Bowled over
It began at 11 a.m. on Dec. 20, and ended at 11:47 p.m. Thursday. In the 444 hours and 47 minutes in between, we were either watching a bowl game, rehashing the last bowl game, or pacing the floor in anticipation of the next bowl game.
OK, most of us weren't that excited about the bowls. There were 34 of them, so everybody ranked in the Top 68 played in one. For the 99.9999 percent of our readers who didn't watch all of them, here's a recap:
EagleBank Bowl: Wake Forest kicks off the bowl season with a 29-19 victory over Navy, which wasn't a good idea. Minutes after the game, a Navy sub surfaces in a lake on the Wake Forest campus and blows up the library.
Fourpeat Bowl: Brigham Young loses to Arizona 31-21 in BYU's fourth consecutive trip to the Las Vegas Bowl, probably the last place you would expect to see a religion-based university.
We Ran All of Those Wind Sprints For This? Bowl: One of the reasons for the existence of bowl games is to provide a nice trip as a reward for players at the end of a successful season. But South Florida played in St. Petersburg, Hawaii played in Honolulu, Southern Mississippi played in New Orleans, Central Michigan played in Detroit, North Carolina played in Charlotte, Florida State played in Orlando, California played in San Francisco, Louisiana Tech played in Shreveport, Rice played in Houston, Vanderbilt played in Nashville, Georgia Tech played in Atlanta, and USC played in Pasadena. Those weren't bowl games. They were extra home games at the end of the season.
Meineke Bowl: West Virginia students were spotted jubilantly burning furniture after their team's 31-30 victory over North Carolina. Of course, WVU students burn furniture after every game, win or lose.
PapaJohns.com Bowl: Rutgers players riot after their 29-23 victory over North Carolina State when the Scarlet Knights find out they will only be getting one small cheese pizza.
Humanitarian Bowl: Maryland and Nevada are forced to fly to Boise, Idaho, and play on blue artificial turf. What is humanitarian about that?
Sun Bowl: Oregon State blows out Pittsburgh 3-0. Afterward, Pitt fans bitterly complain about the Beavers running up the score.
Insight Bowl: Kansas 42, Minnesota 21. If you're looking for any more insight, I don't have any.
Outback Bowl: Iowa takes South Carolina out back and lays a 31-10 beating on the Gamecocks.
Gator Bowl: Nebraska edges Clemson 26-21 in the most hard-fought of all the bowl games. The losers are thrown into a moat filled with gators.
Rose Bowl: Penn State, champion of the Microscopic Ten, gives it the old college try against USC. The Trojans deliver the old college beatdown, 38-24.
Rotten Oranges Bowl: This once-proud game, formerly known as the Orange Bowl, gets stuck with Virginia Tech and Cincinnati. Not sure who won.
Sugar Bowl: Unheralded Utah completes a 13-0 season with a shocking, 31-17 victory over Alabama. The Crimson Tide get back on buses headed for Tuscaloosa, only to unexpectedly stop at 3 a.m. at a high school football field in Mobile. Coach Nick Saban tells the players, "We're gonna run until it's light, then practice until it's dark!!!" Sounds like a long offseason in Alabama.
International Bowl: Connecticut knocks off Buffalo 38-20 in Toronto, then gets arrested after trying to bootleg a case of Molson back across the border.
Fiesta Bowl: Texas clips Ohio State, dropping the Microscopic Ten's bowl record to 1-6. That's a mighty small performance from a supposedly big conference.
GMAC Bowl: Tulsa routs Ball State for the biggest bowl prize of all, a $230 billion government bailout.
BCS Championship Game: Florida knocks off Oklahoma 24-14. It had been 33 days since either team played a game, but this is how some group of knuckleheads has decided a national championship should be decided.
Kind of makes you wish they had a playoff, doesn't it?
delawareonline.com
USC pounds Penn State in Rose Bowl
PASADENA, Calif. -- Southern California made a strong case of its own to be No. 1.
JoePa certainly recognized what a talented team the Trojans were - and that was before they beat up Penn State in the Rose Bowl.
Mark Sanchez passed for 413 yards and four touchdowns, USC dominated on defense and the fifth-ranked Trojans defeated the No. 6 Nittany Lions 38-24 Thursday.
Penn State coach Joe Paterno watched from the press box, where he's been for most of the season because of hip problems. He couldn't have liked what he saw - at one point in the first half, the TV camera caught him shaking his head as USC (12-1) rolled to a 31-7 lead.
Out of the BCS championship mix, the Trojans could only wonder what might have been had they not lost at Oregon State 27-21 on Sept. 25.
