The first weekend of the college football season is upon us. It features marquee matchups such as Florida State-Samford, Penn State-Youngstown State, and Arkansas-Tennessee Tech. As I type this sentence at 2:03 CDT, there is not a single competitive football game happening. I realize that the big-name schools are always going to schedule cupcakes early in the season. There’s really no way of outlawing that. But there’s no reason that the NCAA shouldn’t adopt stricter rules against I-A teams scheduling I-AA teams. (I mean, FBS teams scheduling FCS teams. I hope I haven’t offended the NCAA’s political correctness police.) As it stands now, teams can schedule a I-AA team every year and have that more-or-less guaranteed win* count toward the six wins needed for bowl eligibility. If memory serves, a few years ago you could only count a I-AA win every other year; I believe this rule was changed when the NCAA went to a 12-game schedule every year and let 6-6 teams into bowls.
Quite simply, it’s a joke to see a Top 10 team playing a I-AA team. These games are glorified exhibitions. I can understand a weaker I-A team needing home games and scheduling I-AA teams, but a BCS conference school shouldn’t be playing a I-AA team, ever. Sure, you may have to pay a bit more to get a Sun Belt team to play you than it would cost to get someone from I-AA, but last time I checked your average college football powerhouse was doing okay from a money standpoint.
What I’d like to see is a ban on games against I-AA teams, or at least a rule that wins can never count toward the bowl eligibility total. Perhaps in conjunction with this we might also need a rule capping teams to seven home games, forcing a team that plays eight games within its conference to play at least one non-conference road game every season.
* Yes, I know I-A teams sometime lose these games. But a top team (and no, Michigan doesn’t count) isn’t going to lose to a I-AA team except in an absolute freak occurrence.
Free agency season just started in the NFL, and as should be expected, the Saints have already lost one prominent player, linebacker Scott Fujita. The thought of even one piece from our title-winning team going missing has sent some Saints fans into tears. There are two groups of people: those upset at the Saints for letting Fujita go, and those upset at Fujita for leaving the Saints. Regardless of which camp you’re in (or whether you’re upset with both), you need to calm down and realize that football is about two things a) winning games and b) making money. Sometimes in that order, sometimes not. While Scott Fujita is a class act, stand-up guy who has been a great friend to the city of New Orleans, it’s clear that the ownership and/or personnel staffs and/or coaches felt that he wasn’t worth what the salary he commanded on the free agent market. And for Fujita, it’s clear that the positive aspects of playing in our wonderful city for the defending Super Bowl champions didn’t outweigh the millions of dollars more he’ll be making in Cleveland. I’m going to explain why you shouldn’t be mad at the Saints or at Scott Fujita. Continue reading ‘people who are mad that fujita’s leaving’
So we just won the Super Bowl. The city is pretty much at a standstill as people celebrate. The Saints are on top of the NFL…and we’re still not the favorites to win next year’s Super Bowl. So I say, “Screw you, Vegas oddsmakers.” (The Colts are 6-1, the Saints and Chargers are 8-1). And I say screw you to all those commentators who talked about how Peyton Manning lost the game with his interception, which Tracy Porter returned for a game-sealing touchdown. The pundits treated a 13-3 team like miserable underdogs. Then we won. And they still think we’re not as good—consider The Onion’s take on things: New Orleans moves to No. 3 in NFL power rankings. Too bad—we have this:
and nobody else does. You can respect us or not. It really doesn’t matter to me. Quarterbacks like Mark Sanchez, Brett Favre, and Peyton Manning got more commercial airtime than Drew Brees during the Super Bowl, but those three didn’t get to lift the MVP trophy and film the “I’m going to Disney World!” commercial. People are acting like Drew Brees is just now a member of the NFL’s elite QBs, when anyone with a brain would have seen the numbers Brees has been putting up ever since he arrived in New Orleans and realized just how phenomenal a player he is. Clearly he was already among the elite, and you moronic pundits are just late to the party. Continue reading ‘the fact that people still don’t respect the Saints’
So there’s this little football game that takes place every year and it’s kind of a big deal and millions of people watch it on TV. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Maybe you just watch for the commercials or the wardrobe malfunctions? It’s the Super Bowl. And this year our beloved Black & Gold Boys are in it, so New Orleans is in a state of giddy delirium. But if you want to go, you pretty much have to pay through the nose, since the powers that be only see fit to distribute a few thousand tickets (at the merely eye-popping price of $800) to actual fans of the two teams involved.
