Tuesday, December 9, 2014

The Football Bust, Harbaugh Update, and the CFP CHAOS

The Football Bust 

The Michigan Football Bust happened last night and was well attended.  Some links and photos from the event can be found here.


http://www.detroitnews.com/videos/sports/college/university-michigan/2014/12/09/20127501/

As always, it sounds like a great time was had by all Michigan Men that attended and there were many accolades for former Coach Hoke from the team and the brass that attended. 

Not surprisingly, Gardner and Ryan were named the captains as voted on by their team mates.  Gardner’s speech was well conceived.  Gardner also mentioned Coach Bo and the now famous locker room poster:

Gardner mentioned legendary coach Bo Schembechler as he summed up his career. Schembechler's words, "Those who stay will be champions," were clear in Gardner's remarks.
"I stayed, and I will live the rest of my life as a champion," Gardner said.
But I would like to give a big hat-tip to Will Hagerup who apparently got very emotional for Hoke while speaking and ended his address with a quote from the one and only Fielding H. Yost (via mvictors.com tweet and a John U Bacon Tweet):

“But do let me reiterate the spirit of Michigan.  It is based on a deathless loyalty to Michigan and all her ways; an enthusiasm that makes it a second nature for Michigan Men to spread the gospel of their university to the world’s distant outposts; a conviction that nowhere is there a better university, in any way, than this Michigan of ours.” - Yost

Sounds about right….Take the responsibility and spread the word, Michigan Men!

However, no word on who the new coach is.  This is only the 2nd time in the history of the Football Bust that Michigan’s “Active” Coach hasn’t attended.   The other time was in 1937. 

So, there’s a little trivia tidbit for you on Tuesday.

San Fran Zombies – Harbaugh is a Dead Man Walking

From the San Fran 49er beat writer, Tim Kawakami, is the following article. 

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/2014/12/08/ers-zombies-harbaugh-dead-san-francisco/20097831/

If you can’t link or don’t want to read it, in summary:  The 49er’s are toast, er, Zombies walking as they cannot possibly get a play-off berth in the NFC west (where Seattle is 9-4 and Arizona is 10-3).  It would take a complete collapse of one of those teams and San Fran winning the rest of their games.  In NFL terminology, that’s called, “Impossible.”

So, Harbaugh is kind of in San Fran Limbo Land.  And everyone knows that San Fran is unhappy with Harbaugh and looking to “trade” his contract for draft picks or players.  But here’s the thing:  If I’m ANYBODY ELSE in the NFL and I know you’re going to more or less can a guy at the end of the season or sooner, why on earth would I give anything up when I can have a free run at Jimmy in however many weeks until you fire him?

That’s limboF’d if you do and F’d if you don’t.  San Fran management painted themselves into a corner.  And Jim hangs in the balance.

The only thing that makes sense for anyone in this complicated game of chess right now is Michigan should act, and it sounds like they have.  According to a lot of reports, there’s been contact.  That we can believe.  What’s come out of that contact is where all the rumors start, and that’s where you need to apply “the sniff test”  to figure out what’s going on.  My guess is Hackett spoke to Jim or his agent, one of them said, “Yeah, we’re looking at our future options right now” and Hackett said, “Okay, well Michigan is open to discussion and here’s what we’re prepared to offer for starters.”

And that was probably it.  Jim Harbaugh is fully aware that the Michigan option  

Everything else is BS.  Don’t believe the NFL analysts that Jim told Michigan no.  That would be utterly ludicrous for, well, anyone that has as much uncertainty in his career as Jim does at this moment in time.  You just don’t limit your options at this point.  It’s common sense.

But, Jim can’t do anything until he either resigns (unlikely) or is canned (likely).  San Fran just needs to get to that point and realize that their options are limited.  Limbo. 

Big Ten Bowls – Vegas Has Spoken

And it isn’t pretty for the B1G.  Which, well, I dunno.  I mean, I know the B1G isn’t good, but every single game they are a dog?

That’s a tough one to believe.