What was thought to be a weak Pac-10 hurt the Trojans' chances to reach the national championship game in Miami - where Florida and Oklahoma will play next week. But the Pac-10 finished the postseason 5-0.
"With all due respect, those are two great programs, I don't think anybody can beat the Trojans," USC coach Pete Carroll said. "I just think we can beat anyone we played. That's happened a lot to us late in the season. This is a terrific finishing program. There are so many things we can do. We're just hard to beat right now.
"I just wish we could keep playing. Unfortunately, we don't get to. Maybe someday there will be a chance, but not now."
And not soon, either. There's no playoff in sight for major college football.
USC scored four touchdowns and a field goal on five consecutive first-half possessions for its 24-point halftime lead against a team that allowed only 12.4 points per game during the regular season.
With the No. 1 defense in the nation, there was no way the Trojans would blow that kind of lead.
The Trojans' 31 first-half points were the most they've scored in any of their record 33 Rose Bowl games. They spent most of the second half working the clock while their defense held Penn State in check until the fourth quarter.
"The offense was on fire in the first half," Carroll said. "I thought Mark just set the tempo, (wide receiver) Damian Williams came through and the whole line really protected well so we had a chance to really get moving on these guys. We just kept firing on all cylinders, the defense kept giving them the ball back, and the guys just took advantage of it."
The Nittany Lions (11-2) scored 17 points in the fourth quarter to make the final score respectable, but fell far short of their 40.2-point average.
"I don't want to take anything away from Southern Cal, because they played a heck of a football game and their quarterback played a great game," Paterno said. "They certainly deserved to win it, but I'm a little disappointed that we weren't a little bit more competitive. And a lot of that was because we made so many mistakes in the first half."
USC finished with 27 first downs and 474 yards of total offense. Penn State gained 410 yards, almost twice the average the Trojans allowed during the regular season. But it hardly mattered.
Paterno, whose won 383 games, including 23 bowls - both records - said several times in the days leading up to the Rose Bowl that he thought USC was at least as good as any team in the country, perhaps better.
Clearly, the 82-year-old coach knew what he was talking about. The Trojans won 10 straight after losing to Oregon State, outscoring the opposition 380-80.
"I thought that we were playing against the best and I thought we had to play our best to be competitive," Paterno said. "In the first half, we just did the dumb things that we have not done all year. We didn't play our game in the first half, but we came back and we hung in there. So we have nothing to be ashamed of."
The Nittany Lions committed three turnovers and nine penalties for 72 yards.
Sanchez, who completed 28-of-35 passes without being intercepted and finished the season with 3,207 passing yards and 34 touchdown throws, might have played his final game for USC. The strong-armed junior has said he will consider making himself available for the NFL draft. The deadline is Jan. 15.
Sanchez became the third player to pass for more than 400 yards in the Rose Bowl.
Afterward, many in the crowd of 93,293 chanted: "One more year, one more year" to Sanchez.
"That was special," he said.
"We'll go through it and really take our time doing it," Carroll said. "This should not be an emotional decision."
Williams caught a career-high 10 passes for 162 yards and a touchdown and Ronald Johnson caught two TD passes.
Penn State's Daryll Clark completed 21-of-36 passes for 273 yards and two touchdowns with two interceptions. Evan Royster, who averaged 6.5 yards per carry in gaining 1,202 yards during the regular season, came out with an injured left knee in the first quarter after picking up 34 yards on six carries.
Carroll's Trojans have won seven straight conference championships and played in seven consecutive BCS bowls - both records. They're 6-1 in big games - 5-0 against Big Ten teams such as Penn State - and 82-9 since Carroll’s second year on the job, 2002.
They've also won 11 or more games in seven straight seasons - another record.
The Trojans have played in a record-tying four straight Rose Bowls, winning three straight since losing to Texas 41-38 with the national title on the line.
Sanchez was the offensive player of the game and Kaluka Maiava was the top defensive player, becoming the third straight USC linebacker to win that award, following Brian Cushing and Rey Maualuga.
It became clear in the first quarter that Penn State's usually dominant defense was vulnerable.
Sanchez threw a 27-yard scoring pass to Williams, capping an 86-yard drive that appeared to be short-circuited early on when Aaron Maybin sacked Sanchez and forced a fumble that Ollie Ogbu recovered at the USC 34. But Maybin, who had 12 sacks during the regular season, was offside.
The Nittany Lions, who were 9 1/2-point underdogs, tied it on a 9-yard run by Clark, capping an 80-yard, nine-play drive.
