This year in college football, New Year’s Eve will be so awesome.  And while you may not necessarily be watching the College Football Playoff through confetti (or at all, because of the utterly ridiculous scheduling loophole), the Cotton and Orange Bowls will provide all sorts of intrigue this year as the College Football Playoff bowl games. Of course, the other New Year’s Six bowls (Peach, Fiesta, Rose, Sugar) all provide interesting matchups as well; this post, however, will only focus on the two playoff games.

So for now, we’ll only take a look at Clemson-Oklahoma and Michigan State-Alabama.  It’s playoff time again!  Let’s get right into it.

Orange Bowl

Last year, Clemson and Oklahoma played in the Russell Athletic Bowl, and Oklahoma got absolutely hammered with a capital h.  They’re meeting in a slightly different and more important bowl game this year in Miami, but Oklahoma will still be out for revenge.

The team’s “out for revenge” attitude can be tied directly back to transfer quarterback Baker Mayfield.  He transferred into Oklahoma in 2014 but was unable to play until this season because of the Big 12’s transfer rules against a player transferring from one in-conference school to another.  His departure from Texas Tech can best be described as acrimonious, and he’ll be more than happy to tell you about it.

In any event, the key matchup in this game will be Mayfield and the Sooner offense against that of the Clemson Tigers.  The duel between the Oklahoma quarterback and fellow Heisman Trophy finalist Deshaun Watson will be the main attraction to this semifinal.  Of course, there is more to it than this.

Another key will be each team’s surprisingly good defense.  The Tigers and Sooners are ranked 8th and 31st is yards per game allowed, respectively, in college football, and both allow around 20 points per game.  The defenses are an under-appreciated part of the Orange Bowl, and it will be extremely important for each defensive unit to play well, but particularly against the no-huddle: the defense that is on the field less will likely have the upper hand.  It’s worth noting that Oklahoma easily has the best defensive player on the field in the game in linebacker Eric Striker.

But this is really why I’m taking Oklahoma: weapons.  Talent. Versatility.  Oklahoma’s offense can kill you in many different ways, but the most devastating of all may be through running back Samaje Perine.  If Perine gets loose early in the game, you can expect a very long day for the Tiger defense.  His running will also set up Mayfield, star wide receiver Sterling Shepard and the rest of the Oklahoma passing game.

That being said, it’s going to be an excellent game.  Clemson is getting absolutely no respect from Las Vegas, the public, or really anyone covering the game.  It’s going to be as spirited a big game as we have seen in college football for quite some time, but I think Oklahoma has a slight edge.

The Pick: Oklahoma 38, Clemson 31

Cotton Bowl

This game is really a matchup of two very similar teams.  They both play basically the same offense; often under center, never hurrying up.  But what they do with their offenses is very different: while Michigan State rightfully puts their faith in senior quarterback Connor Cook, Alabama will rightfully give the ball to Heisman Trophy winning running back Derrick Henry.  And they’ll give the ball to him some more.  And some more.  And some more.

A conservative estimate of Henry’s touches would likely be set at 40, and he’ll probably reach that by running the ball alone.  In Alabama’s last two games of the season, Henry racked up 46 and 44 carries in wins over Auburn and Florida.  If Alabama is to win this game, they have to give the ball to #2 and hope that he has another monster day; this is entirely possible, but the task will be tougher against a stout run defense that only allowed 113.1 yards per game on the ground this season (7th in major college football).

Another thing Alabama will need to do is to put faith in quarterback Jake Coker to make enough plays to win them game.  His sound decision making and sudden, new-found mobility has helped Alabama get to this point, and for the first time in his up and down, good and bad college career, the quarterback will get a chance to be the signal caller on a national championship team.  To have that distinction, though, he’ll have to have a solid, mistake-free game against a really good defense.

As for that defense?  It’s really well-suited for a game like this.  While it ranks a mediocre 76th in FBS in passing yards allowed per game, Alabama will have a difficult time running it on them, as the stats above show.  The main battle in this game is going to be Henry and the offensive line of the Crimson Tide against Michigan State’s defensive line, led by future NFL Draft first-round pick Shilique Calhoun.  Whichever front gets a push will win the battle, and possibly win the game as well.

Of course, Michigan State’s offense is key as well.  They will also have to be able to run the ball against Alabama’s solid defense, one that allows the least rushing yards per game of any team in America (74). Cook might have to do it on his right arm alone, and that may be a risky proposition: the Tide are also a top-20 pass defending team. Making headway will be an immense challenge for the Spartan offense, one that may be too difficult to overcome.

