As the college football season wears down, you can pull a few chestnuts from the fire. Like: These were the best of times; these were the worst of times. Like: These are the times that try men’s souls. Like: Happy days are here again. Like: Man, are we glad that’s over.
The climatic events are becoming all-important, all-consuming … and overshadowing the regular season and schedule. NASCAR has the Chase. The NBA has a drawn-out playoff system. Baseball has the ALCS and NLCS and the World Series. NCAA basketball has the Road to the Final Four. The NFL has the Super Bowl. Conference titles used to mean something. Now, it is all about the big dance. and there’s no bigger cotton-eyed Joe in college football than the current play-off system.
Who’s going to make the final four fills the airways, the newsprint. All the speculation. Down the stretch they come. Well, it detracts from the regular season.
Did you see the stands in Morgantown, West Virginia, where the Mountaineers took on Iowa State? The stadium was as empty as a coal mine during an UMWA strike. The weather? The won-loss record? The play-off elimination? Maybe it’s just general disinterest among the fans.
Which brings up another point. The Big 12 Conference never should have brought in West Virginia. The Mountaineers just don’t fit. The selection committee should have given more attention to Louisville, Cincinnati and Memphis. Those schools would have provided proximity and bigger media markets.
Yes, the committee had to do something. Missouri, Nebraska, Texas A&M and Colorado had left. Too bad, so sad.
Interesting, though, that three of those four schools aren’t eligible for bowls this season. Texas A&M is the only one honored with post-season play.
As time goes on, Missouri and Nebraska will rue the day they left the Big 12.
Just look at Missouri. The Tigers are going to suffer in the Southeast. Who can create a rivalry like Kansas? You Tiger fans — are you ready to spat with Florida and Vanderbilt? Nah. And what about recruiting? No longer do the Tigers go into Texas to play. That means Texas is much harder to recruit because mommies and daddies like to see their kids play — in person, not just on TV. And those trips to Athens, Georgia, are difficult for followers to make.
You always wonder when you hear a coach is moving on after he says, “I want to spend more time with my family.” That’s what Mizzou Coach Gary Pinkel said in his retirement address. Yes, of course, he does, indeed, have a big reason, non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer of the blood.
No way you should second-guess his rationale for resigning. But you would be remiss not to mention that he was coaching a program that appears to be heading down, down, down and an administration not necessarily in his corner.
After the 28-3 loss Saturday to Arkansas, the Tigers record stands at 5-7, coming off a season where they lost 42-13 to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. Rumors persist that despite the losing record, the Tigers will receive a bowl bid because of a lack of .500 teams. However, Pinkel said he wasn’t interested in coaching in a bowl.
The pool of replacements for his successor appears to have dwindled by two with Memphis Coach Justin Fuente apparently headed to Virginia Tech and Toledo Coach Matt Campbell going to Iowa State. Pinkel came to Missouri from Toledo.
Is Missouri a plum job with the negatives of recruiting building and the administration in continual disarray?
The curators certainly were unhappy with Pinkel for standing up with the football players in their protest against perceived racial bias on campus. The administration was under attack.
Which brings up this: Were the players going to class? What about their responsibilities? Most of those players were on scholarship and they said they weren’t going to play against BYU. Look, they’re getting, what, a $30,000 a year scholarship, plus other amenities, to play football. Is it not their duty to play? Yes, racial bias is worth standing up against but do you overlook your responsibilities?
As for Pinkel, he stood with players who were highly critical of those who run the university.
Administration/coach relationships can become fragile. At Kansas State, Coach Bill Snyder and Athletic Director John Currie have a strained relationship. Snyder remains upset that Currie won’t consider his son, Sean Snyder as the replacement football coach at K-State. Then there was the seemingly slight of Snyder in the construction of the new facility at the North End of the stadium. Snyder reportedly walked into the building and asked sarcastically: Where’s my office. He apparently had not been offered say-so on the office design.
So, you ask, is Snyder going to retire after this season? Lots of rumors to that effect. It would seem illogical because he wants to coach, for one thing, and he surely is disappointed with the season record of 5-6 and wanting to go out on a much higher note. He has a lot of talent coming back. Plus, who would replace him?
He has a good staff but they are solid assistants and apparently not top-drawer head coaches, as a couple of them, Wes Miller and Dana Dimel, for example, have shown. A new coach would have to be a 24/7 guy just as Snyder has been. Finding one to do that is difficult, darn difficult.
And will Kansas find someone to bring the Jayhawks out of the doldrums. David Beaty appears to have the energy but can he overcome the aura of basketball, the lack of really good facilities and the difficulty of recruiting?
Rivalries, of course, play big roles in building programs. Colorado is off in the Rockies and will have difficult times building any rivalry, especially with most of the opponents on the West Coast. Texas A&M will miss playing intra-state games but recruiting Texas players shouldn’t be a problem, especially with all the money in the athletic till.
Missouri and Nebraska are really suffering from not having a team you really love to hate. No more KU for Mizzou. No more Oklahoma for Nebraska. The Huskers suffer the same fate as the Tigers — the difficulty in recruiting Texas. Nebraska’s record this season: 5-7. Is the Big Ten that much tougher than the Big 12 or is it more difficult to sell the program without all the hoopla that rivalries produce?
Man, those Nebraska-Oklahoma duels. Oh well. You’ll just have to go with the hype of the playoffs.