Shocking

I know it's only June, but we have a runaway winner for the Least Surprising Headline of the Year Award:

BCS rejects Mountain West's playoff proposal

Other finalists were: "Kiffin commits recruiting violation" and "Iowa tackle arrested, suspended."

But back to the playoff rejection, I'm pretty sure every logical college football fan thought the same thing when that headline popped up on ESPN: Obviously.

At the time of the Mountain West's proposal, it sounded like Congressional pressure and an actual structured plan might be able to put some pressure on the BCS executives to listen and think about a change -- I didn't expect a playoff, of course, but I thought some of the proposal's pieces might be intriguing enough to create discussion that would eventually lead to something.

Instead, we got more of the same idiotic excuses about why a playoff supposedly isn't plausible, this time from BCS oversight committee chairman David Frohnmayer (also the president at Oregon):

"In the last six years, I've read pundits, heard the pronouncements of broadcasters and collected several cubic feet of e-mail printouts from advocates of an NFL-style playoff system. Even those that go beyond sound bite certitude share two intertwined and fatal deficiencies: They disrespect our academic calendars and they utterly lack a business plan."

I won't bother with links here, but I could provide Frohnmayer with infinite playoff proposals that interfere in no way with "academic calendars" (at least no more than the current setup, in which many teams are on the road for a week or more right at the end of the fall semester). The two most commonly suggested playoffs -- a plus-one and a standard three-week, eight-team tournament -- could both easily be fit into the gap between semesters, and this has been taken into consideration in almost every serious discussion I can recall. The academic argument has been a joke for years, and it irritates me to no end that it continues to be spewed by people in power whose sole purpose is to generate as much money as possible.

As for the "business plan" aspect: How can there be a legitimate business plan included in these proposals? No one can possibly know what the sponsorship offers, TV contracts, etc., would look like under an entirely different system than the one we have now. The only thing you could reasonably compare a hypothetical playoff to would be the Final Four, which seems to be doing OK financially.

The whole concept of a playoff has become essentially a broken record: Every time a new idea comes about, there's a glimmer of hope for change in the system that's inevitably crushed by a guy in a suit telling us why the newest proposal will destroy academia and the traditional postseason format. We all know what happens in the end -- it's only the details that change.

Common sense prevails

With Florida State still in the midst of appealing a penalty that will strip the school of 14 victories, the NCAA has brought down the hammer once again.

The NCAA Committee on Infractions announced Thursday that Alabama will be forced to vacate all wins from 2005-07 that involved players found ineligible due to a textbook scandal. According to the university, that will result in the loss of 21 victories. Alabama also had 16 programs placed on probation and will be forced to pay a $43,900 fine -- the approximate value of the textbooks -- for "failure to monitor." For the record, the players who have been named in the investigation are former offensive linemen Antoine Caldwell and Marlon Davis, running back Glen Coffee and defensive backs Marquis Johnson and Chris Rogers.

There are two ways to look at these penalties. On one hand, losing a majority of the records from a three-year period in which the Tide went 23-15 will leave a serious black mark on the program that can never be erased. A stretch that included Nick Saban's first season and Mike Shula's best season -- 2005, when 'Bama went 10-2 -- officially goes into the media guides with the Tide's combined record at 2-38.

But in the grand scheme of things, Alabama came out relatively unharmed. Keep in mind that these NCAA proceedings were nothing new for 'Bama, which already had been involved in two embarrassing scandals (involving former cornerback Antonio Langham in 1995 and recruit Albert Means in 2002) in the past 15 years. The school was placed on probation both times and was stripped of a total of 38 scholarships -- in fact, the most recent probation just ended in 2007, Nick Saban's first year as coach. But this time, with no bowl restrictions or scholarship reductions, there's literally no impact on Saban or any of the Tide players going forward (outside of some negative press for a few weeks before fall practice gets started and people have something else to talk about). That's a fairly fortunate development for a school that has multiple major NCAA violations in its recent past and was approaching the death penalty as recently as seven years ago.

And despite my general opinion of Saban -- I give him an 11 out of 10 on my scumbag scale -- I think the NCAA got this one right. This was no grade-fixing scandal or pay-for-play atrocity; what we're talking about is a handful of players using their scholarship benefits to get textbooks for friends.