I’m picking Alabama.  Spread offenses do well against Nick Saban, but this is the furthest thing from a spread offense.  Mark Dantonio will have his team ready, and the Spartans will play angry.  But I just think the Tide has too much.

The Pick: Alabama 27, Michigan State 17

Personally, I believe that Oklahoma would beat Alabama in a national championship game.  However, that will be a separate post after the semifinal results.  As always, enjoy the games and have a safe, healthy, and Happy New Year!

Since 1988, former Oklahoma State running back Barry Sanders held the record for all-purpose yards with 3,250.  In just 11 games, it was one of the most unbelievable records ever held in college football or any other sport, for that matter, and it was one of the few records that looked as if it might never be broken.  That unbeatable record was smashed last weekend.

It was broken by none other than Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey.

Before we go any further, McCaffrey broke the record in 13 games as opposed to Sanders’ 11.  He also had 413 touches against Sanders’ 394. But forget all of that: he broke of the longer-standing and harder-to-break records in sports, and there should be something to show for that.  But will that thing be a Heisman Trophy?

McCaffrey will be in New York on Saturday night as one of three Heisman finalists, along with Alabama running back Derrick Henry and Clemson quarterback DeShaun Watson.  According to OddsShark, Henry is the overwhelming favorite to win the trophy, with McCaffrey far behind and Watson even further off the pace, and many prognosticators think he is going to win the award.  I think he’s going to win it.  It is almost a foregone conclusion that he is going to be the Heisman Trophy winner in 2015, but should he be?  According to statistics, the answer is no.

For starters, McCaffrey obviously has more all-purpose yards than anyone else in the field (all-purpose encapsulates rushing, receiving, and punt and kick return yardage).  With that out of the way, he still deserves the Heisman over Henry.

There are plenty of reasons why he should win the Heisman, but the main one is that we, as college football fans, have just never seen anyone have such a great season in the sport in a long, long time. While the seasons of Henry and Watson have been incredible in their own right and would be worthy of winning the award in almost any other season, McCaffrey’s season has not just been really good; it’s been historic.  It has transcended the usual year-to-year performances that are rewarded with trips to Gotham; this is a performance that should be rewarded with acclaim for decades to come.  This was one of the greatest seasons ever, and it should be rewarded with a Heisman.

One of the reasons, however, that McCaffrey will likely fall short of winning the sport’s greatest individual honor is because of team performance.  Out of the three teams of finalists for the trophy, McCaffrey’s Cardinal are the only one not represented in this year’s College Football Playoff.  The reason is two losses, one in September to Northwestern and the other in November to the team’s biggest rival, Oregon.  McCaffrey only struggled in the Northwestern game (he only rushed for 66 yards) but even in a game in which he supposedly faltered, he still had 171 all-purpose yards.  In the Oregon game, he had 244 all-purpose yards.  No blame can be laid there, and it really wasn’t his fault that Stanford lost either game.

As for Henry, he was able to amass 166 rushing and receiving yards in Alabama’s one loss to Ole Miss.  Watson did not lose, so it’s impossible to see what he would do with his team on the losing end. Here’s the thing, though: McCaffrey is impossible to stop.  If a defense holds down one area of his game, it quite possibly opens up another. He can’t be held down, and the best defenses can hope to do is contain him.  Or, a defense could do what USC did and stop no areas of his game.  He’s one of the most tantalizing players the game has seen recently, and it’s just difficult to completely shut him down.

That’s not to say, of course, that it’s easy to contain Henry, but if a defense is somehow able to take away his inside running game and not let him get the edge for big plays, he can be contained.  He’s not really going to kill you out of the backfield as a receiver or as a return man.  McCaffrey can do literally everything for the Cardinal offense, and he’s the main reason the team has gone from 72nd to 27th in total offense in FBS this season.  He’s the main reason; there aren’t any others.  Alabama’s team offense was 9th in major college football last season, and it’s 34th this season.  To be fair, the offense lost wideout Amari Cooper and quarterback Blake Sims, but Henry has not been able to carry the offense the way McCaffrey has.

