Mailbag: Why Alabama has the most to lose in the playoff semis
DALLAS -- At Cotton Bowl Media Day on Tuesday, Lane Kiffin told us that all those "dynasty is dead" columns that came out after the Tide's early-season Ole Miss loss galvanized the team.
"All that stuff really helped us," said America's most famous offensive coordinator. "It pissed [Nick Saban] off, obviously, so he brought everyone together and said, 'OK, everyone's off the bandwagon, and nobody outside here believes this will happen.' ... The players, the coaches, everybody banded together."
Even mighty Alabama plays the "no respect" card on occasion -- as I'm sure current semifinal underdogs Clemson and Michigan State will be as well this week. But two teams still have to lose.
Which team stands to have its reputation hurt the most by losing Thursday? Is it 'Bama (the dynasty is over), Oklahoma (Bob Stoops still can't win the big one), Clemson (Clemsoning?) or Michigan State (they only got there because Ohio State couldn't put it all together)?
-- Ashley Connor Ryan
Clearly, it's Alabama, because the Tide are the only one of the group that's expected to win. Just like they've been expected to win nearly every time they've taken the field for the past seven years. And because Saban's program will officially be out of excuses. This is my second straight year covering the Tide's playoff game, and for the second straight year we've heard some variation of "We weren't properly focused last year; this year's team is preparing much better." Are we going to hear the exact same thing this time next year if 'Bama drops its third straight BCS/CFP bowl game?
Were that to happen, you still won't see me jumping on the "dynasty is dead" train, because that's just plain short-sighted. For a program to reach the BCS championship game or a playoff semifinal five times in seven seasons is still pretty damn dominant. It's the college version of the New England Patriots, which went a decade between their third and fourth Super Bowl victories but went about 12-4 and made the playoffs nearly every year in between.
The difference, of course, is that college teams, unlike NFL teams, get voted into the playoff by a subjective committee. Alabama has built up such clout with both poll voters and committee members that it continually gets the benefit of the doubt even after a loss like Ole Miss. But that aura would undoubtedly start to chip away a bit if Alabama continually goes belly up in the postseason.
As for the other three, certainly I expect to see some stories written along those lines, but I'd view their defeats more as missed opportunities than referendums. Clemson and Michigan State have a chance Thursday to validate that they are indeed among the very best programs in the country, history be damned. Lose, and they'll continue to harbor skeptics. And I'd hope that Stoops shed most of his critics with this season's resurgence. Yes, the Sooners are favored Thursday, but there's no shame in losing to the No. 1 team in the country.
And all four, by the way, are going to be very good again next season.
Will there be a more popular "dark horse" candidate next year than Nebraska? All the usual boxes are checked: second-year head coach/staff, experienced senior QB, percentage, momentum from a bowl upset, etc.
-- Steve Roney, Scottsville, Va.
Indeed, it's a good thing they allowed 5-7 bowl teams in this year so that Nebraska could rack up its 2016 preseason predictions bump.
The bowl game only reinforced that the 'Huskers were better than their record this season. Most notably, they beat one of the four playoff teams. In fact, when I asked Michigan State assistant Mark Snyder about the Spartans' marked defensive improvement after that Nov. 7 game, one of the first things he said was, "Nebraska's a really good team." But also, the 'Huskers lost one game (BYU) on a Hail Mary, another (Illinois) on a bizarre clock-management debacle and another (Miami) in overtime. Their only truly inexplicable defeat was a 10-point loss to 2-10 Purdue.
Nebraska will return roughly 17 starters next season and should be much more comfortable in Mike Riley's system. He'll have had a chance to plug some of their roster holes. I do expect the 'Huskers will be better. But they probably do still have a ceiling. QB Tommy Armstrong had a nice performance against UCLA, but he's likely always going to be inconsistent and a bit turnover-prone. And while the defense will be more experienced, it's still lacking in top-flight talent.
All in all, though, the entire vibe surrounding that program is going to be a lot more optimistic during the offseason than it would have been had Nebraska become the first team ever to finish a season 5-8.
Hi, Stewart. I'm sure you're still wading through Heisman and playoff questions -- but none of that concerns UCLA. What is a reasonable assessment of the Bruins' 2015 season, Josh Rosen's upside, and Jim Mora's overall tenure? Mora has improved the program for sure, but I feel like he wasted good opportunities to win the division the past three years and possibly bring a conference title to Westwood.
