Has anything happened this week?

At least my internet doesn't go down at very inconvenient times. I've been without blogging capabilities for the last six days, and in that time I missed championship weekend, the BCS bowl announcements, Notre Dame's coaching change and more amusing anecdotes for the Lane Kiffin file.

I'll get to most of that stuff in separate posts, but the important thing is that Alabama solidified itself as the best team in the country while Texas required a freakin' miracle to sneak past an offense-less Nebraska team that consists pretty much entirely of Ndamakong Suh. The national title matchup is set, and while we do get two teams that are indisputably deserving of a shot at the title, three more will unfortunately never get that chance.

I'll be honest: I was pulling for Nebraska, if for no other reason than to see Cincinnati or TCU go up against Alabama. I'm still pretty excited about the Cincinnati-Florida matchup, but it's lost a lot of its intrigue with Brian Kelly's defection and the disappointing revelation that Florida isn't quite what I thought they were (insert Dennis Green joke here).



As I said just a few weeks ago:

We keep waiting for that crazy upset that throws everything into chaos or the surprising loss that knocks a contender out of the race, and it's become clear that those things just aren't gonna happen. ...

The yearly craziness that consumes late-season college football has given way to an obvious pecking order and the realization that the season will end just as everyone has expected since about three months ago: Florida or Alabama will play Texas for the national title.

I'd be singing a different tune if Colt McCoy had run around in the backfield for another half-second or if Hunter Lawrence had pulled that kick another 18 inches to the left, but alas. It just wasn't meant to be.

The shocking thing, of course, was the ass-whoopin' Alabama put on Florida. At least I didn't make any wildly inaccurate predictions about that one ...

... if you think Mark Ingram will be powering through Florida's defense for 150 yards and three touchdowns, I would like to wager heavily against you.

... errrrrr yeah. That's pretty much exactly what happened (it didn't help that I neglected to account for the absence of Carlos Dunlap from Florida's defensive line), so thank you for not wagering against me. It was shocking and terrifying to watch the Tide offense move the ball pretty much at will against a Florida defense that had been one of the best in the country all year, and on the other side of the ball, Tim Tebow looked more like a confused freshman than the guy who had lost one of his previous 26 games. There's no way anyone could watch that game and argue that Alabama isn't the best team in the country.

Colt McCoy's a hell of a quarterback with a lot of experience in big games, but he'd better play waaaay better than he did against Nebraska for Texas to have any chance in the title game. Alabama's defense is at at least as good as Nebraska's, and I'm pretty sure 13 points won't be enough against a team with Mark Ingram.

Speaking of Ingram, as impressive as Alabama's offense was overall against Florida, I'm still not entirely sold on him as a Heisman winner. Is he good? Yes, very. Is he a dominant player who deserves to have his name go down in college football lore? Eh, I guess I'm not ready to go that far. In fact, I'm not sure I can point to any player who was truly dominant this year -- at least not on the offensive side of the ball.

I'd love to see Charles Woodson keep his title as the only defensive player ever to win the Heisman, but man, if there was ever another defender worthy of it -- in a year in which we're all desperate for a truly deserving candidate -- I think we've found him. Watching Ndamukong Suh obliterate Texas' offensive line and toss Colt McCoy around like a toy was just amusing, and that pretty much sealed my hypothetical vote (now if I could just get the Downtown Athletic Club to turn that hypothetical vote into a real one). Toby Gerhart was awesome this year, but no more so than Mark Ingram (and he did it against weaker competition with a lot less impact in meaningful games). McCoy was very good too, but this might have been his worst year statistically. And there's just no way you can vote for Tebow after the disastrous SEC championship game.

It's a close call, but my pick would be Suh, with Ingram finishing a close second. In reality, though, I think the Heisman will go to Ingram, with Gerhart and McCoy close behind, Suh in fourth and Tebow a distant fifth.

As for the BCS games, I'm surprisingly satisfied with the matchups. It seems that one game (Georgia Tech-Iowa) basically jumped on the grenade and ended up with the two teams nobody else really wanted, which sucks for the Orange Bowl but benefits the rest of us. The other three games each pair an excellent defense with an excellent offense, and at the end of the day, all six of the top teams play one of the other six, so I really can't complain.

