Tag: sports

Fixing College Football Conference Championships

The conference championship games were always stupid and should obviously be abolished in light of the way they now generate less revenue than the playoff games and create unnecessary complications for the College Football Playoff. Here is the correct way to determine a college football conference championship in these days of large conferences where all the teams can’t play each other every season.

  1. Conference championships are determined by the conference records.
  2. If two or more teams are tied with the same conference record, the team with the better overall record shall prevail.
  3. If two or more teams are tied with the same conference record and overall record, the head-to-head winner shall prevail.
  4. If two or more teams are tied with the same conference record and overall record and they did not play that season, or the result of the head-to-head game was a tie, the team that has gone longer since last winning the conference championship shall be declared the conference champion.
  5. If two or more teams are tied with the same conference record and overall record and they did not play that season, or the result of the head-to-head game was a tie, and one of the teams joined the conference from a different conference since 2020, the “last conference championship” calculation shall be based on its most recent championship in its previous conference.

In other words, if Minnesota and Washington were to finish in a tie for the Big 10 conference championship next year, Minnesota would be crowned the conference champion since its last conference championship was in 1960, while Washington’s last conference championship was in 2023.

That’s fair, reasonable, and most importantly, respectful of tradition and good for the sport. Look at how the entire country is excited about seeing Indiana being in the Big 10 mix for a change instead of Michigan. And look at how much everyone enjoys seeing new teams in the mix instead of the same six teams taking turns winning the national championship.

This will also permit the CFB to guarantee more spots to conference champions, which is desirable. I’d prefer to see 8 being reserved for conference champions, with 8 at-large invites. March Madness proves that everyone likes to see a dark horse or two included.

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    Alabama Should Be Out

    I’m not militant about the College Football Playoff one way or another, and I’d prefer to see the so-called “conference championship games” dropped from the schedules. But I do have one opinion, and that is Alabama absolutely does not deserve to be in the playoff.

    To lose so comprehensively and finish with -3 rushing yards means you are not a viable contender.

    UPDATE: I did NOT expect Indiana to beat Ohio State after being forced to settle for three FG attempts, and missing one, on their first three trips into scoring territory. And I think that if Ryan Day had coached like the Duke head coach did to upset Virginia for the ACC title, Ohio State would have won. The risk-averse NFL approach is correct on average, but in a big game, you have to coach to win, not to avoid losing.

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    I Don’t Vike That

    It’s truly astonishing how stupid rookie quarterbacks are. Not that their coaches and general managers appear to be much more intelligent.

    At this point, I’d have no problem with the Vikings firing both the GM and the head coach tomorrow. It’s not so much that they’re failing, it’s that they are repeatedly and reliably making the most obviously dumb decisions leading to obvious failure.

    It’s 4th-and-1 inside the Seattle 10. Down by three. Before the snap, I even said: “don’t get cute, just hand it off, don’t put the rookie under pressure.”

    So, naturally, KOC calls a pass because he’s a Smart Boy, Brosmer doesn’t throw the ball right away, but pulls the ball down and decides to try to get away from an onrushing NFL defensive lineman, which works about as well as you’d think. But just to complete the trifecta of retardery, as he’s inevitably going down, Brosmer decides to try flinging the ball with a backhand in the general direction of the end zone.

    Whereupon it is promptly intercepted and run back 90 yards for a touchdown. So now, instead of being tied 3-3, or being down 3-0 with Seattle pinned deep in its own end, you’re down 10-0. Congratu-fucking-lations, Smart Boys!

    Sweet Saint Lombardi, but these people are criminally stupid. Football is complicated, but it is not that hard! I swear, the combination of analytics and Smart Boys trying to be clever is leading to some of the dumbest possible decisions that I’ve ever seen in five decades of watching football.

    The Vikings fans are pretty near unanimous on this one. This comment from the Daily Norseman is one of the more calm and measured responses.

    Stupid fucking coach throwing the ball on 4th and 1 with a QB who doesn’t belong on a NFL roster. He just can’t help himself. Worst playcaller in the league.

    UPDATE: 26-0 was the final score.

