The fog is starting to clear and teams are separating themselves. Three undefeated teams fell on Saturday and they were arguably all pretenders. Michigan, Illinois, and Georgia Tech had all put in sub-par performances in previous weeks and they payed for it. So who’s left?
- LSU
- Alabama
- Oklahoma
- Stanford
- Oklahoma St
- Wisconsin
- Boise St
- Clemson
- Houston
- Kansas State
Who will survive? Let’s take a look at the teams above based on who they’ve beat and what tough games they have left.
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This is the third and final part of Dan’s essay on pay for play. You can check out the earlier entries for part 1 and part 2.
I refused to write this article sober.
In ”I’m Not Telling The Pistol Team Their Sport Is Useless”, I used the words football players instead of “Everyone kills People” Pryor, “Sexual Ball’ah” Bush, “I’m a Soldier” Winslow and crew. I’m now talking about the upper-echlon folks at the top BCS programs whose names plaster our ears on College Game Day and fill the highlight reel on Sports Center. The Men in Black - the “best of the best of the best”. These dudes knew they were going pro shortly before puberty. I took a few moments to reflect back and apply all of those statistical methods I learned in grad school and analyze what I could when the thought “ya know, it’s often those ball’ah guys who pop-up for rules infractions allegations”. It turns out that there’s a strongly-positive correlation between being a stud on the field and fucking over the college helping you put together footage of you on that field for NFL scouts.
The correlation gets its measure from the lack of actual consequences. Potentially sit for a game for getting hammered on expensive steaks and booze before getting a bj from Nut Gobbler - on some other dudes dime on the nearly non-existent chance you’ll get caught OR just get hammered on expensive steaks and booze before getting a bj from Nut Gobbler - on some other dudes dime and play anyway!
These guys are at least 18 years old; that makes them adults. It is not the host institution or NCAAs’ job maintain control on every single athlete’s decision-making process. They know the rules. They were taught was is right and what is wrong. They know the official consequences. Hell, the host institution is actually incentivized to not maintain control. This is why Jim Tressel took the risk of lying and covering it up. He’s a smart dude. He ran the numbers and calculated an acceptable risk to lie about Tee Pee’s tats.
When shit goes down and players are caught, the punishment is not their burden to carry. Did USC know that Reggie got $200,000 for the house? Maybe, maybe not. Reggie did however make a conscious decision that ripped a school, locker room of teammates and a wealth of fans of a BCS National Championship. USC had nothing to do with his choices. Sure he lost the Heisman and a National Championship but he’s also worth 8 figures - not gonna feel sorry. Tee Pee got caught, kicked out of school and received a $500,000 signing bonus while Ohio State has to forfeit millions in winnings, a BCS bowl victory and a Big Ten Championship.
I offer a simple and sustainable solution that is practically self-governing. For every game that a player gets suspended, so are all the starters on that side of the ball. You win as a team and you lose as a team. Once the NCAA gets some fecal cohesion going on their rules manual, you can quite easily implement this. (I’ll admit the rules presently stray into may gray areas and is as dense as the Federal Tax code.). I’m comfortable estimating that car dealerships might be a little less inclined to stretch the rules.
As an additional punishment for the guilty player, they must pay back the lost portion of their scholarship; that is to say there are 12 regular season games and a one game suspensions means you owe 1/12 of the full financial benefits associated with your scholarship before your ass steps onto the field again. (It’s a side topic but people on academic scholarships are due the same financial punishment in my opinion).
A college education is a privilege - not a right. Players can be suspended for the season and not lose their scholarship. Translated to a normal college student means that they are not allowed to clock in at work for spitting in the customers’ food, still get paid, and still get to come back to work in year. Pryor took it a step further and chose to say “that’s ok, I found someone who’ll pay me more.. sorry about your customers”. If a student loses their job and cannot pay for school, they don’t go to school.
Tough shit. Learn from it.
NCCA athletes are given an amazing forum to showcase their impressive talents, a little humility to respect for the opportunity they have isn’t too much to ask. I call that accepting the consequences for the choices you make.
Trying to make sense of the conferences as we know… for today at least.
