Here's our closing argument for Florida
I cannot believe I have to write this because it's so obvious, but apparently, I have to take time from my postseason nap because of all the dopey talking heads out there, along with an incoming president who needs to spend every waking second figuring out how to come up with 3 million new jobs, who can't seem able to compare and contrast teams by actually turning on this new-fangled thing called a "TV" to watch them play.
Florida is the best team in America for 2008 by every and any measure you want to go by. Period. End of story. National champion, Florida Gators. Done.
If you want to rail on the system, go right ahead, but your day was a month ago when the final BCS standings came out. If you want to debate Florida vs. the rest of the country, as the Clovers would say, bring it on.
This is not an anti-USC, Utah, or Texas argument, but today, and this season, is all about Florida. And here's why ...
1. Florida played 11 bowl teams. 11, and that doesn't count Tennessee or Arkansas. Take a step back and let that one sink in for a moment. It beat two No. 1 teams, and outside of the loss to Ole Miss, no one came closer than 23 points until the SEC championship game.
2. If you're going to bring up the Ole Miss loss as evidence of anything, you either a) didn't actually watch the game or b) are totally incapable of putting that game in the context of the other losses out there this season. From a blocked extra point, to two missed touchdown passes late, to Tebow getting stopped on a fourth and inches, to a blown coverage, several things had to happen for Florida to lose to the eventual Cotton Bowl winner and 15th-ranked team in the final polls, by one point. Absolutely, a loss is a loss, but it's not the indictment you probably think it is.
3. Stop bringing up the fact that Utah beat Alabama by 11, just like Florida. No, I don't believe 'Bama automatically beats the Utes if Andre Smith was playing, but if you can't understand how vital the No. 2 pick in the NFL Draft and the best left tackle in college football is, and how Utah was able to destroy the Tide offense that was down to a third-string left tackle, then I can't help you. Also, Florida beat the Tide without Percy Harvin, arguably one of the five best players in America. If you don't think that matters, you didn't watch the national title game.
4. Again, notice the margin of victory in the Florida games this year. Utah needed missed kicks and an epic late drive to get by a TCU team that Oklahoma throttled. The Utes also got pushed around by a miserable Michigan team and played three other games this year decided by seven points or fewer, including a 13-10 tussle with New Mexico. If you think that Florida's defense, the one that held the greatest scoring machine in the history of college football to 14 points, couldn't deal with the speed and precision of the Utah attack, then again, I can't help you.
5. USC couldn't handle Daryll Clark and the Penn State offense in the second half of the Rose Bowl, so what makes you think for a split second that it could stop Florida's offense? Don't you dare. Don't ... you ... dare ... suggest that USC's D took its foot off the gas in the second half of that game, because then I'll have to give you a helmet and a shiny ball of tin foil to play with over in the corner. If you try to bring this up, then you simply have no clue about the pride of a USC defense that wanted DESPERATELY to make an all-timer of a statement against the Nittany Lions.
6. USC would've beaten Ohio State no matter what, but it has to keep being brought up ... if you can't tell the difference between the Ohio State team that battled Penn State and lost to Texas and the one that soiled itself against the Trojans, again, can't help you. If anyone out there actually bothered to watch the 17-10 win over Arizona, the 17-3 win over Cal, the 28-7 win over UCLA, the Oregon State loss, and also watched the entire Florida season, and yet still wants to make a case that USC is the best team in the country based on speed, talent, and any other measure, then again, can't help you. If you want to thump your chest over shutting down Arizona State, Washington State, Washington and Notre Dame, and you want to compare that to beating 10 bowl teams and two No. 1s including an Oklahoma offense that scored over 700 points ... yeah. You know.
