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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly – Conference Championship Day

Posted by EyesOfTX on December 7th, 2008 under Uncategorized

This will be very brief, because I didn’t watch much football yesterday.

It occurs to me that the Big 12 specifically, and major collegiate football in general, have a very big problem on their hands thanks to the outcomes of last week’s BCS formula tabulations and yesterday’s SEC and Big 12 Championship Games.  That problem is:  Credibility.  Or lack thereof.

First to the Big 12.  Huck L Berry was busy last night tabulating stats on the frequency of holding penalties called in the conference this year, and revealed some of his early results elsewhere.  Assuming he finishes the task, I think everyone is going to be amazed at the results.  Well, at least everyone who hasn’t been paying much attention to the games this year.

This was the season that the Big 12 outlawed holding.  No, wait, that’s not right.   This was the season that the Big 12 outlawed the calling of the holding penalty on interior linemen.  This fact is blatantly obvious, even without statistical tabulations, just from watching the games.  Many Texas fans still point to the crew of officials led by the now-infamous Karl Richins as the main culprit, but that’s only because that crew called UT’s highest-profile contests against OU and Texas Tech, in the process penalizing Texas twice for holding and its opponents not a single time.  That the Longhorns managed to still beat OU by ten and come within a second of sneaking past Tech in Lubbock is an extraordinary accomplishment, given that these two teams engage in offensive holding with the same frequency and fervor that Paris Hilton engages in slutty behavior.

The lack of holding calls was not specific to one crew of officials – it was true of every game played this year.  I have no doubt Huck’s calculations will demonstrate this.

The Big 12 outlawed – well, I guess the PC word is “de-emphasized” – the calling of this penalty this season in order to create the high-scoring games we’ve seen.  By golly, it worked.  OU just finished scoring 60+ for the fifth straight game, and though I did not catch the contest after the first quarter, I’m willing to go out on the limb and guess they suffered no holding penalties in the process.   I’m sure the referee for that game – Randy Christal – would prefer to call games according to the book, just as I’m sure he’s been instructed not to do so by the folks who run the conference.

Texas, Texas Tech, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma State all ranked among the national leaders in total offense this season, and the Big 12 is happy.  High-profile Big 12 contests were featured in prime time on ABC and/or ESPN week-in and week-out as the year went on and ratings went up.  We’ll see how it all works out for the conference when these teams are matched up with teams from other conferences in games called by officials from other conferences, who presumably have yet to receive the edict that ignoring holding infractions is expected of them.

So the Big 12’s credibility problem is obvious, and so is the looming credibility crisis faced by major college football in general.  In fact, the former is likely to be largely responsible for the creation of the latter.

Because of the way the BCS is likely to turn out today, the NCAA faces the possibility of the top two ranked teams in the country in the BCS formula at the end of the year being Oklahoma at #1, and Texas at #2.  That would mean that both would have to win their bowl games, and OU would have to overcome Florida in the process.  But assuming that happens, you’d have a situation in which the nominal “national champion” got there despite losing to the “runner-up” on the field of play by double digits on a neutral site.

Such an outcome would forever end any claim to legitimacy for the BCS, and render opponents of the implementation of a season-end playoff system logical eunuchs.  Truthfully, the mere fact that this system allows such a possibility to exist already does.

I suspect Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators will probably bail the BCS out by beating the Sooners in the national “championship” game, but I can’t help thinking it’d almost be worth having OU claim another national title to demonstrate once and for all that the BCS emporer is buck, stark nekkid.

Hook ‘em!!!

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20 Responses

  1. Lumberg said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 7:42 am

    I can’t help thinking it’d almost be worth having OU claim another national title to demonstrate once and for all that the BCS emporer is buck, stark nekkid.

    Yeaahhhh, I’m gonna have to sort of…disagree with you there.

    No way I can wish anything good on those sons of bitches. I think if Texas goes on to an easy victory in the bowl game it won’t matter who wins the traveshamockery in Miami. There will be plenty of people that will say we deserve to be crowned also. In fact, if FL wins and we win, we might be crowned in the AP.

  2. Parlin Hall said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 7:49 am

    Thanks for this write-up, Eyes. Huck’s holding stats will be well worth looking at.