After 4 weeks here is where the conferences stand
Against the BCS:
ACC (5-7)
Big East (4-7)
Big 10 (6-5)
Big 12 (6-2)
SEC (5-2)
Pac 12 (4-7)
Overall against FBS:
ACC (12-10)
Big East (13-9)
Big 10 (25-11)
Big 12 (20-2)
Pac 12 (12-10)
SEC (19-4)
At this point I would rank the conferences like so:
1) Big 12
2) SEC
3) Big 10
4) Pac 12
5) ACC
6) Big East
The ACC has a better win percentage than the Pac 12 but I think the top of the Pac-12 (Stanford and Oregon) is better than the top of the ACC (VT and Clemson) so I moved them up. The Big East has had a rough time but they still haven’t lost to an FCS opponent like the Pac-12, ACC, and Big 10 have. For all the talk of weak schedules, the SEC has only played 6 FCS schools, same as the Big 12 and Big 10. The ACC takes the crown with 10 FCS match-ups. Ouch.
The ACC might actually be weaker with Pitt and Syracuse. Pitt has no wins against non-conference BCS teams and Syracuse’s only BCS win came over Wake Forest… an ACC team.
Big 12 vs. SEC is an interesting question. The SEC is definitely strong at the top with Alabama and LSU but the bottom is also quite weak with Ole Miss, Miss State, and Kentucky. Traditional Big 12 bottom feeders Iowa State and Baylor actually look competitive while whether a top 15 team exists in the SEC east has yet to be proven. Texas A&M vs. Arkansas should tell us a little something about how these conferences stack up and I would love to see a BCS showdown between Oklahoma State and LSU.
Most teams are getting conference play kicked off so we won’t know much more about the how the conferences far against one another until the bowl season. At this point I’m betting a 1 loss Big 12 or SEC school would get the nod over an undefeated ACC squad (VT, Clemson, or GT) but that would be an interesting scenario. Still plenty of football left to play, so who know, perhaps the ACC will recover and make a good showing come BCS time.
The week’s top winners and losers, picking the six teams that collectively had the best and worst Saturdays.
Winners:
Oklahoma State: One half of nearly flawless football kept Ok State in the winner’s column and out of the loser’s. How often can your star player fumble a touchdown out of the endzone and you still win the game? Oh yeah, that was playing on the road against a top 10 conference rival. Bravo, Cowboys. Bravo.
LSU: Like most people I had a hard time decided between Alabama and LSU for the top team in the country this week. Hell, I had Alabama in my winners in the first draft. Alabama had a spectacular game at home against a conference rival that we really didn’t know much about. LSU went on the road against a hungry team that desperately wants to be future conference rival in primetime. LSU smoked them in every way possible. LSU vs. Bama is going to be fun.
Arizona State: Meet the new leader in the Pac-12 South. It just feels good to type that so I can only imagine how great the ASU team and fans are feeling. After dropping the ball against Illinois, ASU is on top of the Pac-12 South and have just cleared a path for themselves to the first Pac-12 title game.
Losers:
Maryland: The ugly uniforms were cool when you beat Miami on ESPN. When you get steamrolled by Temple at home… well ugly refers to more than the uniforms. I’m sure Ralph Friedgen is laughing somewhere.
Florida State: Maybe Clemson is much better than people think but this has to be a huge let down for FSU. Top 5 to barely top 25 in two weeks is rough. Guess we’ll be subjected to more “Is FSU finally back?” stories next preseason too. (3 years in a row now or has it been more?)
Toledo: Toledo fans meet Cubs fans. I have a feeling you’ll get along. If Toledo misses a bowl game this year they might lay seige to Syracuse and the Big East officials.
Still pondering the winners and losers this week but please enjoy the BMB Top 25 for now. Positions 11-25 are getting harder to fill out as the conference schedule kicks off for most teams. It should get easier with each week though.
- LSU
- Alabama
- Oklahoma
- Boise St
- Oklahoma St
- Wisconsin
- Stanford
- Nebraska
- Oregon
- Florida
- South Carolina
- Clemson
- Virginia Tech
- Texas A&M
- Baylor
- South Florida
- Arkansas
- Illinois
- Texas
- Georgia Tech
- TCU
- West Va
- Arizona State
- Michigan
- Florida State
It was a tough choice between LSU and Bama but I think LSU has shown more and they’ve done it on the road. With an impressive win this weekend over Florida, Alabama may move into the top slot though. After that, who knows? Bama and LSU as the top two teams in the country is the only certainty at this point.