Now, for what it’s worth I want to state that there’s not a chance I’d actually go to the Super Bowl at $800 a ticket plus all the travel expenses involved—that’s a lot of money, and besides, we still have two performances of Footloose this weekend (though we canceled our Sunday show, natch), so I’m a little too busy anyway. So I’m not that personally involved. But I’m sure my parents, lifelong Saints fans—my mother grew up going to games in Tulane Stadium with her father, and even attended a Super Bowl many years ago—would jump at the opportunity. It’s just that when the price goes from $800 to $1400 or $1600 or $1800 that things start getting a little too unaffordable. And it’s utterly ridiculous that out of 76,500 seats only a few go to actual fans getting tickets directly from the teams. The Saints sold 4,600 tickets to season ticket holders who were chosen in a weighted lottery, with the Colts likely offering 6,000 or so to their season ticket holders (I saw that 6k number on a Saints message board but was unable to confirm it). That’s out of something like 13,000-14,000 tickets each of the two teams received. Everything else went out to corporate sponsors, employees, and the like. I realize the NFL is a business* but why do the league and its teams give so few tickets to actual fans? Not to mention that only a third or so of the tickets go to the two teams involved—the majority of tickets go to the NFL and its sponsors and affiliates, or to the other 30 NFL teams. Continue reading ‘super bowl ticket allocations’
I’ve been asking people who they thought was the MVP of last night’s Saints win. Walking out of the Dome, my parents were uncertain. My friends at school opted for Drew Brees—3 TDs, no picks, a QB rating over 100—and Tracy Porter—who forced a fumble and made the crucial interception late in the game to keep the Vikes from having a chance at a long field goal attempt to win the game. My facebook friends chimed in with a number of other suggestions: Vilma, for a forced fumble, fumble recovery, and interception; Hartley, for the game-clincher; Pierre Thomas, with 99 yards from scrimmage, two TDs, and a crucial 40-yard kickoff return in overtime when he filled in for the injured Courtney Roby; and the entire d-line for the pressuring Favre. If I had to pick one of those guys, I’d probably go with Pierre Thomas or Jonathan Vilma. Brees wasn’t as accurate as he usually is—and I give the Vikings defensive line a great deal of credit for that. They didn’t sack him, but they kept him uncomfortable. Porter was picked on and gave up a pass interference penalty in the end zone. But there’s one guy who stood out above all the rest on a day when the Vikings outgained the Saints by a huge margin. One person tipped him as an “unsung hero,” then misspelled his name. That man? Thomas Morstead. He is, without a doubt, the MVP of the Saints’ victory. And though he may be considered an “unsung hero,” in this post I will sing of legs and the man. Continue reading ‘not giving Morstead enough credit’
There was much joy in New Orleans last night. The city’s beloved and long-beleaguered football team, the Saints, made history by reaching their first ever Super Bowl. After a giddy ride home through streets filled with cars and buses blaring their horns in celebration, past sidewalks crowded with revelers standing in their pickup trucks, past people waving and screaming from their doorways, I turned on the TV to see what the national media had to say about the game. The one thing they talked about most? Brett Favre! How on earth does the losing quarterback get so much airtime? Well, because he’s an attention whore who has the media eating out of his hand, hanging on his every word, and fawning over his every move. This had been pissing me off for a while, but last night was the last straw. Continue reading ‘the media’s brett favre obsession’
It’s New Year’s Day and I’m sitting in front of the TV watching college football. It’s something I haven’t done in a while, partly because I’ve been too busy, but mostly because we’ve gotten to the point where the number of bowl games is ridiculous, and the matchups feature mediocre teams you couldn’t possibly care about.