This is the statistical argument behind Christian McCaffrey’s Heisman candidacy.  Here’s another argument: while I’m sure this is true of most other great players, his teammates absolutely love him.  Here’s video of him being announced as a Heisman candidate, as well as his teammates going absolutely ape:

The moment you find out you’re a #Heisman finalist. #WildCaffhttps://t.co/CNZwxYJ2VE

— Stanford Athletics (@GoStanford) December 8, 2015

That’s really cool.  That shows you just how much his teammates want this for him, and how much they appreciate how he’s carried the team over the course of the season as well.

So while other candidates will get more consideration and are deserving of attention, there’s one man who should be the surefire winner of the 2015 Heisman Trophy.  He won’t be, but hopefully we can remember in the future just how great he was this season.

That man is none other than Christian McCaffrey.

Former USC and NFL quarterback Pat Haden took over the Trojans’ Athletic Director gig from Mike Garrett on August 3, 2010.  He was walking into an unenviable situation, as the USC football program had been sanctioned by the NCAA in June with a two year bowl ban and the loss of 30 scholarships.  Pete Carroll, the team’s head coach, had left that year to coach for the Seahawks, and Garrett led the coaching search that yielded the unabated disaster that would become the Lane Kiffin era.

And yet, in light of recent events, the time has come to ask whether USC should retain Haden as their AD.

Kiffin’s 2010 and 2011 seasons were very successful, and the team even won 10 games in Kiffin’s second year in Los Angeles.  But things started to go downhill with an incredibly disappointing 7-6 2012 and a rough, albeit 3-1, start to 2013 that included a home loss to Washington State.  And when the Trojans traveled to Tempe to play Arizona State, everything unraveled.

After trailing 20-14 at halftime, the Trojans gave up 28 points in the third quarter, and the game was blown open.  According to all accounts, Haden met with USC brass in the third quarter of that game and decided to fire Kiffin after the game.  And he wasted no time, either: he notified Lane that he would be fired in the terminal at LAx; did I mention that this all happened at 3 A.M. PT?  That was Haden’s first mistake; not firing Kiffin, but rather doing so in the manner he did.

After this, Ed Orgeron would take over and get the Trojans program revitalized and nationally potent again.  Before that Orgeron was famous for two things: being Ole Miss’ head coach from 2005-2007 and Michael Oher’s college coach in The Blind Side (and real life). That was his only stint as a Division I head coach, and he was a grand total of three conference games in as many years with the program.  It didn’t seem like the move would work out.

Of course, it did.  Orgeron had his team playing hard and winning games again.  The USC program was back, and Orgeron’s brief stint as USC head coach culminated in a stunning home win over #4 Stanford on November 16.

It seemed like Orgeron would have the job for good after going 6-2 to finish the season, but a loss to cross-town rival UCLA in the final week sealed his fate.  Haden and the USC Athletic Department opted to go in a different direction. They decided that, instead of keeping Orgeron, it would be better to hire then-Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian. The Orgeron era was over, and he resigned once he was passed over for the head coaching job.

How would an Orgeron regime have fared in the ever-copmetitve Pac-12? No one knows, but Bleacher Report’s Adam Kramer wrote about what could have been Monday:

Having failed at Ole Miss, many assumed Orgeron was not equipped to handle a job of such magnitude over the long haul. But everything aligned. He was different. The program was different. And, perhaps most importantly, he had the unwavering support of his players, many of whom he could still be coaching. The true value of this could have snowballed into something grand.

How grand is a question that will never be answered. At the bare minimum, it would have been much, much different.

Picking a head coach is an inexact science, to say the least. It’s a process that fails far more often than it succeeds. In many interim instances, athletic directors and administrations would much rather test drive a current regime without a financial penalty attached and decide six months later whether they want to proceed.

That, however, is not the way this profession works. Well, in most cases.

Choosing Sarkisian over Orgeron seemed, at the time, like the right decision.  Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and now we can confidently say it wasn’t.

Ironically enough, the Sarkisian epoch at USC got off to a really strange start.  In a game at Stanford on September 6, 2014, Sarkisian had grown rather unhappy with some calls that had not gone his team’s way.  Instead of simply complaining to the referees about it, he decided to go the extra mile and actually text Haden from his cell phone and ask him to come down to the sidelines.

The best part is, Haden acted like receiving a text message from the head coach to come to the sidelines and argue with referees was a completely normal, weekly occurrence.  For example, can you imagine if Carroll had texted Seahawks’ GM John Schneider before the last play of the Super Bowl last year, asking him what play to run? I’m not 100% sure how that would have turned out, but my guess would be Schneider would have said, “Run it”, and the Seahawks would have won back to back Super Bowls.  But that didn’t happen.

