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January 1st

New Year's Day bowl games truly put the rest of the post-season to shame, which is the way it should be. Let the MySpace bowl continue placing the fourth place team from the Sunbelt conference against the loser of Harvard-Yale, it won't cheapen the intrigue and entertainment value of marquee Jan.1 bowls.

In that sense, one has to be somewhat disappointed that a majority of the BCS games are yet to be played, regulated to stand-alone prime time sports events instead of juicy additions to the schedule of the day for college football.

Good for FOX, bad for everyone else.

The Fiesta Bowl at 8:00 PM on Jan. 2, a Wednesday night? Is this the MAC championship game? Particularly in a year when the glamorous Rose Bowl is allowed it's traditional trappings, everything after the first of the year seems like a forgotten coda to the college football season.

It's also a real shame that the Michigan- Florida game wasn't played in a BCS location, because it was certainly the quality game that BCS officials are striving for. Other than a marathon viewing of HBO's The Wire, season one, this was the most entertaining 3 hours of couch time all (extended) weekend.

Like David Simon's razor sharp sociological mind-fuck (*ahem*entering it's fifth and final season on Sunday *ahem*), the Capital One Bowl was a multi-layered drama without a discernible heroes or villains. One one side there's the outspoken Mike Hart, jawing at Florida DT's four times his size and clearly involved in some kind of point shaving scheme, evidenced by his pair of goal line fumbles. Though across from the Wolverines stood an even less likable character, Tim Tebow, Urban Meyer's charismatic errand boy who has the best PR rep in the business. CBS's Gary Danielson ought to be furious with the way ABC was flattering Tebow, on whom Danielson has a well-vocalized man crush.

Yet, from the standpoint of an OSU fan, it wasn't too difficult to pick a side. As is the case every year, any animosity between Ohio St. and Michigan is rightfully put to rest for the small window of time when each team is representing the Big Ten. And, considering his record against Tressel, who doesn't love Lloyd Carr, the man who coached his last game at the school he loves? His team certainly does.

Between Hart making OSU's defense look like a brick wall and waiting for Rich Rod to mistakenly call maize "yellow" in the announcer's booth, this game was a great way to kick off the new year. A statement game for the Big Ten.

...Amidst a day of other conferences "stating" that the Big Ten isn't so great.

Illinois and Wisconsin both fell, the latter in a much more admirable fashion. The Illini lacked any fight and the Rose Bowl quickly began to resemble last year's Championship Game.



Illinois was outmatched from “go” and made things difficult on Herbstreit and Musburger, who were calling the game. When I changed the channel at 21-0 Kirk was listing all USC's Heisman winners while the camera lazily found them in the stadium. Hours later, in the fourth quarter, I stumbled upon the game again to find an info graphic of Pete Carroll’s successes on the screen, most likely recycled from the first half. Bad, bad television.

Thirty-eight Colt Brennan pass attempts and zero Colt Brennan touchdowns later, Georgia players were presenting their argument for #1. Not surprisingly, plenty of others have already written off the up-coming OSU-LSU game after the newly crowned best teams in the country, USC and Georgia, beat up on lesser opponents.

The Sugar Bowl, in which Georgia ruined Hawaii’s vacation without offering to refund their plane tickets, somehow managed to out-suck the Rose Bowl. At best it was a chance to see superstar in-the-making Knowshon Moreno, at worst an unforgiving exposure of Brennan and his system offense. The Rainbow Warriors were one season too late to be a non-BCS Cinderella story so now they are just the team that took Missouri’s place in the Sugar Bowl (and that’s going easy on Kansas.)

The bowl records after today:

1. SEC (6-2)
2. Big-12 (4-2)
3. Pac-10 (4-2)
4. Big Ten (3-4)
5. Big East (1-2)
6. ACC (2-4)

The Weekend Read

The right "man" for the job

Sure, the nearly month long (if you don’t include the three months between the Appy St. and Ohio St. games) search for Michigan’s next head coach has ended, but don’t fret, the bleeding continues. Both CFN and Mitch Albom are less than ecstatic about the hire. Expectations are understandably high and the consensus seems to be that Rodriguez, while a proven leader and exciting coach, is walking into this one blindfolded, pants down.

Say what you will about LLLLLoyd, but he was a “Michigan man,” dammit. And, whatever a “Michigan man” is, they sure seem to like them up in Ann Arbor even though the two coaches who preceded Carr were Ohio-born. Rodriguez is a Mountaineer, through and through. And, if not for the advent of his spread-option offense and big-time talent in the backfield, Rodriguez would have probably remained a Mountaineer for the rest of his life--and been very successful. So you can empathize with the delayed applause from up north when the coaching search ended with a clandestine buy-out deal in Toledo.

From the start, everyone knew this would end with a young coach leaving a relatively high profile program for what is, for some reason, widely regarded as the premier college coaching job (on par with Notre Dame football and UNC and Duke basketball). Things got more interesting, however, when it wasn’t the young coach from the high profile program that everyone expected. Before the second Saturday of the season, the media had prepared more than enough excuses/reasons for Miles to leave LSU. His first press conference as the Michigan head coach was practically written for him by ESPN.

But when it (slowly) became clear that Miles wasn’t interested, it seemed the sketch of a “Michigan man” would have to undergo some revisions. Foremost, this new commander of the leaders and the best is certainly getting the best money Bill Martin can give. Martin made an ass of himself when he supposedly low-balled Miles, so one imagines that whatever sum (undisclosed as of yet) he offered Rodriguez couldn’t be ignored. We can also assume that the new UM prototype has fickle allegiances. After informally accepting the Alabama job last year and “sucker punching” fans, he came back to Morgantown to publicly claim that he was there to stay. Yet when another national power came knocking a year later, the man from a small mining town left a Mountaineer team that was arguably the best he’d ever coached for a key to the Big House.

Though, even after putting like that, it’s hard to say that any man of flesh and blood wouldn’t do the same—but would a “Michigan man?”


All that being said, it’s time to snap back to the reality of the situation and what better way than to get acquainted with the enemy:

Five reasons to hate Rich Rodriguez

1. Mimicking his predecessor, his teams were pre-season favorites to soundly win their conference yet they rarely did and that never seemed to matter when the same predictions were made the following year

2. We were also annually reminded of WVU’s two-headed Heisman juggernaut, Steve Slaton/ Pat White. Yet, after three seasons of hype, Rodriguez and his speedy workhorses are only left with the memories of that one good half in the 2006 Sugar Bowl when their punter won the game. Start the Hart/Henne comparisons anytime you’d like.

3. The spread option. It’s Rich’s bastard child and, in some shape or form, it’s accounted for our last two losses (Illinois ran the read-option but we’re not splitting hairs here). Heacock can’t wrap his mind around it and dual-threat quarterbacks like Terrelle Pyror love it.

4. He had the gall to sign and or negotiate his death sentence in Ohio, of all places. (Note: This could be interpreted as an uncharacteristically intelligent move by Rich if you assume that he was in no hurry to set foot on Michigan soil.)

5. His name lends itself to any number of smarmy nicknames like “R-Rod” or the soon-to-be-popular, “Dick-Rod.”