team playoff?

I know it’s a rhetorical question, but the answer is an emphatic NO. I have no problem missing regular season NFL games, even those that involve the handful of teams I root for. But I’ll be damned if anything – including my wife who was in a red wine-fueled, borderline slutty state last night – was going to tear me away from that early-season, Thursday night PAC-10 game. I watched the whole damned thing and rolled the dice on my chances for carnal satisfaction.

That’s why college football is so great. A playoff would ruin the sport. Although it would probably save my marriage.

How would a playoff ruin college football?

I just post there so Orson will give the Big 12 some respect. I’m tired of SECers thinking we are a substandard conference.

How would a playoff ruin college football?

By diminishing the importance of the regular season. As it stands now, only 2 teams have strong enough regular seasons to have a shot at the end of the year for the title. A playoff would necessarily increase the set of teams with a title shot, thus reducing the required qualifications and therefore making a regular season loss less meaningful.

I significantly prefer college football to the NFL, and a large part of the reason why is that so much is on the line at every part of the season. As it stands now, a 2-loss MNC team is a shocking anomaly. Institute a playoff, and it will become a regular occurrence. That, by necessity, will mean that the outcomes of regular season games are less consequential than a non-playoff system. And, if the regular season games are less consequential, then they are less interesting and enjoyable. Hence, college football would become less enjoyable from September – December. And I don’t think a playoff would be that much more exciting than the current bowl system (at least, the top bowl games).

BTW, Jacquizz Rodgers was a 3* RB per Rivals. He had offers from Oregon State, Louisiana Tech, SMU, Arizona, Baylor, Houston, Illinois and Kansas State.

“Jacquizz”

“Language of origin please?”

“From Latin with French influences.”

“Jacquizz”

“Are there any alternate pronunciations?”

“Jacquizz”

“Can you use it in a sentence, please?”

“In a turn of events, Jacquizz penetrated wide Beaver gaps to pound through the usually, trustworthy Trojans, spawning a nationwide rash of beaver frenzy.”

Did they say he was from Texas? Probably a three star because of size? People always underestimate those of us that are small in stature…

Jacquizz reminded me a little of a great little back that helped OU win the MNC in 2000, and a great little back from KSU that whupped ’em in a B12 CC game.

Scipio actually has a manuscript on the influence of modern suburban vs. inner city naming trends and it’s impact on the starting backfields of D1 schools. Very cutting edge. Quarterbacks named J’Deandre or D’Lamontrelle and tailbacks named Cody, Taylor or Parker completely upset his model. Hence they are coveted in certain google news groups.

Where the fuck has ChrisApplewhite been?

Possibly recovering from wounds suffered in an attack by his pet chupacabra.

A playoff system would have had no effect on last night’s game. The reason it was exciting was because the top ranked team lost to an underdog. Just like it is every time that happens in every sport, playoff or not.

By allowing only two teams to play for the national championship, you’re already diminishing the importance of the regular season. At this point in the season, there are probably about 80 teams who know they won’t finish first or second in the BCS. How are their games meaningful under the current system?

Playoff will happen in the near future. There is no avoiding it. If anything, ultimately the fans will demand it, especially from the me, me, me generation. As the old guard either dies off or gets too old to care, the me, me, me generation will have their say.

And I have to say that I am in support of it myself. Maybe if we do, we can get UT and Mack to finally schedule some real out of conference matchups for a change. The way we crown our MNC now is just a joke and is just way too subjective for it to have any true objective merit. There must be some reason for why the playoff format is being delayed. Haven’t thought about it much, but it probably has something to do with temporary financial considerations. But, in short order, a playoff format will happen and it is inevitable, just as soon as all the old people die off or begin to suffer from alzheimer’s.

Where is ChrisApplewhite? The guy is rarer than Anderson high football victories.

“Scipio actually has a manuscript on the influence of modern suburban vs. inner city naming trends and it’s impact on the starting backfields of D1 schools. Very cutting edge.”

Consider this my formal request for said manuscript.

Brick, I watch college basketball even more intently than college football, and I think college football is great.

I imagine you’re not bored with the NFL because the NFL has a playoff. You’re bored with the NFL because the NFL is boring.

A playoff system would have had no effect on last night’s game. The reason it was exciting was because the top ranked team lost to an underdog. Just like it is every time that happens in every sport, playoff or not.