Anyone who's gone to college knows what a rip-off it is to pay $120 for each book, then try to sell it back at the end of the semester and receive $20 in return (and then know that it'll be sold the next year for $120 again). If i had stumbled across some loophole that enabled me -- and some friends -- to get a deal on textbooks, you can bet your ass I'd have taken advantage of it. And since textbooks aren't exactly cocaine -- last I checked, it was a good thing to gather educational materials while you're in college -- it'd have been kinda difficult for the NCAA to really come down hard on Alabama in this case.

It's not difficult to distinguish a guy distributing free textbooks from a guy getting paid for a job he doesn't really have or getting his grades adjusted in order to continue playing football. For once, I can honestly say that common sense won out in an NCAA decision.

Tackling the issues

There's no worse time of the year to be a college football fan than June. Spring practice is long over, real games are still a good three months away and there is literally nothing interesting happening (except for players continuing to find trouble, which is just depressing).

It should tell you something that I can go 10 days without posting anything -- and not because I was too lazy or too busy, but because there was absolutely nothing worth posting.

So in the complete absence of any real news, I think this is an opportune time to tackle some questions I've been pondering, and I'll start with one that's baffled historians for centuries: Why does the Big Ten suck in bowl games?

This question comes up every year and is extremely annoying to hear (for obvious reasons), especially when compared with most announcers' drooling adoration for all things SEC. The worst part, for me, is the knowledge that the Big Ten is generally just as good as every other BCS conference, but the teams aren't able to show it when it comes to head-to-head play at the end of the season. The conference as a whole hasn't posted a winning bowl record since 2002, and since then its teams are a collective 15-28 (3-8 in BCS games).

There are typically two reasons cited for these failures:

1. Since nearly every bowl game is placed in the West or South, Big Ten teams are often facing an opponent that essentially has homefield advantage.
2. The Big Ten ends its season earlier than every other conference, so each team faces a layoff that's about two weeks longer than that of their bowl opponent.

Even as an admitted Big Ten homer, I can't believe that playing in nice weather is truly that much of a disadvantage. Is it stupid to have to play USC in Los Angeles or Florida in Tampa? Yes. But is it any harder for Ohio State to travel to Arizona than it is for Texas? No. The "homefield advantage" argument might be valid on a rare occasion, but it's not the primary reason for the current state of affairs.

Having six weeks off also doesn't seem that problematic (relatively speaking). Far too often I've seen a Big Ten team look completely different in its bowl game -- think Ohio State against Florida in 2006 -- than it did in the regular season, and there's no doubt in my mind that having so much time off between games is a contributing factor. That said, I just don't see that much of a difference between six weeks off (what Penn State had last season) and four weeks off (what USC had). No team gets to play continuously, of course, and when everyone's facing a relatively long layoff, I think it's hard to argue that an extra two weeks creates that much of a disadvantage.

So what does that leave us with? Well, I think there's one problem -- a self-inflicted disadvantage, but one the conference would never want to lose -- that often goes unnoticed but creates a very difficult situation for nearly every bowl-eligible Big Ten team: Because of the Big Ten's prime bowl slots, it often has middle-of-the-pack teams pulled into games against slightly better opponents from other conferences.

Let's look at the current bowl alignments:

• Rose: Big Ten champion vs. Pac-10 champion (USC pretty much every year)
• Capital One: Big Ten #2 vs. SEC #2
• Outback: Big Ten #3 vs. SEC #3
• Champs Sports: Big Ten #4/5 vs. ACC #4
• Alamo: Big Ten #4/5 vs. Big 12 #5
• Insight: Big Ten #6 vs. Big 12 #6
• Motor City: Big Ten #7 vs. MAC #2/3

Those don't seem unreasonable at first glance. The problem that the Big Ten has run into is that in each of the past four seasons -- and in eight of the 11 seasons the BCS has existed -- the conference has sent two teams to BCS games (deserving or not), and this has ratcheted up the difficulty level for each of the teams below those two in the pecking order.

2007 was a prime example. Because Ohio State finished No. 1 and played LSU for the national title, the Rose Bowl had an at-large pick available and selected Illinois to play USC (to retain the Big Ten-Pac-10 matchup). I can assure you that at no point during the season did I feel, as a regular Big Ten observer, that the Illini were worthy of a BCS bid, especially when compared with a team like Missouri (which was No. 1 as late as early November but got left out of the BCS). But tradition trumps all at the Rose Bowl, so we got to watch USC drag Illinois behind the woodshed in a completely predictable ass-whooping.