    This wasn’t the worst loss in Vikings history, but it might be the most embarrassing. The worst part was the way Kwasi, everyone presumes, leaked stories to Adam Schefter of ESPN about how Max Brosmer was a secret weapon, that he was another Brock Purdy, and that some in the Vikings front office actually liked him better than McCarthy.

    He completed twice as many passes to the Seattle defense as he did to Justin Jefferson, and threw one more touchdown to the Seahawks than he did to the Vikings. Even Christian Ponder never looked this bad, or this unready.

    At this point, Minnesotans are rapidly approaching the point with JJ that they once reached with KG. Go and chase a ring somewhere else with our blessing. You’ve proven your loyalty, and we like you too much to insist that you stay here against your own best interests.

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    The Consequences of Stupidity

    Watching the Vikings implode against a mediocre Chargers team last night would have been painful if I was still capable of feeling anything in that regard. Fortunately, we children of the late, great Bud Grant all have ice in the place where our hearts should be.

    The Vikings are in a bind at quarterback.

    And they deserve zero sympathy for the dilemma because it is of their own making. This is, so far, a botched situation in which the Vikings sabotaged the Vikings.

    The Vikings, you see, could have any of three other quarterbacks starting for them right now and all of them – Sam Darnold, Daniel Jones and Aaron Rodgers – are playing very well elsewhere.

    All of them wanted to play this season for the Vikings.

    All of them.

    I’m absolutely fine with letting Sam Darnold move on to the Seahawks. He’s a good quarterback, but he’s not a great one and he hit his ceiling last year. His price-to-value ratio was just too high. I think, and I thought at the time, that letting an extremely affordable Daniel Jones go instead of telling him that the quarterback job was closed and no competition would be permitted was not only reprehensibly stupid, but indicative of a fundamental problem with whomever was responsible for making that decision.

    It was a classic Smart Boy mistake in which no deviation from the plan can be tolerated, a mistake which reliably leads to failure. If I were the Vikings owner, I would fire the individual responsible, because it is a mindset that is very, very unlikely to ever succeed in a world of variables and probabilities.

    The Jones mistake was compounded by the Rodgers mistake; who cares if the new star-to-be has to wait a second year before getting his shot, especially when he’s now missed 22 out of the 24 games in his short and thus-far unimpressive career. Rodgers sat for three years himself and Jordan Love sat for three years behind him. Both observably benefitted from their long launch ramps.

    The signing of Carson Wentz as a theoretical backup completed the trifecta of stupidity. His decision-making is observably too slow at the NFL level. Sure, the offensive line is terrible, but that means you know you cannot wait to throw the ball! Even an average NFL quarterback would avoid at least half of his sacks and interceptions. And if you know you need two quarterbacks, then why aren’t you signing Jones in the first place?

    Now, perhaps JJ McCarthy will show up next week as the second coming of Tom Brady and lead the Vikes to a rout of the Lions, but that’s highly unlikely. And an unnecessary, so-easily avoidable disaster of this magnitude absolutely calls for consequences at the end of the season.

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    They Have No Regrets

    Carson Wentz is really not giving the Eagles any reason to regret replacing him with Jalen Hurts.

    If he could deliver a reasonably accurate pass, the Vikings would have scored TWICE on one drive. I simply do not understand why the Vikings preferred him over Sam Darnold, Daniel Jones, and Mac Jones as a potential competition/backup to JJ McCarthy.

    UPDATE: Even modestly competent quarterbacking would have sufficed to beat the Eagles today. I truly have not understood some of the decisions made concerning the QB position in Minnesota since Christian Ponder was drafted in the first round in 2011.

    Even the announcers noticed that on the next drive, in the red zone, Wentz was looking RIGHT AT his first option, who would have walked into the end zone untouched, and instead of just throwing him the ball, pulled it down and got sacked.

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    When Change is for the Better

    When I was in high school and college, it was a regular ritual of fall for the Golden Gophers to get absolutely crushed by the nation’s top college football teams. Particularly memorable was the 84-13 defeat at home in 1983, which was part of a 16-0 run by Nebraska from 1963 to 2012.

    Somehow, the Gophers are still in the lead in the series, 38-25-2, a lead to which they added last night by upsetting the #25 Cornhuskers 24-6 thanks to no less than nine (9) sacks by an aggressive, bruising defensive front seven and excellent coverage in the secondary.

