Trap Game: The Eagles Lurk Once Again

Last Saturday night the Clemson Tigers, the number 1 ranked college football team in the country, came into Notre Dame Stadium where they were upset by the fourth-ranked Fighting Irish in double overtime, 47-40.  The game was billed as the most important so far in the current college season, and was viewed by over 10 million fans on television and streaming devices.  For this season only, Notre Dame is a full member of the Atlantic Coast Conference ("ACC"), so the showdown's result has implications not only for the ACC title but also the College Football Playoffs, with the national championship as the ultimate goal.

The pre-game hype was off the charts.  Clemson had won 36 games in a row and was a 5 point favorite even though its All America quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, had to sit out per Covid-19 protocol.  Their second string QB, DJ Uiagalelei, was not exactly chopped liver (to coin a phrase).  The six foot five, 245 pounder was the USA Today high school player of the year two years ago.  The rest of the Tigers two-deep roster was filled with four and five star recruits.

Clemson's visit to The Bend marked only the fourth time in the last 32 years that the Irish have hosted the number 1 team in the country.  On October 15, 1988, the Miami Hurricanes were the defending national champion and ranked number 1 when they invaded Notre Dame.  This was the famous Catholics vs. Convicts Game, which has become so legendary that ESPN produced a documentary about it.  The Canes' "Convicts" sobriquet was well-earned, as some players on the Miami roster had run afoul of NCAA regulations as well as confrontations with the police.  Before the game Miami lived down to its reputation as thugs when they ran through the Notre Dame warm up line.  A rumble in the tunnel ensued.  Back in the locker room the Irish players were stoked.  Referring to his counterpart, ND head coach Lou Holtz famously instructed his squad, "Save Jimmy Johnson's ass for me!"   The Catholics pulled off the upset 31-30.  The final Miami play was an unsuccessful two point conversion attempt.  Momma Cuandito and I had seats on the twenty yard line, compliments of my cousin Louie.  That '88 season was the last time Notre Dame won the national championship.

Prior to last Saturday night's slugfest, the last time a number 1 opponent visited was October 15, 2005 when the Trojans of Southern California faced ninth ranked ND.  The game's most lasting memory was a quarterback sneak by SC's quarterback Matt Leinart from the one yard line with three seconds left in the game, resulting in a thrilling 34-31 victory.  On that play Trojan running back Reggie Bush pushed Leinart into the endzone after Leinart had originally been stacked up short of the goal line.  That play was almost immediately dubbed the "Bush Push" and is a sore topic among Domers.  Under the then-existing rules, aiding a ball-carrying teammate with a push or a pull was illegal, but admittedly that kind of infraction was rarely called.  There are two postscripts concerning that action.  First, a few years later the "no push" rule was taken off the books.  Secondly and ironically, in 2010 the NCAA vacated 14 SC victories in which Bush played because he and his family (and at least one other SC athlete) received improper benefits from or on behalf of the school.  [Note:  Who was the Southern Cal head coach who looked the other way?  None other than smilin' (but slimey) Pete Carroll who got out of Dodge (i.e., LA) right before the NCAA lowered the boom with severe sanctions, including reduction of scholarships, bowl bans and vacated victories. Carroll is now the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, which explains why I am always happy to see that team lose.]

In between the '88 Miami game and the '05 Southern Cal game was the November 13, 1993 showdown billed by the national media as "The Game Of The Century," the number 1 Florida State Seminoles vs. number 2 Notre Dame.  [Note:  The media likes to use the term "Game Of The Century" more than once every 100 years.  For example, the Domers of my vintage consider the famous 10-10 tie with Michigan State on November 19, 1966 to be the real Game Of The Century.  I attended that game in East Lansing.  It was my sophomore year, the only one of the four while I was an ND student when we won the  national championship.]  The Irish dominated Florida State until the fourth quarter when the Noles staged a comeback.  Trailing by 7 points, FSU's Heisman Trophy quarterback Charlie Ward marched his team down the field.  On the last play of the game, Ward's pass from the Irish 14 yard line was batted down and a 31-24 upset was in the books.  Pandemonium prevailed over the campus.  Two days later ND moved up to number 1 in the Associated Press poll while Florida State dropped to number 2.  Only one regular season game remained.  All the Irish had to do was beat the number 12 Boston College Eagles in South Bend to qualify for what would be the NCAA title game, the Orange Bowl.

We have at last arrived at the point where the title of this post comes into play.  What is a "trap game"?  The term generally refers to a contest where a heavily favored team takes its underdog opponent lightly, thereby through their own fault increasing the likelihood of an upset.  A narrower definition would be a game which either immediately precedes or follows a game against either an arch rival or a highly touted team.  That narrower definition applies to the last week of Notre Dame's 1993 regular season.  The Irish had just defeated Florida State and had replaced the Noles as the number 1 team in the country.  If ND could beat number 1, surely ND could beat number 12.

The Boston College contest did not prove to be the ho-hummer we Domers foolishly expected. Notre Dame led 39-38 in the closing minute of the game. BC quarterback Glenn Foley led a furious last gasp march down the field.  Just into Notre Dame territory Foley launched a long pass which an ND linebacker, stretching above his head, got both of his hands on, but he dropped the ball.  A play or two later on the last snap of the game, BC's David Gordon kicked a 41 yard field goal to upset ND by one point.  I was at that game.  Watching that kick sail through the uprights brought a tear to my eye, but I was not embarrassed; almost all the other 59,000 fans in the stadium felt the same way.  [The Irish linebacker who dropped the "sure" interception was Pete Bercich, an excellent player who went on to a five year career with the Vikings and is currently the radio analyst on Vikings' radio broadcasts.  I have never felt so bad for an athlete as I did for Pete, but obviously he has turned the page.  Good for him.  That's as it should be.]

Because of the loss, the AP poll dropped ND to number 4, and moved Florida State back up to number 1 and Nebraska to number 2.  Therefore ND never got to play in the Orange Bowl for the NCAA championship.  Instead the Irish played in the Cotton Bowl where they beat Texas A & M to finish the season 11-1.  Florida State beat Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, so they also finished 11-1.  The final AP poll gave Florida State the national championship title.  The ND fans cried bloody murder.  How could the AP rank FSU over ND when they both finished 11-1 and ND had won in the head-to-head matchup?  The answer was twofold.  First, the FSU loss was to a much better team (ND) than the ND loss (BC).  Secondly, the voters loved the Noles' head coach, folksie Bobby Bowden who, to that point at age 64, had never won a national title.  They also loved Lou, a young pup at the tender age of 56, but he had already coached two national championship squads including one at ND. 

****

Twenty-seven years after the heartbreaking trap game described above, the Irish, fresh off the huge win against Clemson, face another potential trap game tomorrow.  And wouldn't you know, the opponent is once again the Boston College Eagles.  This time the game is on the opponents' campus in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.  Notre Dame is a two touchdown favorite, but you can bet the coaches are telling them all about that '93 debacle.  The Irish coaches will also warn the team that beating Clemson last Saturday won't mean a thing if they don't take care of business tomorrow.  Beating number 2 ranked ND would make the BC season and probably send them to a good bowl game.

Here are some side bars to keep in mind during tomorrow's game.

The Notre Dame fan base has a somewhat weird outlook on Boston College.  Contrary to what many outsiders believe -- partly due to the gridiron meetings being labeled "The Holy Wars" -- the Irish faithful generally do not look upon BC as a main rival.  That designation is reserved for Southern Cal (especially among older alums) and Michigan.  It is often said, "Southern Cal is our arch rival; Michigan is our enemy."  The level of animosity toward BC does not quite rise (or if you prefer, sink) to that level.  Still, there is no love lost between the two schools.  An old Notre Dame joke: What do the initials "BC" stand for?  Backup college.  (Explanation: many BC students applied to ND but were not admitted.)       

Whatever aversion resides between ND and BC fans probably originated from one or two sources.  One of course goes back to that 1993 upset which arguably cost ND a national title.  It wasn't just the loss itself but the Eagles players and fans' reaction.  The old mantra "when you lose say little, when you win say less" has allegedly fallen on deaf ears at BC.  One year following a BC win in Notre Dame Stadium, some Eagles players  dug up the turf to take back to Boston as a trophy.  One of them, sad to say, was linebacker Chris Hovan who was a first round draft choice by the Vikings in 2000.

