Emails in on Gundy, Obama, rankings & playoff
Good catch of emails this week, talking about rankings and playoffs and OU halfbacks and Mike Gundy. Let’s get to it.
My reality rankings drew a lot of buzz. Marc, a Texas fan, wrote, “Florida ahead of Tech? If you base that ranking on what they have done, how can you rank a team that lost at home to Ole Miss over an undefeated team that just beat Texas and OSU? I don’t see it. And although I’m not totally sold on OU, I can’t see them below underachieving Georgia. At least not until next week after Tech clobbers them.”
Here’s why. My reality rankings look at the whole season. Not just who you lost to, but also who you beat. And the SEC teams have an edge because their conference is deeper. The Big 12 is better at the top, but the SEC is better in the middle and at the bottom.
Jim wrote, “I like the concept of your reality poll but I must confess that you might be going against your own rule. You state ‘what they have done’ but you seem to go against that statement … everyone loves Florida. They appear to be very good. They have wins over an average LSU team and a good but not great Georgia. They lost to a 5-4 Mississippi team which is not ranked and they lost to them at home. Give Tech some love. They have done just what you said they should do. Beat everyone you play and you will be the best. OU should be fourth (only loss to a team in front of them) and Florida would be fifth (loss to an unranked team at home).”
Here’s what fascinates me. Everyone is always obsessed with who someone lost to and rarely focuses on who you beat. Tech isn’t as high as some teams because Tech started its season in October. If Tech beats OU, Tech will be higher. If OU beats Tech, OU will move up. But you get no credit for beating rumdums. And the Sooners’ schedule is back-loaded. Two tough tests still to come. That seems kind of obvious to me.
Jay didn’t like OU being ranked behind USC: “If you seriously think USC with a loss to Oregon State is better than OU with one loss to fourth-ranked Texas, you’ve finally lost your mind. Then again, you’ve always picked against the Sooners, so I guess I’m not really surprised.”
Yes, I certainly pick against the Sooners a lot. I think I’ve picked them to lose three times in the last five years. Anyway, USC’s resume’ is better than OU’s so far. Yes, USC has a worse loss than does OU, but USC also has a better victory (Ohio State) than anything OU has. And the Trojans have more solid other victories than does OU. SC has won at Arizona and Virginia, two decent teams, and that’s better than OU’s road victories (K-State, Baylor, A&M). USC’s home victories (Oregon and California) are not far from OU’s home victories (Kansas, Cincinnati, TCU). OU and USC are very close. But so far, USC has done a little more.
My questioning of why Mike Gundy would turn his back on his defense during games generated a lot of response. Doug didn’t appreciate my stance on Gundy: “You said, ‘Punt or go for it on fourth down? Long field goal or pooch punt? Onside kick or kick it deep?’ In every single situation you mentioned above, Gundy would be standing on the sidelines, because the offense would either be on the field or would have just scored. Nice try, but you whiffed.”
Nice try, Doug, but you whiffed. I didn’t say Gundy was unavailable for the tough decision. I said a coach must weight all the factors that go into that decision, and if he’s had his back to half the game, no way can he adequately make an informed decision.
Jim wrote, “Thank you for writing what many are thinking! Gundy looks silly and not head-coachlike taking that approach. Especially when you see Leach using a 4X4 card.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Why is Leach, the ultimate offensive mastermind, able to take in the whole game but Gundy is not.
Charles wrote, “I can’t believe that OSU is having the best season in years and you question Gundy’s style? It drives you and all the experts on TV nuts, doesn’t it? I say more power to him. Perhaps if Stoops had left the offense alone, OU would have a couple more national titles and be undefeated this year. A good man knows his limitations.”
I find two things peculiar: 1. Why the OSU coach turns his back on half the game when no other head coach I’ve ever seen does it; and 2. Why anyone would not find it peculiar.
Don wrote, “I appreciate you having the courage to actually speak up about what I consider a bizarre practice of Gundy’s. I can’t imagine how, after he misses all those plays, (all but removing himself from the field at times), that he would have any kinda true feel for how the refs are calling it, the prevailing momentum at any given point, the pace that the opponent is trying to establish, etc., along with all the other intangibles that affect both offensive decisions as well as defensive ones. I guess he gives up the right to tell his players and backups to keep their heads in the game. It has been like the old story of ‘the emperors new clothes’ as I notice that the announcers after remarking about it repeatedly on the ABC broadcasts were not willing to have even the color person criticize such a strange way of coaching, and no one until your article had written anything at all that I am aware of. So strange is his isolation from the game that I’ve never seen it at any level, much less D1, and he does it to such an extent that Gundy seems to willfully try and ignore what is happening on the field even more completely by sitting behind objects and barriers that don’t even give him a view of the field if he should happen to look up. As Alice said, ‘Curioser and curioser.’”Well, I don’t have really have a response. Don said it better than I did.
