2023-12-20 12:15:51
It was a bit of a quiet week in my inbox, perhaps not surprisingly given we’ve hit that holiday lull between the regular season and the major bowls.
But just think: This week, next year, I’ll be writing about the first-round Playoff results from last weekend.
(Note: Submitted questions have been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
How far is the NCAA from actually becoming a 64-team league like Chip Kelly described? What are the pros and cons of such a league? — Craig B., Charlotte, NC
Everything Kelly said at his bowl-game press conference made a ton of common sense, but even so, some parts were more practical than others.
The key point he’s making — which is absolutely spot-on — is that UCLA joining the Big Ten in football should not necessitate UCLA volleyball, swimming, track and field, etc., having to join the Big Ten as well. “Our softball team should be playing Arizona in softball,” he said. It’s worth pointing out that this already happens. Not every conference offers every sport, and thus, while Florida and Vanderbilt are SEC members in football, their women’s lacrosse teams play in the AAC. Most of Notre Dame’s non-football teams compete in the ACC, but its hockey team is in the Big Ten. And so on and so forth.
So yes, UCLA, USC, Oregon, Washington, go play wherever you want in football, but your other sports should be in a West Coast league with Stanford, Cal and others. The entrant schools’ impact on the Big Ten’s TV value is almost entirely derived from football. They can use that money to fund the other sports.
As for Kelly’s proposed 64-team football conference — that sounds neat and tidy, but what incentive do the SEC and Big Ten have to join forces with the less-valued ACC and Big 12? “Every year, we (would) play seven games against the West Coast teams, and then we play the East — Syracuse, Boston College, Pitt, West Virginia, Virginia. Then the next year you play the South, while you still play your seven (West Coast) teams.” That’s . . . not an attractive schedule. Fox is paying you guys $65 million a year to play Ohio State and Penn State, not Syracuse and Boston College.
As I’ve written every couple of months for the past five years, when conference consolidation comes, the magic cutline won’t be 64; it will be 32 or less. It will be the very top brands that drive the overwhelming majority of the television value banding together. Especially once the courts inevitably rule that schools must share their revenue with the athletes and/or pay them a salary. Ohio State, with its $250 million in annual athletics revenue, can afford to cut those checks without breaking a sweat. Maryland, whose overall budget is less than half that ($114 million), would have a much tougher time of it.
In the meantime, though, I’d love to see some common sense reconfiguration that separates Power 5 football from Power 5 everything else.
Any chance they move the CFB calendar to start the CFP earlier? The NFL can’t play on the second Saturday in December, and it would be perfect for the CFP. However, I love rivalry weekend over Thanksgiving, and the longer CFB lasts through the Midwest winter the better, so I think I prefer the current schedule as is. — Derek D., Des Moines, Iowa
It’s been nearly two years since I wrote my first column urging exactly that. I have not heard of any recent momentum for moving the season up a week — but I think they’re going to have to at some point. For several reasons.
One, which was not even on my radar 23 months ago, is the transfer portal. Anyone who wants to transfer and be in position to participate in spring practices at their new schools will have to be enrolled for the start of spring semester in mid-January. Well, next year’s national championship game is not until Jan. 20. I don’t think you can expect a guy to wait and see how far his team makes it in the Playoff before deciding whether to enter the portal in the early window or wait until spring. The teams will absolutely lose players that might have otherwise been counted on in the game.
Then there’s the TV windows. In their attempt to jam the semifinals in between rounds of the NFL playoffs, next year’s are being played on a Thursday and Friday night, Jan. 9 and 10. Not only is that not a doubleheader, but Friday is the worst night of the week for television. The CFP semis and title game are usually going to be the three most-watched sporting events of the year outside of the NFL, and they’re going to waste one of them on a Friday night? Also, what an ask for fans that want to attend the games: Travel to Miami or Dallas in the middle of a regular ‘ol work week, detached from any holidays.
And finally, as I emphasized in that 2022 column, the championship game is going to take place roughly 24 hours after the NFL’s four-game divisional round, one of the most all-consuming sports weekends of the year. I fear it’s going to feel like an afterthought, coming nearly three weeks after New Year’s and happening the same week as the AFC and NFC championship games.
