Since 1999

A couple of weeks ago the Omaha Beef had a little get together before their game against the Sioux City Bandits. A sort of indoor tailgate party. Sounds a bit silly, but hey, why not have an indoor tailgate for an indoor football game? Twenty five cent wings and meatballs, live music, a raffle, plenty of people watching; not a bad way to spend some time pre-game. Not to mention the fact that Sioux City came into the game riding a thirty one game win streak. So, a big game was looming.

As the aging guitar player/lead singer read and re-read the latest raffle winner, while looking down through his librarian style reading glasses, something caught my eye. The merchandise table had very nice looking black Nebraska Legends division champions shirts.

I can hear Nebraska fans everywhere sighing, “How LAME!” and continue with, “We’re NEBRASKA! We’re above celebrating something so trivial as a measly divisional championship!”

Before I make my case against my fellow Nebraska fans (as it seems I so often do here) let me explain a few things about myself.

First of all, I own way more shirts than any heterosexual male should, and I collect them at an alarming rate. Want me to go to your lame charity function? I’m there, as long as there is a free t-shirt involved, and you have it in extra large. Also, the shirt can’t be lame. But I’ve turned down so few t-shirts in my life that that is a very unlikely mathematical possibility.

Secondly, I wouldn’t say I’ve had a tough life, I’ve been very blessed in fact. But I’ve overcome more than my fair share of obstacles. I’ve had to fight for everything I’ve ever gotten, and in doing so I’ve learned to appreciate every small victory that comes my way. So when Nebraska grabs their division title, yeah, I’m proud of them for that.

Lastly, I had just finished off another round of wings and the band started playing another Elvis song, so why not check the shirts out?

Turns out they were only $5. I’m guessing they needed unloaded, because my fellow Nebraska fans aren’t as enthused about a division title as I am.

Seems like I hear the announcers lament the same thing in every Nebraska game. “Nebraska hasn’t won a conference championship since NINE-TEEN-NINTY-NINE!”

They say it like they’ve discovered some astonishing stat that no one has ever heard before; the kind of discovery that will make football fans heads explode.

First of all, if it wasn’t repeated every time Nebraska football was brought up, yeah, that statement might carry some weight. But just like saying a word over and over again that word weirdly starts losing all meaning. (try it, it’s fun, only works if you say the word out loud though)

Repetition aside the first thing that comes to mind is all those Big Eight championships Nebraska won as I was growing up as a child in the 80s and early 90s. The conference name tells part of the story.

From a purely probability standpoint Nebraska only had to be better than 7 other teams. If you add twenty five percent more teams to a conference you are that much more likely to not win the conference crown. It also doesn’t help if two of those added teams are Texas and Texas A&M.

Speaking of quality of conference, in the Big Eight days all that stood between Nebraska and a conference crown was Oklahoma........and the sad versions of Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Colorado, Missouri, and Okie State.......

I remember getting a college football preview magazine when I was a wee little Smitty. On the cover in big bold letters: “The Big Eight no longer the Big Three”. I was very confused by this, but looking back, what they meant was that Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Colorado were typically viewed as the big boys and the remainder of the conference tended to fight it out for a distant fourth.

As I recall, that statement turned out to be completely false for that season. Nebraska was good; as was Oklahoma and Colorado, in true Monty Python style, was “getting better”, but still a distant third; and everyone else still sucked,...very very badly.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to diminish the accomplishment of all those Big Eight titles. Like I said, I love to celebrate every victory in life. I’m just trying to put things into proper perspective.

The next thing to keep in mind is that in addition to adding more teams to our conference, a conference championship was also introduced. Think about this. How many Big Eight titles do you think we would have won if we had to beat Oklahoma twice in the same season? I’d guess about as many we’ve won since being in conferences with a title game. 1979 Orange Bowl anyone?

Next, I’d like to point out that the divisions Nebraska has been in since this conference championship drought began have had six teams; only two less than the entire conference Nebraska was in when championships came in bunches. This was also the time when it was socially acceptable to throw oranges onto the field while beating Oklahoma. A ritual signifying a conference crown and a corresponding trip to the Orange Bowl.