-- Daniel, Lancaster, Calif.
I think you pretty much answered your own question. UCLA football is in much better shape today than it was before Mora arrived. But two years in a row, the Bruins went into their last game of the regular season with a chance to clinch their division and lost to a 6-5 Stanford team and 7-4 USC team, respectively. At least the 2013 UCLA team rebounded to beat Duke in the Sun Bowl to finish with 10 wins on the season. Losing to a 5-7 Nebraska team in the Foster Farms Bowl to slump to 8-5 has to be a bitter pill.
This year's team came in talented, experienced and deep but did have two built-in excuses, what with starting a true freshman quarterback and then losing a litany of standout defenders (mainly LB Myles Jack and DL Eddie Vanderdoes) to season-ending injuries. But four years into his tenure, Mora still talks about his program as a work in progress. At what point is that no longer acceptable?
The future remains bright. Rosen is an absolute stud who only figures to get better. Furthermore, UCLA's chief rival, USC, can't get out of its own way and is hardly the daunting competitor that it was a decade ago. But you do wonder whether Mora is ever going to break through the mid-to-low Top 25 ceiling. On top of that, there figures to remain a perpetual question of whether he'll bolt for the NFL -- perhaps even in a couple of weeks.
How much is the atmosphere leading up to the semifinal game different from covering the old BCS championship game?
-- Brian Lazenby, Huntsville Ala.
I'd say it's muted by comparison. Granted, I'm mostly in my little media cocoon, but essentially the horde of media that covered the BCS championship game is split in two. While fantastic for our purposes, it was a bit surprising at Media Day that I could just walk up to stars like Michigan State's Malik McDowell or Alabama's A'Shawn Robinson and basically hold court. Other than the two head coaches, Connor Cook and Derrick Henry, nobody had too big a crowd around them. But most of all, it's still very much a holiday week; I can tell there aren't as many people online and reading my articles as there would be if this were Jan. 6.
But my perception may also be clouded by the location. A year ago we were in New Orleans, where every night's a street party and you're closely mingling with Alabama and Ohio State fans. I arrived in Dallas on Saturday shortly after a deadly tornado, and it's been rainy and/or freezing cold ever since. Fans are spread out at hotels all over the Metroplex. It doesn't feel much like a traditional bowl week.
If it were up to me, they'd play the semis in Pasadena and New Orleans and the championship in Arizona every year, but that's a very selfish, sportswriter-centric attitude. Those of you watching at home presumably couldn't care less whether the opening shot on TV is of Bourbon Street or of AT&T Stadium.
Is the fact that teams who make it to bowl games get extra weeks of practice while the bad teams don't the most unfair thing in sports?
-- Dan Klobucar, Minneapolis
I'd say so. Those poor Gophers thought they'd stunk their way out of a week in Detroit, but alas, they just were not bad enough (and too good in school).
It's been a couple of weeks now since Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray announced their transfers from Texas A&M. Is the Aggies' mass exodus of quarterbacks more a reflection of Kevin Sumlin or the entitlement of high-profile quarterbacks of today?
-- Drew Stropka, Glendale, Ariz.
The entitled-QB thing is hardly unique to Texas A&M. It's a position with a unique set of pressures; first and foremost, that there's only one spot available on the field, but also the culture of private QB tutors, the Elite 11 circuit, etc., they get exposed to from an early age. It's become a lot like basketball, where the top recruits are made to feel like failures if they're not off to the NBA by their sophomore year. Many elite QB recruits expect to start no later than their redshirt freshman seasons and, if not, will find somewhere else that they can.
That being said, A&M's particular situation seems a fairly unique fiasco given one of those two was most definitely going to start imminently -- beginning with this week's bowl game.
Sumlin falls into the category of coaches I mentioned earlier who get the big-name recruits but then have to manage their expectations. Clearly, in this case, he failed. His offensive staff is a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen, what with 30-year-old offensive coordinator Jake Spavital working with demoted former OC/running backs coach Clarence McKinney and former FBS head coach-turned-offensive line coach Dave Christensen. I'm not privy to what exactly went down this season, but apparently Sumlin's juggling of the QB and lack of offensive identity drove both guys out. Perhaps that will ultimately prove a mistake for one or both, though Murray's already found himself a pretty sweet landing spot at Oklahoma.