Anyway, the team went 8-4 in the 2014 regular season, winning the 2014 Holiday Bowl over Nebraska.  Going into 2015, the thought around college football was that USC might have its most talented roster since the days of Pete and a chance to compete for a national championship.  After two wins to start the season, things got off the rails with a home 41-31 loss to Stanford in Week 3 and an ugly Week 5, Thursday night 17-12 loss to Washington.

And then the real trouble came.

We all found out about it on Sunday afternoon, with this report from Fox Sports’ Bruce Feldman:

Am told by multiple sources Steve Sarkisian showed up in no condition to work today & #USC brass knows he needs serious help.

— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) October 11, 2015

Sarkisian’s drinking has been somewhat well publicized in the past. While it really hasn’t come into focus until this season, Sunday isn’t the first occurrence of his drinking getting in the way of his work.

Earlier this year, the University held a Salute to Troy event for alumni and donors to kick off the season.  Sarkisian was at the event, but he really wasn’t all there.  While I couldn’t find a full video of the speech, this is the important part, in which he is clearly intoxicated, slurs his words, and drops an f-bomb:

Sarkisian would be fired by USC on Monday, and replaced by offensive coordinator Clay Helton for the rest of the regular season.

Before wrapping up this article, I’d like to take a moment to digress and say that I hope Coach Sark can get the help he needs.  Addiction is a very difficult disease to overcome; here’s to hoping we see Sark on the good side of this when all is said and done.

Going back to Haden; this is where USC is now.  Their football program is in disarray, and at least part of that needs to be put on the shoulders of the athletic director.  The Salute to Troy episode just maybe should have been a sign that the football coach was in dire need of help; after all, his drinking problem dates back well before he was the head football coach at USC.  That ugly night should have been a sign of trouble, but instead, Haden pressed forward with what turned out to be a disastrous hire.

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the fact that the basketball program has not won an NCAA Tournament game since he took over as AD.  His straight outta Dunk City hire of Andy Enfield has gone 23-41 in two seasons, and probably needs to turn the program around in the next year or two if he hopes to have long-term success at the school.

But, going back to football, Haden kind of, sort of, maybe got the Trojans into this mess, with the hire of Sarkisian and the rejection of Orgeron.  Now, he has to get them out of it with his next hire.

As far as I’m concerned, he’s lucky he even has one.

Alabama-Georgia may be, save for Notre Dame-Clemson, the biggest game of this college football weekend.  While Alabama has already endured a home loss to Ole Miss in week 3, a win today in Athens would easily put them right back in the Playoff picture.  However, another loss probably knocks them out of any possible contention for a spot in the sport’s final four.  So, it would be safe to assert that this game is pretty darn big to Alabama, and maybe not so much for Georgia.

As for the Bulldogs, the game against the Tide most likely represents the biggest game of their season.  Trips to Auburn, Tennessee and Georgia Tech still remain, but if Georgia wins, they have a real chance to be undefeated going into the SEC Title Game.

And the oddsmakers like Georgia as well; they’re a 2-point favorite. Which is, in simplest terms, a mistake.

This year’s Alabama team is undoubtedly weaker than last year’s, losing standouts such as safety Landon Collins, linebacker Trey DePriest, quarterback Blake Sims, and, most of all, wide receiver Amari Cooper and running back T.J. Yeldon.  Nick Saban, Lane Kiffin, Kirby Smart and staff have had something of a difficult time replacing these departed players, and this year’s team has likely taken a step back from last year’s Playoff squad.

So far, they’ve suffered for having this much turnover.  After a week one win over Wisconsin in Jerry World AT&T Stadium and a 37-10 victory over Middle Tennessee the week after, Ole Miss came into Bryant-Denney Stadium and, for certain long portions of the game, handed the Tide their lunch.  Alabama would end up going down 43-37 that night, and while the Rebels absolutely should have won by more than six points, this play was the difference in the game: (While watching this unhinged play never gets old, it turned out to be an enormous play when all was said and done.)

So that being said, there is both a statistical and historical argument to be made for an Alabama win on Saturday.

