I didn’t want to have to write anything about the Notre Dame/Navy game in Dublin– it’s 40-10 in disfavor of the Midshipmen right now– but then Jungle Bird showed up, and the environment demanded a digital response. Here’s the video:
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Related
The U.S. Open golf tournament turned interesting shortly after it ended
Brendan is in Dallas for this game, but he refused to preview it for ALDLAND because he didn’t “want to jinx anything like I did with Barca in the champs league,” whatever that means. The only thing I don’t want to jinx is the chance that the earth under the megastadium opens up and swallows both teams, and I don’t think a quick preview of the game will do that.
Another person who fears no jinx is Floyd Mayweather, who apparently put $3 million on Michigan to cover the fourteen-point spread. If anything could jinx an outcome, it would seem to be publicly betting $3 million on that outcome.
Operating with a far lower budget, here’s a video preview of tonight’s game:
If you’re still with me and care at this point what I think about the game, it’s that I can’t see a path to victory for Michigan. I may have a blind spot in that regard, but let’s be real: Alabama’s going to win. The only question is whether Floyd Mayweather will win too.
In less than three hours, Boise State will take on Michigan State in a Top-25 battle in East Lansing. Playing a ranked opponent in the first game is a risky proposition, especially when it’s Boise State. Just ask Georgia. Still, the Michigan State team that won a share of the Big Ten championship last season (and should have gone to the Rose Bowl as a result) is without quarterback Kirk Cousins and offensive coordinator Don Treadwell, and their strengths– defense and the running game– are somewhat diminished. This isn’t the same Boise Broncos team either, though, especially in the absence of quarterback Kellen Moore, which is why I think MSU will handle their visiting opponents tonight. (Field color may also be a factor.)
As my favorite ESPN.com feature illustrates, the rest of the nation, and indeed the world, agrees with me. By now your eyes have been drawn to a few exceptions, of which there are two kinds. The first is less interesting for sports purposes. These are usually low-population states, and their apparent bucking of the trend usually is the result of a near-even split of a very small number of participants. Here, those states are Alaska (23), Vermont (20), and Rhode Island (45). Social scientists probably have something to say about this interactive map as a tool to measure things like local awareness of broader issues and the availability of internet access.
The second sort is more interesting for sports purposes. These are the states where participants reject rational objectivity and choose the team they want to win the game, rather than the team they think will win the game. Their team could be a 7.5-point dog on the road and they’d still pick them. The overall vote could be two-to-one against them, and they’ll swing even harder in the opposite direction. (Yes, there are some remote reasons why people in Idaho, Montana, and Utah might rationally believe Boise State will win tonight, but please be quiet Mister Social Scientist.)
The truth, of course, is that all voters are of the second type. Or, at least, we all approach the extreme of the second type in positive correlation with the strength of our emotional connection to at least one of the teams involved, and I’m really ok with that. In fact, I love it.
As football season regularizes our schedule, ALDLAND’s regular Monday recaps will return in short order, but given the hype of last night’s CFB season-opener, some instant reaction seems appropriate.
We go now to the most reactionary of instant reactors. Clay Travis writes:
Every time I see SEC commissioner Mike Slive at big games, he tells me the same thing, he’s not rooting for either team, he’s just rooting for the officials.
On Thursday night en route to a South Carolina 17-13 victory, Slive’s team lost.
SEC officials missed a crucial and clear pass interference call that would have given Vanderbilt a first down at the South Carolina 47. Would the Commodores have scored a touchdown to win? Maybe not, but we’ll never know.
Instead fans left fuming over the latest, greatest near miss Vanderbilt Commodore upset victory.
Read the rest here.
College football starts tonight, when Vanderbilt hosts South Carolina in the first game of the season. With the national spotlight on Nashville, I’ve decided I’m allowed to make this preview collection extremely Commodore-heavy.
There are a number of reasons this game is a great season opener. First, it pits two division rivals against each other. In an era in which teams don’t play non-cupcakes until October to boost their BCS rankings, the value of an in-conference, in-division game to lead off opening day cannot be overstated. Second, that conference just happens to be the Southeastern Conference, the top one in the country. Third, these teams actually are somewhat competitive with each other, at least recently. While the overall series isn’t pretty for the black & gold, the Gamecocks are just 3-2 over the last five meetings, and one of those losses came in Columbia. Fourth, SC coach Steve Spurrier has a history of Vanderbilt hatred, which is showing no signs of cooling off. Fifth, the game should be an excellent showcase for the run game, with the visitors’ Heisman candidate competing against the home team’s RB corps, which is top in the conference. Sixth, SC is ranked #9 in the preseason rankings, which is a high ranking.
I’m on record predicting a Vandy win, but did you really expect anything else? Other games of note this weekend include Boise State at Michigan State on Friday and Alabama and Michigan playing in Dallas on Saturday.
The rest of this 2012 college football preview goes like this:
I realize this is likely the least useful preview aggregation I’ve put forth to date, but our sponsorship agreement with Gongshow Hockey hasn’t come through yet, and the site just doesn’t pay like it used to. Also and far more importantly, this week’s podcast took a very thorough look at the national college football scene, so listen to that on your way home from work, and if you’ve got other links that belong in the collection above, let me know, and I’d be happy to add them.
Enjoy the games!