I would have loved to watch Brian Kelly go up against Urban Meyer and it would've been great to see Boise State's offense against Alabama's defense (rather than a rematch of last year's Poinsettia Bowl against TCU), but we're still left with three great games and one good one (Ohio State and Oregon in the Rose Bowl), which is a lot more than you can say most years.

There's a semi-important game today in Atlanta

This year's Game of the Century is upon us. It's No. 1 Florida vs. No. 2 Alabama, with the winner taking home the SEC title and clinching a spot in the BCS title game. Oh, and the offensive star for the winning team has a good shot to win the Heisman. Not much on the line, right?

I intended to do an in-depth statistical breakdown of each team's offense and defense to try to figure out who has the edge, but I came to the conclusion at some point this week that I just can't pick against Tim Tebow. It's not gonna happen. Tebow is the edge. I said the same thing before last year's title game, even as I acknowledged that Oklahoma had been the better team throughout the Heisman:

* I think that Tim Tebow has a competitive streak like no other and Urban Meyer is a scary-good big-game coach, and that combination is making me extremely leery of picking the Sooners.

* I think that Florida will win 35-27.

I was a little high on the score, but the premise was correct. Florida isn't the same team this year, of course. The offense hasn't been anywhere near as explosive (mostly due to the loss of Percy Harvin and Louis Murphy), but it hasn't really needed to be, because the defense has been absolutely dominant.

And if you read that sentence and thought, "That sounds a lot like Alabama," you're right. These two teams are pretty much mirror images of each other in terms of identity: power running game + suffocating defense = lots of wins. It's funny that everyone things the SEC is the awesomest conference ever because of its speed and the Big Ten is the boringest conference ever because of its prehistoric offenses, because the two teams everyone cites as examples of SEC dominance are actually the quintessential examples of old-school Big Ten style (Drew Sharp's mind just exploded).

I'm assuming that each team's defense will be able to mitigate the other's rushing attack -- Alabama is second nationally in rushing defense and Florida is eighth -- and if that's the case, the quarterbacks will be the deciding factor, as they usually are in these games. That's not to say that the running games will be completely shut down, but if you think Mark Ingram will be powering through Florida's defense for 150 yards and three touchdowns, I would like to wager heavily against you.

So ... the quarterbacks. There are two of them. One is a first-year starter who has been solid when needed but has been a complementary piece for most of the season. The other is Tim Tebow. I know his numbers haven't been quite at their usual level this year, but the fact of the matter is that he's the heart, soul and everything else of the Florida offense, and whenever they need a play, he makes it. You can't say the same about McElroy; Ingram has been options A, B and C all season (Julio Jones on a 5-yard crossing route is options D and E).

Considering the enormity of the game, I feel like there's surprisingly little to say. Both teams are what they are. The defenses should control the game -- the first team to get to 20 points probably wins -- and unless McElroy pulls a Jake Delhomme and throws three picks or something, it ought to be a hell of a game.

If you want to call the "can't pick against Tebow" argument a cop-out, go for it. But I'm sticking with what works. Prediction: Florida 24, Alabama 16.

Michigan would be happy to take your spot

The Little Caesar's Pizza Pizza Bowl isn't good enough for Notre Dame:

Athletic director Jack Swarbrick announced Friday that the school has decided against going to a bowl game with a 6-6 record, citing "unique circumstances." He didn't elaborate, but Swarbrick fired coach Charlie Weis after five seasons earlier this week and the search for a replacement is under way.

I didn't think there was any real chance Notre Dame would turn down a bowl game -- not so much for the "experience," but because of the 15 extra practices that come with a bowl berth -- but when you think about it, there's no good reason for ND to go to Detroit or Mobile for a fourth-tier game against a MAC or Sun Belt opponent.

On the flipside, there are plenty of reasons NOT to go, specifically the fact that the extra practices (which are usually key in preparing for next season) would be meaningless. When you have no coach and no coordinators and both your starting QB and top receiver are almost certainly headed to the NFL, what are you preparing for? The players would be going through the motions, with only a win over Central Michigan as potential motivation.