7. In deep down places you don't talk about at parties, when you watched Texas need everything in the bag to get by Ohio State, did you really think that this was a national title team? If the Ohio State defense could keep the Longhorn offense in check, and if a still-emerging player like Terrelle Pryor, who wasn't allowed to throw the ball five feet in front of him, could get the offense moving just enough to get by, then can you imagine what Tim Tebow, Brandon Spikes, and the motivated Gators would've done? In the end, yeah, there's no dogging the Texas win over OU or the Longhorn season in any way, the Texas Tech loss might be the most forgivable big-game defeat of the regular season, but the second-best regular season win was against ... Oklahoma State? Missouri? Don't laugh, but Rice? If the Big 12 turned out to be exposed this bowl season, and the SEC turned out to be strong, then Florida has to be given more than just the benefit of the doubt here.
People, it's not like I have any horse in this race. The last thing I need in my world is yet another off-season of dealing with jazzed up SEC fans who don't believe the rest of the country plays college football, and I'm going to waste at least 19 days of total time in 2009 explaining to them that teams like USC, Texas, and even Boise State, going into next year, really are fantastic. If the shoe was on the other foot, and USC had done what Florida had done this year, I'd be Mr. Trojan right now (keep your comments to yourself). But for otherwise knowledgeable media types (cough, Mel Kiper, cough) and others to claim that there isn't a No. 1 team is absurd.
Florida won the national title. Don't like it? Then play up to your talent level for 12 games next year, USC, and you'll get your chance to knock the big boys off the throne. Win all your games in blowout fashion you non-BCS team, so I'll have to sit here and beat my head against the wall defending your case. Beat Oklahoma again next year, Texas, and you'll get the benefit of the Big 12 doubt from everyone.
The issue was settled on the field this year. Debate over.
(c)2009 Fox Sports Interactive Media, LLC
Britt's Nixon to play football at Florida
North Carolina's best is headed to the Sunshine State to play college football.
Jack Britt High School offensive lineman Xavier Nixon revealed Saturday his intentions to accept a scholarship offer from the University of Florida just before the second half of the U.S. Army All-American Game in San Antonio, Texas. Nixon, a 6-foot-6, 275-pounder, was No. 1 in the Fayetteville Observer's preseason list of the state's college prospects.
Nixon chose the Gators over a final list of three schools that also included Miami and LSU. Nixon first picked up a Miami hat during the announcement ceremony, but tossed it aside and put on a Florida hat.
"When he picked up that Miami hat he really surprised me for a second," said Jack Britt coach Richard Bailey, who was in attendance at the game. "He faked me out a little. But this is a decision he probably made a long time ago."
Copyright 2009 - The Fayetteville Observer
Trojans' best defense doesn't look that way
LOS ANGELES -- By at least one statistical measure, the 2008 USC defense is the greatest in college football history.
But it probably will be as underappreciated years from now as it is today.
The Trojans will not win the national championship, or whatever passes for it. They will not set any significant NCAA records.
They will, if the bowl season is anything like the regular season, set a mark that will separate their defense from every one before it.
USC has allowed 7.8 points per game -- best in the nation and the lowest since Auburn in 1988 -- heading into the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl vs. Penn State. Through Dec. 24, Football Bowl Subdivision teams averaged 27.2 points per game. The difference between those figures - 19.4 points - is the largest since the NCAA began keeping records in 1937.
Other teams have allowed fewer points. Heck, the '37 Duke Blue Devils and '38 Tennessee Volunteers surrendered none.
But college football was a different game back then - a much lower-scoring one.
Teams averaged fewer than 12 points per game in '37 and '38. This season's figure is tied for the third highest of all time, all occurring this decade, including last season's record mark of 28.4.
What the 2008 USC defense has done to keep opponents off the scoreboard in this high-scoring, high-flying age of spread offenses and multifaceted option attacks is akin to Pedro Martinez posting sub-2.50 ERAs in baseball's steroids era. In the context of its time, USC's defense is arguably the best ever.
"It's tougher to play great defense today," ESPN commentator and college football historian Beano Cook said. "The game is so much more wide open. There's more speed. They want you to pass.
"That's what's amazing about USC's defense. But nobody's going to remember."
Greatest-ever anythings typically are recounted and exalted. So where has the 2008 USC defense gone wrong?