I found this tweet in an article by SBNation’s Bill Connelly (I’ll get back to that later) that, to be honest with you, kind of startled me. This is from ESPN’s David Hale, on Greyson Lambert and how he handles (or doesn’t handle) pressure:

Some potentially concerning stats on Greyson Lambert for #UGA fans looking ahead to Bama… pic.twitter.com/xCNur1Kb2w

— David Hale (@DavidHaleESPN) September 29, 2015

So, if Alabama’s pass rush can get through to Lambert, it’ll be a long day for Georgia’s offense.  Of course, they may very well not get through to Lambert, and that may be an issue.  Back to that Connelly article:

It’s been a while since Alabama’s had an impressive pass rush. That’s partially by design; Saban’s and Kirby Smart’s defense is based on leverage, swarming and gang tackling more than risk. But the baseline sack rate has still been lower than preferred over the last couple of seasons.

The needle seems to be pointed up. Alabama ranks 42nd in Adj. Sack Rate; the Tide aren’t generating a ton of pressure on passing downs, but linemen Jonathan Allen and Da’Shawn Hand are beating linemen by themselves. They have combined for 5.5 sacks, while everybody else on the team has just 4.5.

Pressure could be vital. Alabama’s secondary is still the weakest link in the defense, and Greyson Lambert has proven that, when given time, he can do devastating things. Since beginning the Vanderbilt game 0-for-7 against the Commodores’ increasingly tricky defense, he has completed 44 of 49 for 592 yards.

With that, we can most likely wrap up the statistical argument right here.  Now, it’s time to delve into the historical argument behind why Alabama should go into Saturday favored instead of being a two-point underdog.

Since 2012, Alabama has remarkably only lost five times.  I’m excluding 2011 because they’re only loss that season was to #1 LSU in the greatest 9-6 game in college football history.  But think about that for a second; five times.  Over the course of 3+ seasons.  That’s amazing.  But this historical argument is about the teams they lost to, so let’s look at that.

In 2012, they lost at home to Texas A&M in large part due to the heroics of that year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Johnny Manziel.  Who remembers this play?

The Tide went on to win a national title that year, overpowering Notre Dame 42-14 in Miami.  The A&M loss was their only defeat in an otherwise perfect season.  The point is, A&M’s was an offense designed to spread out the opponent, something Alabama was simply not ready for.

Fast forward to 2013 and Alabama had won their first 11 games in hopes of a three-peat.  There was one, final, looming task in front of them to complete an undefeated regular season, and it came in the person of the Auburn Tigers.  While Alabama’s inability to kick a field goal (and their continued attempts at doing so) played a large part in the final outcome of the game, plays like this one did too.  Here is the game tying touchdown for Auburn, a play that is as spread offense as it gets.

Their next loss would come in their next game, against yet another spread offense in the Oklahoma Sooners.  OU quarterback Trevor Knight had the game of his life, throwing for 348 yards and four touchdowns.  Alabama simply couldn’t keep up, and would go on to lose 45-31.

A year later, the Tide, out for revenge after the disappointing finish to the previous season’s campaign, went into their game at Ole Miss ranked as the #1 team in the land.  While their defense did better against Hugh Freeze’s spread, they would go on to lose 23-17. Another spread offense had beaten the mighty Tide.

Finally, the team made the inaugural College Football Playoff as the #1 seed, despite having lost in the regular season.  Their opponent in the semifinal would be Ohio State, a team, and spread offense, on its third-string quarterback, Cardale Jones.  While Jones didn’t have that great of a game statistically (18-35, 243 yards, one touchdown, one interception), the Buckeyes rushed for almost 300 yards behind Ezekiel Elliott.  It was as shocking a game as there was in college football last season, and it happened for one simple reason: Alabama could not stop Ohio State’s spread look.

So what’s the point in me saying all this?  Well, Georgia is not a spread offense.  While Nick Chubb has had an amazing start to his season and even elicited absurd comparisons to Herschel Walker, the offense won’t be working the perimeter of the field like 2012 Texas A&M, 2013 Auburn, 2013 Oklahoma, 2014 and 2015 Ole Miss, and 2014 Ohio State were able to.  They’ll be playing in the trenches, which may bode well for Bama.  And, in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m predicting that the Tide will roll in Athens.

But no matter what the result of today’s game is, there is one thing that needs to be certain here: it’s way too early to count out Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide.

If you weren’t around to digest all of the action in college football this weekend, well, sorry.  Week 3 of the season brought the first (and probably not the last) Saturday of wild and wacky happenings, as Ole Miss beat Alabama, Ohio State looked ready to lose to Northern Illinois, and SEC West ex-hopefuls Auburn and Arkansas withered against LSU and Texas Tech, respectively.  And while there weren’t exactly that many upsets, per se, this Saturday just felt… different.