    The economic analogy Scip makes for this offensive fantasy world (’Look how many points we can score if you can’t sack the QB!’) seems to me right on the mark. There’s an irrational exuberance in college football today, and these 60-point efforts are too often based on flimsy derivatives and junk bonds.

  3. zizzyballooba said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 8:03 am

    Couldn’t Paris Hilton’s slutty behavior be considered offensive holding? I guess that depends on perspective.

  4. Levander Williams said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 8:46 am

    Eyes:

    - It’s never a good thing for OU to win anything, unless said win directly and exclusively benefits Texas. I can’t think of any such examples right now, but…

    - I couldn’t be happier that the BCS now has a logjam of one-loss teams near the top. There has never been a better argument for a playoff system than this year.

    - Screw this balkanized mess of conference rules. Between tiebreaker rules, the mix of yes & no on championship games, the variance on whether to observe long-observed regulatory basics like holding, etc, major college football needs a massive overhaul.

    - Speaking of holding, I tried to pay close attention to the holding calls last night, but honestly didn’t see that many egregious examples of OU tackling defenders. Then again, the defensive front seven must first demonstrate a measureable desire to pressure the QB. Through the late first half, much of the Mizzou pass rush shied away from pressure as if the Sooners had poo on their jerseys.

  5. EyesOfTX said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 9:02 am

    Levander, please note that I said “almost” in that last sentence.

  6. Levander Williams said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 9:08 am

    I hear you.

  7. Parlin Hall said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 9:33 am

    Thinking about Tech’s innovative way of protecting Harrell this season, I looked back at the OT game with NU and noticed that the officials called holding on the Huskers but, oddly, not Tech.

    The overall penalties–NU 8 for 55; Tech 2 for 20–suggest sloppy play by an outgunned Nebraska squad. But it seems strange that the referees called the only three holding penalties of the game on Nebraska, including two in a row on the same lineman (Mike Smith, end of half). These were back-to-back plays that would, in each case, have produced first downs deep in Tech territory.

    I’m sure it happens (two holding calls in a row on the same player), but I didn’t see it in the Big 12 this year outside this one game in Lubbock. And, with apologies to Ded, it’s surprising which team seemed guilty of the infraction.

  8. anonymous said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 10:34 am

    OU winning the MNC would do nothing to destroy the BCS. As last night’s love fest over OU’s classless pursuit of a classless 60 point record proved, the media will rally around OU if they win and actually give credit to the BCS for recognizing them as the best one loss team.

  9. Hobzzz said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 10:41 am

    the coaches and AP polls are out and based on the results, it’s inpossible for a split championship. Eyes has it right, the fact that we could end up # 2 behind ou (after beating them by 10) exploits the system for what it is…….shit.

  10. hopefulhorn said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 10:50 am

    I am skeptical that this season’s absurdities and our resulting outrage will change a thing. This ridiculous system screws someone most years and this season it happened to be Texas. The BCS conferences, the bowls and the TV networks control the flow of money as it is and aren’t about to give up that control.

    I think it was Sinclair Lewis who said something like “you can’t expect a man to grasp the obvious when his livelihood depends on his not grasping it.”

  11. (The Original)Tim said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    You all really need to drop this whole “The Entire Big 12 Got away with offensive holding, except for Texas”. The only thing it really does is make you look like a whiny loser.

    You can pull out the stats and show that there were fewer holding calls than last year if you want.

    The only thing you are going to prove to be true are;

    1. There were fewer holding calls and more points this year than in previous years.

    2. There wasn’t a conspiracy against UT, if the Big 12 made an emphasis on not calling holding they allowed UT to also get away with it.

    3. If this is all true, don’t blame the Big 12 for allow it, blame Mack Brown and staff for not taking advantage of it themselves. If every other team in the league, figured this out and coached to hold on every play, why didn’t Mack? Please don’t tell me he is just too classy to make the adjustments to hold, because that just isn’t true. It would mean he was just too stupid to figure this out and implement it in time.

