Fired Up Friday

The BCS National Championship Game

Going into this Monday's National Championship Game everyone was expecting to see a very exciting game with a ton of points scored, but instead of two high-powered offenses exchanging highlight plays and impressive long-lasting drives the teams slopped through the game and bored me to death.  I understand that the score was close throughout the whole game, but sloppy football doesn't really excite me.  I'm not saying that these two teams weren't the two best teams in the nation, but that was just an ugly football game and I didn't find it exciting.  I refuse to buy into the media's claims that the National Championship was a great game this year.

The problem with this game, as well as many other bowl games, is the ridiculous amount of time between each team's final regular season game and their bowl game.  It is nearly impossible to expect the best game of the season out of teams in bowl games when they have been forced to take more than a month of since their last game.  The NCAA needs to find a way to shorten up the length of time in between these games, especially the BCS games.  I'm tired of seeing teams struggle in the first quarter as they get their rhythm back and finally be able to turn it on as the second quarter begins.

A Playoff System in College Football

As the National Championship game came to a close, I tweeted "After such a sloppy game, TCU should claim to be the Co-National Champions,"  and I meant it.  There is no reason for TCU to claim they aren't the national champions.  Just because the NCAA decided to start calling a certain game the National Championship and handing out a trophy for it doesn't mean that TCU shouldn't be able to call themselves national champions.  Though low-scoring, the Rose Bowl was a very well played game between two strong teams and proved that TCU was one of the best teams in the nation, maybe even the best team.  TCU answered the questions many haters, myself included, had before the game and finished the season as one of two undefeated teams in the nation.  With no clear cut best team in the nation, there is an obvious need for a playoff system.

I could sit here and explain why we need a playoff system, but there is no reason for it.  Every college football fan knows why there should be a playoff.  Everyone knows that the BCS system is ineffective.   But this doesn't matter.  The only thing that matters is that college presidents, college coaches, and even some college players don't want a playoff system.  The only thing these people care about is MONEY. 

Every year, the city of Pasadena knows that they will make two billion dollars because of the Rose Bowl.  The economic boom of bowl games and the money made is completely dependent on the fan bases of each team.  Bowl games need college students and college alumni to fill up the stadiums.  These fan bases are typically able to make one trip to a college bowl game each year.  The playoff system would lead to three or four games for these fans to travel to and it seems relatively unlikely that they would be able to fill three or four games at neutral sites up with two fan bases.

Even if you would be able to guarantee that these tickets would get filled and people would be to travel to three of their team's games, there are still college presidents to please.  Over the last 20 years, the bowl system has turned into a very sophisticated group of legal contracts signed by a ton of different college and conference presidents.  To successfully implement a playoff system, there needs to be a significant amount of legal work done to please all the people involved who will stand to benefit economically from the bowl stystem.

Instead of people arguing for a playoff system, we need to begin assembling the country's smartest lawyers to begin looking at the legal work needed to create a playoff system. 

Cam Newton = Tim Tebow

I am getting really tired of people claiming that Cam Newton will be successful because Tim Tebow has been successful in the NFL.  First off, since when is starting three games and leading your team to one victory successful?  In his three starts, he has only completed 50% of his passes and has a QB rating of 82.1.  This is NOT a successful QB.  That is a quarterback who has managed to sneak up on a few teams and be relatively successful, but not anywhere near an elite QB.

Second, though the promotion of Tebow has been sickening, few people in the league have a better work ethic than him.  He works extremely hard and will do whatever possible to become successful.  Have we ever seen anything like that out of Newton?  No.  We have learned to question Newton's character and some people are even thinking that NFL GMs will force Newton to take a lie detector test.  I simply just do not see Newton being able to have the same success as Tebow in the NFL because he will not do everything in his power to become a successful NFL QB.

Trash Talk

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to talk trash.  Nothing is better than some good trash talking and I have absolutely loved the talk between the Jets and Patriots this week.  A lot of people believed that Rex Ryan and Antonio Cromartie were ignorant to begin riling up the Patriots and giving them motivation, but I could not disagree more.  The Jets have talked trash all year and there is no reason for them to stop doing it just because they are facing the Patriots.  By talking trash, the Jets have taken all the pressure off of Mark Sanchez, which is exactly where it should be.  Without the trash talk, we would all be focusing on Sanchez's weaknesses and he would have to deal with questions about his inadequacies as a quarterback, but instead we are worried about the stupid things Ryan and Cromartie have said.

Though everyone believed that the Patriots would stay out of the trash talking because they like everyone to think they are one of the classiest organizations in the league (Cough...Spygate...Cough), but Wes Welker was having none of that.  Welker's press conference yesterday was absolutely hilarious.  Earlier in the year, a video surfaced which highlighted Rex Ryan's unusual foot preferences and Welker had an absolute field day with it.  If you watch this video, Welker very subtly makes fun of Ryan throughout the whole press conference and doesn't crack even a smirk.  Perfectly delivered and hilarious.  Sublime acting, Mr. Welker.  Absolutely sublime.