This is why it was different: virtually every team in the top 10 got tested in some fashion.  #1 ranked Ohio State was pushed to the brink by the pesky Huskies of Northern Illinois.  For basically the entire game, the Bucks looked terrible, and even made a QB change from Cardale Jones to JT Barrett in the second quarter; Jones threw two picks in the early going.  It’s worth noting that they did win 20-13, but so many questions remain for the defending champs.

As for Alabama, they encountered an even worse fate.  They would be dispatched by Ole Miss in a tight, high-scoring, and rather long 43-37 affair.  While Ole Miss did have some luck in pulling off the upset (see play below), the Tide were dominated and were down 43-24 in the late going.

TCU also had to deal with a test, this one against in-state rival SMU.  At home, the Horned Frogs let the Mustangs pull within five with just over eight minutes to play in the fourth quarter.  While Gary Patterson’s team was able to pull away late, SMU did have the ball with a chance to take the lead and six minutes to play; however, they would turn it over on downs, and TCU survived.

As for the other major upset, #6 ranked USC was toppled by perennial foe Stanford at home; the Cardinal, after being left for dead after a stunning opening week loss to Northwestern, have crept back into the AP Top 25 at #21.  They won the game against USC by controlling the ball in the second half and limiting the potent Trojan offense to just 20:31 of possession for the game.

The other top 10 teams (Michigan State, Georgia, Notre Dame, Florida State, UCLA) all won, and #5 Baylor was off.  And even that being said, last Saturday certainly did not disappoint.

But it also left us with a serious conundrum: who should be #1?

If you like sticking with the status quo, then you’re probably going with Ohio State.  And if you’re going with Ohio State, then… I’m sorry. I would strongly disagree with you.

They just don’t look good.  They sleepwalked through their second straight home win Saturday (they turned in a similarly sleepy performance against Hawaii in a 31-0 win the week before) and it looks like they will be facing the same curse that has befallen every team (other than Alabama) this side of 1995 Nebraska; the curse of trying to become a repeat champion.

And, as Stewart Mandel of Fox Sports writes, it isn’t happening this year, either:

Alas, it appears we will go yet another season without seeing college football’s elusive unicorn – The Unbeatable Preseason No. 1 Team. Following in the footsteps of 2005USC, 2009 Florida, 2013 Alabama and 2014 Florida State, 2015 Ohio State appears to be yet another ostensibly loaded defending national champ that, it turns out, has issues just like everyone else.

Mind you, the Buckeyes’ are particularly puzzling. How does an offense with Cardale Jones, J.T. Barrett, Ezekiel Elliott,Braxton Miller, Michael Thomas and four veteran O-lineman score just 13 points against Northern Illinois? Like those aforementioned teams, Ohio State will likely remain a contender into December but hardly the overwhelming favorite it appeared a couple of weeks ago.

This should serve to us as a lesson of how difficult it is to repeat in sports.  And Ohio State won’t be doing it this year, so why make them #1 now?

As for Michigan State, they have a case, but not a strong one.  While they moved up to #2 in this week’s poll (leap frogging TCU for no particular reason), they haven’t looked overly impressive, either, save for a strong game against Oregon in East Lansing on September 12. Western Michigan and Air Force both played them well, and this may be something to remember as Sparty gets into its conference slate. But if they and the Buckeyes can both win out against fairly easy schedules, it could set up a Game of the Century in Columbus on November 21.  Stay tuned.

The aforementioned Horned Frogs have also looked somewhat uninspired, and, other than a cupcake game against Stephen F. Austin, have been pushed by Minnesota and SMU.  It should be duly noted that Minnesota, whom TCU beat on the road on the season’s opening night, has beaten Colorado State and Kent State in its last two games by a combined total of six points.  That being said, I would actually put them at #1, if only for this week.  They have most of the players back from last year’s squad and have come to play in both of their games.  Their defense is nowhere good enough to win or even compete for a national title right now, but they have a track record and a history of success with the players currently on the team. While their defense has been disappointing, their offense looks as if it is firing on all cylinders, and most importantly, they have passed the eye test so far in this young season.