    In other sports news, I don’t pay much attention to baseball, but the historic performance by Shohei Ohtani merits a mention, considering that it was arguably the greatest baseball game by a single player in the history of the sport. He hit three home runs – including the first leadoff home run as a pitcher in the history of the major leagues – and struck out 10 batters and gave up only two hits while leading the Dodgers to a 5-1 victory over the Brewers to sweep the National League championship series.

    We never got the chance to see Babe Ruth or Ted Williams play, but we can watch Shohei Ohtani in action, which may actually, incredibly, be to our advantage.

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    Monday Night McCarthy

    After three quarters of the offense doing less than nothing and scoring -1 points, the Vikings finally managed to put it all together and come back for a 27-24 win against the Bears. McCarthy looked frighteningly bad under pressure throughout the first three quarters, holding the ball too long, getting repeatedly sacked, and even throwing a pick-six to an ex-Viking, until apparently Kevin O’Connell told the OC to start throwing the ball down the field to Justin Jefferson. An excellent 4th quarter meant McCarthy finished with respectable stats: 13 of 20 for 143 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 98.5 QBR plus a rushing TD, and in his first game he accomplished something that tended to evade Kurt Cousins in his entire tenure, namely, a big win over a conference rival on national TV.

    Other observations:

    • The defense has to improve its pass rush. It had three sacks; it should have had nine.
    • Jordan Mason was a nice pickup at RB for the Vikings. He looked shifty.
    • Caleb Williams looked like a cross between an eel and the young Russell Wilson in the pocket.
    • Justin Jefferson hasn’t missed a beat. When in doubt, throw him the ball. Also, when not in doubt, throw him the ball.
    • The Vikings clearly missed the Hitman in the secondary. And on the blitz.
    • McCarthy’s accuracy was not great and he was holding the ball a little too long when Chicago was obviously blitzing. On the TD pass to Aaron Jones, the ball was two yards short. But he’s got courage, the other players clearly like him, and the potential is definitely there.
    • McCarthy is the first Vikings quarterback to throw multiple touchdown passes in his debut since Fran Tarkenton threw four against the Bears in 1961.

    All in all, beating Chicago at Soldier Field on Monday Night is not a bad start for a young QB, especially on a night when the defense wasn’t particularly good. And ruining Ben Johnson’s debut as a head coach is just a bonus.

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    Never Seen That Before

    The Golden Gophers were up 59-0 over some team called Northwestern State which looked more like Northwestern College in Roseville. After the stadium ran out of fireworks, and it became clear that even the substitutes were too much for the NSU players, the referee announced that the game had been called by mutual consent midway through the fourth quarter with the score at 66-0.

    I’m not saying it was the wrong decision. In fact, given the circumstances, it was probably the right thing to do. I just want to know why they didn’t call the game early back in the days when the Gophers were losing 73-0 to Nebraska.

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    Line to Go

    I understand why the announcers are encouraged to refer to the yardage point that will give a first down as “the line to gain” since it is a line and not a “first down” in itself. But it’s awkward and doesn’t sound like a football term.

    Which is why I suggest “line to go” to represent the first down line, since it’s in keeping with “first and goal-to-go” and so forth. So, if you’re a producer or an announcer reading this, try it. I suspect it will catch on in a way that “line to gain” won’t.

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    Back in Purple

    It’s very good to see Adam Thielen come back to the Vikes.

    After plenty of rumors this preseason, the Vikings finally added depth at the receiver position— and it’s a familiar name for Minnesota fans.

    On Wednesday NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported Minnesota was finalizing a trade with the Panthers to bring back veteran wideout Adam Thielen. The terms of the deal: the Vikings send a 2026 fifth-round pick and a 2027 fourth-round pick in exchange for Thielen, a conditional 2026 seventh-round pick, and a conditional 2027 fifth-round pick.

    Thielen spent 10 years with the Vikings before joining Carolina in free agency in 2023. Thielen was a fan favorite in Minnesota for those years. He attended Minnesota State and broke into the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Vikings. Thielen developed into a Pro Bowl-caliber wideout and was named to an All-Pro team in 2017.

    Good vibes. Definitely good vibes going into this season. He doesn’t have much speed left, but that’s fine, since he’s always been the hands guy.

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