This is Part 2 of Dan’s thoughts on pay for play. Read Part 1 here.
In “Fiscal Responsibility - Not Just For AIG”, I used the term “student athletes” instead of football and basketball players. In this post, I’m only talking about those two sport as those are the only two revenue generating sports found at the collegiate level (with a few exceptions here and there) and even then, there’s no guarantee. And my goodness how they generate revenue from crazed fans, media conglomerates, boosters, and sponsors. OSU had a profit exceeding $40 million from their football program alone in 2010. ESPN spent $2.25 billion over the next 15 years to certify their monopoly on SEC college football. Once you get into March Madness and Bowl Sponsorship - it get’s even crazier. It is fair that some programs generate cash money and others do not? Of course not but it is the reality of the situation. Always has, always will.
All those dollars are to watch the athletes on the field or on the court. Every single one of them. There’s quite a few folks out there that think the financial benefits (full scholarship, tutors, food, clothing, etc) and the un-calculable benefits (the opportunity to showcase and refine the athlete’s talent at a very elite level to sports zealots all over the country) isn’t enough. That student athletes in revenue generating programs should get a piece of the pie. Divide $40 million (OSU’s profit last year from the football program) by 85 (max. # scholarships) and I’ll readily agree the benefits in college calculable or otherwise probably don’t balance. Ok, so, they shouldn’t get all of the $40 million but let’s run a thought experiment. Let’s say we give each player $100,000 and leave $31.5 million to OSU. What happens?
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Looks like someone got my letter. Over the weekend Commish Swofford made the first big move in the conference re-alignment wars. The ACC added Syracuse and Pitt.
As an ACC fan, I’m not really that happy with expansion in general and I’m definitely not happy with having Pitt and Syracuse in the conference (Miami and BC are bad enough, did we really need more Big East dead weight?), but I think Swoff did the best he could with what was available.
Now please stop.
14 teams is enough. 16 teams will further skew things and here’s why:
The ACC already claimed the two biggest prizes in the Big East. Send hate mail here UConn, South Florida, and West Va fans. Rutgers fans you can too but I really don’t think you exist.
7 team divisions allows for a divisional round robin with two cross-division games in an 8 game scenario. 8 team divisions just makes things messy and the two divisions almost operate like small conferences.
If the league stops now, things can be split geographically for divisions that make sense rather than the sufficiently vague Atlantic and Coastal variations. Here is how I would split things:
North:
- BC
- Syracuse
- Pitt
- Maryland
- VT
- UVA
- Duke
South:
- UNC
- NC State
- Wake
- Clemson
- GT
- Florida State
- Miami
Gasp! Duke and UNC in separate divisions? They can deal with it the same way Michigan and Ohio State will deal with it. Besides it will fit well for basketball too. ESPN would love to see the ACC tournament end with a classic Duke - Carolina match-up in Charlotte. (Screw you, Jim Boeheim, you join the ACC, you deal with the ACC’s traditions.)
Is the South division a little football heavy? Perhaps it looks that way now, but remember, things change. Miami looked like a heavy weight when they joined the ACC but it turns out Virginia Tech was longer term power. Who’s to say Pitt wouldn’t emerge or Maryland wouldn’t step up?
Most importantly, let’s try to preserve the little bit of tradition the ACC has left. The basketball tournament and football title game stay in Charlotte every year until the end of time. North Carolina is the geographic center of the league, most of the fans live within driving distance of Charlotte, and it is a neutral site with pro facilities. End of story.
NOTRE DAME. YOU. ARE. NOT. SPECIAL. GET. OVER. IT.
For those of you who did not watch insane finish in the Michigan-Notre Dame game, you missed a doozy. Michigan entered the 4th quarter down 24-7 in a game marked by complete ineptitude from the Michigan defense and 18 penalties (9 each). They also entered the 4th quarter on 3rd and goal from the ND one yard line. Denard Robinson handed it off to his RB who had the ball knocked from his hands charging into the trenches. Mr. Robinson scooped up the loose ball and trotted into the end zone- I’ve never seen that happen. That touchdown sparked a 15 minute performance by Michigan that poured on 28 points (almost 35 had they maintained possession in the fumbled kickoff return in the last 2 seconds).