Now, I understand the capitalist desire for more bowl games. ESPN will televise just about anything, fans will travel, perhaps a few locals snap up extra tickets, and teams love getting an extra month of practice. And if I’ve got nothing else to do, why not watch some football? Now, some of the games have been pretty good (the SportsCenter highlights of Idaho (7-5) vs. Bowling Green (6-6) in the Humanitarian Bowl looked fantastic). But who the fuck cares about Idaho or Bowling Green? Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t even realize what state Bowling Green was in.* Do either of these schools have fans? Idaho isn’t even the number one team in its tiny state. And Bowling Green? It’s undoubtedly miles behind OSU and Cincinnati, duking it out with instate MAC rivals Kent State, Toledo, Ohio, Akron, and Miami for second tier Buckeye State bragging rights. And why the hell are .500 mid-major teams making bowls? It’s bad enough when power conference .500 teams get to bowls, but Bowling Green? What the fuck? Continue reading ‘the glut of bowl games’
If you’re second-guessing anything from the Saints’ 26-23 win over the Falcons, it’s probably that fake field goal late in the 4th quarter. I’ll get back to that later, but the real mistakes were a few clock management errors that made the result far closer than it should have been. First, the Saints didn’t run enough time off the clock at the end of the 1st half, enabling the Falcons to mount a scoring drive of their own; second, the pass-happy playcalling on the drive leading up to that fake field goal let the Falcons save their timeouts and gave them more time to drive down the field for a tie or win. Continue reading ‘bad clock management #4′
You’ve seen it happen tons of times. A team gets the ball with a few seconds left in the 1st half and rather than take a shot with a Hail Mary pass, the quarterback takes a knee and the team trots off to the locker room. But with a few second left, why not take a shot? This is yet another example of bad football coaching: teams play it safe instead of making the play that would maximize their chance of scoring points (and thus their chance of winning). One example occurred in last night’s Saints-Patriots game. Continue reading ‘first half kneeldowns’
Now, I’m going to start this with a disclaimer: I didn’t see much of the LSU/Ole Miss game because I was moderating at a quiz bowl tournament. But I did hear everything from LSU’s failed two-point conversion and successful onside kick through to the end of the game, and when I got home I rewound and watched the game from the same point on. But I’ll just be concerning myself with the last minute of the game, so that shouldn’t matter.
LSU got a remarkably good break with their successful onside kick, and then another when Brandon LaFell made a superb play, racking up the yards after catch en route to the Ole Miss 31-yard line. At that point LSU was in excellent shape, with two timeouts left and within Josh Jasper’s range (he had already made a 50-yarder earlier in the game). That said, a 48-yarder is no gimme, so Les Miles was entirely justified in trying to pick up more yards through the air. But Jordan Jefferson has got to have the pocket presence to get rid of the ball. On first down he successfully avoided a sack by throwing the ball away, but on 2nd down the 10-yard loss was a killer. Certainly one could argue for running the ball there, but the fault for the sack has to rest with Jefferson. The 3rd down play call for a screen pass is one of those things where if it works right, we’re all talking about how much of a genius he is. That’s the sort of play that very easily could have gotten fifteen yards and put LSU solidly back within Jasper’s field goal range. Was it the best call? Maybe, maybe not, but I have to rail against the results-oriented thinking I’ve already bitched in my Belichick post. If Ciron Black gets out and makes a block there might’ve been a decent gain on the play instead of a loss. While Les Miles and Gary Crowton’s playcalling was certainly questionable, it was also defensible. Continue reading ‘bad clock management #3′