LA Tech -5 vs Illinois
North Carolina -3 vs Rutgers
Boston College -2.5 vs Penn State
USC -5.5 vs Nebraska
Stanford -13 vs Maryland
Auburn -5.5 vs Wisconsin
Baylor -3 vs Michigan State
Missouri -5.5 vs Minnesota
Alabama -10 vs Ohio State
Tennessee -3 vs Iowa

But there you have it.  My earlier analysis that the B1G going 0.500 was a possibility just took a back seat to a more realistic 3-7 or 2-8.  And I’m not even sure which 2 or 3 teams I’m picking yet, but there’s bound to be a couple of upsets….right?

Speaking of the CFP

So, are we happy?  Frankly, the MMQ couldn’t be happier.  We still have controversy, which, if you’re a fan of the NCAA Tournament, you know just goes with any college sports play-off and tournament territory.  But instead of having a “weak” computer and public opinion poll handing us undefeated Florida State vs. Alabama in the BCS Championship, we have two additional teams that can vie against FSU and Bama.  And that’s good.  We would have been screaming that a 1-loss Oregon was a much better team than FSU.  And TCU, Baylor and ohio would have been additional noise.

And that’s a very good thing.  Two less teams got hosed this year and get the opportunity to prove they belong and deserve a shot.  I’m not sure the suckeyes are going to be able to do much against Bama, but the Ducks may prove they’re worthy against FSU and earn a spot in the national title game. 

And if FSU and Bama prevail, nothing’s changed….But, this whole thing got me to thinking about the MMQ position of “Conference Champions ONLY” and is that really the right thinking?  If we would have had TOTAL CHAOS (Which  I was vehemently rooting for) on Friday/Saturday, well, we would have the following conference champions:

PAC12 – Arizona
B1G – Wiscy
ACC – GTU
SEC – Mizzou
Big 12 – TCU and Baylor…or whatever they want to tell us this week.

So, that would have left us with 5(6) teams where only 2 (Baylor and TCU) had been in the top 6 prior to Saturday.  And I’m not sure that any of the other CHAOS champions are worthy of playing for the National Title.

Yet, I have firmly believed up to this point that you have to earn the conference title to be in

Where does that leave me?

As the MMQ, I’m in a big time conundrum (For the Sparty and suckeyes out there – that means I’m extremely confused/perplexed/baffled).  IF I had gotten my wish and said that only conference champs in the CFP, well, I would be bitching pretty loud that Oregon, Bama and even FSU deserve a spot.  And I do believe they each deserve a spot based on their overall season performance.  But they would have lost the most important game on their calendar!!!

So, what now???

Just like the NCAA Basketball Tournament, I suppose that’s why the committee is there to bring sound reasoning into the discussion.  If there had been CHAOS, I’m guessing we would have seen the following:

ACC:  FSU would have been OUT of the F4 if they were the only CHAOS loss.  That much is clear.  If Quad Chaos – I could see an argument where they were still a 1-loss team that deserved a spot and chance to defend National Title.
SEC:  Alabama, I’m guessing, would probably be in and would have fallen to the 4th slot, regardless of how many CHAOS losses we had.  Which, okay.  But does Miss St. with 2 losses look better than Bama with two?
PAC12:  I could actually see where Oregon falls to 6-7, right behind Arizona, and if there had been at least DOUBLE CHAOS (Two top 4 teams losing), then POSSIBLY, Arizona could have been in the F4.
B1G:  there’s no case for a B1G team getting in….At least, there’s not one I can dream up at this point.

B1G 12In the event of Double, Triple or Quad CHAOS the Big12 probably has two teams in the Final 4. 

And somehow…that’s wrong, too.  But I can’t solve ALL OF THIS entirely by adding additional teams/games to the play-off.  But it’s not a bad first step8 teams would insure that anyone playing in Championship Weekend is probably in the final 8 even if they lost.  The committee could see to that and the next 4 teams in line get moved up and seeded as well. 

IS that the answer?

What are we going to do?

Frankly, I’m stumped.  I guess we ride this 4 team/3 game leg of the CFP journey out until we have a single thru Quad Chaos scenario occur and see how it all plays out.  But you can sure as hell bet that when it happens, there will be an uproar….and it will be LOUD. 

Correction


Yesterday I posted that there were 16 teams in the B1G and there are actually only 14. I’m not sure where the ole noggin’ was yesterday morning, but I thank G-Money for pointing that out.  Life without an editor is tough.  Last one left because the pay sucked….go figure.

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