As always, any column about a college football playoff fired up the masses. My point: we don’t need a playoff, but if we’re going to have one, let’s make it conference-champions only. Brad wrote, “All Obama did was voice what the vast majority of sports fan clamor for every year, a playoff. You agree with him that we need a playoff but you spend the first part of your commentary attacking him. I don’t get it.”
Actually, I don’t get it. I didn’t agree that we have to have a playoff, and I most certainly didn’t attack Obama. He’s attacked plenty, but not by sports columnists who tell him to fix health care and leave college football alone.
Mike, an LSU fan, wrote, “I am not in favor of a playoff for some of the reasons you mentioned. Every team should begin the year with aspirations to be their conferences champion. That will always keep the regular season as interesting as it has been. I also believe that the arguments are as much fun as the games themselves and football is the only sport that is on everyone’s mind the entire year. Your playoff recommendations are about the best I have seen so far except it adds too many games. I also believe that the Pac-10 and the Big 10 should be required to add teams to reach 12 and have a conference championship game. The most unfair part of today’s environment is not the BCS or voting or any of those things, it is the fact that all the conferences do not have a championship game.”
How can the conference championship games be unfair when no one forced the Big 12, SEC and ACC to implement them? That was of their own choosing.
Roy also supported my playoff or lack thereof. “College football is doing fine, thank you, due in large measure to the fact, as you point out, that the regular season games mean something! They mean EVERYTHING. Those who pine for a tournament should wake up and smell the roar of the grease paint. The college football season IS a tournament! We’re watching an exciting one right now! And your emphasis on making the conferences the brackets to qualify is right on the money.”
Sometimes, cool heads prevail.
Ambrose – heck of a name, Ambrose – wrote, “I don’t remember you defending the integrity of the BCS like you did today. People seem to think the BCS is a person/organization that is making bad decisions, when in fact the BCS is just compiling the results of the data provided. It provides a vehicle for the top two teams to play. That rarely happened before the BCS, and it was an unlikely event every year. Please continue to educate people that the human polls are a major driving factor in the placement of teams in the BCS and that the computers remember (better than humans) what happened throughout the entire season.”
Look at it this way. The BCS is simply a tiebreaker. If the polls can’t agree on who is No. 1 and No. 2, the BCS formula steps in. But if the polls have the same two teams 1 and 2 or 2 and 1, then the computers don’t matter.
Shawn wrote, “I would like to point out some deficiencies in your argument. There is a flaw in the notion of ‘best regular season’ of any sport. You write the article from the perspective of a non-partisan fan. I would argue that the people most interested in and passionate about college football are typically devout followers of a particular team. How much interest or enjoyment do you continue to have once your team is mathematically eliminated from championship contention? I suspect that, for most, there is a tremendous emotional drop-off in the degree of their emotional investment in that season. A USC fan likely has a soured perspective on the season now as compared to Sept. 24, yet they are legitimately a championship-caliber team. I understand that typically a few teams will find themselves back in contention, but the intervening period is severely tainted due to the lack of that team’s control over their own destiny. I believe that the function of a playoff is to allow the teams with a legitimate chance of winning a championship an opportunity to do so. Your playoff would fail this criteria more often than not. Under your plan, a truly superior team could fail to make the tournament for unfortunate circumstances not limited to: early season growing pains, temporary loss of a critical player, a one-point/last second loss on the road to the second best team in the nation (see Texas at Texas Tech), game-changing officiating blunders, severely unbalanced conference schedules, unnatural playing conditions. Instead, your tournament would give that position to teams with no chance of winning.”
For crying out loud. No one is entitled to play for a national championship. Sounds like a long list of excuses for teams that don’t win. In my plan – conference champions only in a playoff – a ton of teams would stay in contention most of the season. And if you’re eliminated early, how can that be undeserved?
Another Brad is the prime example of the extreme positions people take in everything from politics to playoffs. He didn’t like a champions-only playoff plan, citing the 1971 season as a reason why. But 1971 is the perfect example of why my plan would work. Let in wild cards, and suddenly the 1971 OU-Nebraska game is meaningless. Both teams get in no matter the outcome. The Game of the Century becomes something less than even the game of the week. But in our debate, Brad wrote, “The consequence of who won that football game was that the winner became Big Eight Conference champion. Were any of the Red Sox-Rays games neutralized because the Rays won the regular season series between the two? The answer is no, they weren’t. The Rays won the division and the Red Sox made the playoffs because they won enough games during the regular season against virtually the same competition to make the AL playoffs under the Major League Baseball rules. If you are right about your plan, there is no reason to have an accredited rating system for college football.”
Did you see what zealousness does. It brings OU-Nebraska ‘71 to the level of a July baseball game between Boston and Tampa Bay. And yes, Brad, under my playoff plan, there would be no reason to have a rating system. Isn’t that what everyone is worked up about in the first place?