Right. Last night was no more exciting than when the Cubs drop a game to the Marlins in June. Or when the Lakers lose a squeeker to the Bucks in March. Or when the Cowboys lose by a field goal to the Panthers in November.

None of those games is even remotely as exciting as what we saw last night. And there will be probably 20 games as important and exciting as that one over the course of this season.

By allowing only two teams to play for the national championship, you’re already diminishing the importance of the regular season. At this point in the season, there are probably about 80 teams who know they won’t finish first or second in the BCS. How are their games meaningful under the current system?

Because the bowl and rankings system opens up a huge set of goals beyond just the singular holy grail of a national championship. Our ‘98 season was exciting because the Horns were ranked in the Top 15, won a semi-major bowl in impressive style to finish off the year and had a Heisman winner on the team. What NFL fan gets excited about a wildcard birth, first-round playoff loss and an MVP winner? That’s essentially the equivalent of what the ‘98 Horns did, and the city had a f*cking parade for it. Rice, who has NO chance of winning an NC in the foreseeable future, had a very successful season just by making it to a minor bowl game a couple of years ago. They were friggin’ thrilled with that.

A playoff tends to focus all attention on only one goal – winning the final game of an end-of-season single-elimination tournament – to the detriment of others. If you don’t believe me, just think about the focus in other sports.

I like college football the way it was about 10 years ago.

When you lost the battle of turnovers and explosives and are outrushed, you are 0-9,649 in the history of college football.

Actually it seemed USC won the battle of explosives. So delete “and explosives”. You are still 2-9,647.

I imagine you’re not bored with the NFL because the NFL has a playoff. You’re bored with the NFL because the NFL is boring.

To me, the NFL is boring because an 11-5 team can go on and win the “championship” by getting hot and beating 3 teams with far better records, each of which whipped the “champions” in the regular season. It’s the same reason I don’t follow baseball, basketball or hockey (two of which I love to play and watch) – because wins and losses just aren’t that consequential.

Would you rather that people vote on the NFL champ?

As to basketball and hockey, again, the issue is not the playoff itself, but that those seasons may be too long.

Blame the playoff, if you must, on the World Series. Everything playoff in American sport flows from that.

The World Series was the best solution to the problem at the time. Two separate leagues, and a desire to select one best team. I don’t have a problem with the World Series so much (in fact, it is roughly equivalent to a bowl game between two teams with no mutual regular-season opponents). It’s the LCS and LDS that bother me.

And, yes, I wouldn’t mind a polling system for the NFL.

Determining an athletic champion by polling is absurd and inherently corrupt. College football has enough problems with corruption (such as academic cheating, playing players and their families, exploitation of the athletes, injuring way too many players seriously, etc) that it needs to clean up its act wherever it can.

Brick is half right—a 16 team playoff really would have a significant negative impact on the regular season that would, in my opinion, out weigh the benefit of the playoff.

But an 8 team playoff, with 6 of the slots going to conference champs, and only 2 at large spots available, would still place a premium on wining in the regular season. It would also create an incentive for teams to schedule tough out of conference games for two reasons: 1) They would improve your team for conference games—and winning your conference would be the clearest way to make the playoffs. 2)If you fail to win your conference, you would need to ensure that you had a high SOS in order to be one of only two at large teams in the nation to make the playoffs. A marquee out of conference win would be necessity to take an at large spot.

Determining that an “athletic champion” means the team or individual that won a couple of games at the end is absurd and inherently artificial.

Once people accept that a “champion” in most sports is just a mythical construct that only matters if you let it, everyone can chill the fuck out and enjoy the show.

As a Missouri fan, that game was somewhere near infinitely more entertaining to me due to the lack of a playoff than it would have been otherwise. If there was a 16 team playoff, I don’t give a third of a fuck about that game and continue being awed by the idea that a giant meteor crashing into Earth would have an antipodal effect on the complete opposite side. Wow!

I’m with you guys who want to decide championships based on votes instead of play-offs. This is something that makes figure skating extra special, along with sparkly uniforms, crotch padding and men in makeup. Play-offs are just so butch.

I’m still waiting on the day someone shows me a season where five teams were deserving of a shot at the national title, let alone eight. Huck is probably most suited for this task.

