There is nothing as good as NFL football, and we are now only a few days away from the start of the regular season. If the NFL is the entrée, we got the appetizer this past weekend as the college football season got fully underway in what was being promoted as the best opening weekend ever. I can't say for sure if it was the best opening weekend ever, but it was pretty damn good, and there were more than a few things that I took away from the past three days.
I love teams scheduling tough games right out of the gate - Gone (for the most part) are the days of powerhouse schools beating up on cupcake opponents to start the season, and I don't know how, as fans, anyone could argue against that. When you look at the schedule for this week, it seems like most of those games have simply been slid into Week 2, but I can deal with that after seeing powerhouse schools battle in games that we don't normally get to see. USC vs Alabama. LSU vs Wisconsin. Florida State vs Ole Miss. Clemson vs Auburn. Georgia vs North Carolina. Notre Dame vs Texas. These are games that for decades we would never get to see in the regular season. Not only do I like this new theme because it gives us the potential for great games, but I also like it because it immediately puts college football in the national spotlight.
Alabama is still really, really good - In one of those non-traditional opening week matchups, Alabama faced USC in a battle of historically great schools. Both teams had high hopes coming into the season, but what we got was a resounding statement win by the Crimson Tide to the tune of 52-6. College football is a game that centers around the coaches more than the players because the players come and go. What Alabama did this past Saturday was provide yet another reason to believe that Nick Saban is the best coach and best recruiter in the entire sport. It doesn't matter who is out there on the field for his team. No matter what, Alabama is so talented that as long as Saban is there, they will be a national title contender.
The playoff field is going to expand to eight sooner rather than later - Not only will this make the end of the season more exciting, but it will give a legitimate chance to the one team that always stands out as the best team that is not a member of the "Power Five" conferences. Houston beat Oklahoma and proved that they were legitimately better than the Sooners, who were considered one of the best teams in the nation. For years, it was always Boise State, but there is always one team from a smaller conference that deserves at least a shot at the big boys at the end of the season. I am not going to overreact after only one game, but I was impressed by Houston on both sides of the ball. I hear a ton of talk already about Houston going undefeated, and if I had to bet money on it right now, I would say that does not happen. There is always a hiccup somewhere that no one sees coming. However, I think there is also always at least one team from a smaller conference at the end of the year that deserves a chance to play for the national title, and I think that means adding four more teams to the playoff format. It might not happen next year, but I think that everyone with the power to make that happen is beginning to see that for the good of the game, the playoffs should expand.
If you want to be a good quarterback, do not even consider going to LSU - This is one thing that I just do not understand. LSU sends boatloads of talented players into the NFL year after year. However, for some reason, none of them are ever quarterbacks. This year, Brandon Harris is the quarterback for the Tigers, and he threw an interception to basically end the game against Wisconsin. Like I said, I am not going to overreact to one game, but Harris did not exactly get off to a good start. What I am going to react to though, is how unbelievable it is that a school with a football program as storied as the program at LSU is continually fails to produce anything close to even an average quarterback.
When you have to go back to 1972 to find the last quarterback out of LSU to have a successful NFL career, you can hardly claim to be a program that develops pro-quality players at that position. The long and far less than prestigious line of LSU quarterbacks to make the NFL after him includes Ryan Perriloux, Zach Mettenberger, Jordan Jefferson, and Matt Flynn.
So at least there has to be one quarterback in recent history that succeeded in college, right? Yes actually, there is. His name? Jamarcus Russell. How did he turn out in the NFL? That's right, only the biggest bust (in my opinion, and the opinion of many others) in the history of the NFL Draft.
I don't understand why LSU just cannot develop top level quarterbacks. This problem has spanned multiple years and multiple coaches (including Nick Saban), but it just does not go away. LSU seems to be very good in multiple facets of the game this year, but once again, the quarterback play just does not seem to be there.
Preseason rankings are useless, but still fun to discuss - Let's face it, for the most part, the preseason rankings in college football are usually based only on the results of the previous season and the history of the program. Tennessee was ranked ninth going into this season and just escaped losing at home to Appalachian State. Oklahoma was ranked third and they were dominated by Houston. LSU was ranked fifth and they lost. Notre Dame, Ole Miss (granted, to a higher ranked Florida State team), and UCLA all lost despite being ranked in the Top 25.