And as for the other team I would put in my top 4 for this week? Baylor.  Yes, they haven’t looked great either, but, again, track record must be absolutely critical when ranking teams.  And after all, I picked Baylor to win the national title, so that has to bear some consideration, right?  Only kidding.

Yes, Ole Miss did look dominant against Alabama, but to be very honest with you, I thought Alabama was overrated in the first place. They should have never been as high as #2 and, by extension, Ole Miss shouldn’t be as high as tied for third in the latest AP poll.

My point is that it is far, far too soon to be passing out judgment on the college football season, because there is probably more carnage on the way.  We still have to remember that it’s early in the season, and even though Ohio State looks like a cross between 2014 Florida State and 2011 Auburn, it’s still a little to early to be overreacting to teams looking unimpressive.  But if we get another week like this one, well, I’ll have to write another one of these articles.

I don’t know for sure who number one should be.  But I did take a guess, at least.  I’m more than happy to put my name and face to putting TCU at #1 and picking Baylor as my national champion.

But I can’t pretend to have any idea what’s coming next week, or in that case, the rest of the season.

*P.S.: This is what my top 10 would look like if I had an AP ballot. I don’t, obviously, but this is what I would have done. Here it is:

1. TCU
2. Ohio State
3. Michigan State
4. Baylor
5. Notre Dame
6. Georgia
7. Ole Miss
8. UCLA
9. LSU
10. Florida State

Let me know what’s right and wrong in the comments section!

College football season is now just four days away; that’s awesome, awesome news.  One of the headline games of the sport’s opening weekend will occur Monday night in Blacksburg, when the Hokies of Virginia Tech bring their lunch-pail D, their Beamer Ball, and their Enter Sandman into Lane Stadium as they host the defending champion Ohio State Buckeyes; again, wonderful.

However there is one piece of not-so-awesome news that pertains to college football, and specifically Virginia Tech, and that is the thought of fining players for various transgressions.

Now, you must be thinking that this is some kind of sick joke; that’s what I was thinking when I first heard the story.  But it isn’t, and there is even photographic evidence:

#BREAKING: #VaTech players apparently assessed fines for missing meals, practices http://t.co/bHZE0NNRqp#Hokiespic.twitter.com/9j712UL7uA

— RTDSports (@RTDSports) August 27, 2015

Yeah, a fining system makes perfect sense… in the pro game.  For the record, Virginia Tech Athletic Director Whit Babcock put an end to the system that was initially proposed by Defensive Coordinator Bud Foster.  So how was Virginia Tech going to get away with this, if Foster got his wish?

On January 17th, the schools in the Power 5 conferences got together at the NCAA convention and voted 79-1 in favor of a cost-of-attendance stipend.  These schools were able to get this done because, as you may remember, they were given autonomy by the NCAA last August to make their own rules, free of those set by the NCAA.  This is what ESPN’s Mitch Sherman wrote about it at the time:

Stipends, determined by institutions under federally created guidelines, have been estimated at $2,000 to $4,000 annually. They are designed to cover the cost-of-living expenses that fall outside athletic scholarships.

Group of Five and other non-football playing Division I conferences can opt to enact the proposals passed Saturday as early as next fall.

And many schools are doing just that; Virginia Tech is one of them. As I understand it, this stipend is designed to help the players pay to live on campus and keep a roof over their heads.  There isn’t anything wrong with that; even if you are opposed to the payment of college athletes, this rule tangibly benefits the players without actually paying them, per se.

Another godawful element to the Foster Fine System?  The inconsistency.  Go take another look at the chart and you’ll notice something.  That something is the difference between, say, missing a Monday class and getting an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.  Not being in that Monday, Wednesday, or Friday class will set you back $30, but a lapse in judgment on the field will cost you $100.  The other things that will cost a player more than missing a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday class?  Forgetting your equipment for practice, having a dirty dorm room, and having a dirty locker.  That’s nice.

And you’re still thinking that Virginia Tech is the only school even thinking of doing this.  No, no, no, no, no, there’s another school and another coach deliberating the adoption of this practice, per ESPN’s Joe Schad:

Cincinnati’s Tommy Tuberville said he will consider withholding some cost of attendance money for off the field shortcomings/violations.

— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) August 27, 2015

Yes, now there are two schools who have at least given thought to the idea of taking a chunk of the little money the players get because of minor off-field transgressions.  Kevin Trahan of VICE Sports wrote to this point a couple of days ago:

This time, the athletic director was on the coach’s side, as Cincinnati AD Mike Bohn said that he supports using fines as “a tool”—a tool to take money out of a supposed academic-based scholarship due to “accountability” related to athletics.