Why is this such a negative for the conference as a whole? Because when the conference has an additional team pulled into the BCS, the team that finished third is pulled up to the No. 2 spot for bowl slotting (and the team that finished fourth gets pulled up to third, etc.). The effect is that a large majority of the Big Ten's bowl games over the last decade have included a team that finished lower in its conference than the opposition.

Look at last season's bowls ...

• USC vs. Penn State
• Texas vs. Ohio State
• Georgia vs. Michigan State
• Iowa vs. South Carolina (the Big Ten's only win)
• Missouri vs. Northwestern
• Kansas vs. Minnesota
• Florida State vs. Wisconsin

... and compare them with what we would have seen had Texas Tech been selected to the BCS ahead of Ohio State (I know this is an impossible scenario because of the two-teams-per-conference rule, but I'm playing devil's advocate):

• USC vs. Penn State
• Ohio State vs. Georgia
• Michigan State vs. South Carolina
• Iowa vs. Missouri
• Northwestern vs. Kansas
• Minnesota vs. Florida State
• Wisconsin vs. Central Michigan (Motor City Bowl tie-in)

I'm not saying that the Big Ten would have gone undefeated by any means, but it wouldn't have finished anywhere near 1-6 either. In my opinion, Ohio State, Michigan State and Wisconsin all would have won in the modified alignment, while Northwestern-Kansas and Minnesota-Florida State would have been toss-ups. Missouri and USC still would have won, obviously. Again, it might not have been a HUGE difference, but a record somewhere between 3-4 and 5-2 looks a lot better than 1-6.

This doesn't excuse the conference's poor bowl record entirely, of course. I can't argue with anyone who says the Big Ten hasn't been particularly strong in the middle. For the most part, there's been one very good team every year (usually Ohio State), one other team of similar quality (usually Penn State or Michigan) and then a fairly significant drop-off to teams such as Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern and Michigan State. The Big Ten hasn't been able to match the depth of the Big 12 (which has seen strong play from Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Texas Tech, Kansas and Oklahoma State for most of the past several years) or the SEC (Florida, LSU, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Auburn) -- and coincidentally, those are the two conferences the Big Ten faces in four of its seven bowl games. That's obviously bad when it comes to those noteworthy non-BCS bowls such as the Capital One, the Outback and the Alamo.

As for the BCS ugliness, I honestly think the Big Ten's recent struggles are just part of the cyclical nature of sports. The conference's record all-time in BCS games is now 8-11, and that includes a disastrous 0-6 mark over the last three seasons, meaning the Big Ten was 8-5 in BCS games as recently as 2005. Three of those six losses were to USC (by Michigan, Illinois and Penn State) -- I have a feeling that any conference would have a pretty poor record in BCS games if it had to face USC on an annual basis -- and the other three all belong to Ohio State.

So I'm blaming Ohio State, right? Typical Michigan fan ....

No. In fact (although it pains me to say it), I think OSU has gotten a bit of a bad rap over its BCS failures. Of the losses in the last three years -- to Florida, LSU and Texas -- only the Florida game was truly a blowout, and that was a game that saw nearly everything go wrong for the Buckeyes. LSU won pretty comfortably, but only because of a 21-point run in the second quarter. And Texas was fortunate to escape the most recent Fiesta Bowl on a last-minute TD pass to Quan Cosby.

What I'm saying here is that the Big Ten's failures in BCS games have been somewhat blown out of proportion by Ohio State struggling in the conference's two biggest showcase games and USC dominating basically every bowl opponent. I found it somewhat ironic that Ohio State's loss to LSU after the '07 season jump-started the SEC blowhards and Big Ten critics while, just days earlier, Michigan's win over defending champion (and the next year's champion) Florida in Orlando went unmentioned. If that had been a BCS game -- which it easily could have, considering the teams -- the Big Ten might be facing a little less heat over its showing in "big games."