The other source stems from BC's desertion of the Big East Conference in 2004 to join the Atlantic Coast Conference.  At that time Notre Dame was a member of the Big East for almost all varsity sports except football.  Since BC was a charter member of the Big East going back to 1979, its jumping ship to go to a rival conference was seen by many as an act of betrayal.  To this day, ND fans like to call Boston College "Fredo," the Corleone brother in The Godfather who betrayed his family.

One final nugget of intrigue.  The starting quarterback for Boston College is Phil Jurkovec, a red shirt sophomore.  When Phil played high school football in Pittsburgh, he was one of the very top QB prospects in the country.  He turned down many scholarship offers to attend Notre Dame.  After sitting out (aka red shirting) his freshman year, he was thought to have a decent chance of being ND's starting QB his sophomore year.  But, he could not beat out the incumbent starter Ian Book.  This decision by the Notre Dame coaches was not popular with at least half of the Irish fans, many of whom do not consider head coach Brian Kelly to be a good developer of quarterbacks.  When Phil saw the writing on the wall last year, he transferred to BC, and the Eagles are mighty happy to have him.  Even those of us who are die hard Irish fans hope Phil has a good game tomorrow -- in a losing effort, of course.   

Dillon Hall Diaries: Kooch

I have been told that the most luxurious hotel in the state of Oklahoma is not really a hotel at all.  It's Headington Hall, the lodging facility at Oklahoma University where Sooner scholarship athletes lay their weary heads at night.  To call it a "dorm" would be an insult to the OU athletic department.  Check out these amenities: a study lounge and a laundry room on every floor, open 24/7; a commons area on every floor, where social and educational programs are hosted; a dining hall with many food options, a game room containing pool tables and ping pong tables; a media lounge with HD flat screen televisions and surround sound, plus blu ray machines; a seminar room, a reading room and private study rooms; an academic lounge, a performing arts theater and a technology center.  Most of the sleeping quarters are suites with quality furniture and kitchenettes.   

Many other colleges with huge athletic budgets follow a similar track, although OU is probably the most extreme example of a place where scholarship athletes are afforded accommodations which set them apart from most of the general student population.  We also hear a lot about practice facilities and how they play a major role in the recruitment process.  The one year old Athletes' Village at the University Of Minnesota, with a price tag of $166 million, is an example of how schools which wish to be competitive must keep up with the Joneses.  It's all part of the arms race.   Other perks might include training table meals, first dibs on "Easy A" classes, individualized tutorial help, and even an eased admission policy for prospective student athletes with subpar academic credentials.  Athletes admitted under such eased conditions are sometimes called "exceptions."  Heck, the University Of North Carolina even gave credit for non-existent classes to some of their "student" athletes, a scam that went undetected for years.  We'd better not get into the hiring of strippers to entertain basketball recruits at the University Of Louisville, alleged to have occurred under the watch of former head coach Rick Pitino.

***

You would be hard pressed to find an athletic dorm among the thirty residence halls at the University Of Notre Dame.  That's because no such thing exists.  The ND philosophy is that the student athletes should blend in with the rest of student body.  The athletes are sprinkled around campus and, to the extent their in-season team obligations allow, live much the same life as their "non-jock" classmates.

That is the background in which Bob Kuechenberg became my roommate in Dillon Hall during our senior year.  Well, okay, I'm guilty of a slight exaggeration; Bob was my suite mate, not my roommate.  It sounds a little more civilized to call him my suite mate than to say we, together with our roomies, Wayne and Mike, shared the semi-private bathroom which was between our two rooms.  Kuechenberg, better known as "Kooch," was a three year starter on the Irish football team.  This was the Era of Ara -- named for head coach Ara Parseghian -- when more often than not Notre Dame was in the running for the national championship, the only goal that mattered since we were (and remain) an independent.  (Mission accomplished in my sophomore season, 1966, and also 1973 under Ara.)

Kooch was born on October 14, 1947, making him sixteen days older than I.  He passed away unexpectedly a week ago today in Florida, where he had lived since 1970.  The family announced that he died in his sleep; a heart attack is suspected, although not yet officially confirmed.

Kooch was from Hobart, Indiana, a suburb of the rough and tumble steel city of Gary.  At six foot two and around 255 pounds, he was all muscle, and on the football field, all business.  When Kooch walked into your room it felt like the square footage of the space shrank exponentially.  He started his ND career as an offensive tackle.  In one of the most famous games in ND history, the 10-10 tie at Michigan State in 1966, he lined up across from Spartan All American defensive end Bubba Smith on virtually every snap.  As a junior Kooch moved to defensive end to fill in for an injured teammate, then back to starting guard on offense his senior year.  Kooch told a Miami sportswriter many years later that he thought his having to switch between O-line and D-line in college might have caused him to slip to the fourth round in the 1969 draft, especially since Ara then moved him from his old spot, tackle, to guard.  Admittedly, Ara had a valid reason for doing so.  The guy who'd slipped into Kooch's old spot was George Kunz, probably the best offensive tackle on any of Ara's eleven Irish teams, a consensus All American and the number 2 overall pick in the 1969 NFL draft (going to the Atlanta Falcons).

Kooch was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1969, and had a cup of coffee with the Falcons later that year.  He married his high school sweetheart the same year, and ended up playing for a semi-pro team in Chicago, the Owls.  After a tryout with the Miami Dolphins he signed as a free agent in 1970, and ended up playing fourteen years for the "Fins," all that time under the legendary Hall Of Fame coach Don Shula.

Kooch's accolades as a pro are too numerous to list in their entirety, but I would not be doing him justice if I didn't mention a few.  Most football fans of my vintage know that Kooch was a key contributor on three championship teams: Notre Dame's 1966 national champion, and the Miami Dolphins' Super Bowl champs of 1972 and 1973.  There is a little known but almost equally important fourth championship involving Kooch; I will describe it momentarily. 

Many NFL players have a career lasting ten or fifteen years and never reach the Super Bowl.  In the Dolphins' franchise history, they have made five Super Bowl appearances; Kooch was the starting right guard in the first four of them.   Kooch only had to wait until his second year with Miami to experience his first such start.  Unfortunately his team lost by three touchdowns to the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl VI.  Kooch's mano-a-mano adversary that game was Hall Of Fame defensive tackle Bob Lilly.

The following season begat one of the greatest teams in NFL history, the Dolphins, who ran the table for a perfect season, 14-0.  That team remains the only one which has ever gone undefeated throughout both the regular season and the playoffs, including Super Bowl VII, a seven point victory over the Washington Redskins.  You have probably seen pictures of Kooch and his old teammates lighting up cigars each year when the last remaining undefeated NFL team suffers a loss, thereby preserving the '72 Fins' place in history.

Then there was Super Bowl VIII, an easy 24-7 demolition of the Minnesota Vikings.  The Vikings featured their supposedly unstoppable defensive front four known as the Purple People Eaters: Carl Eller, Alan Page, Gary Larsen and Jim Marshall.  Page, a fellow Notre Dame alum (Class of 1967), lined up across from Kooch and never got a whiff of the Miami QB, Bob Griese.  The Dolphins' offense was so dominant that Griese only had to pass seven times during the entire game.

Finally there was Super Bowl XVII following the 1982 season.  The Dolphins came up short, losing to the Redskins by ten.

Despite his prominent role in helping Miami reach four Super Bowls, plus being a six time selection to the Pro Bowl and an Associated Press All-Pro three seasons, Kooch was never elected into the NFL Hall Of Fame.  It was little solace to him that he was a finalist for Hall induction eight times.  One explanation offered by many so-called experts is the fact that three of his Miami offensive line mates, Larry Little, Jim Langer (a product of Royalton, Minnesota High School) and Dwight Stephenson, were all voted into the Hall, thus diluting his chances.  Here is what Coach Shula had to say: "I've coached a lot of Hall Of Fame Players, including a number of offensive linemen, and Kooch was as good as any of them.  He gave everything he had on every snap."

The highest honor bestowed on Kooch occurred on December 15, 1995 when he was added to the Dolphins' Ring Of Honor.  At the time, he was just the eighth player so anointed, and the only one of them not enshrined in the Hall Of Fame.  He retired after the 1984 season after having played in 196 games, the third most in Dolphins' history.  An amazing Kuechenberg stat:  In his entire career, he was called for holding a mere 15 times.

***

And now for a description of that fourth championship I promised.  In the spring of 1969, a movement was started in Dillon Hall to conduct a beer drinking contest.  In order to appreciate the atmosphere, you have to realize that out of the dorm's 325 residents, aka Dillon Dirt Bags, more than 225 of us no doubt considered ourselves quite proficient in the art of beer drinking.  After all, what else (besides studying) was there to do when the cold March air was cutting across campus from nearby Lake Michigan?  [Note: That's a rhetorical question.  For a real answer check out my post from September 9, 2014, Dillon Hall Diaries: Kiwi Can Contests.]