Preseason rankings are great use for discussion early in the year, but since there are no actual preseason games in college football, it takes a few weeks to get a sense of what teams really are the best out there. I understand those that believe preseason rankings should be done away with, but I disagree with that. Like I said, this opening weekend was being hyped as the best ever, and much of that was directly related to the preseason rankings. Once January rolls around, no one is going to be focused on what teams were ranked where before the season began.
More than any other sport, the college football regular season means almost everything - Highly ranked teams that lost this weekend are already facing win or go home situations despite it only being September. Could Oklahoma or USC or LSU survive one loss at the end of the regular season? Yes. But could they survive two? No.
The best part of college basketball is March Madness. All a team has to do is reach the tournament and they have a chance to win the national title. We have seen eight seeds win the title. An eight seed in the NCAA Tournament means that the selection committee considers you somewhere near the 30th best team in the country. So if they get hot at the right time, that means there are a few dozen teams that have a legitimate chance to win the national title. In college football, at the end of the regular season, there are at most, probably six teams that have a shot to win it all.
Any sort of slip goes a long way in deciding whether or not you even have a chance to be considered for the playoff at the end of the season. Therefore, every game counts. Some see that as a gift and some see it as a curse. In my opinion, it is a gift. It means that no team can take any opponent lightly. It means that you have to be ready to play each and every week. If the playoff does eventually expand to eight teams, this may become at least somewhat less of a factor, but as it stands now, every team in the country needs to treat every game as an elimination game, and from the perspective of a fan, I love that.
There are a few other things, I took from this past weekend, but I have gone on a bit longer than I expected so my last point will be this...
THE OVERTIME FORMAT IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL IS BY FAR THE WORST OF ANY FORMAT IN ANY SPORT - I hated it when they installed it, and my hatred only grows more for it every time I see games end in overtime. I am a believer that every game in every sport, be it collegiate or professional, should end just as the game begins. That means no shootouts (in the regular season) in hockey. No penalty kicks in soccer. No second chances for a defense that can't stop another team in the NFL. Do it like baseball and basketball. Keep playing the same game as long as you need to.
I do at least give soccer credit because the game does not immediately go to penalty kicks. I also give credit to hockey because they do play an overtime before the shootout in the regular season. But what hockey does in the postseason brings epic games. If it takes seven overtimes for Keith Primeau or Steve Yzerman to win a game, then give it to us. If we get to see a buzzer beater or a walk-off home run after regulation time ends, then that is what we want to see, even if we have to stay up into the wee hours of the night to watch.
The overtime format in college football is absolutely horrible. It basically starts each team in field goal range before possession even changes. It gives teams equal opportunities to score even though for the entire game actual defensive strategy and field position matters. It turns football scores into basketball scores. It forces teams to go for two in positions that normally would not call for that. Can it be exciting? Yes, it can be. But every time I watch a college football game play into overtime, I am so overwhelmed by how contrived and stupid the format is, it takes away from my enjoyment of what would normally be an exciting and competitive game.
You can expand the playoff to eight teams, you can get rid of the preseason rankings, and you can try to find a quarterback at LSU that actually might be average, but before you do that, please give me a new overtime format in college football, because the current one is absolutely terrible.
I already said before that it seems as though the normally easy games for the top teams have now simply moved to the second week, and that is what we can expect next week. Second ranked Clemson will play Troy. Florida State gets Charleston Southern. Alabama plays Western Kentucky. This Saturday will surely not be as intriguing as last Saturday, but at least last Saturday gave us a great glimpse of what could be to come this season. So for that, football fans across the country should be thankful.
Daily Diamondbacks Update: All of that money for Zack Greinke has not exactly been worth it so far, as he was on the mound serving up home run after home run to the Dodgers in a 10-2 loss.
Daily Giants Update: What makes watching the Diamondbacks easier is the fact that we are only five days away from the Giants opening the season in Dallas. It has been a long time coming, but the time is almost here, and I could not be more excited for some NFL football.