ALMOST FAMOUS
Defense, in general, is not as sexy as offense. USC's defense, in particular, lacks mass appeal.
Oh, it has star players (Rey Maualuga, Brian Cushing, Taylor Mays), a renowned leader (Pete Carroll) and the unquestioned respect of its opponents. But in a weird way - a way that has had negative repercussions - USC's defense has been too numbingly efficient for its own good.
The 2008 Trojans do not have a notable number of sacks. Their total of 28, with one game to go, is barely more than half the 2003 team's 55. They have not forced a tremendous number of turnovers - 26 in 12 games falling 10 short of the coaches' minimum preseason goal. And they have scored only two defensive touchdowns. Carroll's 2001 and '03 teams had five interception returns for scores, prompting the coach to lament: "Two is not a great year at all."
Forcing the other team to punt - which USC did with uncommon frequency - does not lend itself to in-game updates or "SportsCenter" highlights.
"This defense ranks up there with the best we've seen in a long, long time," said Charles Davis, one of the analysts for NFL Network's "College Football Now" who also will call the Orange Bowl and BCS title game for Fox.
"The hard thing for me is, when I think of the great defenses they've had during this run, the ones that created turnovers stand out in my mind. That's the only thing that's lacking."
Without numerous ESPN- and YouTube-worthy moments, USC's defense lacks the national acclaim of, say, Oklahoma's offense. When it came time for the voters to decide who would play for the BCS title, they chose the teams that earned more notoriety by scoring more points.
"People picked (other) one-loss teams ahead of 'SC because they liked their offenses," Davis said. "That doesn't mean they're better. The style of those teams trumped the defense of 'SC."
IMPROVING GROUND
The primary argument against the Trojans' defense being the best ever - and against them belonging in the BCS title game - hinges on the quality, or lack thereof, of their competition.
"It's a great defense," said Pete Fiutak, the founder of CollegeFootballNews.com. "But the Pac-10 was awful."
USC recorded two of its three shutouts against Washington and Washington State, who combined for two victories - including the Cougars' triumph over the Huskies. The other shutout came against disappointing Arizona State, which started the season in the top 25 and ended it with a sub-.500 record.
The Trojans' defense could have dispelled any doubts by facing and shutting down a Big 12 power such as Oklahoma (54.0 points per game) or Texas (43.9), or SEC champion Florida (45.2). Instead, USC's final proving ground is Penn State, which is 11th in the nation in scoring (40.2) but hails from the Big Ten, a conference that garners no more respect than the Pac-10.
So what is the defense to do?
Play even better than it already has.
"I still think," Maualuga said this week, "the best is yet to come."
Copyright (c) 2008 Orange County Register Communications
Eastern Michigan names English head football coach
Ypsilanti, MI (Sports Network) - Eastern Michigan has named Ron English its new head football coach.
English spent this past season as the defensive coordinator at Louisville after a five-year run at Michigan under Lloyd Carr. Carr served as an unpaid adviser throughout the search process for a new coach.
The 40-year-old English, who becomes the fifth African-American head coach in major college football, has also been an assistant at Arizona State, Northern Arizona and San Diego State.
Eastern Michigan needed a replacement for Jeff Genyk, who was fired in November after five years at the helm. The Eagles were just 3-9 this past season and posted a mark of 16-42 during Genyk's tenure.
The school has not had a winning season since a 6-5 mark in 1995 and last won the Mid-American Conference title in 1987, a season that included a victory over San Jose State in the California Bowl.
(c)1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Rutgers football, a 35-year clash of cultures
At Ohio State or Oklahoma, what happened at Rutgers would be called the price of doing business. The $15.6 million for football, the $2 million coach, the $102 million stadium expansion would all be business as usual.
But this is Rutgers, which is schizoid when it comes to football. It's an internal struggle, a 35-year war.
That word is not used lightly. Go to any Rutgers message board or forum, including nj.com, and read the comments. Typical, angry Jersey guy stuff. Strident, and mostly stupid.
