2021 College Football Thread

[unclevlad]

The churn never ends.  It just buries itself into the ground and waits, like 17-year locusts.

[unclevlad]

My, my.

 

Michigan Wolverines may well have to root for Ohio State in a few weeks when OSU meets Michigan State...MSU over Michigan, 37-33 in the first of the triumvirate of games among the 3, who all came into this week 4-0.  Since they're all in the same division, only 1 can reach the conference championship game.  Got to think Michigan's best shot is if they gain the bid in a 3-way tie scenario, which means they have to beat OSU and OSU has to beat MSU.

 

If OSU drops both games, then Michigan is a 1-loss team that did not make its conference championship.  It MAY play out that they can get into the playoffs, but that would need lots of things to come out right.

 

And Iowa basically got throttled.  Defense did as much as they could, but no ball movement on offense, and red zone turnovers meant it wasn't much of a contest for most of the game.  So they're out.

[Pariah]

In local FCS action, Weber State leads Idaho State 34-17 with ~11 minutes left. With a win, Weber goes to 4-4 on the season.

 

About those four losses ... they came against FBS Utah, James Madison (currently ranked #5 in FCS), Montana State (#6), and UC Davis (#9). And the Wildcats beat #7 Eastern Washington on the hideous red turf of theirs last week.

 

Weber State's three remaining games are against Portland State, Southern Utah, and Northern Colorado--all teams the Wildcats should beat. Win out with a record of 7-4, including a top 10 road win, and that might just be good enough for an FCS at-large playoff bid.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Gators were very competitive for one quarter. Then the wheels came off. What a disaster. 😲

[Pariah]

Holy cats, what the heck was that?! BYU jumps out to a 21-0 lead in the first quarter, falls behind 42-38 at halftime, then outscores Virginia 21-0 in the fourth to win 66-49.

 

The game was a defensive coordinator's nightmare. 

[Pariah]

It's abnormally late and I should probably be asleep right now, but I'm not. So I had this thought about the upcoming 16-team Southeast Conference. It made me think of the only other 16-team FBS conference, the old Western Athletic Conference.

 

For the longest time, the WAC had eight teams. Then they brought aboard Air Force, which increased membership to nine, where it stayed for several more years. Eventually they also adopted Fresno State, which brought it to 10.

 

Then the old Southwest Conference evaporated, with four of their members joining the Big 8 to become the Big 12. The WAC absorbed three of the other four teams, along with three others, to expand to 16.

 

And then things got weird. The 16 teams were divided into four quadrants: one on the west coast, one in the intermountain west, one along the front range, and one in Oklahoma and Texas. Instead of a permanent arrangement of two 8-team divisions, the idea was to switch the quadrants around every couple of years to keep things fresh. 

 

After the first rotation, discussions apparently began in earnest about establishing two permanent 8-team divisions. Part of the problem: the proposed alignment put Air Force in a different division than Colorado State and Wyoming. This made those three schools a lot less interested in being part of the big conference. When they started talking to BYU and Utah and discovered similar sentiments there, the end of the 16-team WAC had begun. Those five schools, along with New Mexico, San Diego State, and UNLV (rather than longtime WAC member Hawaii, which was kind of surprising) defected from the conference and created the Mountain West.

 

So, how long until the same thing happens to the 16-team Southeast Conference?

 

I don't know how long the media agreement for the bigger, badder SEC will last. For kicks, let's say 2030. At that point, my guess is that some of the bigger, more influential programs will opt out. I'm thinking a 50/50 split between the haves and the have-nots of the conference. So Alabama, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Auburn, Oklahoma, Texas, and maybe Tennessee will decide that they can navigate their own way without having to share revenues with the likes of Vanderbilt and Kentucky. They defect from the SEC to form their own conference, triggering the next round of realignment.

 

Thoughts? 

 

[Cancer]

Whatever happens, it will be due to administrators chasing money, not football.

[Pariah]

Oh, absolutely. There's no question about that. It's entirely possible that the elite eight of the SEC will defect not just from the Conference, but from the NCAA itself. Why bother with inconvenient rules when there's money to be made?

[unclevlad]

With 16 teams and the limited number of games, it's guaranteed that you'll have scheduling inconsistencies...not only in football, but in all sports.  12 is probably the largest that's mostly manageable. But 14 is just about as bad as 16, so I think they'll Make Do.

 

It's possible that the NCAA will fracture, but it's also possible that's too messy to pull off.  It isn't just football;  that's the biggest driver but it's not the sole determinant.  Kentucky might be a cash sink for footballl, but how much basketball money does it bring in?  And the NCAA is about all sports, so this is a much more serious issue.

[Pariah]

Lady P lived in Lexington in the early Oughts. UK football tickets were easy to come by; a lot of entities were just giving them away (arguably because Kentucky football wasn't worth paying to see back in those days).

 

Now that UK actually wins games frequently, it's apparently completely different dynamic.

[Grailknight]

The SEC really only has one odd member and that's Vanderbilt. All the rest are the largest or second largest state universities in their states. Football money is king though. With a few exceptions, football dominates the other sports at all of these schools.  The Notre Dame model may actually be the best way of running college sports. Keep the conferences for all the sports except football and just go with 4-6 regions with each school playing 3-4 rivalry games(with some rotations) and flexible scheduling otherwise. 