Maybe the Big Ten would finally hang in there against USC.
Nope.
Sanchez scored on a 6-yard quarterback draw, completing an 80-yard drive that put USC on top for good.
David Buehler's 30-yard field goal made it 17-7, and Sanchez threw scoring passes of 19 yards to Johnson and 20 yards to CJ Gable in a 48-second span late in the second period for USC's 24-point halftime lead.
Clark threw a 2-yard touchdown pass to Derrick Williams early in the fourth quarter, capping an 80-yard drive and trimming USC's lead to 31-14. The Trojans wasted no time in answering, going 82 yards on three plays, the last one a 45-yard scoring pass from Sanchez to a wide-open Johnson with 12:02 left.
If there was going to be any drama on a typically clear and mild evening in Pasadena, that ended it.
(c) Copyright 2009 The Times Herald
Coach in Army family
Army filled its football coaching vacancy by heeding a core West Point value: History matters.
Rich Ellerson grew up around Black Knights football and is leaving his coaching job at Cal Poly to come to a place he knows well. His father and two brothers graduated from the U.S. Military Academy, where brother John led the 1962 team to a 6-4 record. And he's worked before with former Army coaches known for running successful schemes on both sides of the ball.
Ellerson replaces Stan Brock, who was fired Dec. 12 after a pair of 3-9 seasons. This season ended with a 34-0 loss to Navy.
"I will never receive, nor have I ever received, a finer compliment professionally or personally than to be entrusted with the Army football program at this point in its history," said Ellerson, who turns 55 on Jan. 1.
Before his eight years as Cal Poly's coach, Ellerson worked with former Army coach Jim Young at Arizona, where Ellerson was an assistant. Young, who ran a successful option attack at Army, had retired from the Black Knights after the 1990 season and assumed a volunteer role on the Arizona coaching staff.
Ellerson also assisted Army coach Bob Sutton when he installed his "Desert Swarm" defense at West Point, which helped carry the Black Knights to a 10-2 record and a berth in the Independence Bowl in 1996.
Cal Poly made it to the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs twice under Ellerson, who was 56-34 in eight years.
New MSU deal
Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio got a new contract that will pay him a $2 million bonus if he remains with the program into 2016.
Dantonio, who's preparing the Spartans to play Georgia in the Capital One Bowl, still has a five-year rollover deal with a base salary of $618,000, but overall compensation will rise to $1.8 million per year, up from $1.13 million, because of increased supplemental income.
Copyright(c) 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Vols' Hiring of Kiffin Exemplifies College Football's Race Barrier
Sunday's New York Times featured a piece investigating the dearth of black college football coaches. In a sport where 50 percent of the players are black, 3.4 percent of the coaches are black.
Among the two recent decisions cited as prime examples of the problem--the Vols' hiring of Lane Kiffin:
"The hiring problem was underlined when two white coaches who had failed spectacularly in their previous jobs--Lane Kiffin with the NFL's Raiders and Gene Chizik at Iowa State--landed plum positions. Kiffin went to Tennessee, Chizik to Auburn.
Meanwhile, the country's hottest young African-American coach, Turner Gill of Buffalo, was passed over. Gill took one of the worst programs in college football and turned it into a Mid-American Conference champion in three seasons. But he was overlooked for the marquee openings."
"Failed spectacularly." Come on, Times, don't mince words--say what you mean. Of course, the writer is referring to Kiffin's recent tenure with the Raiders, where he went 5-and-15 over a season-and-a-quarter.
Among the contributing factors discussed: Unlike in the NFL, prospective college coaches have to run the gauntlet of university administrators, athletic directors and boosters, who all have sway. As former Temple basketball coach John Chaney explained it, "It's all related to the fact that we want to make sure that we keep it safe and stay safe. And they do that by recruiting people that look like them and think the same way they think."
That's a rather magnanimous way of putting it.
Interestingly, before the Kiffin hiring, much of the chatter on the Vol Nation forums dismissed the 46-year-old Gill because, among other things, he was too young and inexperienced.
"Too young yet. Has no idea what it's like to play the big boys," read one post.
"Simply not ready to be handed the reigns [sic] of an elite big time program. He will be one day, but today is not the day," read another.
It would be interesting to know what those Vols fans are thinking now, with the 33-year-old Kiffin at the helm.
(c) 1995-2008 City Press LLC
Southeast's candidates for athletic director -- Michael Waddell
Background
The 39-year-old current senior associate AD at Cincinnati began his professional career with broadcasting and marketing in the ACC. He worked at Appalachian State and the U.S. Military Academy before accepting an associate AD position at Akron in 2001. He worked there for nearly five years with Mike Thomas before joining Thomas' staff at Cincinnati in February 2006.