So, is it so wrong of me to celebrate a division title? Especially, when the only difference between heaving tropical produce at the field, coupled with tearing down goal posts, versus poo-pooing a similar accomplishment; is a step down in team arrangement nomenclature and two fewer teams?

And hell, starting in 2014 there will be seven teams in our division, only one away from having a big eight DIVISION of our own.

Look at the NFL, a total of thirty two teams, two conferences with four divisions in each conference. If you win your conference......YOU’RE IN THE SUPER BOWL.

I know, I know the Super Bowl is a much bigger accomplishment, much more parody in the NFL etc etc. But the Big Ten is only one more round of expansion away from having sixteen teams and they may not even stop there. The same number of teams in both NFL conferences.

Now that I’ve made my case for pride in our team’s divisional accomplishment let me break down how I view each level of achievement analogy style.

Nebraska accomplishment / NFL equivalent

1. Winning Record and a bowl game / Made the playoffs as a wild card

I could see an argument here but the Seahawks made the playoffs a few years back with a very impressive 7-9 regular season record

2. Winning our division / First round bye and a berth in the NFC or AFC title game

3. Winning the conference title / Birth in the Super Bowl ( i.e the Rose Bowl or some other BCS equivalent)

4. Rose Bowl or some other BCS win / Winning the Super Bowl

5. National Championship / To me that’s a set above winning the Super Bowl, hard to fathom but that’s how awesome it would feel to me. No real NFL equivalent here.

Therefore, since I graduated from high school, by my logic Nebraska has been the Buffalo Bills of conference title games. I can live with that. Especially, if a neat, inexpensive shirt is involved.

My College Football Division 1-A Playoff System

Last week I promised my system for determining division 1-A’s MNC*.

The most important part of my system is that I refuse use the TLA’s to differentiate between division I footballs two subcategories. Growing up it was always 1-A and 1-AA. The day I refer to them as FCS and FBS is the day I take a cheese grater to my face and jump in the Pacific Ocean.

Now that that business is settled, I believe i touched on this during last weeks blog, but in case I didn’t. I can’t stress enough that this is MY system, and I’m not about being fair or even making sense, this is the system that I would get the most enjoyment out of and makes the most sense to me. Don’t like it? Email me, tweet me, the address should be over there ----->

I’ll pretend like your criticisms don’t bother me and then I’ll cry myself to sleep that night, sounds like fun huh?

In all seriousness, I wouldn’t mind hearing your system. So again, shoot me an email ---->
Or a tweet ----->

Now to my system. My system is a twelve team playoff bracket with the top four teams getting a first round bye. These teams are made up of four of the six teams that have a conference championship. Those conferences include:

• ACC
• Big Ten
• C-USA
• MAC
• Pac 12
• SEC

Here are my reasons for this stance:

• Conference Championships are awesome, don’t like the fact that you conference doesn’t get a first round bye? Add more teams and have a conference championship......you ninnies

• I like the idea that the conference championships would act as a sort of first round playoff game

• Conferences that have a championship have to play an extra game that other conferences do not, so I think it is only fair we reward those teams with one fewer game to make things even.

• Teams that don’t have a conference championship could play on the same weekend that other conferences are playing their conference championships. I like that idea. The only problem with that is that two conferences (usually the MAC and C-USA) would be left out of the top four due to the weakness of their conference. I know that doesn’t seem fair but fill your conference with something other than Akrons, directional Michigan Schools and maybe i’d be more merciful. Also, in most peoples scenarios (including the current model now used by the BCS) they are left completely out in the cold, so I’m doing them a favor by including them at all. You’re welcome.

Idealy it would be nice to have eight conferences of sixteen teams, or something so no byes are needed, that would require some conference realignment, I’ve thought about doing that for another blog, but it would be a real time sink, so no promises.

I’m also torn between the awesomeness that is conference championships and conferences that can actually play all of the teams in their conference every year (the way the Big 12 is now). To me it seems silly to have teams in your conference that you play in two year on, two year off cycles, or longer in some cases.