I've gotten a bit long-winded here, so before I write another 1,500 words, let me summarize the best I can:

• The Big Ten's recent BCS failures have been overstated, because they are based primarily on two disappointing showings in the national championship game and have come directly after an extended successful period (8-5 over the first eight years of the BCS).
• Half of the conference's current 0-6 skid is owed directly to a dominant USC program that nobody has had success against.
• The Rose Bowl's sometimes annoying desire to involve the Big Ten and Pac-10 at all costs has hurt the conference throughout the bowl lineup, as having a second (usually undeserving) team in the BCS has distorted the matchups in the Big Ten's other bowl games.
• Admittedly, the conference's middle tier hasn't kept up with the Big 12 and SEC, and that has further exacerbated the conference's poor bowl showing over the past few seasons.
• Despite popular belief, the location of the bowls and the lengthy layoff beforehand have probably had little impact on the results.

Frank Spaziani is pulling his mustache hair out

While Pitt seems to be running away with the 2009 edition of the Worst Offseason Award, Boston College is quietly putting together an impressive run of its own.

Besides losing two first-day draft picks on the defensive line (B.J. Raji and Ron Brace), the Eagles have seen a potentially devastating amount of unforeseeable attrition. Let's take a look:

• Impressive young coach Jeff Jagodzinski? Fired for interviewing with the New York Jets.
• Offensive coordinator Steve Logan? Resigned after Jagodzinski's departure.
• Star outside linebacker and ACC defensive player of the year Mark Herzlich? Out indefinitely while battling cancer.

And if those three departures weren't damaging enough, it was announced last week that projected starting quarterback Dominique Davis -- the only QB on the roster with game experience -- will transfer after being suspended for academic reasons.

Davis had some ups and downs when he finally got on the field late last season -- he completed less than 50% of his passes while throwing six TD passes to only four interceptions -- but to say he was atop the depth chart would be an understatement. Redshirt freshman Justin Tuggle appears to be next in line, but apparently he didn't play well enough in the spring to pull away from Codi Boek, a former transfer from American River Junior College (seriously) who played fullback last year. I don't have any particular insight about either of these guys, but that can't be a good sign for your offense.

I mentioned several months ago that I wasn't a big fan of promoting longtime defensive coordinator Frank Spaziani to head coach, but given the events of this offseason, it could be even worse than I anticipated at BC this fall.

I hate this

Sometimes there are simply no words to describe the stupidity of a decision. Adjectives like "incomprehensible" and "baffling" just aren't strong enough.

Exhibit A: The American Football Coaches Association announced Wednesday that the final coaches' poll of the season will be confidential starting in 2010.

My response: AAAAAAARRRRGHGHGHGHHH.

It was a step in the right direction four years ago when final ballots were made public, as the danger of coaches being publicly outed as biased idiots injected some badly needed credibility into the poll. The fact that the coaches' poll is included in the BCS is ridiculous to begin with, of course. It's inherently biased even if ballots are published, and it's been widely documented (and flat-out admitted on numerous occasions) that most coaches aren't able to see a whole lot of other teams' games. The media poll might have had its flaws, but at least it was put together by people who had seen a lot of different teams -- and it was fair. How do I know it was fair? Most media members publish their ballots, and if they don't, The Associated Press does it for them. There's nothing hidden.

The entire point of the AFCA's decision to publicize the final ballot in 2005 was to make sure coaches weren't vastly overrating their own teams or opponents (or underrating a competitor) in order to skew the results. This is a good thing, right? So what's the point of going back?

This move has been ripped everywhere -- do a Google search and you can read for days about the absurdity of confidential ballots -- but I think Pat Forde at ESPN says it best:

In a sham system already sagging under suspicions of bias and criticisms of inherent unfairness, this provides one more reason to doubt the BCS.

When EVERY voter has an agenda, nothing good can come from confidential ballots. I already had a hard time believing that a lot of coaches were voting fairly, but when there's not a single thing stopping them from distorting their ballots as much as necessary to benefit their team or their conference, how can I have any confidence that the results are fair and meaningful? (That's a rhetorical question.)

Like so many other decisions in the BCS era, this is nothing but a slap in the face to fans from the coaches who don't want to answer questions or worry about being publicly embarrassed.

A bunch of stuff about stuff

* Bad news for Kentucky, as star defensive end Jeremy Jarmon, who was honorable mention All-SEC last season and had 13.5 sacks over the past two years, has been informed that he failed an NCAA drug test and is ineligible for the season. As a senior, Jarmon's career is over. I have a confession: I did not know that the NCAA could suspend a player for an entire season for failing a drug test. Now that I know, I think the most surprising thing is that it doesn't happen more often. Jarmon said that he inadvertently took a banned substance included in a weight-loss product -- if true, that's a crappy way to end a nice career.