What, in your mind, defines a great coach? Is it someone like Mark Dantonio, Kirk Ferentz or Pat Fitzgerald who consistently recruits two/three/four-star prospects and coaches them into better players, or is it someone like Urban Meyer, Nick Saban and Les Miles who consistently recruits four/five-star players and harnesses the superior talent into a successful team?
-- Andy Leonard, St. Paul, Minn.
It's easier to recognize great coaching when someone is doing more with less. Dantonio, for example, should absolutely be mentioned in any discussion about the sport's best coaches, given the level of consistency he's achieved (winning at least 11 games five of the past six seasons) without nearly the recruiting cachet as some of his Big Ten peers. It's one thing to capture lightning in a bottle and produce one dream season like Iowa seemingly did this year; it's another to develop two-star guys into NFL players, lose them, then do it all over again year after year. It's remarkable.
But that's not to say that anyone could walk into Ohio State or Alabama and achieve what Meyer and Saban have. If it were that easy, Texas would not be mediocre for a half-decade and counting, and USC wouldn't be losing four games every year. Meyer and Saban still have to evaluate and develop guys, just like Dantonio does. They also have to manage the egos and expectations of guys who all think they're going to the NFL in three years, which is arguably more challenging than getting a chronically overlooked player to work his butt off.
So, I know that comes off as a cop-out, but no one who wins big on a regular basis does it by accident, be it at Ohio State or Ohio.
If you were in charge of the NCAA rules committee, what would you do in regard to the controversial targeting rule?
-- Mike Clark, Omaha, Neb.
I'd blow it up and start over, and I'd tie it into my other crusade to blow up the college replay system.
Starting in reverse, we set up a central command center in Indianapolis where experienced officials monitor each game. You can divide it up by conference if you want, but these would not be conference officials like we have today. Once that's in place, then I'd be comfortable taking targeting enforcement completely out of the on-field refs' hands and letting replay observers decide when it's merited.
The collisions that prompt targeting calls happen in a millisecond, so it's hardly a surprise the on-field refs sometimes overreact. The problem is, once they make the call, replay officials' hands are tied. They need overwhelming evidence to overturn it. Thus a player gets ejected for what is often a clean hit. If you do it in reverse, though, a player only gets tossed when the intent and area of contact are so obvious that a replay observer would call it in to the refs on the field. The deterrent remains in place, but it's more effectively managed.
Stewart: Now that it's (almost) finally here, what are your official predictions for the playoff semifinal TV ratings? And do you think there's any way the Rose Bowl pulls a higher rating than one or both of the playoff games?
--Scott Sandy, Cobleskill, N.Y.
Great question. The semifinal ratings will definitely be down from last year, when the Sugar Bowl got a 15.1, the Rose a 14.8; however, the New Year’s Six as a whole will be up, with the Rose in its traditional New Year’s Day slot coming in close, but not exceeding, the Orange semifinal roughly 24 hours earlier.
Mind you, I’m not a TV executive who follows these things for a living, but here’s a rough guess. Cotton: 13.6, Orange: 11.8, Rose: 10.9. The Notre Dame-Ohio State Fiesta will also do significantly better than the Cotton Bowl that aired in that time slot last year and did a 5.2, but it’s not the only bowl game on at that time.
Stewart, Since it's bowl season, I've always wondered: What's the deal with bowl swag? As an example, the Peach Bowl is reportedly giving away $300 Visa gift cards. Why is this not an NCAA violation? If the manager of a local Chick-Fil-A gave Dalvin Cook $300 cash in an envelope, he would presumably get suspended immediately and be forced to repay the money (e.g., Todd Gurley).
-- Joseph Sura, Atlanta
Bowl gifts are as old as the bowls themselves, and the NCAA specifically allows them --€“ up to $550 worth per person. In addition to that gift card, Florida State and Houston players can also receive a Fossil watch and Bluetooth speaker, among other items.
Bowl games are a pretty sweet deal for the media, too. Our hotel here in Dallas has a hospitality room with an open bar, a bottomless supply of junk food, ping-pong tables, Pop-A-Shot and a miniature golf course. I've written most of my stories so far from a plushy recliner in the corner with the foot stand kicked out.
My annual post-bowl season diet begins Jan. 12.