Aside from the four conferences with the bye that leaves 7 conferences plus the independents. Therefore I give one slot each to each conference champion. I feel it’s important you win your conference in order to win the MNC, that’s just how I feel. Don’t like it? Write your own blog :-)

That leaves one spot left. A spot I had a hard time deciding on. On the one hand you have the four independents, however there are only four of them, if their were more I might think about giving an automatic spot, but there aren’t, so they have to be ranked highly enough (perhaps in the top 10) or have a decent enough record. You indy’s don’t like it? Join one of the conferences that needs a few extra teams to hold a conference championship so they’re eligible for one of those nifty top four seeds.

Even better yet, be selected or not by a committee of experts whose sole job is selecting the 12th spot or a wild card team. Yeah, I like that committee idea.***

Yes, I said wild card team, I didn’t like that idea either, especially since I just got done saying how important conference championships are. As things are now I don’t see a way around it.

Next unique aspect of my playoff is that reseeding will take place after each round, meaning that in each round the lowest seeds will be matched against the highest seeds. This will increase the likelihood that the two best teams meet in the championship. I know the NFL does this with their first round, but they still split their brackets by conference and only reseed for the first round I believe, mine is the only system I know of that would be a complete reseed system.

Last major unique thingy about my system is that the first two rounds will be played at the higher rated teams home stadium. This was just nixed by the Big Ten which originally suggested something similar for the future four team playoff. I liked the idea. I like the idea of a team from the south having to come up north in the middle of December and playing somewhere really, really cold. This instead of northern teams always having to travel south for their bowl game as it has been forever.

The so called ‘final four’ will take place at traditional BCS bowls, rotating between them as to who hosts the championship. Those bowls being the Orange, Sugar and Rose. Screw you Fiesta bowl, you corrupt bastards you! You’ve lost your chance.  

I’m not entirely against some further mix-match of bowls to home games, perhaps the first round could be bowls as well, again rewarding the top four seeds with a home game.....but this blog is due so no more time to ponder....

Now onto the fun part, using my system, what would last year have looked liked? First, seeding the teams, we’ll start with the infamous top four seeds, pulled from the conferences having a championship.

Seed Team Pre-Bowl Record in 2011/ Notes
1. LSU 12-0 / Easy-peesy pick, only undefeated team, and out of the rugged SEC to boot.

2. Oregon 11-2 / Picked them over Wisconsin as they played a more courageous Non-conference schedule including a loss to #1 seed LSU in the first week of the season.

3. Wisconsin 11-2 / See above, plus they totally aren’t Clemson....

4. Clemson 10-3 / Worst record, plus I hate them, they wreck havoc on my family college pick’em every week of every year with their Jeckl and Hydeness, but they are better conference champs than the C-USA offerening or the MAC,..although I would have been curious to see Southern Miss take a shot at them...


So those are our top four seeds, again, pulled from the conferences that have a championship.

Onto the teams in the first round, without the bye.

Seed Team Pre-Bowl Record in 2011/ Notes
5. Alabama 11-1 / Alabama sneaks into the only wild card spot with their only loss coming to #1 Seed LSU. Had somebody in the independent ranks been worth a poop though, they’d have been on the outside looking in...

6. Oklahoma State 11-1 / Best record of the remaining conference champs, prolly would have been involved in the championship last year had they used any sensible system of a four team or even a plus one playoff.

7. TCU 10-2 / Next year they’re off the the Big 12 but last year they were still in the Mountain West conference and their Rose Bowl appearance and win against Wisconsin in 2010 proves to me they can hang with the big boys.

8. Southern Miss 11-2 / Always a favorite of mine (other than Nebraska) they take on the big boys and normally scare the be-jesus out of them, and sometimes beat them. That’s why I’m a little lot leary about Nebraska playing them the first game of the season next year....yikes,...anyways, they upset up until that point undefeated Houston in the C-USA championship, and like I said I’d be curious to see how S.Miss would have matched up against Clemson,...the more I think about it, the more I’m closer to giving them that 4th seed.....

9. Arkansas State 10-2 / Another scary non-conference opponent for Nebraska next year, getting the slight edge over N.Illinois

10. N.Illinois 10-3 / Biggest thing the Huskies had going for them is that they’re not in the Big East, which I can’t even bring myself to watch. Which is saying something...considering we are talking about College football here.....

11. Cincinnati 10-2 / As much as I can’t stand watching the Big East, I still think the Bearcats are better than.....

12. Louisiana Tech 8-4 / Who finished with the worst record of any conference champ and they are coming out of the cupcake filled Sun Belt conference.