Personality
Waddell described himself as "high energy, creative, think outside the box."
"I think I have a very strong work ethic," Waddell said, "and in the words of my director of athletics ... he was very kind to describe me in a recent forum as one of the more creative people he's been around."
What is your first priority?
"Reaching out to the donor base and letting them know that there is a new vision that is about to be crafted for Southeast athletics. To bring back in what was at one point a 3,000-person donor pool and may have shrunk under a thousand. We'll call it 'Project 4,000.' I don't want to just to get 3,000 back. I want to grow that. That will be the first order of business. ... And we want to make sure that everyone feels that their opinion is valued."
Given the economy and the fear of "donor fatigue" for athletics, what will be the approach to raising funds?
"I think you look at all the events that are done right now and you look at them and see what the return on investment is. Just because something that has worked in the past doesn't mean that it won't be continued in the future or that it will be. We have to make sure our donors are being valued, that they have a personal, significant and unexpected result whenever they deal with us."
On making football at Southeast be competitive in the OVC
"There's no reason why Southeast can't contend for an OVC championship if the University of Cincinnati can contend for a BCS bowl and Big East championship, if the University of Akron can contend for a MAC championship. It takes a vision, it takes the experience of taking these programs to a championship level."
With this as a season in limbo, how do you deal with men's basketball?
"Obviously, the situation is one that will take a great deal of careful examination, but one that in the end will yield the realization that this is still the best city in the OVC, it's still one of the best arenas in this part of the country, the people are passionate, success has gone on here before, so making the right moves now ... that's the challenge that is exciting.
Asked about steps for this year, including contact with coach Scott Edgar: "You have to be proactive. You want to reach out and make sure that first and foremost the student-athletes' needs and welfare are being take care of. This is 25 percent of their college career and you want to make sure this season finishes well."
With so much emphasis on rebuilding football and men's basketball, how do you approach the other sports?
"I am the sport oversight over men's and women's golf [at Cincinnati]. ... I was the tennis supervisor for a while. I had men's and women's track and field for a while, and now I've given that up in favor of men's and women's swimming and diving. I have men's soccer. ... The way you focus on all the sports is you realize that you have some sports that are going to get more attention, but it doesn't mean that their student-athletes are any more important than the ones on the other teams."
(c) 2008 Southeast Missourian
Kragthorpe to stay as Louisville coach
LOUISVILLE, Ky.: Louisville football coach Steve Kragthorpe says he has no plans on leaving and wants to rebuild the team after its first losing season since 1997.
"I'm not a quitter," Kragthorpe said Friday. "I'm going to continue to fight. I'm going to continue to battle."
Kragthorpe is 11-13 in two years at Louisville and hasn't come close to replicating the success of Bobby Petrino, who led the Cardinals to the Orange Bowl in 2006 before leaving for the Atlanta Falcons.
Louisville began the season 5-2, including an upset of South Florida on Oct. 25. A five-game losing streak followed, culminating in an embarrassing 63-14 loss to Rutgers on Thursday. It was the team's worst loss in more than 20 years and dropped the Cardinals to 5-7.
"I am very, very disappointed in the progress we've made the last 2 seasons," Kragthorpe said. "I know fans are disappointed. I know the administration is disappointed ... but I'm going to be here to fix it. I want to be here."
Kragthorpe spoke with reporters for almost an hour on Friday, brushing aside speculation that he'd resign moments after the loss to the Scarlet Knights. Louisville gave up 671 yards of total offense to Rutgers and trailed 49-0 at halftime to scuttle any longshot bowl hopes.
Despite the lopsided outcome, Kragthorpe said his undermanned squad played hard until the final gun and offered it as proof that he hasn't lost the team. Louisville took 62 players on the trip, including just 25 on its injury ravaged defense.
"I'm encouraged with where we're at right now," he said. "Obviously I'm discouraged we didn't get to final point that we wanted to be this season. But I am encouraged with a lot of the players have coming back that really performed at a high level this year."
Athletic director Tom Jurich, who hired Kragthorpe less than 48 hours after Petrino bolted for the pros, has remained a steadfast supporter though Kragthorpe said there has been no talk of extending his contract, which runs through the 2011 season.
"I don't anticipate getting a contract extension. I don't deserve a contract extension right now," Kragthorpe said. "But I do deserve, I think, the opportunity to lead this football program."
Kragthorpe had hoped this would be his breakthrough year. The Cardinals put together a user-friendly schedule that featured eight home games and manageable road trips to Memphis and Syracuse.