The Dillon beer drinking contest had just one rule.  You had to drink a shot of beer every 30 seconds.  My friends and I scoffed at the leniency and ease of such a regulation.  Surely we could stick with that program for hours.  We were wrong.  When forced to drink beer at that rate, pretty soon it doesn't go down the hatch before it's time to quaff another.  I felt so humiliated when I had to throw in the towel after nine shots.  I didn't even feel a buzz, but my esophagus was about to rupture.

I was surprised Kooch was talked into participating.  Between football commitments and Vomit Comet trips home to the Gary/Hobart area, we didn't see a lot of him on weekends.  But once he signed up for the contest, it was almost inevitable he'd be crowned the champ.  As I recall, he put down 237 shots, one every 30 seconds.  The number sticks in my mind first of all because he beat the second place finisher by over 100, and secondly because I remember talking about his remarkable feat when I came home shortly thereafter for spring break.

***

Following his death, Kooch's family requested that memorials be forwarded to The Buoniconti Fund To Cure Paralysis, a non-profit organized to assist The Miami Project. The Miami Project is a spinal cord injury research center owned by and located at the University Of Miami.  The Project was co-founded by Nick Buoniconti thirty-four years ago following a spinal cord injury sustained by Nick's son, Marc, in a college football game.  Nick Buoniconti played football for Notre Dame, Class of 1962, and was Kooch's Dolphins teammate for six NFL seasons.

I have sent a check for $67 to the Buoniconti Fund, the significance of that dollar amount matching Kooch's Miami jersey, number 67.  If he and I ever meet at that Big Senior Bar In The Sky, he'll probably ask why I didn't make the dollar amount 69, the year we graduated from Notre Dame.    

Football Fans Fund Foundations

Up until the last month or so, I never paid much attention to foundations which were set up by professional athletes.  The one exception is the Page Education Foundation, named after its originator and leader, Alan Page.  The mission of that foundation is to provide college scholarships to Minnesota high school students of color.  In return, the recipients enter into a contract by which they agree to perform community service, mentor younger students, and maintain a certain level of academic achievement. 

Alan, a living legend in Minnesota sports history as one of the Vikings' four Purple People Eaters, is an NFL Hall Of Fame member and a recently retired justice of the Minnesota State Supreme Court.  I know him as a fellow Notre Dame alum who graduated two years ahead of me in 1967.  He was a starting defensive lineman on our 1966 National Champion team.  The combination of praiseworthy mission and ND connection have led Momma Cuandito and I to be donors to Alan's foundation since its inception in 1988.    

So, why have foundations set up by other professional athletes caught my eye (and maybe yours) recently?  It all began on December 31, 2017, the last day of the current NFL regular season.

Andy Dalton's Foundation.  We Vikings fans are feeling cursed by our team's string of bad luck in playoff games.  The team has broken our hearts time and again, including two weeks ago in the NFC Championship Game, yet we keep tuning in.  But if we think we have it bad, consider the plight of the Buffalo Bills' fans.  Going into the current season, the Bills had gone seventeen years without making the playoffs, not even as a wild card team.  That is the longest drought of any team in any of the four major North American profession sports leagues.

On that last regular season Sunday, the Bills still had a glimmer of hope to finally achieve the playoffs, but required two things to happen.  First, they had to defeat the underachieving Miami Dolphins in Miami.  Check.  Final score: Buffalo 22, Miami 16.  Next, the Bills needed the Cincinnati Bengals, who had no hope of making the playoffs and thus were mostly just playing for pride, to upset the Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore. A Ravens' win would clinch the playoffs for them and eliminate the Bills.

The Bengals trailed 27-24 with forty-four seconds left when Cincy quarterback Andy Dalton threw a forty-nine yard desperation bomb to wide receiver Tyler Boyd.  Touchdown!  Bengals win, 31-27, the Ravens' season ends and the Bills make the playoffs, ending their futility streak!

The Bills players, still in their uniforms following their Miami game, were able to watch the final moments of the Cincy-Baltimore game on locker room televisions.  The room erupted with glee, as did virtually every sports bar in the city of Buffalo.

This is where the foundation follies begin.  Some ecstatic Bills fans took to twitter and suggested donating to Dalton's foundation, the Andy & Jordan Dalton Foundation, as a way of showing their collective appreciation for the Bengals' quarterback's last minute heroics.  The Dalton Foundation states its mission as follows: "To provide daily support, opportunities, resources and life-changing experiences to seriously ill and physically challenged children and their families in Cincinnati and Fort Worth."  (Andy and his wife, Jordan, are both alums of TCU, located in Fort Worth.)  The twitter suggestion caught fire.  In less than a month, approximately 16,000 Buffalo fans have donated $360,000 to the foundation.  "I think I'm the hottest guy in Buffalo right now," exclaimed the Cincinnati QB.  He and his wife have expressed their gratitude to Buffalo by putting up five billboards in that city.

You might wonder, "What about Tyler Boyd, who caught the game-winning TD pass?"  The Bills fans did not forget his role in the victory.  Boyd's favorite charity, the Western Pennsylvania Youth Athletic Association, has received over $20,000 from Buffalo donors this month.

Blake Bortles' Foundation.  There are many heated rivalries among the fans of the thirty-two teams in the NFL.  Various ranked lists have been compiled, but regardless of the author, you are almost sure to find the Bears-Packers, Chiefs-Raiders and Redskins-Cowboys among the top ten, if not the top five.  Another no holds barred relationship is between the Bengals and the Steelers.  They are both NFC North Division teams, and therefore face off twice a year.  There is an old saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt."  That applies to those teams' fan bases.  Each derives almost as much pleasure from the other guys' losses as it does from its own victories.

That's the set up for what transpired in the second week of the playoffs earlier this month.  Most of the football gurus and oddsmakers had already penciled in the New England Patriots and the Steelers as the two teams who would meet in the AFC championship game the following week.  Their respective opponents in the playoffs' second week, the Tennessee Titans and the Jacksonville Jaguars, respectively, would be mere speed bumps.  Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin even let it slip a couple of times while talking to the media that he was thinking ahead at least a little bit to facing the Pats.  The Jags had other ideas.

Playing with a huge chip on their collective shoulders, Jacksonville upset Pittsburgh 45-42.  Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles, usually considered several tiers below Pittsburgh QB Big Ben Roethlisberger, managed the game well enough, completing fourteen of twenty-six passes for over 200 yards and a touchdown.  The Jacksonville fans were dubbing the upset a prevention of the Steelers "Stairway To Seven," a reference to the number of Super Bowls Pittsburgh would have attained had they beaten Jacksonville as expected.

The Cincinnati fans, delirious with joy over seeing their enemy, Pittsburgh, lose, and still mindful of the Buffalo fans' donations to the Dalton Foundation, decided to play it forward.  Within a few days, more than $11,000 from approximately five hundred Bengals loyalists had poured into the Blake Bortles Foundation, whose dual mission is to support those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and to support first responders in the Jacksonville and Oviedo (Bortles' home town), Florida communities. 

Thomas Morstead's Foundation.  Thomas Morstead is the punter for the New Orleans Saints.  Most NFL games are played with each team's punter participating with total anonymity.  (How many of you can identify the Vikings' punter?)  But in the Saints' January 14 playoff game against the Vikings, the final game-winning play of which has been called the Minneapolis Miracle, Morstead stood out for two reasons.  

On Morstead's first punt of the game in the first quarter, he fractured his ribs while tackling Viking punt returner Marcus Sherels.  A little while later Morstead had to punt again, and he clearly grimmaced in pain, holding his side as he kicked.  It was tough for anyone, fan or foe, to watch.  Because NFL teams activate only one punter for each game, Morstead ended up punting four times, with an unbelievably excellent average, even for an able-bodied athlete, of forty-eight yards.

Here's the second reason.  NFL rules dictate that if a game ends with a touchdown on the last play of overtime, the scoring team does not have to attempt the extra point kick, aka PAT for "point after touchdown."  But -- and here is the stupid part -- if the game ends with a touchdown on the last play during regulation (60 minutes), the scoring team does have to line up for the PAT.  So, when the Vikings ended the game with the historic touchdown pass from Case Keenum to Stefon Diggs as regulation time expired, the game was not technically over.  By rule, both teams had to line up on the two yard line for some semblance of a PAT.  This would prove to be more difficult than you'd expect.