And along those same lines, how many Notre Dame fans would travel to Detroit to watch the sad finish to an incredibly disappointing season? My guess: not many. If you took a poll of Notre Dame fans right now and asked for their reaction to the bowl rejection, the top two responses would be:

1. This gives us a better shot at Bob Stoops!
2. Urban Meyer still says Notre Dame is his dream job.

I've spent much of the past week on ND message boards trying to find useful information about the coaching search, and at no point have I heard a potential bowl game even mentioned. In other words, nobody cares. A bowl game is supposed to be a celebration of a successful season, not a pointless finale for a team that doesn't want to be there (although that's becoming the case more and more often as the bowl lineup continues to expand).

Is it an "elitist" decision? Yeah, I guess so. I'm sure the seniors would have enjoyed finishing with a win instead of four straight losses. But it's not like a win in the Who Cares Bowl would erase the damage from the past month. The coach is gone, the season was a disaster and the fans care 10 times more about the future than they do about the present. Sometimes it's better to just move on.

Charlie Weis isn't the only fat coach out of a job

About 23 months ago, Kansas was playing in the Orange Bowl. Two months ago, Kansas was 5-0 and ranked 17th in the country. Today, Mark Mangino is out of a job.

His "resignation" -- I think it's safe to say he was forced out -- didn't have anything to do with performance, obviously. Kansas has NEVER been as relevant as it's been the past four years.
It all came down to whether anyone would want to play for Mangino after the accusations that came out this week regarding his treatment of players (no, he didn't try to eat them).

Yelling and using a lot of profanity is one thing -- it's football, not sewing -- but when you're purposefully digging up some extremely inappropriate personal material to insult your own players, that's crossing the line. There's absolutely no excuse or logical reason to ever say things like this ...

Former Kansas wide receiver Raymond Brown said that once, his younger brother had been shot in the arm in St. Louis. Then came a game. "I dropped a pass and [Mangino] was mad," Brown said. "And I said, 'Yes, sir. Yes, sir.' The yelling didn't bother me. But then he said, 'Shut up!' He said, 'If you don't shut up, I'm going to send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies.'"

or this ...

Brown said another teammate had confided in the team that his father was an alcoholic and the player dreamed of becoming a lawyer. "One day, [Mangino] said in front of the entire team, 'Are you going to be a lawyer or do you want to become an alcoholic like your dad?' " Brown said.

... unless you're just a complete asshole, and maybe that's what Mangino was.

If that's the case, it's unfortunate for Kansas. He might be ridiculously large and he might be an asshole, but man, Mark Mangino knows how to coach football. In the 20 years before his arrival, Kansas had gone 86-122-3, with none of the four coaches in that span leaving with a winning record. The Jayhawks had played in two bowl games in that time (the prestigious Aloha Bowl each time) and had won a total of three in their history. In Mangino's seven years, Kansas went 50-48 and played in four bowl games and won three, including a victory over Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl after an 11-1 regular season in 2007. Mangino was named national coach of the year after that win, and until this year, Kansas hadn't seen a losing season since 2004. That might not seem like much, but keep in mind that KU hadn't been on the positive side of .500 since 1995 when Mangino arrived.

Nobody would call Kansas a national power, but the fact that they've become relevant in the Big 12 is enough evidence of Mangino's effect. And when you factor in the facilities upgrades -- which were greatly aided by actually winning some games -- there's no question that Kansas is a far, far better job now than it was in 2002.

Athletic director Lew Perkins hasn't yet identified any potential candidates, but if he can find someone who's as good of a coach as Mangino, the search will have been a success. Hopefully that guy won't turn out to be such a dick that he has to be fired regardless.

An unusually meaningful Civil War

I think it's safe to call tonight's Oregon State-Oregon game the most meaningful in the history of the series. A win for Oregon gives the Ducks the outright Pac-10 title and a trip to the Rose Bowl, while a loss creates a tie at the top and sends the Beavers to Pasadena.

I never suspected a month ago that OSU would be in the mix for the Rose Bowl, but their offense has been surprisingly potent recently (albeit against the dregs of the Pac-10), putting up 31 against Cal, 48 against Washington and 42 against Washington State in the past three games. That would be fantastic if not for Oregon's output against those teams: 42 against Cal, 43 against Washington and 52 against Washington State, and that doesn't include the 47 they hung on USC and the 42 they put up in a loss to Stanford.

