Blogs like a girl

Give 'Em Hell, Part 2

Meet Miss Auburn, circa I have no idea.
What does she have to do with bringing the BcS to its knees? Nothing really. But she went to a university that knows the ugly side of this BcS system. They were robbed of an opportunity to play for a National Championship despite going undefeated. In the SEC. Not cool.

So our email target today is Auburn President Jay Gogue. You can read about Jay here.

His email is: jgogue@auburn.edu.

Talking points:
* Congratulate his school on another big victory against Alabama.
* Remind him how Auburn was lumped in with Utah and Boise State in 2004-05 and denied a chance to play for a National Championship and instead had to watch Oklahoma get drilled by USC. You may also want to ask him to ask 10 Auburn alums how they feel about the system.
* Drop in a very parental sounding reminder that universities are there for the students and, by not fighting this silly system, he is not doing right by the student athletes at Auburn.
* Sign your email War Eagle, with possible :). To warm him up.

Remember Jay is a possible ally so be kind.
Until later,

jengel

Give Them Hell, Part 1

What does my English Bulldog, Miss Ellie, have to do with bringing the BcS to its knees one email at a time? Nothing really. I guess, technically, she is no less qualified to pick who plays for the national championship and in The BcS Bowls than some of the idiot holes making the decisions.

So here is my plan. It is actually kind of simple.

Every day, I am going to give you the email address of one of the principle butt-kissers/enablers of a system that is slowly sucking the soul out of college football. Every other level of football -- from Pee Wee to the NFL -- uses a playoff to determine its champion.

I will also give you a few talking points to enable you to send them a nice, brief email suggesting a change is needed. Like now. Immediately. Before another season is ruined.

We are starting with my personal fave, SEC commissioner and BcS coordinater Mike Slive Slime. Be nice. He sounds a little sensitive in this Q&A with reporters Sunday.

His e-mail is mslive@sec.org.

Here are a few suggested talking points:
* When you were Conference USA Commish, did you find this system to be fair? What changed your mind?
* How can you argue the BcS works when every year ends in controversy?
* How is Mizzou ranked No. 6 in the final BcS rankings and yet not in a BcS Bowl?
* How can a team from a mid-major conference, i.e. Hawaii this year, feel like they have a shot at winning a championship?
* How can you look yourself in the face every morning, knowing you perpetrate this crime against all that is good and holy.

OK, the last one may be a little harsh. Stick with the salient points, namely "Give Us A Playoff".

Hugs and kisses to all and happy e-mailing.

jengel

Question Of The Day: The BcS Edition

Apparently, I am not the only one a little miffed at the BcS this morning. Read here and here and here and, of course, me right here. Yep, media and fans and coaches are mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more.

Except, we will.

We will watch because, despite this sham of a system for determining an overall champion (see that kid above, Colt Brennan, he is one of the kids who got jobbed), college football games are wildly entertaining and what else are you going to watch on New Year's Day?

So this has me wondering this morning if my righteous indignation is wasted and I'd be better trying to help Al Gore as he single-handedly tackles global warming. Or are college football fans angry and bitter and looking for a leader to take on BcS commissioner Mike Slive?

Your turn: Does the BcS system turn you off to college football?

Please Don't Read This Blog ...

... because this technically makes you a witness if the BcS decides to sue for defamation of character. And they might by the time I am done with them.

I hate the BcS.
I hate BcS commissioner Mike Slive.
I hate the Big 12.
I hate the Big 10.
I hate the Rose Bowl.
I hate Ohio State and Illinois.
Who else do I hate?
Oh yeah, I hate the Big 12 commissioner whose name I will not mention because he is such a nonfactor.
I hate the BcS standings.
I hate the American Football Coaches Association and its spineless members who say they hate the current system but do nothing to change it.
I hate the university ADs.
I hate BcS Daddy Roy Kramer.
I hate the university presidents.
I hate the power conferences.
I hate the Orange Bowl.   
I hate Orange Bowl executive director Eric Poms.
And I really hate Kansas.

