Bowls, awards and Christmas presents.

 

BOWLS

Well, somebody was going to get screwed.  Sorry, USC, just not your lucky day.  Actually maybe it was.  For the national championship you can play a.) OU at a neutral site; b.) LSU, in New Orleans; or c.) Michigan in your home town.  I think answer c. is a pretty good choice.  Not only is UM the weakest of the three possible opponents, but to play the game in your own backyard is a pretty good deal.  As it turns out Notre Dame really  knocked USC out of the Sugar Bowl.  Not by beating them on the field of course, but by going into the tank against Syracuse and costing their rival crucial strength of schedule points.  It must be a good feeling to know that by embarrassing yourself you can stick it to your rival.  Sort of a lose-lose proposition, or   justice, BCS style.

            Rose Bowl:  OK, I know I’m supposed to root for all the Big Ten teams in the bowls.  I understand that it makes our league look strong.  My argument is that we recruit against these guys, so I want them to look pitiful, inept and so terrible that no high school stud is going to consider wearing the maize and blue.  Anything, which makes UM easier to beat, gets my vote.  Fight on, Men of Troy!

            Orange Bowl:  Can they both lose?  Outside of Michigan are there two more despicable college football teams than Florida State and Miami.  The beauty of this game is that they get to knock each other silly for absolutely no good reason.  No one cares and the game means nothing.  One of them will end up with 3 losses.  Then they do it all over again at the start of the 2004 season and knock one them out of the early race for number one. 

            Fiesta Bowl:  The Kansas State Wildcats are 6-7 point favorites over the defending national champion Buckeyes?  Can this be right?  Win, lose or draw, I’m glad we are in this bowl as opposed to the Orange Bowl playing Miami.  We don’t need to listen to the Canes’ incessant yapping.  The Buckeyes beat them when it mattered a year ago and that is all that matters.

            Sugar Bowl:  Every time I see LSU, I am more impressed.  The Bayou Bengals

are playing great on both sides of the ball. If you saw them dismantle what was thought to be a pretty good Georgia team, you had to be impressed.   Still, I think the Sooners will play with passion to redeem themselves, after their loss to KSU.  OU wins by two touchdowns.

            Are there too many other bowls?  Probably, but as long as it means more college football, I’m not complaining.  As long as the Buckeyes don’t have to be involved, I’m all for rewarding mediocrity.  After all, 6-6 at Northwestern deserves something.  A short trip to Detroit seems about right.  A long trip to Detroit would be considered punishing mediocrity.

 

AWARDS

Jason White deserved and won the Heisman.  Larry Fitzgerald is the most talented player and will make the most money playing on Sundays.  But, though no fault of his, the position Fitzgerald plays is a non-factor for long periods of  time.  Especially when Walt Harris, paints him green and uses him like a wooden duck for three quarters at a time.

Beyond that there are just too many awards.  We used to have the Heisman and the Lombardi and the Outland.  OK, we had the Maxwell Award too, which has always been sort of the New Hampshire primary for the Heisman.  Now it seems anyone who was an All American has an award named after them.  The sad part is how many of the recipients from the hip-hop generation ever heard of the awards namesake?  Do you think today’s stars really know who Davey O’Brien, John Mackey, Lou Groza, Dave Rimington, Doak Walker, Chuck Bednarik were.  Of course to be fair, how many of us old-school types know much about John Heisman.   Who was Maxwell?  Was he in the coffee business?  Why are awards named after Bronco Nagurski and Jim Thorpe for defensive players? Most of the film clips I have seen of those two legends were when they were running over defenders. The Ted Hendricks award for the best defensive end.  Is Ted Hendricks really the best we could do?  Gino Marchetti? Deacon Jones?  Don’t they merit trophies?  Since we have too many awards already, I guess just a few more wouldn’t make the situation much worse.  Below are my suggestions:

The Elmer Lippert Trophy for the best back-up tailback.

 

The Brian Bozworth Award  for the biggest jerk in NCAA football.  It would only be offered one year after which it would be renamed to honor this year’s recipient, Kellen Winslow II.

 

 The Joe Paterno Award would go to the coach who most needs to retire. Of course Joe Pa would be the automatic winner, until he, himself retires.

 

The Jackie Sherrill Cup for most total NCAA violations.

 

The Manley-Harmon-Dixon Trophy is  to honor Iowa’s Ronnie Harmon and Oklahoma States’s Dexter Manley , both of whom were found to be functionally illiterate when they arrived in the NFL.  Former Bengal and OU corner back, Ricky Dixon still holds the record for the lowest score on the Wonderlic test the NFL administers to prospects at the combine.  Ricky’s score placed him somewhere between wood and Carrot Top on the intelligence scale.  The fun part is that, knowing this, the Bengals still drafted him. Perhaps the award could go to the player drafted with the fewest academic credits.  Naturally we would misspell some words on the trophy, not that anyone would notice. 

 

The Flounder Trophy.  Remember the character, Flounder, from the movie Animal House?  Flounder  was told by Dean Wermer,  “Son, fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.”  I cannot decide whether to name the award after Flounder and give it to Mike Price or to name it after Mike Price and give it to Flounder.

 

COACHING:

I know that LSU is trying to money-whip him into staying, but how long before Nick Saban departs Baton Rouge for the NFL?  Frank Solich turned down the job at Army. What was he thinking?  That was the perfect match.  Nobody can recruit there, all service academy teams run the option. He would have been the perfect fit, he could have run his 1960 offense on the banks of the Hudson for decades.  Hey Frank, that call from the NY Giants is for Coach Saban, not you.  Instead of Army, Solich considers University of Cincinnati.  Go figure.  Cincinnati is joining the Big East as is Lousiville and everyone thinks this makes them big time.  This is not your father’s Big East.  Has anyone noticed the departure of Virginia Tech, Miami, and Boston College? This is not the new Big East, this is the old Conference USA.  No one cares until tip off time.  The closest he will get to the BCS as a Bearcat will be when one of Coach Huggins’ scholar-athletes tries to spell the word dog.  Steve Pedersen, the Nebraska AD has formed a one-man search committee and refuses to tell himself who he is considering.  The players, interim coach Bo Pellini, and some big-money boosters continue to twist in the wind while Pedersen slow dances with Walt Harris.  Dark horse candidate Rush Limbaugh has been quoted as saying he could lead the Huskers back to the top.  Former governor of California, Gray Davis is available.  With his experience managing an organization with a big budget and no power, he merits consideration.

 

Christmas Presents:

 

Kellen Winslow II – A draft notice so he can learn what being a soldier really means.

 

Maurice Clarrett – An industrial size dose of humility, and an understanding of what he has lost forever.

 

NC State coach Chuck Amato:  A new, at least somewhat, masculine pair of sunglasses.  Queer Eye for the straight Guy has gone too far.

 

Michigan fans:  One teeny-tiny bit of class, since they have none at all.

 

Will Smith and Mike Jenkins – big fat NFL contracts.  Thanks guys,  for coming back this year.

 

The Orange Bowl – Empty seats, for screwing the Rose Bowl out of Iowa last year.

 

Bobby Bowden – A new prescription for his idiotic sunglasses so he can see that his teams behavior on and off the field make a mockery of his Bible-spouting, good old boy act.

 

Craig Krenzel – Another Fiesta Bowl MVP award, to help us remember, ten years from now, how truly special this guy was.