Does that mean Oregon State can't keep up? Not necessarily. There's one interesting stat that plays in their favor:

Rush defense
13. Oregon State - 98.45 ypg
40. Oregon - 130.64 ypg

Has Oregon State played anyone comparable to Oregon in terms of rushing offense? No -- at least not in terms of style -- but they did hold Toby Gerhart to 98 yards on 20 carries in a 38-28 win back in October. If you want to identify one particular area that's the key to the game, it's the Beavers' front seven. If OSU holds Oregon in check on the ground and keeps this thing from becoming a full-bore shootout, it'll be close.

I'm not sure I see that happening, though. With LeGarrette Blount back and two weeks to prepare, it seems pretty likely that Chip Kelly will have a few things up his sleeve, and once the Ducks get moving, they can REALLY get moving. And as impressive as it is holding Gerhart under 100 yards, Stanford's running game is a lot closer to Oregon State's than it is to Oregon's spread.

One other important factor: location. If this game was being played in Corvallis, I'd call it a toss-up. But Oregon has lost a total of once at home in the past two seasons -- to a Boise State team that finished the regular season unbeaten in 2008 -- and they haven't scored fewer than 31 points in a home game this year. They also haven't scored fewer than 42 points in any game since early October, which is just ridiculous.

I might be selling Jacquizz Rodgers short (no pun intended), but it's hard to pick against the Ducks in this one. Oregon State will have to be nearly perfect on offense, milking the clock and putting as many points on the board as possible in the process. Basically, they need to do what Stanford did ... except they have to do it in Autzen, with the crowd going bonkers in one of the biggest games in the history of either school. Good luck with that.

Prediction: Oregon 34, Oregon State 24

Karma punches Michigan State in the face

In October of last year, Michigan State running back Glenn Winston and another player (walk-on Mitchell White) were involved in a fight at the home of several other MSU students. A bystander ended up with a broken jaw and hockey player A.J. Sturges suffered a severe head injury.

Sturges wrote a letter afterward that described the disturbing incident, including this lovely detail:

I was standing in my front yard trying to figure out what was going on when Glenn Winston punched me in the head from the side. I never saw him. I did not have any chance to protect myself at all. Neither did his other victims.

As a hockey player, I know what a fight is. What happened that night was not a fight. What happened was a violent crime. Pure and simple.

The court system agreed: Winston was sentenced to six months in jail on two misdemeanor assault charges. Remarkably, due to prison overcrowding, he was released on August 10 -- the exact day Michigan State started fall practice.

You'd assume there would be some punishment, of course, for assaulting a fellow student and spending several months in jail. But not from Mark Dantonio; Winston was reinstated to the football program the same day, earned regular playing time and was the starter by the time MSU played Michigan.

A.J. Sturges was less than thrilled:

I now look at myself as naive. I believed that the people involved in the assault, and those at MSU charged with handling policy, would do the right thing. They haven't. ...

Me and the other victims have not received any form of apology from Glenn Winston. Nothing. He has not acknowledged to us in any way the damage he caused. While this fact remains ignored, I cannot allow myself to believe that his debts have been paid, or even understood.

While the victims of his actions still recover from what he did, Winston's obligations have been deemed fulfilled by the football program and athletic department. I think his immediate reinstatement after a shortened jail sentence in my opinion is the wrong decision by our athletic program.

While I hope what happened to me will never happen again, I am afraid the precedent set by this decision will only enable similar incidents in the future. With no formal athletic standards or means to deal with student athletes convicted of a violent crime, this cycle will continue.

That was one hell of a prophetic statement. It's 14 months later, and where are we now?

Eight players suspended from Michigan State football team

A campus surveillance video shows 10 people -- eight of them football players -- donning ski masks and assaulting a number of students at a Iota Phi Theta fraternity dinner. The attack is believed to have been payback for a fight that broke out at a club the previous night. Any guesses as to who was kicked off the team immediately after news of the assault broke?

Glenn Winston.