* Oregon QB Justin Roper, a redshirt sophomore, announced that he will transfer after getting beat out by Jeremiah Masoli in spring practice for the starting quarterback job. Roper wasn't terrible when he found the field, but given the Ducks' potency with Masoli at the helm during their ridiculous run late in the season (49.5 points per game over the final four), it seems doubtful that Roper was in Chip Kelly's long-term plans.

* Tomahawk Nation has a great post up related to fumbles and the general randomness related to their recovery. It's been the stated opinion of numerous sites -- including Mgoblog, Football Outsiders and RollBamaRoll.com -- that recovering fumbles isn't something that teams are "good" or "bad" at -- it just happens, with no consistency from year to year and no trends of certain teams being better than certain other teams. In other words, if a team gets all the lucky bounces in a given season, odds are good that those numbers will regress to the mean the following year (and vice versa). I'm intrigued so much by this idea that I can foresee a lengthier post in my future.

* According to Ohio State's student newspaper, there were 21 recruiting violations by Big Ten schools this year. The breakdown: 13 for Ohio State, eight for all the other teams combined. I try to stay objective, but that's just ridiculous. And here's the best part:

"I don't view it as a bad thing. If we suddenly had zero violations, I would have to ask myself what the coaches were hiding," said Doug Archie, OSU's associate athletics director for compliance and camps.

In other words, as long as the coaches admit that they did something wrong, they didn't really do anything wrong at all. Nice.

* Michigan's game on October 17 against Delaware State has caused some craziness, as DSU has announced that it will have to forfeit its conference game against North Carolina A&T originally scheduled for the same date. How can this happen? Well, Delaware State apparently didn't have an athletic director at the time -- it's unclear who in the administration actually agreed to the deal with Michigan -- and a "miscommunication" left school officials with the understanding that a couple of conference teams would rearrange their schedules if necessary. When that didn't happen, Delaware State was left with its pants down and with an 0-1 record to start the season. Gene Wojciechowski has it right: This game never should have been scheduled, even if you're willing to overlook the general blah-ness of games between FBS and FCS schools. Speaking of mistakes, I'd like to point out to ESPN's web people that "Delware" (in the headline above the URL directory) is not correct.

Math doesn't exist in the Big Ten

Amid all the talk of possible Big Ten expansion last week, it was thoroughly overlooked when the topic of switching to a nine-game conference schedule came up at the conference meetings.

I have long advocated playing as many conference games as possible, especially with the recent development of teams filling most (if not all) of their nonconference slots with fluffy-soft cupcakes in order to pad their win total and ensure bowl eligibility. So in theory, I fully support the Big Ten adding another conference game.

There's a problem, though, that the Big Ten simply refuses to acknowledge: It isn't possible for each team to play nine conference games. This has been covered previously at Mgoblog and touched on by Dr. Saturday, so this isn't exactly a revelation. The basic dilemma is this: there's no way for 11 schools to play nine games against each of the other teams in the conference. That's a total of 99 games played, and it isn't possible to have an odd number of games played when there are two teams involved in each game.

But who cares about logic:

"By [2012], you'll probably see it," Michigan athletic director Bill Martin said. "It's hard, but we all understand the need for it."

I'm not sure I'd say there's a need for it, although it'd certainly be nice. But that's beside the point. The question I (and many others) have is how the conference could justify the only possible solution to the scheduling conflict: having 10 teams play nine conference games while only one team plays eight.

What happens if, say, Penn State finishes 7-1 and Ohio State finishes 8-1 but the two don't play each other (remember, adding another game still won't result in a round-robin schedule)? What happens if Penn State finishes 7-1 and Ohio State finishes 8-1 but the Nittany Lions beat the Buckeyes?

The conference would have to prepare a number of tiebreakers for scenarios like those above, and I can't imagine that the Big Ten wants its title and a potential BCS berth decided that way. Just look at the PR hit the Big 12 took last year over its own tiebreaker, which resulted in Oklahoma being selected over Texas to play for the national title. If I'm the Big Ten, I want no part of any similar controversy, and this change would open the door to all sorts of controversial finishes.

Again, it'd be nice to see Michigan be able to drop Eastern Michigan or Delaware State in favor of Northwestern or Indiana, but not at the cost of a potentially disastrous clusterfuck at the top of the conference standings.