Yet lost in all the yelling are the things everybody should want. A good football program that respects academics. A good program that doesn't cannibalize the other university sports. A good stadium built for college football, not a sports emporium.
But the Rutgers football war tribes don't think like that. It's all or nothing, with no in-between. Rutgers should be like Penn State. Rutgers should be like Princeton. Challenge athletic department growth, and you're a Scarlet traitor with no pride in the state. Support big-time football and you're beer-swilling Neanderthal, whose red face paint is an embarrassment to the state.
The latest casualty is athletic director Bob Mulcahy. He wasn't the first. Fred Gruninger and Doug Graber come to mind.
And he won't be the last. With the political fallout over athletic department oversight -- and the way Mulcahy's firing was handled -- more casualties are certainly coming. Maybe president Richard McCormick, maybe even the structure that creates the board of governors, who rubber-stamped every athletic department move.
Because what happened at Rutgers last week, is also, in many ways, business as usual. In the football war, it's one step up, two steps back.
"There is a reluctance, to say the least, to fully endorse big-time football," said Al Koeppe, who co-chaired the nine-member commission that criticized athletic department oversight at Rutgers. "There is an ingrained culture of the university that says football is fine, but it should not be the dominant piece on the chess board."
True enough. Because for everyone who thinks big-time football will add to Rutgers' luster, there's someone who sees it as the university selling its soul, and it seems the middle ground can never be met.
The history of the culture clash goes back three decades when Rutgers president Edward Bloustein enlisted Sonny Werblin, a Rutgers alum and Jets' owner, to help upgrade RU football.
Norm McNatt, who graduated first in the Class of'64, and later became secretary of the university under Bloustein, said Werblin warned Bloustein about trying to go too big.
"Werblin said it was the worst market, because there was too much else going on," McNatt said. "He recognized the school didn't have the tradition, or really, a very strong demand for major football. People were quite happy playing Cornell and Princeton."
There was anger when Princeton was dropped in 1980, ending a rivalry that began with the first college game ever played in 1869. But 1980 also fueled big-time fantasies. Rutgers hosted No. 1 Alabama at Giants Stadium and almost stole the game, losing 17-13.
The push accelerated in the late 1990s under president Fran Lawrence. Milton Friedman, the Nobel-winning economist, assailed the plans.
"The university does not exist to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes," he wrote.
A group called the Rutgers 1000 led the fight, saying the university was headed toward Yahoo U, with tumbleweeds blowing through the academic halls. They, in turn, were dismissed as Chaucer-loving, silk scarlet tie types, pretentious in their belief that Olde Queens was an Ivy-elite academic institution.
The football war took a dramatic turn two years ago, when the board and McCormick agreed with Mulcahy's plan to kill off the "Olympic sports." Men's crew, the oldest sport on campus, swimming, tennis, and fencing, the sport with the school's best students.
"We were all for football,," said Bob Stanicki, the varsity tennis coach. "We hoped the football success would generate more revenue for all sports. But then they cut us off. The message was, 'It's all about football.'"
These were no cranky old academics now lined up against big-time football. They were people like former Olympic rower Jeff Klepacki, and major donors like Bruce Nicholas, as in the Nicholas Music Center at Douglass, and Richard Shindell, who gave Rutgers a $3 million endowment to fund spinal injury research by world-renowned doctor Wise Young.
"I love football," said Nicholas last week, "but we're losing the character of what the university should be."
Here's the grand irony. Those small sports were a great model for how football should be. Winning teams with traditions not invented, but built over decades, with alumni who give not because the team wins, but because the sport enriched their lives.
Instead, the six sports were dropped for what amounted to a $1 million savings for the school.
Here's another irony. The Rutgers Stadium expansion plan included $30 million of private donations. They got less than $2 million, half of which came from Gov. Jon Corzine, so they have to bond for the rest. Crew, on the other hand, has a $5 million alumni commitment to build a new boathouse for the team. No bonding needed. It was already done.
(c) 2008 New Jersey On-Line LLC
UW-Texas Southern hoop advance
They're winless, have dealt with a recent coaching change and show up Saturday in need of a serious breakthrough.