Yet the season seemed to follow a similar pattern. Louisville would play well for long stretches during the game, only to self-destruct late. A late interception return for a touchdown let Connecticut escape with a win on Sept. 26. The Cardinals found a way to lose to Big East doormat Syracuse for the second straight year and led eventual conference champion Cincinnati by six late in the third quarter before collapsing.
"I think we're a couple of plays away from competing for a championship," he said.
Maybe, but next year's schedule will be far more difficult. Louisville will travel to West Virginia, South Florida and unbeaten Utah in 2009 and the Cardinals will have to do it while trying to find a quarterback. Senior Hunter Cantwell is done and his backups have thrown all of 14 collegiate passes.
"I'm going to open the job up," he said. "It may be a guy we have, it may be a junior college transfer, it may be a true freshman."
Kragthorpe plans to throw waves of players at his team's depth problems, the result of two years of transfers, dismissals or injuries. Nearly two dozen players have left the program since Kragthorpe replaced Petrino, though the coach is hopeful the steady march out the door has finally stopped.
Who some of the incoming players will play for next year is uncertain. Kragthorpe overhauled his staff after going 6-6 in 2007 and could make more changes next year.
Defensive coordinator Ron English has been mentioned as a candidate for head coaching jobs at San Diego State and Eastern Michigan, though Kragthorpe said he won't address his staffing issues until later this month. The only thing Kragthorpe knows for sure is that he'll be back in 2009.
"I'm in it for the long haul," he said. "We are rebuilding but there's no reason we can't play great football next year."
Copyright (c) 2008 the International Herald Tribune All rights reserved
Oklahoma slips into Big 12 title game by a loophole
You may not care about what I think. That's OK. I'm used to it. I've got a wife and kids.
But imagine my surprise to learn that the Big 12 Conference does care.
The Big 12 Conference cares so much they offered me the chance to help pick one of the teams that will play in the Big 12 Conference Championship Game Saturday in Kansas City.
Never mind that pesky old head-to-head formula that usually decides such things. Who cares what the results are when two teams actually play each other on the field?
The Big 12 would rather do it by committee. So they take the vote of people like me, take another set of votes from coaches that often have direct conflicts of interest, and combine that with some computer formula probably created by pencil-necked geeks from non-football playing schools like MIT.
They let what is essentially a bunch of strangers decide who should be considered the best team in the best division of the best conference in college football this year.
Oklahoma Sooners, come on down!
If you follow college football - and if you don't, what are you doing reading this column or, for that matter, living in this state? - you know the Big 12 South ended in a three-way tie between Texas, which beat Oklahoma; Oklahoma, which beat Texas Tech; and Texas Tech, which beat Texas.
In the Southeastern Conference, when there is a three-way tie that can't be broken by any other means, the conference looks at the BSC poll, eliminates the lowest ranked team, then lets head-to-head competition decide between the top two teams.
In fact, there are five conferences in NCAA Division I football that have 12 teams and play in two divisions. If you plug the Big 12 dilemma into all five of those conferences' three-team tie-breaker formats, four of the five - the SEC, ACC, Conference USA, and Mid-American - work out giving the tie-breaker to Texas.
The only 12-team league that would give the nod to Oklahoma is the only one that matters in this case: the Big 12.
Out in Big 12 country, they simply look at the BCS standings and figure that if the polls say Oklahoma is the best team, then that's good enough for them and Texas' 45-35 victory over the then No. 1 Sooners on Oct. 11 doesn't matter.
Admittedly, no system is perfect. Thank goodness the Alabama High School Athletic Association wasn't in charge of the Big 12. Oklahoma might have needed to lose its last game of the season against Oklahoma State in order to advance to the playoffs.
And we all know the BCS system is far from perfect.
But this mess in the Big 12 is not the BCS' fault. All the BCS was designed to do was find a way to match the top two teams in the country against each other to decide a national championship. It's better than the way championships were decided for the 100 years before that, when the top teams all went off on various bowls and the national championship was left completely up to the whims of voters.
Texas coach Mack Brown can complain about the system, but he's part of the conference that voted to do it this way.
So thank you, Big 12, for wanting my input into how you run your conference. For the record, I voted Texas over Oklahoma, because I do believe in head-to-head competition.
It didn't work out that way, so I guess that means the Big 12 didn't really care what I thought after all.
But then, I didn't accept the request to become a Harris Poll voter to decide the Big 12 championship.
I thought the Big 12 was smart enough to let that be decided on the field.
(c) 2008 Alabama Live LLC
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