The Wolverines took their first lead 58 minutes and 58 seconds into the game (that means for 98.3% of the game Michigan was losing). Then the Michigan defense did what they do best and let ND go 61 yards in 42 seconds to retake the lead. Now down by 3 with 30 seconds left, not to be out done by ND’s 61 yard march, Michigan moved 80 yards in 28 seconds to score with 2 seconds remaining taking the lead for good. Wowzers. First game under the lights with an NCAA record of 114,000 people. I wish I was there and don’t even like either team!
You may have noticed that the title of this article has some grumbles in it but I seem to be summarizing the dramatic finish to the ND-Michigan game. No worries, things will now get grumpy.
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Top 25 (week 2)
- LSU
- Boise St
- Alabama
- Wisconsin
- Oklahoma
- Florida St
- Stanford
- Nebraska
- Oklahoma St
- South Carolina
- Arkansas
- Oregon
- Texas A&M
- Ohio State
- Mich State
- Virginia Tech
- Arizona St
- West Va
- Florida
- Baylor
- Auburn
- Maryland
- Northwestern
- Miss State
- Penn State
Not much changed from last week. Oregon is still the best 1 loss team in the country. Penn State and Miss State lost to quality opponents, but I still think they are top 25 teams. We’ll learn a lot more about Miss State this week though. Otherwise this is all just wild speculation as only a few teams have proven themselves (LSU, Boise, maybe OK St).
3 Winners:
Texas: They pulled one out and came back from a 13 point deficit against a good BYU team. To say they struggled at QB is to put it gently. The QB situation is probably causing Mack Brown night terrors but they may have found a solution in a familiar name, McCoy. That would be Case McCoy, Colt’s younger brother. He can toss it to Jaxon Shipley, Jordan’s younger brother. And yes, in a made for Gameday story,they are roommates, keeping the family tradition alive.
Oklahoma State: Remember on Thursday when Weeden to Blackmon looked like two buddies playing catch in the backyard? Remember they were playing a decent Arizona team that many people picked as a Pac-12 darkhorse? The Cowboys are good this year.
Auburn: Somehow they just keep winning. Are they are a good team? Who knows but the only thing that matters right now to the Auburn fans is that they keep winning and are now 1-0 in the SEC after defeating a hyped up Miss State squad. Gene Chizik is now 9-0 in games decided by 4 points or less. (via Bruce Feldman #freebruce )
Honorary Mentions: Tennessee, Michigan
3 Losers
Notre Dame: What can I say? The offense continued to turn the ball over and the defense decided not to show up in the last two minutes of the game. At least Brian Kelly didn’t blow a gasket on national television again. I can only imagine the hell he gave those players after the game.
Miss State: Thought you could steam roll Auburn and look forward to LSU? Didn’t realize Gene Chizik had sold his soul to keep winning games without Cam Newton? Or was it just poor coaching that turned an opportunity to tie the game into a loss? I know MSU is run first and runs a mean spread option but 8 seconds left on the goal line? I’d at least try one throw.
Georgia: Georgia was clearly focused and hyped for this one. They came out strong and generally outplayed South Carolina in every way possible except they lost. Stephen Garcia looked hungover at times but Steve Spurrier dialed in enough trickery and the South Carolina defense did just enough to deliver a win. The question now is not if they fire Richt but when. The fan base is frothing at the mouth. I almost feel bad for the guy… nah. THWG!
Honorary Mentions: Iowa, Oregon State, football in the state of Indiana
As a Buckeye Fan, the last 9 months have been rough and I’ve got plenty to say about that. Interestingly enough however, Ohio State was joined by a dozen other schools around the country for players allegedly receiving improper benefits. These allegations put the “pay-for-play” discussion into the spotlight for most of the off-season.