The home town fans were delerious, as were the Vikings players celebrating on the field.  The Saints, whose coach, Sean Payton, had been irking the fans with "skol claps" moments before, hastily retreated to their locker room.  One of the game officials had to fetch eleven Saints back onto the field.  Who should be the first of their fifty-three man roster to make the long trek?  None other than Mr. Morstead, the punter with the broken ribs.

This display of sportsmanship so impressed some Vikings fans that a suggestion was made on Reddit to do what Bills and Bengals fans had done, viz., make a donation to Morstead's foundation, What You Give Will Grow.  That organization, founded by Morstead and his wife Lauren, donates raised funds to other non-profits in New Orleans and Gulf South communities, with a focus on children's charities.  Only four years old, it has delivered over $2.5 million to those causes.

The latest reports indicate that over five thousand Vikings fans have followed the suggestion by donating more than $200,000 to What You Give Will Grow.  Morstead graciously thanked the Minnesotans, with a promise to hand-deliver a check equalling 100% of the Minnesota donations to the Child Life Department at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis.  Wow!

Gratuitous question which I cannot resist asking:  Do you think the Eagles fans, whom veteran Star Tribune columnist Jim Souhan called "the worst fans in sports" and "a rotting orchard," would recognize the good will of the Bills, Bengals and Vikings fan bases?

Noteworthy Numbers:  Several Buffalo fans who contributed to Andy Dalton's foundation did so in the amount of $17, representing the length of their team's playoff drought.  Some Cincinnati fans who contributed to the Bortles foundation upped the ante a little with gifts of $45.42, the final score of Pittsburgh's defeat at the hands of Bortles and his teammates.  But most of the donations made to the three players' foundations described above were for smaller dollar amounts, often matching the relevant players' uniform numbers: Dalton # 14, Bortles # 5, and Morstead # 6.  One lesson to be learned for aspiring NFL players: choose the biggest two-digit number you can, in case some day you become a hero.

Gridiron Influences Hoop Rooting Interests

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

- John 8:7

 

The Big 10 Conference Tournament for men's basketball starts tomorrow in Washington, DC.  Every one of the thirty-two Division 1 conferences holds such a tournament.  The winner of each conference tournament receives an automatic invitation to the NCAA Tournament, aka the "Big Dance," regardless of where they finished in the conference standings during the regular season.  Any team not winning its conference tournament is at the mercy of the Selection Committee for inclusion in the NCAA tournament.  The Committee will choose thirty-six "at large" teams to fill in the sixty-eight team bracket.

 

With the Gophers expected to make some noise in this year's conference tournament, many Minnesota fans including me will pay more attention to the entire tournament, not just the games featuring our lovable rodents.  Usually I will simply root for the underdog.  But human nature being what it is, other factors come into play, including a school's head basketball coach -- thank goodness Jim Boeheim, Coach K, Coach Cal and Rick Pitino are not Big 10 coaches -- their football program and their fan base.  It may seem strange that I would include a football program as an element, but like it or not, college football is the make it or break it revenue creator for any college athletic program which hosts both football and basketball.  It is hard for me to wish a basketball team well if I have a problem with its school's football team.  My like or dislike of a school's basketball team sometimes has less to do with roundball than it does with the pigskin.  In other instances, football is a non-factor.

 

What follows, then, is my rooting interest ranking, in ascending order, of the fourteen Big 10 basketball teams in their conference tournament.  I have conveniently sorted them into two categories, creatively labeled "Teams I Would Like To See Lose" and "Teams I Would Like To See Win."  When two teams within the same category oppose each other, I root for the team closer to # 1.

 

I can be very judgmental, but in the universe of sports-related blogging, such behavior often comes with the territory.  I am not without sin, but I'm fine casting stones here.  As the great philosopher Popeye used to say, "I yam what I yam."

 

TEAMS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE LOSE:

 

14. Penn State: Penn State should have received the death penalty in football for the 2011 Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal.  The Nittany Lions' fans feel no shame.  The chances that Paterno knew nothing about what his assistant coach was up to in the locker room showers hover around 0%.  Yet the fans want to bring back a statue of the late Joe Pa which the school removed, under immense public pressure, from grounds outside the stadium.  (I wonder, how is the view from the fiery furnace?)  Hard to cheer for a hoops team whose fan base is likely comprised of the school's football fans.  Saving grace: None.

 

13. Ohio State:  The Buckeyes are having a horrible basketball season, an anomaly for them.  The Buckeyes' football fans have a reputation of being the most hostile hosts to visiting teams' fans of any major program in the country.  The head football coach, Urban Meyer, is known in some circles as "The Poacher."  Most coaches -- although certainly not new Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck, another poacher -- will stop recruiting a high school prospect once that kid has given a verbal commitment to another school.  It's only if that committed kid later initiates contact with another school, thus indicating that perhaps his commitment is not on solid footing, that a coach will resume going after the high schooler.  Not so Urbie.  A kid's verbal means nothing to him.  It is only after the kid has signed a national letter of intent that Meyer will call off the dogs, and only then because to do otherwise would invite an NCAA reprimand.  I have nothing against the Buckeyes' basketball coach, Thad Motta, except that he is willing to use "one and done" athletes, the standard practice of John Calipari at Kentucky.  Saving grace: Throughout the season, Motta has suffered from severe back pain.  I've had my share of back pain too, so maybe I should cut him a break.

 

12. Michigan:  For many years the Big 10 was known as "The Big 2 & The Little 8" in football.  The Big 2 were Michigan and Ohio State, especially in the days when Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes were, respectively, their head football coaches. The old Domers of my era never had a bone to pick with Michigan when we were students.  The Irish and the Wolverines did not play each other in football from 1944 until 1978, nine years after I graduated.  However, the younger generation of Irish alums and subway alums dislike Michigan even more than they do our arch rival, Southern Cal. The Michigan football team has a kind of gangsta thugginess about them, and many of their (especially younger) fans follow suit.  They are an easy team to mock.  Certainly the "team up north" leads the league in kinesiology majors.  Since they have hired the rules-bending Jim Harbaugh as their coach, Michigan's football fortunes will probably rise.  Similar to what I wrote about Penn State fans, how can I cheer for their basketball team when I know Michigan's hoops fans are also their football fans?  Saving grace: I do like the Wolverines' head basketball coach, John Beilein.

 

11. Maryland:  Notre Dame fans refer to Boston College as "Fredo," the Corleone brother in The Godfather who betrayed his family.  ["Fredo, you are nothing to me now," scolded younger brother Michael, who waited for their mother's passing before ordering a henchman to give Fredo his just desserts.]  BC, which was a charter member of the Big East, deserted that conference to join the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2005, at a time when the Big East was highly successful.  Maryland is the ACC's Fredo, opting in 2014 to abandon its ACC charter membership for what it considered to be the greener pastures of the Big Ten.  Maryland is not a midwestern school, rarely having midwestern kids on its roster.  I would rather cheer for schools that do.  Saving grace: Unlike their football team, which exemplifies gridiron mediocrity, the Terrapins have represented their new conference well on the hardwood.

 

10. Michigan State:  When I attended ND in the sixties, two chants which we yelled the most were "Hate State!" and "Screw Purdue."  Michigan State (158 miles from The Bend) and Purdue (109 miles) were practically neighbors of ours.  We played them every year in football, and those games were always no holes barred.  The most famous game in the ND-State series was the classic 10-10 tie which I attended in East Lansing my sophomore year, when we won the 1966 National Championship.   Throughout the years I have never considered the Spartans to be lacking class, but one ignominious incident which occurred on September 17, 2005 is still talked about every time the two schools meet.  After beating the Irish in overtime 44-41 at Notre Dame Stadium, several jubilant Spartan players planted a Michigan State flag at the fifty yard line.  That addition of insult to injury was a sportsmanship no no and remains the lowlight of the two schools' rivalry.  As for hoops, Michigan State has been the most successful Big 10 team since 1995 when current head coach Tom Izzo was hired to fill that position.  It's always gratifying for opposing fans to see a perennial favorite stumble.  Saving grace: Although he can be a court side crybaby, Izzo runs a clean program and is highly regarded.