As you probably guessed by now, I am a product of that famous Mizzou J-School and, if saying Chase Daniel and his Tigers teammates got ... well, a verb I am not allowed to use ... by the Orange Bowl and the BcS on Sunday qualifies me as biased, well, I'm OK with that because they were. How do I know this for sure? Because even Mr. Hate, a KU grad, believes Mizzou got BcSed. They were not invited to a BcS bowl, which is funny because they ranked higher in the final BcS standings than Illinois (9-3) and Kansas (11-1) and three other teams who gobbled up invites. Did I mention the Tigers (11-2) beat both KU and Illinois? Including whooping Kansas to reach The Big 12 Championship Game that ultimately led to their snub.

What exactly is the criteria for selection -- what happens on the field? Puh-lease. How silly of anybody to think how a team plays determines anything. Money and greed and back-room deals determine who wins everything in college football. This system stinks, a fact evidently not lost on Mizzou tight end Martin Rucker.

Listen to what Rucker told StL-PD columnist Bryan Burwell:

"I don't know if you need a playoff system to see that it doesn't make sense that one team (Illinois) lost three games and lost to you, and you only lost two games, and they're going to a BCS game and you're not. I don't think we need a playoff system to understand that, do we?"

How do you look a kid like that in the face, Mike Slime Slive? Or what do you say to coach Bob Stoops, whose Sooners defeated the  No. 1 team in the country while Ohio State sat on their keisters, only to watch Buckeye Nation backdoor into another national championship game?

Where Rucker is wrong, 100-percent dead wrong, is that this latest Mizzou slight does not scream "playoff, Playoff, PLAYOFF". It does. And this is not simply about Mizzou because Oklahoma and Hawaii and Georgia and USC and Virginia Tech were also hosed.

Let's stick with Oklahoma because, well, Stooper and Co. qualify as local and his post Big 12 Championship pleading had a big hunk of truth mixed in with his whine.

Oklahoma deserves a chance to play for an NC.
So does USC.
So does Georgia.
So does Hawaii.
So do Ohio State and LSU.

And the only way to accomodate everybody is a 16-team playoff, not this chaotic mess dictated by a bunch of old dudes in bad jackets and whom they feel like inviting to their antiquated bowls. Blame the bowls for giving a big, fat Heisman to any talk of change. They need things to stay the way they are so they can all travel the country on their junkets watching games and having their butts kissed under the guise of "determining who fits their bowl".

I feel I need to note that I have hated this BcS system since conception, a firm believer that college football needed to be like every other real American sport and have its champion decided in head-to-head competition on the field rather than being figure skating on turf where style points and judges decide who wins.

I screamed when the BcS jobbed Auburn.
I complained when the BcS dissed USC.
I have hated this BcS system for forever.

Now, however, they have really made me mad and they are not going to like me when I am mad because my goal is to make you mad, to make you hate them, to make you hate them so much that you join me in forcing them to change the system.

Starting Monday, Dec. 3, we begin 365 days of Operation: Give Them Hell. Details to follow.

Thanks LBOHers for letting me vent.
Hugs and kisses to all, except, of course, for those BcS butt-kissers mentioned above.
I think you know how I feel about you right now.

jengel

Live From The Alamodome, Part IV

I find myself, for the second time in three days, wondering why in the *&%$ sports have instant replay. It rarely never manages to correct the play. It was obvious during the Cowboys game, on the should have been catch and fumble by T.O. and in the Big 12 Championship game where Mizzou QB Chase Daniel scored a touchdown. Everybody who saw the play and then replays on TV saw that he clearly crossed the line. He was ruled down and, despite the fact every play is supposed to be reviewed and refs buzzed if there is a problem, it stood.

So either do replay right or don't do it. I do not care. But quit with this pretending like replay is doing anything except extending games.