I’m all for a 4 team playoff. There’s just too many years lately where there are three deserving teams and no way to account for the third team. I’m willing to give one extra team a shot it may not deserve to safely settle the score.

I am for a playoff but there never will be a playoff. By going to a 8 team or 16 team playoff 50ish teams will lose money completely. There are too many teams getting good money for bowls. They are not going to give up the pot of gold at the end of the season.

Rogers set a Texas HS record for TD’s so he was hardly an unknown commodity. Maybe UT needs to get over this height/weight fetish and just recruit some football players.

The difference between playoff proponents and bowl/poll proponents is that the former subscribe to the lie that it is possible to precisely determine which is the best team and the latter recognize a fundamental ambiguity in the undertaking. If the answer can never be determined accurately, might as well leave the question up for debate.

<em>The difference between playoff proponents and bowl/poll proponents is that the former subscribe to the lie that it is possible to precisely determine which is the best team and the latter recognize a fundamental ambiguity in the undertaking.</em>

A playoff doesn’t determine the best team. It determines the best team at the time of the playoff. Kansas is the national champion because they were the best team during March Madness, not necessarily the best during the season.

That holds true with every playoff in just about every sport.

At this point, I’d be fine with introducing a playoff just because it would get people to shut the fuck up, even if it’s not the ideal way of determining the ‘best’ team. But I abhor the idea of it involving more than 8 teams because that adulterates the whole sport. Basically, I agree with ‘anonymous’, but I’d like 7 of the 8 spots reserved for conference champions (still keeping a backdoor for independents).

It’s tough to preserve that ‘regular season’ (I hate that expression) importance, but I think the key is the conference championship. As long as that’s relevant, you might be able to sustain the weekly desperation to win. And then at season’s end, the mindless masses can still get their cheap ‘happy ending.’

So, we still haven’t located ChrisApplewhite?

“Memphis is the national champion because they were the best team during March Madness, not necessarily the best during the season. "

KU fans would disagree.

Kafka-

The NCAA is injuring too many players? How do they do that?

“…Maybe UT needs to get over this height/weight fetish and just recruit some football players.”

Brushpile Bill- Have you looked at our Roster lately?

We have a ton of midgets, we play most of them and none of them do shit. Palmer, Collins, Kirkendol, Bobino, Hales, etc….

ChrisApplewhite ruptured his colon while trying to dunk a basketball. No one wants to sit at a computer with an injury like that. He tried to tape it up and walk it off but it didn’t work.

Brick Horn is right on. The only tweak I would make is to go to the old Bowl system with tie ins and have a plus win with the top two team standing after that. I’m sure everyone remembers the 83 season around here. On bowl day there were about 7-8 teams who had legitimate shots at the National Title and Miami was able to secure because others kept on losing

I didn’t watch the game, but I did fuck BrickHorn’s drunk slutty wife last night.

I feel good about my choice, frankly.

“By going to a 8 team or 16 team playoff 50ish teams will lose money completely. There are too many teams getting good money for bowls. They are not going to give up the pot of gold at the end of the season.”

Why would this happen? We already have 30-plus meaningless bowls. There might be fewer bowls, but it’s no better or worse than having a NIT in basketball. Example: There is no reason why, with an eight-team playoff, that the Alamo Bowl couldn’t continue to match Big Ten No. 4 and Big 12 No. 4.

What do you guys think about having a collegiate football playoff? I don’t think I’ve seen much in the way of conjecture on that subject.

Also, while you’re at it, how would you bail out the financial industry (or would you even try). Also, what are your dead-set policies regarding pollution and carbon emissions?

Finally, just to give us a civil area of discussion, what are your thoughts on abortion?

Ready …. go!

Also, fuck OU. Also, fuck Arkie and CU in the near-term.

The year Auburn was left out of the national title game was a true travesty. As they were in hindsight a much better team than Oklahoma. However, they were penalized for their weak non-conference schedule that year. The system by and large has gotten it right as the body of work of the whole season is taken in account. The system worked when Florida went instead of Michigan based on strength of schedule and quality wins.

As I stated above, a playoff would ruin the best sport on this planet. I am in favor of returning to the old bowl system to Make New Year’s Day more exciting and having a plus one the week after between the top two teams and you would definitely know who those teams would be.