I look at the “pay for play” discussion and college football and see two schools of thought. School #1 revolves around supplementing athletes income by providing them a modest payment to cover living expenses - in the neighborhood of a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars a semester. School #2 involves giving the athletes a piece of the money-pie served up (mostly) among the BCS conferences. I can summarize both schools using Obama 2012 campaign slogan’s initial acronym ‘WTF’ but I feel they are worth discussing. Each school brings to light another issue that will need to be resolved should college football - hell, college athletics - continue to exist. As a result, I’ve broken up the “pay-for-play” discussion into 3 posts:
“Fiscal Responsibility - Not Just For AIG” 9/11
“I’m Not Telling The Pistol Team Their Sport Is Useless” 9/18
“Life, Liberty And The Pursuit of Happiness May Be Inalienable Rights - A College Scholarship Is Not” 9/25
“Fiscal Responsibility - Not Just For AIG”
Supplemental income of a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars is not a whole lot of money in the grand scheme of things but a college student can stretch that a lonngggggg ways. And for student athletes supplemental income is talking about $2500 spread out over the course of 15-18 weeks. You know how most students gather $2500 over the course of 15-18 weeks?
They get a j-o-b.
Pre-season and in-season responsibilities are a full-time commitment above and beyond classroom duties for student athletes. As many of these students are on a scholarship for their respective sport, I fully support dedication of 100% of their effort to their studies and athletic commitments during this time. Once the season is over their athletic commitments drop to a part-time job, or drop completely or at least should (more on this last point in a minute). This would be a great time to get a job and earn “a modest sum of money to cover living expenses - in the neighborhood of a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars”.
As an added bonus, unlike nearly all of their classmates, most of student athletes’ educational expenses are already covered. Cash from that part-time job need only be used to directly supplement their living expenses. While they’re at it, squirrel a little away for preseason and season commitments. Viola! Living expenses covered! As a matter of fact, I watched my roommate in college (Women’s Soccer @ OSU) and her teammates do exactly that. I call that fiscal responsibility and I doubt I’m the only one.
I’m am also sure I am not the only one whose heard the rumor that athletic commitments at high-profile institutions in revenue-generating sports are a year-round commitment. Sure the NCAA limits the official number of practices but there’s plenty of “volunteer” activities, practices, lifts, etc that make the commitment year-round. I agree that this would make it difficult, but not impossible, to get that job to supplement your income. (Some of us regular folk worked 40 hours a week year-round to pay for their school and didn’t bitch about not having enough money but I digress). However I am willing to find some semblance of sympathy if that commitment is so great that finding part-time work to supplement your living expenses is that restricted.
The NCAA and host institutions should work to limit the amount of off-season commitments instead of finding ways to pay all their athletes. I think a little extra monitoring may have additional benefits (see ESPN for a list of NCAA programs on the “you should have monitored your program more” shit list). And ya know what? I suspect this is the reason, this year-round commitment, the whole pay for play discussion has come about. You don’t hear about the men’s gymnastic team complaining about pay for play. You don’t read about the lacrosse team asking for a supplemental income. Quite frankly, 99.9% of student athletes are doing what is necessary to play the sport they love, go to their classes and live the college lifestyle. It’s the 0.1% of student athletes playing high-profile sports at the highest-profile institutions that are involved in this pay-for-play debacle.
Limiting off-season commitments also represents a sustainable path forward to supplement athletes income. Most athletic departments lose money each year, only a very select few make money. Where in budgets that lose money year in and year out do you expect to find a couple thousand dollars for the hundreds of athletes ? How do you expect to make a case to tax-payers for those state-institutions to supplement income when their poster children are buying tattoos? How do you keep an amateur-level playing field internally between sports and externally between institutions? Most academic institutions are already providing enough benefits to their student athletes above and beyond paying for the entirety of their education (see food, clothing, travel expenses, etc) - paying them more money should not be their burden.
All sports however can determine maximum commitments between pre-season, season and off-season regardless of sport - and can enforce them with a little help from the NCAA. If you ensure student athletes have the opportunity to supplement their income like everyone else, the pay-for-play discussion is over for 90% of that 0.1% of student athletes that give this article its purpose. And while you’re at it, you teach the student athletes a lesson in fiscal responsibility - lord knows we need as much of that among my generation as we can get. The remaining 0.01% of student athletes need an article all of themselves and I’ll talk about them in “Life, Liberty And The Pursuit of Happiness May Be Inalienable Rights - A College Scholarship Is Not”.