Those are the seeds. Now with the aid of a neat site I found called What If Sports I’ll use that to trace through my hypothetical playoff from last year.

The site uses stats, formulas, algorythms and a bunch of other stuff I don’t understand to generate realistic results in hypothetical match-ups, complete with stats and stuff, very cool...so you could say, match up the 1994 Nebraska team with the 1995 Nebraska team, or whatever your heart desires...again,....very cool.

On to the first round:

To no ones surprise 5th seed Alabama throttles 12th seed La. Tech 38-17.

6th seed Okie State takes down 9th seed Cincy from the Big (L)East 48-27.

TCU (7th seed) wins a high scoring game with 10th seed and MAC champ N. Illinois 49-31.

In the last match up of the first round, my dark horse S.Miss team falls in a slight suprise to 9th seed Arkansas State 20-17.

So we have the following four seeds advancing:

• 5th seed Alabama
• 6th seed Okie State
• 7th seed TCU
• and 9th seed Arkansas State

Making the 2nd round feature:

• #1 LSU vs #9 Arkansas State
• #2 Oregon vs #7 TCU
• #3 Wisky vs #6 Okie State
• and #4 Clemson vs #5 Alabama

The results from the second round hold no huge shockers, but I’m mildly surprised LSU only managed to squeak by ASU 20-17, and Wisky managed to outscore Okie State 56-42.

Other scores from round two:

• #2 Oregon 27-17 over #7 TCU
• and #5 Alabama knocking off #4 Clemson 30-6

We’re now down to the ‘final four’ and the games that are associated with existing bowls. After re-seeding again we end up with the following match-ups:

• #1 LSU vs #5 Alabama, a match up that took place in last years actual national championship bore fest.
• and #2 Oregon vs #3 Wisky another actual match up from last bowl season, with Oregon winning.

As I mentioned earlier my original idea was to rotate the bowls, but seeing as how Oregon and Wisky are a traditional Pac 12/Big Ten Rose Bowl match up we’ll put them there. And the SEC is a Sugar Bowl conference (if I remember right), so we’ll put them there, leaving the MNC to be the Orange Bowl. Maybe I should make some rule that if a traditional bowl match up occurs the teams will go to their traditional bowl,...or something,....haven’t decided....too late now...


In the Sugar Bowl Alabama all but shuts down LSU just like in the real life matchup 38-3, but the Rose takes a different turn than the real thing and Wisconsin prevails.

Now are our National Championship. A show down in the Orange Bowl,.....finally a playoff where a true champion can be determined!

…....Alabama thrashes Wisky 45-13..... ......


So even though I designed a playoff system specifically to my tastes, and Alabama only got in because their weren’t any good independent teams we still wound up with the same MNC.

Also, we ended up having what was probably an even more mis-matched national championship...all under scoring my point from last week, that the national championship is stupid, and you can’t prevent a stinker from occurring in the championship game regardless of the system.

Therefore,...I say again....teams should just win their games and not worry about whatever post-season tweak the rich guys are trying this year......now if you don’t mind the “Committee***” has to meet to prevent this 45-13 disaster from happening again next year....surely SOMETHING can be figured out...maybe if we ju-......

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* remember that acronym? Awww...shucks...well thanks for trying...
** Three.Letter.Acronyms
*** Oh, and by committee I mean me.......and only me

Obligatory College Football Playoff Blog

As you may well know, anyone who has a blog and even thinks about sports is legally required to offer their take on playoffs at the highest level of college football.

Failure to do so results in the revocation of your bloggers of america union card and a poke in the arm with a sharpened stick. To avoid such a horrible fate I’m going to provide my take now and also file all the necessary paper as proof of doing so.

Before we continue I must state something that will come as a shock to just about everyone, sports fans and non sports fans alike. The National Championship is stupid.

There.

I said it.

Light your torches, find your pitchforks and “come at me bro”.