The stated reason -- in a one-sentence press release -- was a "violation of team rules," as nobody (other than Mark Dantonio, apparently) knew Winston was involved in the fight until surveillance video was reviewed. Dantonio obviously hoped to hide the ugly details for as long as possible with a vague statement that made no mention of the damning truth behind the dismissal, but it's kind of hard to cover up a planned attack that was caught on tape. For all his tough talk and his grandfatherly look, Dantonio refused to punish a player who literally walked out of jail and onto the practice field the same day, and now it's come back to bite him in the ass.

I'm normally not a person who criticizes coaches for off-the-field problems -- nobody can be expected to keep constant tabs on 85 young men -- but when you instill a culture with no accountability and no threat of punishment, what do you expect? Discipline exists in society for a reason -- to stop people from doing stupid things.

The other players involved were: wide receiver Mark Dell, wide receiver B.J. Cunningham, wide receiver Fred Smith, running back Ashton Leggett, cornerback Chris L. Rucker, linebacker Brynden Trawick, nose tackle Ishmyl Johnson, defensive end Jamiihr Williams and safety Roderick Jenrette (Jenrette has since been dismissed, as this was his second off-the-field issue).

Dantonio now has two choices:

1. Make a complete mockery of himself and the school by issuing a bunch of one-game suspensions, proving beyond all doubt that "discipline" is only a word at Michigan State.
2. Kick a whole bunch of guys -- including both of next year's projected starting receivers and a starting cornerback -- off the team.

Based on his previous record, I'm guessing he'll choose the former. But if A.J. Sturges finally gets his way -- and if the school administration has any hopes of saving face -- it'll be the latter.

Bowden's career comes to an end (finally)

We'll never really know whether or not Bobby Bowden wanted to coach a 35th year at Florida State, but the administration had no interest in finding out. The school finally gave Bowden the ultimatum fans have been asking for on Monday, offering him the option of stepping down at the end of the year or serving as an "ambassador" next year while Jimbo Fisher took over day-to-day control of the program. Bowden apparently didn't take long to make his decision:

Legendary Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, who built one of college football's greatest dynasties in 34 seasons with the Seminoles, plans to announce his retirement Tuesday morning, sources close to the situation told ESPN.com.

We've known for the last two years that Fisher would be in control by 2011, but it's still a little jarring to think that for the first time since 1975 (!!!), Bobby Bowden won't be walking the sidelines next year with the Seminoles.

Was it time for him to go? Absolutely. The program has been in steady decline since the beginning of the decade, with six losses this season for the third time in the past four years. Recruiting has dropped off precipitously, the offense has been a joke since Mark Richt's departure for Georgia in 2001 and the once-vaunted defense has gone from dominant to decent to terrible (98th in the country this year in points per game). I said about a month ago that I had no problem with Bowden sticking around next year if he'd just allow Fisher to start planning the transition, but that obviously wasn't enough for him -- and that explains a lot of Florida State's problems.

But let's not forget the big picture: Florida State's run of 14 straight top-five finishes from 1987-2000 will probably never be duplicated (even USC has a down year now and then), and that success is even more remarkable when you consider where FSU was before Bowden arrived. When he came to Tallahassee from West Virginia in 1976, the 'Noles were coming off a miserable 19-37 four-year stretch and had appeared in one bowl in the previous eight years (a loss to Arizona State in the Fiesta Bowl, which wasn't a big game back then). Florida State went 5-6 the following year, then 10-2 in 1977. They haven't had a losing record since.

Before Bowden, FSU was 148-132-14 in its history. In the 34 years since, their record is 315-97-4. To say that Bowden put FSU on the college football map would be an understatement; he tore up the map and drew a new one with Florida State right in the middle as THE dominant program in the country for close to 15 years.

It's too bad, then, that there will always be two sides to Bowden's legacy. What I'll remember from the past decade are the Peter Warrick-led "Criminoles," the academic scandal and the program's continued slide. I don't feel sorry for him -- he brought all these problems on himself to a certain extent -- but FSU's on-field and off-the-field descent will overshadow what should legitimately be remembered as one of the greatest coaching careers ever.

Rather than going out in style, Bowden will go out as a once-great coach who lost control of his program at the end.