We can agree on one thing, the BCS has ruined New Year’s Day as all the bowl games on now meaningless in the NC race. An extended playoff would have the same effect on the regular season.

Yes, it is so much more exciting to have 29 absolutely meaningless bowl games and 1 bowl that means anything than it would be to have 15 incredibly meaningful and exiciting playoff games leading up to a championship game played by teams who got there by winning on the field of play rather than in the minds of a bunch of pissant newspaper reporters and computer geeks.

Sheesh.

BTW, as for the ridiculous argument that a real playoff system would somehow diminish the importance of the regular season – after Thursday’s game, USC now has one loss, and is one more loss away from being out of the national championship picture. If an 8 team playoff existed, USC would have one loss and would be one loss away from being out of the national championship picture.

Big change, that.

Playoffs determine a champion. I don’t know what a bowl game gives you.

Whether or not either finds you your “Best Team” seems less important than whether or not one is more entertaining.

Ore St – USC was entertaining for the upset. If USC had covered, it would hardly have warranted any discussion at all.

Most regular season matchups between teams competing for spot in the mnc bowl game are conference games, with some memorable exceptions. Those conference games would retain their championship implications with post a season playoff, assuming conference champs go and at large bids are hard to come by.

Now quick, someone figure out how to get the networks and school paid like they are now with a playoff system and you can start changing the world (of college football).

USC now has one loss, and is one more loss away from being out of the national championship picture.

USC is out of the picture right now unless the Big 12 or SEC champ has a loss, and maybe not even then. An undefeated OU/Texas and Georgia/Alabama get first turn. Hell, a one loss Big 12 champ might still have the inside track with the way the Pac 10 sucks this year. USC just went from having their reservations booked in Miami to being on the outside looking in. Their fate rests in the hands of other teams, computers, and voters. In a playoff system, they just went from the #1 seed to the #4 seed. In short, you are wrong.

Now quick, someone figure out how to get the networks and school paid like they are now with a playoff system and you can start changing the world (of college football).

Wow, you really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?
1) Figure out how to get the Big 10 and Pac 10 to get the Rose Bowl on board. All you’re doing is asking them to give up a 100+ year tradition to satisfy a knee jerk reaction. Good luck with that.
2) Figure out how to get anyone but the top 3 teams in each conference on board. It’s not OU, UT, Florida, Georgia, USC, Ohio State, and the like that won’t buy this. It’s the OTHER 80% of each and every single conference. Well over half of the BCS schools aren’t playing for the title every year, they’re playing for a bowl. Again, good luck with that.

Bgrk, playoffs do NOT determine a champion in any way superior to a bowl system. They determine who is the hottest team at the end of the season.

BTW, as for the ridiculous argument that a real playoff system would somehow diminish the importance of the regular season – after Thursday’s game, USC now has one loss, and is one more loss away from being out of the national championship picture. If an 8 team playoff existed, USC would have one loss and would be one loss away from being out of the national championship picture.

The two situations are not the same, because the latter would create far less interest in subsequent games than does the former. USC now must rely on a series of upsets to get a shot. Thus, games involving the top contenders against weaklings will be interesting because, should an undefeated contender lose, they’re out and USC might be back in.

Given a playoff, no upsets need to occur for USC to have a shot. In the natural order, less than 8 major teams will suffer only 1 loss. So, USC is pretty much guaranteed a shot if they just win out – or even if they drop another game.

No matter how you look at it, the current system assigns more significance to regular season games than would a playoff system. This is a fact of simple mathematics. The more teams you give a chance at the end of the season, the lower the barriers to entry for a title shot and the less significant a regular season loss becomes. You can argue to what degree playoffs will diminish the significance of regular season losses. That’s a legitimate debate. But the claim that a playoff will not render regular season games at least somewhat less significant is simply false.

you’re a knee jerk.

Just a heads up. When OU gets the No. 1 ranking this weekend it will put them into a tie for first with Notre Dame for first place in the number of times ranked No. 1 in the AP Poll. And after OU beats Baylor next week, the tie will be broken. That’s how it works.

jacquizz was the all time leading rusher for touchdowns in texas state history if im not mistaken…he just didnt have size to go to most major d1 schools

apparently he has sufficient size to jam it up their asses