That’s all well and good, but expect Bohn to get a memo from the NCAA soon enough. Subject line, Re: Shut up. There will be no fines at Virginia Tech this season, or at Cincinnati, because nobody riding the gold-plated gravy train of big-time college sports administration wants the association to lose its future legal battles.

In the NFL, teams can fine players because those players are employees earning salaries, and they’ve agreed to having those salaries docked through collective bargaining. In college football, players don’t have those same fundamental economic rights. At least not yet.

Absolutely.  Players in the NCAA don’t have collective bargaining. Whether they should or not is a matter of much debate; after all, the NLRB recently denied the request of Northwestern football players to unionize.  No matter what you think, it simply isn’t fair that players who have no workers’ rights have to also allow their coaches to take their money.

Before you ask: sure, players should be going to class (that’s why they’re there) and there’s nothing wrong with coaches wanting to incentivize class attendance/good in-class behavior.  But, in Foster’s case, fining the players only $30 for missing certain classes but a full $100 for unsportsmanlike conduct?  Come on, especially when you consider that the stipend the players receive may only be $2,000.  So a player could hypothetically lose 5% of his stipend because of one dumb play.

It should bear repeating, however, that Virginia Tech’s AD killed the idea very shortly after Foster announced it.  He probably killed it because he didn’t think that the Hokie players were employees of Virginia Tech or head coach Frank Beamer.

And this is something that Spencer Hall of SBNation has already written about:

Virginia Tech laid waste to the system in a matter of hours for a good reason. Fining athletes is something professional leagues do because they are professionals — paid, well-compensated employees of a corporation, the kind of companies that have definite labor laws, obligations to their employees, and rules for behavior. (In the NFL, the person in charge of some of those rules is Roger Goodell, so maybe “rules” and “consistent standards” are misnomers, but let’s get back on topic.)

If you are a student-athlete — a designation Virginia Tech and every other college football program would love to keep around — then you are not an employee. You play for the love of the game alone, plus a scholarship and cost of attendance and maybe a few under-the-table fringe benefits on the side. Those side benefits are vastly overrated in value. Mostly a few hundred here, maybe a few thousand there if you’re lucky.

We’ve had this discussion before, and we’ll have it again right now. Things are not free, unless they’re classified as amateur sports. The company store has been theoretically outlawed in the United States for years, unless we call it amateur sports. We are completely opposed to paying people with things they often don’t want or need, unless it’s amateur sports. You can’t underpay people for decades on end, unless we’re talking about amateur sports.

You don’t defend a system that deliberately shorts people their worth unless: amateur sports.

And this is the way of amateur sports: screw over the players while the coaches and institutions get all of the wealth and power.  And who does a good lion’s share of that work for the coaches and institutions? The players.

For the record, this isn’t an essay in favor of paying college athletes. But there is no doubt that these players should be able to make money off themselves and their likenesses; their inability to do so has at least partially helped to rob our conglomerate of the delightful NCAA Football video game series.  But that game shouldn’t be made again until the players can make money off their appearance in it; we all know who this dude is, from NCAA Football 14:

QB #2 was the previous year’s Heisman winner and maybe the most unstoppable sports video game character this side of Madden 2004 Michael Vick.  QB #2 went on to be a first round pick in the next year’s NFL draft.  QB #2 couldn’t make any money off of his awesomeness in the game, but he did try to make money off other things.  And QB #2, like the Virginia Tech and Cincinnati football players, had no collective bargaining rights to protect himself in case of something like a fine system being enforced on him.

You’ve figured it out; QB #2 is Johnny Manziel.  Anyway, let’s get back to the point.

While I understand why student-athletes want to be paid, the value of receiving a free education in the greatest country in the world is kind of a huge benefit, too.  While some student-athletes are really more athlete than student, many athletes do go to college for the education. But this is why it’s easy to understand the plight of college athletes: they are being treated like employees without being compensated like employees would be.

And it would be fair for employees to be fined for shortcomings; NFL players are fined every single day.  That’s fair; those players are getting paid to do a job, and are expected to do it well.  But, in amateur sports?  The players are being fined, even though they are nothing near employees.

They’re volunteers, playing for the love of the game and being exploited time and time again by the amateur system.

The system that allowed Foster and Tuberville to think about fining their players in the first place.