The obvious solution is to turn what is currently Week 0 into Week 1, move the conference championship games up to Thanksgiving weekend, and play both the first-round and quarterfinal rounds on campuses in December, so the semis and title game can remain where they currently are. It won’t happen overnight, but after experiencing the first couple years of the calendar they’ve created, we could see a pivot in 2026.
J.J. McCarthy and his fellow Wolverines polished off an undefeated season where they were rarely tested — why does it feel like people don’t believe in them? (Photo: Matt Krohn / USA Today)
Why doesn’t anyone think Michigan can beat Alabama? — L D.
Lots of people must think Michigan can beat Alabama because the spread opened at Michigan -1.5 and has barely moved in the two weeks since. However, you might be referring specifically to Bruce Feldman’s Michigan scouting report Monday surveying 10 Big Ten coaches that said in part: “Alabama being the underdog didn’t seem right to most of the coaches, and the majority believe Alabama will beat Michigan.” Alternatively, you may be referring to this line from Bruce’s Alabama scouting report: “Almost all of the coaches who faced Alabama believe the Tide will handle Michigan.” Or perhaps both, as the two pieces (filled with great intel) do seem to demonstrate that coaches — Big Ten or SEC — have reached a consensus on the matchup’s likely result.
All I know is, in order to pick Michigan to beat Alabama, you’ve got to have extreme conviction that the 2023 Wolverines can defy two decades of postseason history.
SEC teams have gone 14-3 against non-SEC teams in the CFP, having now won eight straight dating to LSU’s 2019 run. This after going 8-1 against non-SEC teams in BCS championship games.
Conversely, Big Ten teams are 3-6 in CFP games, with Ohio State responsible for all three wins. Alabama itself is 8-3. Michigan, as we know, is 0-2.
Meanwhile, giving Nick Saban a month or more to prepare for a big game has not generally gone well for his opponents. Dating to his LSU days, he is 10-1 in BCS National Championship games and CFP semifinals. Urban Meyer in 2014 is the only guy so far to best him.
You also have to feel very confident that J.J. McCarthy, Blake Corum and friends can do to a team like Alabama what they’ve been doing for three years in the Big Ten without any hard evidence to go by. While Michigan is 29-1 against Big Ten foes over the past three seasons, their only Power 5 non-conference win over that span came against an eventual 4-8 Washington team in 2021. They haven’t played one in either of the past two regular seasons, got blown out by Georgia in the 2021 semifinal and got upset by TCU a year later.
Despite that, you’d have to be more confident in Alabama, which has gone 4-1 against Power 5 opponents over the same span, the only loss coming this year to Texas, which turned out to be the No. 3 team in the country. Not to mention the last time they took the field, the Tide ended two-time national champion Georgia’s 29-game winning streak.
L.D.’s question was, why doesn’t anyone think Michigan can beat Alabama? Mine would be, how does one talk themselves into Michigan beating Alabama?
What would the national beat writers be saying if Ohio State had won the Big Ten and was playing Alabama at the Rose Bowl? — Craig F.
Probably that the Buckeyes would have a hard time beating the Crimson Tide with their starting quarterback at Syracuse.
Now that Nebraska has flipped Dylan Raiola from Georgia, what does this do for Matt Rhule and the Nebraska program? Does it raise the ceiling on what they are capable of doing, or just raise the floor so at least they can make a bowl game? — Dave D.
It’s huge for Nebraska’s credibility, and for Rhule’s next round of recruiting pitches. It’s the same exact program coming off its seventh straight losing season that it was a week earlier, but one that the top quarterback recruit in the country has now bought into. Rhule needs to use it to build momentum for the 2025 class, most of which will come together before the Huskers even play another football game.
As for the immediate on-field impact, though . . . who knows? Recruiting analysts can’t say enough good things about Raiola. Maybe he’ll be next season’s Trevor Lawrence or Caleb Williams and shine right from the jump. But, those guys are the exception. Most five-star quarterbacks don’t start as true freshmen, much less transform a program overnight. Two of the five in this year’s freshman class, Dante Moore (UCLA) and Malachi Nelson (USC), are already hitting the portal.