In engaging in this process of writing for a sports blog, I’ve taken the approach of fully immersing myself in the sports media world– starting my days with ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike, reading all of the websites that are linked in the left-hand column of our homepage, following athletes and sports media personalities on twitter, listening to podcasts, and taking in as many games as possible– for better and worse. I know more about sports and the issues surrounding sports than at any point in my life. Just like any other area of interest, though, immersion in the context of today’s myriad media offerings also can lead to a lack of perspective.
One of the steadiest mantras in all of sports chatter is that football is king. I’m not here to question that tenet– wondering, for example, whether it’s most popular because it is in fact more amenable to Americans’ true love, television, than other sports, or whether that amenability is a convenient coincidental characteristic of the inherently popular game– but to confirm it, which I did last night at the grocery store, where I happily was adding to my Fat Tire new state label collection. Keep reading…
College football season is finally here! Join blog founder AD and I, along with a special guest, as we go conference by conference and give you a comprehensive preview of the upcoming season.
Also a shoutout to Felix Hernandez, who notched his fifth complete game shutout of the season, but could not be included in the podcast since this is college football only, and also because it happened while we were recording. Anyway, go ahead and press play.
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Download the ALDLAND podcast at our Podcasts Page or stream it right here:
We haven’t said much about this Penn State mess because we’re busy and because really, what is there to say?
From the initial news of the grand jury investigation through the firing of Joe Paterno, the release of the Freeh Report, and this morning’s announcement of NCAA sanctions, it feels like this thing has reached at least a temporary landing point at which we can breathe, take stock of what’s happened, restore some perspective, and focus on what’s important (i.e., the victims).
All of us, that is, except for one group: current Penn State students. (There’s no point in even approaching the parallel universe in which the Paterno family steadfastly resides. That’s expected, if indefensible.) They rioted furiously when the university fired Paterno, and from the sounds of it, little has changed today. In anticipation of the announcement of NCAA sanctions, ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike checked in this morning with a correspondent in State College, PA, who had clips from two students responding to yesterday’s removal of the Paterno statue outside Beaver Stadium. My attempted transcriptions, first of student one:
Removing the Paterno statue did nothing to heal us. How does that heal us?
The emphasis in this statement was on the “us,” as in, “us students.” To them I ask, why do you need healing? What happened to you? Unless Jerry Sandusky raped you, you are not a victim in need of healing. Of course it didn’t heal you. It has nothing to do with you.
Student two:
Doctor Rodney Erickson said that he was going to protect JoePa’s legacy. How does this protect his legacy?
First, the kid actually said “Doctor Rodney Erickson.” Just so we’re clear. Secondly, to answer his question, it doesn’t protect “JoePa[‘s]” legacy in any way. Paterno’s “legacy” was a charade, a falsity Paterno and others protected at the expense of children. In reality, Paterno’s legacy is this coverup. That’s the legacy Paterno advanced through his dying day, and that’s the legacy Erickson protected by removing a monument to Paterno’s fraudulent legacy. Third, now seems like as good a time as any to stop calling him “JoePa.”
I think we wanted to think that the students initially rioted because they didn’t quite understand, but now that all the information is out in the sunlight and there’s been time for clearer heads to prevail, the students at the geographic locus of this would come in line with the general public. We’re told that Penn State is a big school, that not everybody thinks the same way, that they aren’t wearing blinders. The only data points we get from them– the initial riots and rallies, the Big Brother-esque turning off of the campus televisions during the Freeh Report announcement, Matt Millen, incoming recruits, and now these comments– indicate that the PSU campus residents are as delusional as ever.
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Related
ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap: Giving a Voice to Penn State’s Victims – Huffington Post
Previously
“It sounds like an attempt to avoid personal liability”
Joe Paterno to retire at season’s end
Growing Up Penn State
Today, USA Today makes sure you don’t:
Endorsement is expected Tuesday for an historic four-team major college football playoff – only there’ll be more to the new system than that.
It likely will entail a total of seven games each year, including four top-tier bowls apart from the playoff, according to two officials involved in the discussions. They spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because those details haven’t been publicly released.
All told, the system would incorporate six bowls. Two would rotate each year as playoff semifinal sites, and the other four would serve as attractive landing spots for the best non-playoff teams.
The playoff final – the national championship game – would be put up for bid.
Conference commissioners endorsed the concept of a four-team playoff last week, and will meet Tuesday in Washington, D.C., with an oversight committee of university presidents and chancellors. Those CEOs have final say.
Coming out of meetings in Chicago last week, many of the details of the playoff and bowl plan remained to be worked out.
The “most likely” overall format, one of the officials told USA TODAY, would complement the three-game playoff with four bowls. Among other things, those bowls would accommodate teams that win conference championships but don’t make the playoff or can’t play in their affiliated bowl – for instance, the Rose in the case of a Big Ten champion – because the bowl is serving as a semifinal.
The system would allow the top-tier bowls and conferences to maintain their ties and continue to give marquee-league champions access to high-profile, high-paying postseason games.
This all is separate from the national championship game. An existing bowl could bid for it separately.
The full story online is here.
Intransigence by corporate interests, media interests, and Big Ten leadership all have been the objects of blame for college football’s failure to move away from the BCS-based postseason format, and many of those same interests will continue to face blame when dissatisfaction builds with the newly proposed “plus one” system set to begin after the current BCS contract runs out in 2013. Particularly in SEC and Big XII country, Jim Delaney, commissioner of the Big 10, has played the role of lightning rod, the embodiment of resistance new college football’s new competitive order
Interestingly, though, it appears that it was from Delaney’s Big 10 that the vision of college football’s yet-unrealized future first emanated. From The Milwaukee Journal, November 1, 1966:
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