 

9. Indiana:  Of all the Big 10 schools, the one having the biggest gap between glorious basketball success and football ineptitude is Indiana.  Minnesota has christened itself the State Of Hockey.  In Indiana they have Hoosier Hysteria, which technically refers to the high school scene but describes nicely the state's basketball atmosphere at every level.  This is the state of John "The Wizard Of Westwood" Wooden, Bobby Knight and of course the 1986 film classic, Hoosiers.  Indiana's 1976 National Championship team is the only team in NCAA Division 1 history to achieve a perfect season.  Like Izzo's Michigan State, Indiana can usually be counted on to have a very good season, so a bump in the road for them would be a pleasing change of circumstances for many of their conference rivals' fans.  Saving grace: Indiana has suffered more injuries to key players this season than any other team in the league.  The result has been a dismal season.  Cheering against them might be piling on.

 

8. Rutgers:  Rutgers does not belong in the Big 10.  It adds nothing to the conference's football or basketball standing as a Power 6 Conference.  Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delaney, a self-serving empire builder, sold the notion that Rutgers would bring the New York television market into the Big 10 Network.  Guess what, Jimbo?  New York is a pro sports town which pays scant attention to the Big 10.  No sports fans are more provincial than New Yorkers.  They could not give two hoots what Rutgers is doing, much less Iowa, Nebraska and their hinterland brethren. Saving grace:  Unlike Maryland, which came into the Big 10 at the same time as Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights have not represented their new conference well, but they are so weak as to be irrelevant.  I would feel like a bully rooting against them.

 

7. Purdue:  Purdue has always been a huge rival of Notre Dame.  See the chant cited above.  The following short story reflects how I feel about the Boilermakers.  In the fall of 1996, Momma Cuandito and I were on our way home from Oxford, Ohio where we had dropped off our daughter, Gina, at Miami University for her freshman year.  As a diversion from the long drive, we stopped in West Lafayette, Indiana to walk around the Purdue campus.  The temperature was around twenty-five, and we were too lightly dressed.  Our first stop was the bookstore, where I bought MC a heavy Purdue sweatshirt.  She offered to buy me one in return.  My response was, "I would rather freeze my badoodskies off than wear a Purdue sweatshirt."  The main reason to root against the Boilers in the upcoming tourney:  They are the # 1 seed; upsets make for engrossing, dramatic theater.  Saving grace: The best player in the Big 10 this year is Boiler big guy Caleb Swanigan.  He has a most interesting bio, including overcoming homelessness and obesity as a youth.  I wish him well.  I also like head coach Matt Painter, a former Purdue hoopster.

 

6. Nebraska:  The main reason I have the Cornhuskers in this "Lose" category is that I can't think of a reason why I should root for them (unless, of course, they were playing one of the seven teams listed above them).  Maybe I am simply envious of their historic football success, although since joining the Big 10 in 2011, they are not the powerhouse they once were in the old Big 8 Conference.  My observation is that Big Red Country is all about football; basketball is just something to watch in the offseason.  I would rather see a team with a more vested interest from its fan base achieve basketball success.  Saving grace: I have heard from many sources that the Nebraska football fans are among the most gracious and hospitable sports enthusiasts in the nation, showing a lot of class whether in Lincoln or on the road, i.e., the opposite of Buckeye fans.

 

5. Iowa:  I am conflicted whether to put the Hawkeyes in the Win or Lose category.  I lived in Iowa for three years, yet have never claimed to be from that state.  When asked the question, I have always responded, with pride, that I hail from Illinois or North Dakota.  I have attended many football and basketball games pitting Minnesota against either Iowa or Wisconsin.  Here is my observed comparison. When the Badgers win their fans celebrate and  have a party, right there in the stadium or arena.  Their band is excellent.  "When you've said 'Wis-con-sin,' you've said it all!"  When the Hawkeyes win their fans feel a need to brag and ridicule their vanquished opponent.  They have failed to learn the wise advice learned from a coach in my youth: When you lose say little, when you win say less.  Saving grace:  As I wrote in my December 28, 2016 post, I enjoy Iowa's fiery head basketball coach, Fran McCaffrey, and not just because he is married to former Notre Dame basketball star Margaret Nowlin.     

 

TEAMS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE WIN:

 

4. Wisconsin.  The number of reasons to cheer on the Badgers is marginally greater than the number on the opposite side of the ledger.  It starts with my favorable impression of the Wisconsin fans; see my comparison to Iowa's above.  Our family cabin is in the great Wisconsin North Woods, which makes me a land owner and a tax payer.  My daughter-in-law, Lindsey, is a Badger alum, as are several of my kids' friends.  And what better place to spend a fun weekend than Mad City?  I also appreciate the tradition of the Badgers' players staying in school for the duration of their eligibility, a practice which one might cynically attribute to a dearth of NBA caliber talent.  The Badgers' roster is not stocked with McDonald's All Americans, but they've been to the Sweet 16 each of the last three years.  On the other hand:  The Badgers are the Gophers' arch rival, which causes some pangs of betrayal for those of us on the west side of the St. Croix to pull for them when they're not facing Minnesota.  (Note: Although Wisconsin has had the upper hand lately in football -- twelve straight wins over the Gophs -- the football series is tied 59-59 plus 8 ties.  The Maroon & Gold hold a razor thin victory margin in the basketball series, 102-99.)  There is also the matter of recruiting wars, with both schools going after some of the same high school phenoms.

 

3. Northwestern.  Northwestern,the highest ranked school academically in the Big 10, has never participated in the NCAA tournament.  Although the term "Mildcats" originally was meant as a slur on the football team, the Wildcats basketball team historically has also proved deserving of the label, having almost always finished in the bottom half, if not the bottom fourth, of the Big 10 standings.  Not so this year; seeded sixth in the Big 10 Tournament, they are a lock to be invited to the Big Dance as an at-large team.  Northwestern is this year's Cinderella of Power 6 teams.  The icing on the cake for rooting interest purposes is that one of their starting forwards is Sanjay Lumpkin, the pride of Benilde-St. Margaret's High School.  On the other hand: When I was a high school senior, I applied to three colleges, Notre Dame, Marquette and Loyola.  When I was a college senior, I applied to three law schools, Minnesota, Northwestern and DePaul.  Of those six schools, Northwestern was the only one to respond thumbs down.  Should I be rooting for them anyway?

 

2. Illinois.  Illinois is my native state.  (The rumors you've heard are true; Hillary Clinton and I were born four days apart in Chicago.)  In grade school I developed a love of geography -- thank you Mrs. Foley, my fifth grade teacher -- and studied the Prairie State quite thoroughly.  Ever since then I've held a fondness for the Land Of Lincoln.  It is hard for me to cheer against the Fighting Illini, even though I haven't lived there since I was thirteen.  No one can accuse me of being a front running band wagon rider.  Illinois finished ninth in the Big 10 and would probably have to win the conference tournament to reach the Big Dance.  On the other hand: No basketball team wastes its location in fertile recruiting grounds like Illinois.  Illinois high school basketball is among the best in the nation.  If only Illini could recruit two or three of the top players from the Chicago area each year, they would have a leg up on their conference brethren.          
 

1. Minnesota.  The reasons for placing the Gophers # 1 are obvious.  The four biggest are (i) Momma Cuandito is an alum, (ii) I have lived here since 1966, (iii) my kids and grandkids were born here and live here, and (iv) to do otherwise would incur the wrath of Gina, the Hot Italian Tomato and the Gophers' # 1 fan.  On the other hand: I am not a fan of the new Gophers' football coach, PJ Fleck. (Here we go again, looking to football in a basketball post.)  It is my (old fashioned?) belief that when a new head coach accepts the position, he should not recruit or accept transfers from the program he is leaving.  Such practice is probably unethical, and if that's too harsh an accusation, let's just say it does not pass the Smell Test.  This coming season's football roster will be stocked with former Western Michigan recruits and at least one or two transfers.  If you think he won't pull the same stunt when he leaves Minny for greener pastures some day, you must also believe in the Tooth Fairy.

Same Sport But Different Games

Last weekend marked the end of the regular college football season.  We are now on to the bowl games, forty of them to be exact.  That is about thirty too many, but like a fool I will probably watch at least portions of most of them.  That's what ESPN is counting on, right?  That network, together with their business affiliate ABC, will televise all but three of those games.  There are one hundred twenty-eight FBS (Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision) programs, meaning that 62.5% of them will fill one of the eighty bowl team slots.  You have to be pretty mediocre -- or worse -- not to be a bowl game participant.  In fact, three teams with below .500 records (including the 5-7 Gophers) will play in a bowl because the NCAA was forced into making an exception to their rule of a team needing at least six wins to become bowl-eligible; otherwise they would not have had enough teams to fill up those eighty slots.