In today’s sport, you should still celebrate the recruiting wins when they come — especially if you’re Nebraska — but Rhule needs to land a lot more than one stud high-school QB to turn the Huskers into contenders.
Relative to preseason expectations, who do you think had the best season this year? — Jason S., Madison, Wis.
First off, interesting that you used past tense — who had the best season. I would, too. This year, for the first time, it truly feels to me like the 2023 season ended on Dec. 3, and most of the sport has already turned its attention to next season. Even the bowl games, with all the opt outs, feels more like a sneak peek into next season than a culmination of this one. I’m interested in seeing Oklahoma QB Jackson Arnold make his first start in the Alamo Bowl. Ditto Ohio State’s Devin Brown in the Cotton Bowl.
But, come Jan. 1, we’ll all have a mini-2023 season reunion with Michigan, Washington, Texas and Alabama, the four teams whose rosters remain largely intact.
Thanks for sticking with me for that tangent.
Northwestern is the obvious answer for the team that most thoroughly blew past its preseason expectations — of which it had none. The program seemed dead in the water this summer, coming off 1-11 last season and 3-9 the year before that, with an interim coach, David Braun, who’d yet to coach a game at the FBS level, much less as a head coach. On Oct. 21, the Wildcats stood at 3-4, having just lost 17-9 to Nebraska. No one would have fathomed they would turn around and win four of their last five, including a 24-10 blowout at Wisconsin and a 45-point explosion in the finale against Illinois, to finish second in the Big Ten West and reach the Las Vegas Bowl.
But I’ll give you two more as well. While Jedd Fisch had gotten Arizona more competitive in his first two seasons, I did not see the Wildcats jumping from 5-7 to 9-3 this season, finishing in third place in a stacked Pac-12, two games ahead of USC, two-time defending champ Utah and Top 25 Oregon State. And Missouri came out of seemingly nowhere in the SEC. After failing to finish above .500 in his first three seasons, Eli Drinkwitz led the Tigers to 10 wins and produced the nation’s leading rusher in Cody Schrader, the former walk-on from Truman State.
Honorable mention: Louisville, West Virginia, James Madison and UNLV.
If there was a 12-team Playoff this year, it seems unfair that Washington could conceivably have to beat Oregon three times to win the national championship but Oregon would only have to win the last one (regular season, conference championship, playoff). Same could be said for Michigan and Ohio State. Am I misunderstanding how this scenario would actually play out? — Ryan, Tri Cities, Wash.
That could absolutely happen, especially in the SEC, where the two teams that reach the championship game in a division-less format will almost certainly both be national championship contenders. Next season, for example, Georgia plays at Alabama in Week 4. Let’s say the Tide win that one. They meet again in Atlanta, neither team having lost since then, and Alabama wins again. The undefeated Tide get the No. 1 seed in the Playoff, the 11-2 Dawgs get the No. 8 seed. They meet again in the quarterfinals, only this time Georgia wins and goes on to take home the natty.
What people need to realize is that in moving to an “NFL-style” playoff, you’re going to have all the same quirks that come with every other sport’s postseason. Teams may face each other two or three times in the same season, perhaps even in back-to-back weeks. See: The Bengals and Ravens meeting in last year’s regular-season finale on Jan. 8, then again in the wild-card round on Jan. 15. The “best” team all season might lose to a team that barely got in. See: The 2007 New England Patriots that had a 16-0 regular season losing in the Super Bowl to a 10-6 New York Giants team it had previously beaten in the regular-season finale.
These things are foreign concepts to college football, and I have no doubt will feel jarring the first time they happen. But the majority of the college football public has been yearning for a bigger playoff for years, if not decades. You can’t switch to a radically different postseason format and expect everything else to remain exactly the same.
Is there a collective for college football writers? What NIL endorsement opportunities would be most coveted? — David S.
You know those videos of Caleb Williams or Michael Penix Jr. handing out Beats headphones to all their teammates? The sportswriter equivalent would be me getting an NIL deal with Marriott and giving each of my colleagues 50,000 free Bonvoy points.
Happy holidays, everyone! Hope you get to enjoy some downtime these next couple of weeks with your friends and family watching 30-plus bowl games.
(Top photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
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