Don’t get me wrong. Shiny crystal trophies are nice, but we’re talking about something that is completely out of your team's control. Something that is debated so much and has been  for so long, that when discussed in written form an acronym is used to describe it. “MNC” which stands for Mythical National Champion/Championship. Sounds like fun doesn’t it?*

That’s why i don’t get my undies in a bunch like my fellow Nebraska fans when the topic of Penn State in 94ish (if my memory is correct) or Michigan in 97 should get part of that that year’s “MNC”. I don’t care. We won all our games those years and that to me is awesome enough. So, if Michigan or Penn State want to put that year in big letters on their stadium somewhere under “National Champions”, good for them. I’ll still sleep tonight. They did everything they were supposed to, too. They won all of their games.

And don’t even get me started on teams that lose one or two games and still claim the MNC, lame. I’d argue those years shouldn’t even have a MNC. Especially when a two loss team claims it....ick.

Ever since I was old enough to listen to the talking heads on Saturday mornings debate which team really was the best in the nation, I began to grow more and more sick of the topic. To me, especially at that time, it was a bigger deal to beat Oklahoma, win the Big Eight conference, and go to the Orange Bowl. I liked this for several reasons.

• First, it didn’t matter if you were undefeated or not, didn’t matter if you stubbed your toe week two against someone and tarnished your undefeated season, you could always win the conference and go to the Orange Bowl.
• The conference rankings were never based on what some sportswriter in some town far away who never saw a Nebraska game thought of how good Nebraska was. It was all about wins and losses, head to head match-ups, and in rare cases tie-breakers.
• Same deal with the Coaches rankings....
• I always felt like it was our own little mini-world of college football. The Orange Bowl was our bowl, our championship...and even though we lost to a Florida team every year, it was still somehow special.

Another dirty little secret? Playoffs rarely determine who the best team is, especially in a single elimination tournament. Are you gonna try and tell me that the 9-7 New York Giants were really the best team in the NFL last year because they won the Super Bowl** ? The same Giants that at one point lost five out of six of their games including four games in a row? The same team that lost to the Washington Redskins twice? Nuh-uh sorry.

Or what about UConn who won the National Championship in basketball a few years back after finishing NINTH in their conference.....in short, playoffs don’t determine who the best team is, only who is on a roll at the end of the season.

To put it in yet another way, Bertrand Russell’s quote about war comes to mind; “War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

So I think of playoffs like this “Playoffs don’t determine who is best, only who is left”

All of this comes about as I write this, because the NCAA is considering a four team playoff at the end of the regular season. At first I was excited about this. I know, I know, I just got done griping about how playoffs don’t determine a champion, and I stand by that, they don’t. However, playoffs have one really important factor in their corner.....playoffs = more football, and I can’t ever have enough football.

Then I heard the local radio guys debating how those four teams would be determined and realized that a four team playoff wouldn’t put an end to the constant debate about “Who is #1” it only pushes the problem a tiny bit farther down the chain.

So, why did the old rich white guys in charge of college football's highest level finally change their tune?

• Well last year’s MNC featured a rematch of two teams from the same division of the same conference.
• A conference that has now had a team win the “National Championship” five years in a row. So no matter who won, it would be from the same conference....again.
• The game itself a rematch of a field goal miss/make fest that ended in a 9-6 overtime ‘thriller’.**
• It didn’t help that the game was hyped for months beforehand either....so, people were tired of hearing about the FIRST game even before it was played,...let alone the rematch in the MNC

All of this added up to less than stellar ratings for a college football MNC, which meant the fat cats finally got hit somewhere where they actually cared about,...the wallet.

So, now they are meeting in high rise offices, late into the night scrambling to find the perfect formula. Unfortunately, there isn’t one.

I’d argue that although the MNC this year sucked. Both as a match up and a game itself, I still have to admit that those were indeed probably the two best teams in the country. No combination of fancy computer formulas, voters, even playoffs can prevent a championship stinker once in awhile. How many Super Bowls can you remember that weren’t all that competitive? Had teams you didn’t care about?  Where the commercials were just ‘meh’?

What to do then? Well, in next week’s blog, I will detail my design for College football’s postseason. Keep in mind I don’t want to, but it’s another blog requirement, and I really don’t want to be poked with a sharp stick.

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* No

**That was the game where your girlfriend shushed everyone during the commercials so she could hear what the talking baby said, then blabbed loudly during the actual game. Seriously dude, did you HAVE to bring her?

*** I fell asleep during the first quarter