I personally enjoy the college game more than the pros -- most Notre Dame fans do -- but I have to admit that the more rigorous requirement for NFL teams to make the playoffs is a better system.  Out of the thirty-two NFL teams, only a dozen of them (37.5%) qualify for the playoffs.  That's one of several reasons the NFL has taken over as America's favorite sport.  (Yes, as a baseball fan, it's hard to believe I just wrote that sentence.)  One could argue that because it's relatively hard for a pro football team to make the playoffs, the importance of each regular season game is magnified.  Teams can rarely afford, say, a three game losing streak.  Plus, a team's won-loss record impacts whether they will get to play at home if they do make the playoffs.  You will seldom see a below average team in the NFL playoffs, and almost never see such a team playing at home in the post season.

What about the on-field games themselves?  Even though the NFL has a better playoff qualification format than the NCAA has for bowl games, which product is preferable from a fan's viewpoint?  Sure, you will find more elite athletes and excellent football players on a typical pro team than you will on a college team.  But that does not necessarily mean that the pros have a more entertaining game.  Let's look at seven rules differences between the college game and the pros which directly impact how the game is played and the level of fans' enjoyment of the sport.

1. Sideline Pass Receptions.  In the college game, a receiver (or an interceptor) has to get one foot in-bounds after he has control of a pass before he steps out of bounds.  If he fails to get at least one foot down in-bounds, the pass is ruled incomplete.  In the pro game, a receiver (or interceptor) must get both of his feet down in-bounds in order for the pass to be ruled complete (or intercepted, as the case may be).  Consequently, it's much tougher for a pro quarterback to complete a sidelines pass than it is for his college counterpart.  The Edge: I like the college rule better, as it results in more big pass plays, which in turn make the game more exciting.  I am surprised the NFL does not adapt the college rule, since almost all the rules which have been put on the books recently favor the offense.  As the saying goes, "Defense might win championships, but offense puts fannies in the seats."

2. Down By Contact.  In college football, a ball carrier is deemed down, and the play whistled dead, as soon as his knee, elbow, butt or any other part of his torso touches the ground, even if he slips on lose turf or trips over his own shoelace.  In pro football, a ball carrier is not deemed down unless contact with an opposing player occurs in the process of his going down, or if an opposing player touches the downed ball carrier before he can get up off the ground.  This rule gains importance in inclement weather or with poor field conditions.  The Edge:  I prefer the pro rule, although it could lead to more injuries.  For example, if a ball carrier is down, but not by contact, he might get reamed by a defender before he can rise.  Good sportsmanship and the threat of unnecessary roughness penalties mitigate the concern.

3. PATs.  Until this year, the college rules and pro rules regarding PATs (point after touchdown kicks) were the same.  The ball was placed on the two yard line.  Since the holder on a PAT puts the ball down seven yards behind the line of scrimmage, and because the goal post is ten yards beyond the goal line, the distance of a PAT when the line of scrimmage is the two is nineteen yards (2 + 7 + 10).  During the past offseason, however, the NFL Rules Committee decided that PATs were boring because they were almost never missed.  Every NFL kicker can kick a nineteen yard PAT or field goal in his sleep.  Therefore, to spice up the game and create more fan interest, the Committee moved the line of scrimmage for PATs from the two yard line to the fifteen yard line.  That makes PAT kicks thirty-two yards (15 + 7 + 10) instead of just nineteen.  The Edge:  Being a traditionalist, I was originally against the NFL rule change.  Too gimmicky, and NFL kickers should be able to handle a thirty-two yard kick with ease.  However, what we have learned in the first three-quarters of the season is that the longer PATs are not the gimmes that we thought they'd be.  Maybe the kickers are over-thinking it.  Anyway, I'm coming around to liking the change.  By the way, there are no rumors regarding the college rule makers following suit.  They still put the ball down on the two for PATs.

4. Hash Marks Width.  This is a subtle difference which isn't always apparent to TV viewers but is easily ascertained in person.  In college football, the hash marks are set wide apart; forty feet, to be exact.  The NFL used to have the same width, but in 1972 they narrowed the gap from forty feet to just eighteen and a-half feet, matching the width of the goal posts.  What are the ramifications of wide vs. narrow hash marks?  There is an old saying in football that the sideline is like an extra defender.  In college, when the ball is placed on a hash mark, you have a "wide side" of the field and a "short side."  A defense will position more players on the wide side because, as just noted, the sidelines act like a twelfth defender.  Some teams always have one of their cornerbacks (the better one) assigned to the wide side (the "field corner"), and the other CB assigned to the short side (the "border corner").  The offense, realizing that there are more defenders to the wide side, might position more of its players to the wide side to counter-act the defensive alignment.  It may run more plays to the wide side to give the ball carrier additional space to run laterally before heading upfield.  On the other hand, the offense might attempt to take the defense by surprise by running a play to the short side.  It is a cat and mouse game between the offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator.  This additional element of strategy makes for a more interesting game versus the bland setup in the NFL where the narrow hash marks mean that there is no appreciable difference between the wide and short sides of the field; the ball is close to the middle, width-wise.  The other obvious difference is in the kicking game.  The NFL's narrower hash marks make it easier for a place kicker to line up his kick.  A college kicker facing the wider hash marks has to deal with severe angles, which get more acute the closer you get to the goalposts.  The Edge:  This is analogous to the old baseball debate about American League (designated hitter) rules versus National League (no designated hitter) rules.  Just like National League managers have to employ more strategy, so do the college coaches.  The distance from the pre-snap placement of the football to the sidelines is an extra variable which the pro coaches don't typically have on their plate.  If you enjoy more strategy, the college hash mark rule is for you.

 

5. The Clock.  College and professional football games all last through sixty minutes of running time, and in both cases, each team is provided with three charged timeouts per half.  But there are two major differences between the college and pro games concerning how and when the clock is stopped.  The most obvious difference is the presence of the Two Minute Warning in the NFL during each half.  Hooray for the NCAA for not falling victim to that shameless excuse to subject the television viewers to three or four more minutes of commercials in a game that already lasts too long!  Are we to believe that when the New England Patriots have the ball, quarterback Tom Brady, whose salary cap compensation this season is $13 million, does not know when there are two minutes left in the half?  The other major clock rules difference is the NCAA's momentary stoppage of the clock following a first down to enable the officials to "move the chains."  In the NFL, the clock keeps ticking while the chain gang does their thing.  The Edge:  I'm calling this one a tie.  I would like the Two Minute Warnings employed by the NFL to cease and desist -- I know that will never happen -- but I prefer the NFL method of not stopping the clock after first downs to move the chains.  Stopping the clock for such purpose, even if only for a matter of a few seconds, invites opportunity for foul play on the part of the timer.  Keeping the clock running is more transparent.

 

6. Defensive Pass Interference.  This is one of the most controversial subjects in the pro game, due to the severity of the penalty.  In the NFL, defensive pass interference (DPI) is a "spot foul," meaning that the ball will be placed for the next snap at the spot of the foul.  If the DPI occurs fifty yards down field from the line of scrimmage, the result is a fifty yard penalty.  (If the infraction happens in the end zone, the ball is placed on the one yard line.)  When you take into consideration that at least a fourth of the DPI calls are disputed, and are subject to human interpretation if not human error, the penalty is way too stiff.  In the college game, the penalty for DPI is fifteen yards from the previous line of scrimmage.  The Edge: The college rule is much more realistic and consistent.  The defense is still severely penalized, but the call is not a game changer as much as it is in the NFL.

 

7.  Overtime.  I have saved the category for which there should be the clearest preference for one set of rules.  In college, if a game goes into overtime, each team is guaranteed at least one possession, starting at the opponent's twenty-five yard line.  The offense retains the ball until it scores, turns the ball over, runs out of downs or misses a field goal attempt.  If the score is still tied after one overtime, another overtime period is played, and so on until one team ends an overtime period with more points than its opponent.  In the NFL, the overtime period is played more or less like a fifth quarter, which starts with a kickoff.  It is sudden death (i.e., whoever scores first wins), with one key exception:  If the team receiving the overtime kickoff scores a touchdown (or the defense scores a safety) on the initial overtime possession, the game ends at that point.  The Edge:  The NFL overtime rules are, by far, superior to the NCAA rules.  The college rules for overtime are analogous to the National Hockey League's three-on-three overtime rules, because the way the game is played during overtime employing those rules is vastly different from the way it's played during regulation.  In other words, it's artificial and gimmicky.  (There's that word again.)  Additionally, the team winning the college overtime coin flip will assuredly choose to play defense last, so that it knows what it needs to do (TD or field goal) when they get the ball.  The outcome of a football game should not be so dependent on who wins the coin flip.  In the NFL, it's obviously better to win the coin flip than to lose it, but losing it does not put your team up against the wall immediately.  In fact, Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer won an overtime coin flip against the Rams last month and chose to play defense (with the wind at The Purple's backs) first.  Just make sure your opponent does not score an opening drive TD, and you have an even chance of winning the game.