Several people wrote about my jeer of Troy Aikman, for saying OU halfbacks weren’t known for catching the ball. I mentioned Greg Pruitt and Joe Washington, but readers added to the list. Bill wrote, “You left out Kenny King, who caught some passes in his fairly short career at Oakland. At one time, he had the Super Bowl record for the longest TD pass, 80 yards from Jim Plunkett.
King played seven years in the NFL but only had 89 catches.
Ronnie wrote, “I was watching the Green Bay- Minnesota game when Troy Aikman made those statements. One of the most versatile running backs of the Barry Switzer era was Steve Sewell. Steve is the reason I am a Denver Bronco fan today and no Oklahoma running back could catch the ball like Steve and get those third downs. Steve was John Elway’s clutch man for a good 8-10 years. Steve should be mentioned among the most versatile OU running backs.
Sewell played seven years with the Broncos and had 187 catches, for 13 TDs. He actually had more carries (229) than catches, which I wouldn’t have guessed.
Rob wrote, “Good catch on Troy Aikman’s ridiculous statement on OU running backs’ pass catching. He could have added Eddie Hinton and Tommy MacDonald to the guys you mentioned. Troy is sharp some of the time. But he blew this one.”
Hinton wasn’t a running back. He was a wingback and would have been a slot guy – Jeremy Maclin – in today’s football. But McDonald was a pure halfback who had good enough hands to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a wide receiver.
Ken thinks I am out to get the Sooners by writing about Brent Venables’ candidacy at Clemson. “Why do you always add to the hype about OU coordinators possibly being hired away? Why don’t you talk about (Texas offensive coordinator) Greg Davis as a real possibility for particular head coaching jobs? I’ll bet the Austin American-Statesman is NOT even whispering about that!”
I wrote about Venables because the Clemson University plane landed at Wiley Post Airport, with athletic director Terry Don Phillips on board. Does anyone have a clue how unattractive paranoia is? Ken is right. The Austin American-Statesman is not writing about Greg Davis’ job prospects. It is writing about (defensive coordinator) Will Muschamp’s job prospects.
Larry, a big Tech fan, wrote, “It’s as predictable as the sunrise. Every year about this time, the hearts of sportswriters and broadcasters in places like Oklahoma, Austin and College Station go all aflutter over Mike Leach’s job prospects, linking him to whatever coaching vacancies are or might become available, implying that it surely has always been his fondest wish to put the South Plains and the Lowly Likes of Texas Tech in his personal rearview mirror. It’s probably just my suspicious nature, but I’m beginning to feel like there are some folks who actually want to see him in another conference.”
You know, it must be hell feeling persecuted all the time.
Chad, a Clemson fan, wrote about Venables, “This is probably the biggest hire in the history of Clemson football. I think Terry Don Phillips knows that. We have the talent in place for somebody to step right in a win immediately with the right scheme and attitude. The facilities have been upgraded and the league is ripe for the picking. But we have not won an ACC title in almost 20 years. I wish that we would try to lure a Butch Davis, who would win immediately. Leach wouldn’t be a good fit (personality wise) but I think that his offense would dominate in the ACC. Venables or Muschamp could be the next Bob Stoops. They also could be the next Ed Orgeron. That’s the risk that you run with hiring a coordinator.”
No matter what school is looking for a coach or when they’re looking, everyone always seems to say it’s the biggest hire in history. I don’t buy it. If Clemson doesn’t hire a guy who returns the Tigers to championship level, what? The program will fold? They’ll get kicked out of the ACC?
Tim wrote, “Why was the two-team BCS bowl limit rule put in effect? What was this rule trying to prevent? With the possibility of Texas, Oklahoma and Texas Tech all finishing with only one loss, how are you going to eliminate one of these schools and justify it? What harm is done if all three qualify for and make it to a BCS bowl?”
The rule was put in effect, I’m sure, because the BCS largely was a Roy Kramer creation. Kramer was the SEC commissioner, and I’ll bet everyone in college football wanted the rule to keep the BCS from becoming an SEC monopoly. Now that it bites the Big 12 is an unfortunate byproduct.
Shane, another Tech fan, wrote, “I’ve heard several of your colleagues claim that in the three-way tie scenario, that Texas will be ranked the highest because you can’t put OU in front of Texas due to the fact they lost to them. Berry, please explain that if you use that logic then my Red Raiders should be ranked ahead of Texas! Thus, Texas is not ranked highest! Everyone seems to be dismissing Tech in this three-way tie argument. If this plays out then the voters will have to throw out each teams loss and analyze the other 11 games of the season and then simply decide which of the teams they think is best and vote their conscience.”
Actually, it’s not even that complicated. OU almost surely will win the three-way tie because voters have a 70-year history of rewarding the team that lost earliest and won the big game(s) late.
Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel.
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