If the nation’s 2017 No. 1 recruit, running back Najee Harris from Antioch, California, stays true to his verbal commitment to the Alabama Crimson Tide, he will follow QB Blake Barnett as another recent top-rated California high school football player opting to play for St. Nick Saban. Indeed, Blake was “committed” to Notre Dame and then to Oregon (for a nano-second) before he tripped to Alabama, was seduced by …
May rabies ravage the Dawgs and anthrax annihilate the Aggies! It’s not as if Oregon‘s Athletic Directors haven’t made a valiant effort. The Ducks once had home engagements scheduled with the Georgia Bull Dogs and the Texas A&M Aggies, only to be left at the altar by that castrated, chicken whip, canine University of Georgia, as well as being dumped …
In 2015, the College Football Playoff Committee (Committee) seemingly paid no attention to strength of schedule (SOS.) The Committee, by design or lack thereof, has no standard metric to judge a team’s SOS. Accordingly, overall wins in 2015 trumped any evaluation of the quality of a team’s victories against both out of conference (OOC) and in-conference opponents. 11-1 Oklahoma with a bad …
I was 10 years old in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik. I can tell you with certainty that Uncle Sammy’s reaction to being eclipsed technologically by the Red Menace was far more tepid than the SEC’s response to college football (CFB) satellite camps. The U.S. turned to NASA to bridge the gap. The SEC …
The 2016 preseason Top 25 college football (CFB) polls, including ESPN’s FPI rankings that we reviewed last week, are pounding down the Pac-12. In the four ‘big time’ polls, the putative 2016 champion Stanford Cardinal is ranked as follows: ESPN 8; FOX Sports 11; Sports Illustrated 11 and CBS 14. The Oregon Ducks are not ranked higher than 20 in any of these polls. …
Any college football (CFB) fan with anything more than a passing interest in the game knows that it is next to impossible to escape CFB’s ESPN media supremacy including The Worldwide Leader’s ubiquitous prediction machine, the Football Power Index (FPI). In the near future I will be offering up my preseason 2016 CFB Dandy Dozen; the 12 teams that I believe …
Head trauma, including Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) damage and player safety, in general, are major areas of concern today in both the NFL and in college football (CFB). With parents and guardians concerned about head injuries, participation in youth football continues to decline. In response, a number of youth leagues have eliminated tackling in both practice and in games. The Ivy League recently eliminated live tackling in …
Mr. Lawrence Scott Commissioner, Pacific 12 Conference 360 3rd Street, 3rd Floor San Francisco, CA 94107 Dear Mr. Commissioner, As a graduate of John Harvard’s University, I am reasonably certain that somewhere along your educational path you studied the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The law that tells you ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ has to be one of …
Perhaps Tulsa should not be in the field? Perhaps Monmouth, South Carolina, St. Bonnies and St. Mary’s should be in? But it’s not as if any team left out is a true threat to be cutting down the nets in Houston. And it is hard to feel sorry for ‘mid-major’ conference regular season champions left out because they did not also win their …
Thank you NCAA Basketball Committee (Committee) for correctly seeding PAC 12 regular season and PAC 12 Tournament Champion Oregon at No.1 in the West Region. The PAC 12 tied the ACC and the B 12 with the most teams in the 2016 NCAA Tournament field at 7. It certainly seems logical that the champions of all 3 conferences would receive …
“And the beat goes on, the beat goes on. East coast bias it never seems to stop, Stanford was denied a Football Playoff spot, McCaffery’s Heisman dreams had no real shot, An Alabama back stole Christian’s deserved slot. And the beat goes on, the beat goes on. Is the Pac-12 on the far side of the Moon? Or back east …
“Whatever is the natural propensity of a person is hard to overcome. If a dog were to be made king, he would still gnaw at his shoelaces.” The Hitopadesha Although he is in the process of doing it incrementally, I certainly hope that Johnny Manziel will not confirm his father’s fear and commit suicide in one fell swoop. New Age folk will, of …