Conflicts Of Interest Mar College Football

Imagine your job puts you in a position where you have a lot of discretion regarding the decisions you make.  One day you are faced with a tough decision requiring an instantaneous verdict.  If you rule one way, your employer will make approximately $18 million with a good chance at $40 million.  If you rule the opposite way, instead of $40 million, the revenue will be approximately $5 million, at best, and more likely around $2 million.  Oh, yeah, there's one other component of this scenario: There are millions of people watching in real time as you perform your duty.  Do you think you would be up to the task?

That is precisely what awaits the officials for the four major conference title games this weekend.  You might recall the brilliant explanation of the new college football playoffs contained in my August 28 post (Musical Chairs, Football Style).  In that post I explained how a "select" committee of thirteen people was going to chose the four teams to play in a playoff format for the national championship.  (One panelist, Archie Manning, had to resign for health reasons, so the committee ended up being comprised of twelve members.) The committee's decision will be announced this Sunday.  In the meantime, starting tonight, four of the five so-called Power 5 conferences (i.e., all but the Big 12 Conference, which does not have a title game) will hold their championship games on neutral fields.  Let's take a quick look at what's at stake.

SEC Conference.  This game, to be played in Atlanta, pits SEC West Division champ Alabama against SEC East Division champ Missouri.  (Yes, you read that correctly; Missouri is in the east!).  Alabama is currently ranked # 1 according to the committee's latest poll, which was released three days ago.  If 'Bama wins, they are a shoo-in to be chosen for the four-team playoff.  If the Crimson Tide gets upset by Mizzou, there is an excellent chance that the SEC will not have any team in the playoffs, especially if the favorites in this weekend's other big games win as predicted.   Currently, Missouri is ranked relatively low at # 16.  The second highest SEC school is Mississippi State at # 10.  Mizzou and Mississippi State are too far back to jump other teams to reach the top four. The result of having no SEC team in the playoffs would be flabbergasting, because the SEC is universally considered the best conference in the world of college football.  In fact, about five weeks ago, three of the committee's top four teams were SEC schools.  If Alabama loses tomorrow, the best hope for the SEC is that the committee only drops them down to # 4, an unlikely result since, at that point, 'Bama would be a two-loss team.

PAC 12 Conference.  This game features PAC 12 North champ Oregon versus PAC 12 South champ Arizona.  The site is Santa Clara, California.  The analysis here is pretty close to that for the SEC.  If Oregon wins, it's a lock for the playoffs.  At its current # 2 ranking, it is a heavy favorite.  A Wildcat win probably leaves the PAC 12 without a playoff team.  My guess is that Arizona at #7 is likely too far back to jump other teams up to the top four, and Oregon would be a two-loss team.

ACC.  The Atlantic Coast Conference championship will be played tomorrow in Charlotte.  Florida State, the Atlantic Division champ, is the sole undefeated major college team, but they are only ranked # 4.  They allegedly run a dirty program, and my guess is that the committee will drop them like a rock if they lose to Georgia Tech, the Coastal Division champ.  Georgia Tech, at # 11, has virtually no shot at making the playoffs, even with a win over the 'Noles.

Big 10:  This is the only one of the four major conference championship games which does not have a team currently in the top four.  However, Ohio State is poised at # 5 to claim a playoff spot if at least one of the four teams above it (Alabama, Oregon, Texas Christian or Florida State) loses. The Buckeyes' opponent is Wisconsin, currently ranked # 13.  Just like Missouri and Georgia Tech -- and possibly Arizona -- a conference championship does not guarantee a playoff berth for the Badgers.  They are too far back and already have two losses.  Ironically, Wisconsin is a slight favorite to beat Ohio State, because State's two best quarterbacks have injuries which will deprive them of playing.

Now, back to my point.  The payout per team for the two playoff semi-finals (this season, the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl) is $18 million.  The payout per team for the college football championship game, to be played in Arlington on January 12, is a cool $22 million.  According to my North Dakota high school math, therefore, each of the two teams making it to Arlington will be paid a total of $40 million, the lion's share of which goes to those schools' respective conferences to be split among all its member schools.  The highest payout for any bowl outside of the four-team playoff is the Citrus Bowl on New Year's Day, with a  payout per team of $4.25 million.

In summary, for the first three championship games described above, if the favorites (Alabama, Oregon and Florida State) win, their respective conferences are practically assured of benefiting to the tune of at least $18 million, and possibly $40 million.  If any of the underdogs (Missouri, Arizona and Georgia Tech) win, their conferences can probably kiss the mega bucks goodbye, because those winners will not make the playoffs.  Regarding the Big 10 title game, that conference's only realistic hope for the two huge paydays is for Ohio State to win.

In college football, referees are employed by a conference, and each conference obviously uses one of its own crews for their title games.  Contrast this with professional sports, which employ their game officials on a national basis, without consideration to a particular league or conference.  For example, Major League Baseball might use a certain umpiring crew for a National League series, and then send that crew to another city to work an American League series.

So, put yourself in this situation.  You are a back judge on the SEC crew which is assigned to work the SEC title game tomorrow night.  Your main job is to decide, in a split second, whether there is pass interference on any passing play.  Alabama has the ball, 4th down on the Mizzou 35 yard line.  Missouri is winning, 24 to 20, and there are only three seconds left in the game; time for only one more play.  The ball is snapped, the Alabama receiver and the Missouri cornerback are hand-checking each other all the way downfield as the quarterback lofts the ball toward the end zone. Theoretically, each player is entitled to go for the ball, but whether the Missouri DB is being too aggressive is up to you.  Do you, as the back judge, think about who signs your paycheck?  Do you think about the fact that an Alabama loss means no $40 million pot of gold for the SEC?  Is this not a conflict of interest?  Even if you decide to throw the flag in good faith, is there not the appearance of a conflict of interest?

It is time for major college football to end the conference alliance of game officials.  There should be one national referees association, just like there is for professional sports.

Musical Chairs, Football Style

Everyone is familiar with musical chairs, the game in which contestants walk around a group of chairs until the music stops.  When it does, everyone dashes to plant her posterior extremity on a chair.  Since there is one less chair than the number of participants, the one person left standing is the loser.  For each subsequent round, one chair is removed.  The final round starts with two players fighting over one chair.

As we head into the 2014 college football season, a game of musical chairs awaits at least one of the five so-called power conferences (i.e., the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Southeastern Conference, the Big Ten, the Big 12 and the PAC 12).  That is because, for the first time in NCAA history, there will be a four team tournament at the end of the regular season to determine the national champion.  Five power conferences but only four teams.  Somebody will be left standing on the outside looking in.  I can hear screams of "We was robbed" already, and it's only August.

 

In case you hadn't heard, the BSC (Bowl Championship Series), which had a sixteen year run, no longer exists.  The name was, at best, a misnomer, because the only real function of the BCS was to pick the top two teams to play a single championship game.  No playoff whatsoever.  The algorithms used to determine those two squads was dependent, to a large extent, by several computerized rankings which only the wonks followed with any exactitude. Furthermore, the BCS system was not transparent because, among other things, the polls incorporated into the BCS formula were conducted by anonymous voters with little to no accountability.  In many years, the fans of the team ranked third (or even fourth) in the BCS final pre-bowl ranking argued that their team deserved to be in that title game.

 

Starting this year, all of that is changing.  A select Committee of thirteen people will determine which four teams will play in the semi-finals.  (I use the word "select" loosely here, as Tyrone Willingham, who was fired from his last two head coaching positions in 2004 (Notre Dame) and 2011 (Washington), serves on the Committee.)  The Committee's first ranking of the top twenty-five teams will not be until October 28, after the ninth week of the college season, and then they'll issue subsequent weekly rankings throughout the season.  All the other polls (USA Today, Associated Press, ESPN, etc.) you might see before or after October 28 carry no weight.  Only the Committee's opinion will count for purposes of filling the tournament brackets.  On December 7, 2014 ("Selection Sunday"), the final rankings, including the four national title tournament teams with their respective semi-final pairings, will be announced.