    Ya’ll also need to stop whining about the Big 12 South tiebreaker. In 2008 the Big 12 South was all about Home Field advantage. OU was the only team in the South to go on the road and win a Big game. I don’t like it any more than ya’ll but that’s just the way it is, Texas Tech didn’t go and beat another Good Big 12 South team on the road and neither did UT. OU went to Stillwater and won, and they lost first, that really is the only difference.

  12. ChrisApplewhite said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    Texas doesn’t hold, at least not as a systematized method of protecting the QB. It’s why Colt gets hit/scrambles so much.

    I really, really wish we would, though. It’s a self-inflicted disadvantage, like keeping Davis on the payroll.

    It’s not just pass protection, either. OU’s RBs get all kinds of daylight because the OL never quits, even past the point of legality, when the defense is trying to pursue away from the blocker. We can’t run, mostly because of scheme, and partially because we naively try to do things in an environment where you’d be punished for holding.

    Just grab the guy and don’t let go.

  13. ChrisApplewhite said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    Also, this isn’t new. We’ve been complaining about it for 8 years now. Since 2000, at least.

  14. NateHeupel said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

    Chris, I’m sorry, but UT fans whining about unfair refereeing just doesn’t fly with the rest of the Big 12. Make statements that ridiculous in front of Mark Mangino or Mike Leach and you’ll be either eaten alive or forced to walk the plank.

    Speaking of class…Just have a few more of your fans pony up for another flying banner. That’s classy.

    The screw job is that OU and Missouri were playing instead of OU and Texas. Texas lost all rights to complain about a rematch when they spit the bit against Tech. But if the consensus was that the top two were UT and OU, then it should be OU and UT playing for the Big 12 title. THAT is the game everyone wanted to see.

    There was a very good article on CNNSI.com about running up the score. Here’s a particularly relevant excerpt:
    ———————————————
    Stoops and Brown, men who have managed to reach the pinnacle of their profession while still carrying themselves with class and dignity, were reduced to this level by a system that values political capital, style points and exposure. Don’t blame them. Blame the BCS and the boneheads who keep endorsing it.

    “We’re in what we’re in,” said Stoops, who, when he should have been celebrating, had to explain why he risked injury to his star quarterback in order to run up the score on a fallen opponent. “I can’t change it tonight.”

    No, Stoops and the Sooners had to make a statement…They had to make a statement because of the banner trailing a plane that flew over Arrowhead Stadium on Saturday afternoon. It read “Enjoy the BeatByTexas.com Bowl.”
    ——————————————–

  15. ponderos said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    Mack puts Tech, which beat him head-to-head, at #8.

    http://www.usatoday.com/sports/graphics/coaches_fb_poll_2008/flash.htm

  16. Kansas Horn said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    Well, Leach voted Texas #5, so who gives a shit

  17. Groundhog Day said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    I found Art Briles’ballot interesting. He had Texas at 5. Not exactly an endorsement of the Big 12 and he had a son play for Brown. HMMMM….

  18. theBobs said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

    “The screw job is that OU and Missouri were playing instead of OU and Texas. Texas lost all rights to complain about a rematch when they spit the bit against Tech. But if the consensus was that the top two were UT and OU, then it should be OU and UT playing for the Big 12 title. THAT is the game everyone wanted to see.”

    Once again, okie, everyone DID see that game…

    And despite what you find anyone at SI writing, I defy you to find me an example of Mack throwing a deep pass into the end zone with his first string quarterback with minutes to go and a 34-point lead… we can wait if you need a few minutes there, champ*.

  19. Groundhog Day said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    Also, Butch Davis had OU ahead of Texas despite claiming in 2000 that Miami should have played OU in the NCG over FSU due to identical records and their head to head match up.

    Everyone should make a copy of this poll so coaches who might complain in the future about head to head scenarios can be judged by their actions in this poll.

    I also love how Urban Meyer had his team ranked #1. Is it possible to have a matchup with my two least favorite coaches in football? I’ve always disliked Meyer, but I have grown to really dislike Stoops (I used to respect and like him) in the last few weeks. I can’t believe I will be rooting for a Meyer coached team.

  20. BCS said:

    December 7th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

    It’s official:

    Florida and OU.

    http://cfn.scout.com/2/819181.html

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