The comment came right out of the blue. And maize. Michigan coach Lloyd Carr has gone from the hot seat to the catbird seat with a 5-0 start and this week used his lofty perch to make a proclamation from above.
“I think we need a 16-team playoff,” Carr said.
Speaking Tuesday at the Big Ten conference call, Carr came across as a wise, old sage rather than a desperate coach grasping for straws.
The timing couldn’t be better. The season reaches the halfway point Saturday – and don’t look now, but the once-embattled Bowl Championship Series could be in for another mind-numbing controversy.
Look at the schedules and there’s a good chance four teams will be unbeaten at the end of the year: the winner of the Michigan-Ohio State game, Southern California, the West Virginia-Louisville winner and Boise State.
Yes, we know we said the same thing last year and USC and Texas were the only unbeaten teams left. But the BCS got lucky. It dealt to an inside straight. Don’t expect the cards to fall right this time. After all, controversy ripped through the BCS championship game four of the previous five years.
Here’s Carr’s plan:
“Take the top 16 teams and give the top eight home-field advantage,” he said. “Do that in early December and you have eight teams left. You can continue to have the bowl system. You can have a second round.
“I think, in the first round, if you have it at home on the college campuses, it would be tremendous for college football and the fans wouldn’t have to travel.”
Carr was asked what he thought about university presidents saying a playoff system through December would affect athletes’ academics.
“When we went to 12 games there wasn’t much concern about academics,” he snarled.
Carr’s plan doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Auburn of getting accepted, but the point is a major coach is talking about change, which college football so desperately needs.
Joe Paterno, the only coach with more seniority in the Big Ten than Carr, is willing to pull up some chairs, invite the presidents and athletic directors and break open the beer and discussion.
“We’ve never had a forum to figure out if a playoff is best and what is the best playoff system so we can move ahead,” Paterno said Tuesday. “I don’t like the BCS for a lot of reasons. I’m for a playoff. I’m not sure if I could tell you 16 teams would be the best way to do it. But I think the dialogue has to start.
“If we get a group dialogue going, I think we’ll have a system that’s better than the BCS.”
Unfortunately, nothing can change for a while. Fox Sports has a contract for the BCS championship game through the 2009 season, and president Ed Goren told me in July his network was in no position to tell the presidents how to run their sport.
“We’re done,” Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville said. “Probably for my tenure and JoePa’s and Lloyd’s. I don’t see it changing.”
Pity poor Tuberville and the rest of the Southeastern Conference. No. 2 Auburn, No. 5 Florida and No. 10 Georgia are 5-0. No. 9 Louisiana State and No. 13 Tennessee, both 4-1, have already lost conference games. With five teams in the top 13 and with an SEC Championship game looming in December, no SEC team can expect to survive this savage league unbeaten.
One loss and an SEC team is likely done. It’s finished. It’s through. It shouldn’t be. But it probably is. No conference would benefit more from the best solution of all: “plus one.” Keep the current system, redo the rankings at the end of the bowls and the top two teams play the following week.
Two years ago, it would have pitted Tuberville’s 13-0 Auburn team against 13-0 USC.
“There’s no reason on this earth why we can’t have the best four at the end of the year, have the regular bowl games and pick the top two to play the last one,” Tuberville said. “That’s the legitimate way. We’ve already added a BCS bowl game. I understand they’re trying to avoid lawsuits, but first take care of the players and the sport and then work backwards.”
What he means is a “plus one” would create extra money for all the non-BCS schools who fought for access. The BCS subsequently added the fifth BCS bowl this year. The truth is, when it comes to football, the presidents don’t care about academics. They care about not alienating bowl officials who feel one more game would put their bowl in the toilet bowl.
However, most of them already are. The second half starts next week, folks. Let the debate begin, even though the presidents won’t.
New stadium at Minnesota
Minnesota broke ground Saturday on a new on-campus stadium due to open in 2009, and not a day too soon for Gophers coach Glen Mason. The Metrodome protected fans from the elements, but the 2 miles from campus might as well be 200 for recruits. Minnesota is the only Big Ten school without an on-campus stadium.
“It’s been a major disadvantage because people we’re recruiting against constantly use it against us,” Mason said. “Not only that it’s not an on-campus stadium, but a lot of times they convince them it’s a lack of commitment to football by the University of Minnesota, which isn’t the case.”
TCF Bank Stadium, to be built on a campus parking complex, will have 50,000 seats in a horseshoe design. The $248 million project was financed by private, corporate and state contributions.
Thievery in the SEC
Last week’s theft of Tuberville’s laptop with Auburn’s gameplan for the South Carolina game turned out to be harmless. The thief was a mere drifter and not a defensive coordinator. But it brought back memories of Florida’s playbook landing on eBay last year.
It did no harm. Florida won four of its last five, and coach Urban Meyer isn’t worried about it happening again, saying, “We run a unique-style offense and it’s not unique anymore. It’s not because of the playbook. It’s because of the comfort level of the people running it.”
Still, some are worried.
“I don’t know how much it would help them because they don’t know when you call something,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “If there’s a bunch of signals in there, they could probably pick up things here and there. What bothers me is that’s the way they think it’s the way they do their business.”
Footnotes
Non-BCS schools are 12-79 against the BCS. … Ohio State suffered its first significant injury when safety Anderson Russell injured his knee covering a kickoff. No problem. The Buckeyes have been interchanging safeties all year. … Meanwhile, USC lost another receiver when senior Chris McFoy injured his shoulder at Washington State and will miss four to six weeks. Dwayne Jarrett remains doubtful Saturday against Washington. … Speaking of USC, who was the last coach to win at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum? Washington coach Tyrone Willingham. … The 1,181 yards by Northern Illinois’ Garrett Wolfe broke the NCAA mark for most rushing yards after five games, but don’t think he padded it against Mid-American Conference competition. He got 285 all-purpose yards at Ohio State.
STRANGER THAN FICTION
BROWN NAILS ROLE
If you saw Tuesday’s premier episode of “Friday Night Lights” on NBC, no, that was not an actor. That was Texas coach Mack Brown, playing a parent at a pep rally, jumping all over the new high school coach in town about the importance of winning.
However, it sure looked like an actor – Brown played the role that well. No wonder. He’d been on the receiving end enough times to know the role. “I didn’t need a script,” Brown said Monday during the Big 12 Conference call. “I had 33 years of parents talking to me during the week of the game.”
Brown did not use a script. It’s true. He winged the entire spiel. “Yes, I did,” Brown said proudly. “The first reason I did it was my daughter is in the movie business in L.A. She asked me to do it. Secondly, there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on high school coaches in the state of Texas. There’s more pressure on our high school coaches year in and year out than there are on our college coaches, and they don’t get paid near the same.
“I thought that being a parent putting pressure on a high school coach on Friday night might also portray to fans across the country how much pressure there is on a high school football coach in the state of Texas to win.”
If you didn’t see it, Brown nailed it. He confronts the coach outside the pep rally and nearly becomes possessed in his overbearing enthusiasm. He all but told the coach: win or else.
“The young coach, who’s a tremendous actor (Kyle Chandler), told me later, ‘I thought you were serious. You’ve got a bad job,”‘ Brown said. “I said, ‘It’s not a bad job, but I do have discussions with parents.”‘