[Pariah]

At this point, it just feels like piling on.

 

Report: MAC could land death blow to Conference USA

 

And why, exactly, would the MAC want Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee in the first place? 

[unclevlad]

15 hours ago, Pariah said:

At this point, it just feels like piling on.

 

Report: MAC could land death blow to Conference USA

 

And why, exactly, would the MAC want Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee in the first place? 

 

Because they're over-concentrated in their existing markets, and have no chance to expand in them.  Not from a standpoint of more teams...from marketing and recruiting.  Article points out, 9 of the 12 schools are in Ohio and Michigan.  Yes, well, Michigan means UM and MSU.  Ohio means OSU primarily, plus Cincy more recently.  Tennessee and Kentucky (the schools) don't have that level of impact in their states/markets.  And geographically, it's still fairly compact.  

[Pariah]

It ain't U$C, but it's a living....

 

Georgia Southern targeting ex-USC coach Clay Helton to lead Eagles football program, per reports

[Pariah]

I don't know whether to classify this as spiteful, petty, or just lame.

 

James Madison to be barred from CAA conference championships if school joins Sun Belt — or any other conference

[unclevlad]

Good Twitter comment:  

 

Quote

Over-under on when the CAA backs down on this is Thursday at noon.

 

And why pick one when all three fit?

[Pariah]

Mother of Hades, TCU may be wearing the ugliest uniforms I've ever seen:

- Black pants and socks

- Black jerseys with red numbers trimmed in red (except in the sleeves, where the numbers are purple trimmed in red)

- Purple helmets with a black stripe and logos, all trimmed in red

 

Yikes!

 

[Pariah]

Arizona beat Cal 10-3 for their first win in over 2 years.

 

Meanwhile, Michigan State's undefeated season is over thanks to a loss at Purdue.

 

Air Force lost to Army, meaning the Black Knights will retain the Commander in Chief's trophy.

[unclevlad]

Wake Forest lost to UNC.  The game was not a conference game.  

 

The joys of an excessively large conference is what happened there.  The game's a rivalry game that both schools want to maintain, but not enough of one for the conference to mandate they play every year as a conference game.

 

So 2 more top-10 teams lose to unranked teams.  Oregon, Ohio State, Cincy, and Alabama didn't pick up any style points...but they won.  

 

And ohhhhh nooooo..................

 

They were showing Bama's upcoming schedule.

 

Next week they host.......yes..........

 

NMSU.....

 

Rankings vary  of course, but Alabama is top 5 for sure, and NMSU is bottom 10 to bottom 5.  This one might not even make the board, the mismatch is so ridiculous.  They've given up at least 35 points in 6 consecutive losses...and Bama's an offensive machine.  Bama -60?  

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

I didn't see the Gators' game, but the score tells me it was a blowout. I can only imagine what the fans are saying this morning. Mullen is a marked man. 

[Grailknight]

3 minutes ago, Logan.1179 said:

I didn't see the Gators' game, but the score tells me it was a blowout. I can only imagine what the fans are saying this morning. Mullen is a marked man. 

 

It was worse than the final score. South Carolina took their foot off the gas in the 2nd half.

[Pariah]

A bit too far, perhaps.

 

Ole Miss apologizes for savagely trolling ex-coach Hugh Freeze after beating Liberty, his current team

[unclevlad]

Florida-South Carolina was 10-10, then the roof caved in.  South Carolina scored the next 30.  According to the box score.  As confirmation that, yeah, Mullen's days are probably numbered...they canned the DC and running game coordinator/offensive line coach.  Both came with Mullen in 2018, so they were very much Mullen guys.  NOT a good sign for the HC.

 

And yeah...SEC East isn't that strong, other than Georgia, so 2-5 in that division is Not Good.  The CBS full rankings have them at 37;  they've got Florida State and Missouri, both ranked 40-50 places lower.  And Samford, but they're FCS and I'm not sure if those count for bowl eligibility.  Losing to Florida State might be enough to get him fired immediately after, state rivalry game and all that.  Not making a bowl, likely same.  But just making one of the junk bowl games probably won't be enough to save him, no.

 

The NMSU Aggies are only +51.5 against Alabama.  I overestimated.  By comparison, the next largest line this week is UTSA -32.5 over Southern Miss.  Oh...take that back.  Different site has some more games.  Clemson is -40.5 versus UConn.  Still...51....<sigh>

 

it's looking like a fair number of schools are using this as Cupcake Weekend, playing totally non-competitive non-conference games.  Or I might've just spotted the specific ones this week.  But there are more late-season cupcake matchups like this than in the past, as there are more legit, even conference, games in week 1 and 2.

[Pariah]

BYU is probably favored over BYE, but I can't seem to find the line anywhere. 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

24 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

As confirmation that, yeah, Mullen's days are probably numbered...they canned the DC and running game coordinator/offensive line coach.  Both came with Mullen in 2018, so they were very much Mullen guys.