 

In addition to Willingham, the Committee is an amalgamation of former head coaches, assistant coaches, athletic directors, conference commissioners and media members.  I am not sure what credentials Condoleezza Rice brings to the table -- football fan(?) -- but her vote counts the same as Jeff Long, who is the A.D. at the University of Arkansas and is chairman of the Committee.  No one on the Committee has a direct tie to the University of Minnesota and, unfortunately for the Irish, no one besides Willingham has a direct tie to ND.

 

This season, the two semi-final games will be played on January 1, 2015 in the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.  One of those sites will host the # 1 seed (as determined by the Committee) against the # 4 seed; the other site will feature # 2 vs. # 3.  The Committee will decide which bowl gets which of the two games.  The fact that both semi-finals are being played on New Years Day is cause for celebration.  Under the old BCS system, there was never one day on which so much was at stake.  A lot of fans, including me, felt like the BSC ruined what used to be, perhaps, the greatest sports day of the year, New Years Day.  Now that holiday is back to the preeminence of the pre-BCS era.  

The two semi-final winners from New Years Day will play for the national title on Monday night, January 12, 2015 in the Jerry Dome in Arlington, Texas.  Just like the procedure used for the NFL's Super Bowl, in subsequent years the NCAA title game will be awarded to different cities which will bid for it.  You can be sure that the Twin Cities sports moguls will try to obtain the game for the Vikings stadium at some point.

 

Not only will the Committee choose the four semi-finalists to play in the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl, they will also be charged with the responsibility of selecting the combatants for four other bowls which are not semi-final sites.  At least one of those four other bowls (Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Cotton Bowl and Peach Bowl) will be played on New Years Eve and the rest on New Years Day.  In following years, the two semi-finals will be rotated among all six of those bowl games.

 

Five more things to keep in mind as you play armchair quarterback in front of your TV:

 

1. There is no restriction regarding how many semi-final teams can come from the same conference.  For example, if Alabama and LSU are deemed by the Committee to be two of the top four teams on Selection Sunday, they will both be semi-finalists even though those schools belong to the same conference, the SEC.

 

2. Strength of schedule is going to be more important than ever.  That is one of the key criteria which the Committee is going to consider in their deliberations.  Teams that schedule cream puffs to fill their pre-conference schedule will pay the piper in the end.

 

3. In addition to the schools which belong to the five power conferences named above, Notre Dame and schools from five other conferences (American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Mountain West Conference and Sun Belt Conference) are also eligible for the four team playoff, and will be included in the Committee's rankings.

4. Transparency is still an issue, just as it was with the BCS protocol.  All of the Committe's votes are to be conducted using a secret ballot.  I can't believe this rule is going to last for long.  Why allow the Committee members to hide behind a veil of anonymity?

 

5. Now that we have gone from no playoff to a four team playoff, you are going to hear a lot about the prospect of expanding the playoff brackets in the future from four to eight teams.  The current contracts with the networks and the bowl committees call for the four team playoff arrangement to last twelve years. Although I think expansion to an eight team playoff will probably happen, I hope it does not.  There is an inverse correlation between the number of teams in the playoffs and the importance of the regular season. With room for only four playoff teams, any more than one loss during the regular season will knock a team out of playoff consideration.  But if the tournament field is enlarged to eight or more teams, each individual regular season game will be rendered less important, because there will be more margin for error in terms of losses.  Retaining the integrity of the regular season should be a paramount goal of the NCAA, regardless of the extra money that could be added to its coffers via playoff expansion.

The Slow White Guy Gets Drafted

Unless you have not opened a sports page or tuned in jock talk radio this spring, you certainly know that today is NFL Draft Day, the year's biggest off-field single day in the sports world.  I have written about it on April 25, 2012 ("The NFL Sells Hope") and recently with my April 17, 2014 movie review of the Kevin Costner flick, "Draft Day" (A-).  This year marks the fifth in which the league has conducted the draft over a three day period.  Only the first round takes place tonight.  It's also the only round of the seven in which the college players drafted have national name recognition.  The remaining six rounds, held tomorrow and Saturday, is mostly for players whom only the most ardent college fan would know.  Hence, the term "Draft Day" usually refers only to the first of the three consecutive days. 

As I wrote to my kids in the April 26, 2008 e-mail shown below, I was drafted too way back when, and I think about it every year on NFL Draft Day.  No, it's not what you're thinking.  Read on.

                                        THE SLOW WHITE GUY GETS DRAFTED

 

Hello Boys & Girls,

 

Today is draft day in the NFL, when the pro teams get to pick college football players to join their teams.  I watch a chunk of it every year, although this year I won't waste as much time because the Vikings traded away their first round pick to the Chiefs.  Believe it or not, your father was drafted to a football team (no, not an NFL team), and it remains one of my favorite memories from my illustrious (not!) athletic career.

 

The Libertyville Boys Club offered tackle football for fifth through eighth graders.  There were four teams: the Demons, the Yanks, the Eagles and the Hornets.  Their uniforms and helmets were red, blue, yellow and green, respectively.   There was a varsity unit for the seventh and eighth graders, and a junior varsity unit for the fifth and sixth graders.  The draft was for the fifth graders, and once a kid was drafted, he stayed on that team for his entire four-year Boys Club career.  The games were held on Sunday afternoons on the Libertyville High School football field, so needless to say, this was Big Time in our eyes.  First two varsity teams would play each other for two quarters.  Then, at half time of that varsity game, the junior varsity game involving those two teams would take place in its entirety.  When the JV game ended, the third and fourth quarters of varsity would be played.  Even though the varsity and JV games were separate contests, there was a real comraderie within the entire team; the JV kids watched, cheered for and learned from the varsity players, and the varsity guys cheered on their younger teammates when the "little guys" were playing.  Of course, the seventh graders were particularly interested in the JV contest, because they knew the sixth graders would be on the field with them the next season.  In retrospect, it was a great, and unique, arrangement.  It was particularly cool for those of us fifth graders who did not have an older brother... now we had about eighteen of them!

 

Boys Club draft day itself was a huge moment in our lives, and I will try to explain why.  First of all, unbeknownst to the kids, the coaches must have privately met after a few fifth grade/JV tryouts and conducted a secret draft.  Then, on a sunny Saturday afternoon in early September, when the LHS team was not using their field, the four varsity Boys Club teams would have simultaneous practices in their game day uniforms on that field.  Quite a colorful sight.  Toward the end of that practice, the BC President would gather the four varsity teams to sit around in a square at midfield, each of the four teams occupying a side of the square.  The fifth graders were brought in, and sat in the center of the square, anxiously awaiting the announcement of which team drafted them.  I was so excited to actually be drafted by ANY team that I really didn't care who took me.  The Eagles, for some reason, usually had the best team, and the Yanks usually had the weakest.  The Demons, dressed in bright red, had the coolest unies.  The Hornets were the one team I was the most ambivalent about. The President called out each fifth grader's name, and revealed the identity of that player's new team.  Each time, the relevant varsity players would stand, clap, and congratulate their new team member, slapping him on the back and patting the top of his head.  One cool aspect of this process was that I don't believe they did this in anything other than random order.  In other words, the best kids were not necessarily the first names announced, and the worst kids were not necessarily the last ones.  And as I recall, the order of teams was not always the same for each round.

 

My name was called somewhere in the middle.  "John Periolat, congratulations... You are now a HORNET!!"  All the Hornets got up and cheered, happy and excited, shaking my hand and literally welcoming me to the team with open arms.  (They must have been very good actors!)  You would think I was Bronco Nagurski joining their ranks, instead of a slow dude who hated to run.  I had the proverbial ear-to-ear smile on my face, and even now, fifty-one years later, I still smile when I think about that glorious day.

 

Postscript:  It was ironic that I ended up on the Hornets, the one team I knew the least about.  This is hard to believe, but I played right end on both offense and defense.  (They did not call offensive ends "wide receivers" in those days.)  Three of our four coaches played D-1 college football; our head coach played quarterback at the University of Iowa, and two of the assistants were linemen at Syracuse and Arizona State.  Coach Martin, the ASU alum, used to have a Sun Devil decal on his car's back window, and since I thought that both Coach Martin and the decal were totally cool, ASU became my favorite college team other than Notre Dame.  None of those coaches had sons on our team.  They coached because they loved football and hoped to impart that love and an understanding of the game to the youngsters.  How lucky we were!

 

Final Postscript:  In my four year Boys Club career, my mother missed only one game.  It was the one game in which I was injured.  The guy who creamed me was a St. Joe classmate and friend of mine, Ronnie Mauer, the biggest bruiser on the Demons.

 

I love you all. 

 

The Old Boy