Forget Washington's sorry football team. The Texas Southern Tigers have their own set of problems on the basketball floor, lugging a 0-7 record into Edmundson Pavilion to face Lorenzo Romar's revitalized Huskies.
The man entrusted with fixing this Southwestern Athletic Conference mess is new coach Tony Harvey, no stranger to hard times. Harvey spent five seasons as Missouri's lead recruiter, answering to Seattle native Quin Snyder, before everyone lost their jobs once program improprieties were uncovered.
For all those reasons, the Huskies (4-3), coming off Thursday's inspired victory over the Oklahoma State Cowboys, could be hard-pressed to maintain high energy levels against an overmatched Texas Southern team that has lost by 31 to Cincinnati, 19 to Arkansas and 17 to Marquette.
Romar, however, has been greatly encouraged by what he's seen in three consecutive outings from his players since they bottomed out against Kansas 12 days ago, losing by 19 points in Kansas City. The big letdowns might have come and gone.
"When we started 0-5 in 2004, it was like this," the coach said, referring to the conference record for his first NCAA Tournament team at the UW. "Everyone wanted to do it themselves. We had to hit rock bottom for everyone to see that. Maybe that was the Kansas game. I don't know if it was unavoidable. Maybe our attention was grabbed."
Early on this season, the Huskies were tagged as a team that couldn't shoot or handle the ball well. Lately, they've been a group that plays hard and together, discovering it's possible to fix the other stuff with sheer hustle.
Freshman guard Isaiah Thomas has been a key addition as advertised. After a brief adjustment period, he's learned how to mix both necessary scoring and floor leadership. Oklahoma State tried to target him on defense and didn't get anywhere.
"We were going to let little Thomas beat us from the perimeter and he hit his first two shots," Cowboys coach Travis Ford pointed out. "Good players beat you like that, and that's what he is, a good player."
Some people still scoff at this notion, but these aren't the plodding Huskies of recent seasons. They block shots. They intimidate people on the backboards. They can run the floor some. They matched up well against a speedy Big 12 team. They might even have more mobility than most Pac-10 teams this season.
"They'll probably be as quick as any team in the league, but they still need a big center," former UW coach Marv Harshman said.
Continuing with Texas Southern, the Huskies have a chance to run the table on the rest of their non-conference games, all at home, and enter Pac-10 play with a 10-3 record. No one thought that was possible after the Kansas game, with these guys playing as poorly as possible in a 73-54 defeat.
Momentum is building for Romar's team, especially after its 83-65 manhandling of Oklahoma State, a team that lost 83-71 to Gonzaga seven days earlier.
OK, how much difference is there between the improving Huskies and the unbeaten and fifth-ranked Zags, especially since they no longer play each other?
"I don't get in the middle of that," the Cowboys' Ford said with a weary grin. "Washington is a good team. Gonzaga is a good team. I'll let you settle that."
There's another barometer coming soon. For those who take great pleasure in bragging up the Zags' non-league schedule and ridiculing the UW's, it should be noted that Texas Southern will return home and play Texas, and then fly all the way back to the Northwest for another outing/beating.
Gonzaga hosts these same win-starved Tigers on Dec. 18.
(c)1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
CWU's Reilly advances to final three of Harlon Hill Trophy balloting
FLORENCE, Ala. - Central Washington University senior quarterback Mike Reilly has been named one of the three national finalists for the 2008 Harlon Hill Trophy, and has been invited to the trophy presentation banquet on Dec. 12 in Florence, Ala.
Reilly, running back Bernard Scott of Abilene Christian University (Texas), and quarterback A.J. Milwee of the University of North Alabama emerged from an original list of eight national finalists and will be invited to the announcement of the award on the eve of the NCAA Division II National Championship game. The three players were the top three vote-getters from the field of eight finalists in voting by the sports information directors at the 149 schools that compete in Division II football.
The Hill Trophy is presented to the top player in Division II football and is in its 23rd year of existence.
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