Live From The Alamodome, Part II

So this whole Les Miles indignant act -- I am staying at LSU and why would anybody suggest any differently -- is grating on my last nerve. I say this not to defend the media or the reporting of Kirk Herbstreit. I have no way of knowing who told him what, although, I am struggling to think he just yanked this out of his you-know-where for laughs.

Why, if Miles was so wedded to LSU, did he not kibosh Michigan rumors earlier?

Oh yeah, because he wanted (a) The Michigan job or (b) To at least use that job to pry more money from LSU. None of this makes him unique among college coaches or coaches in general or really human beings. What this always reminds me of is how unbelievably unfair college sports is to college athletes who do not have the same ability to bail on a commitment simply because somebody else is making them a better offer.

They have to stay, not matter what and no matter where the coach who recruited them and promised them undying loyalty during recruiting decides to go. This to me seems like the height of hypocrisy.

Your turn: Do you think college coaches, like players, should have to sit out a year if they want to go elsewhere?

Live From The Alamodome, Part I

This blog is brought to you by my respected Star-Telecolleague Wendell Barnhouse. Me, being my idiot self, left my power cord at home and currently borrowing his to charge what had been my dormant computer.

I am alive and in Santonio, waiting for Oklahoma-Mizzou to begin at what I am pretty sure is a game that begins at quarter til midnight. And may end a week from Tuesday. If I am lucky.

I keep promising a blog/column/note on my feelings about this game. I have just had a hard time wrapping my brain around Mizzou being ranked No. 1 in the country and playing in a Big 12 Championship game, with a victory sending them to the National Championship game. This program has been so bad for so long that I have to go back to my dad's days at Mizzou to find No. 1 rankings and hoopla and happy. He says those were lovely times. My memory is jammed with fifth downs and kicked balls and mainly just pain.

And now I am here, sitting about 10 feet from Brent Musberger as he talks about who he thinks deserves the Heisman and tells stories from games past and generally entertains us scribes with his thoughts on Mizzou-Oklahoma. (I hope it is not rude that I'm blogging while he talks.) Anyway, this all seems a little surreal, that they or I got here.

 

Question Of The Day, II: The Big 12 Edition

I have a lot of thoughts on this Big 12 game and promise to blog them up (or is down, like in jot it down? I need to remember to ask Cuban this next time I see him since blogging is his domain) when I settle my stomach enough to think about this game.

Yes, I am dying wondering if Mizzou, a team my love and money has gone to since forever, is capable of beating Oklahoma. Consensus around the sportswriting country is no and heck no. Of course, I do not like that answer so I bring it to you, the people, the biased Longhorns, Aggies and Red Raiders who have dealt with years of Stooper heartache.

Your turn: Do you think Mizzou wins?

Fran is a man, 40, but does he deserve this?

I always hesitate before writing about Texas A&M coach Dennis Franchione. I truly like the guy and believe he is a good coach yet I am a firmer believer in this Bill Parcells-ism: You are what you are. And what the Aggies are right now is just OK under Fran and not even that good when playing Oklahoma, Tech and Texas.

So the Aggies want to change. This is their right. I can not argue too much.

What has become a little tiresome is how black-and-white this Fran issue has become. I mean, really, are the only two choices a) Great coach who is being done in by Aggie expectations run amok or b) He is a coaching antichrist, a nefarious, no-good, e-mail-wielding bum who needs to be fired and fired immediately.

Puh-lease.

Of course, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Nobody can honestly argue that Fran is not a good coach. His record at TCU and Alabama says at much. Nor do I think it is fair to say he is a bad guy. Has he screwed up? Definitely. Starting with how he exited 'Bama. I did not hear a lot of Aggies complaining too much then about his lack of character yet, somehow, this e-mail fiasco proves he has none and must be fired immediately.

Sorry, I just don't buy it. What needs to happen -- for Fran, for those Aggie players, for Aggie fans -- is to let him coach his final games without a cloud of ugly hanging over the program and then, when this season ends, if another direction is needed, by all means, go and enjoy Tommy Tuberville.