Andy

Yeah, I think it's a reflection of Tomlin getting all he can from the team in the regular season. They don't have another gear.

Yeah I don't feel comfortable with either side of it. My heart says that Al Golden is the best DC in the country and if Texas can reasonably slow OSU's offense down, so can he. But ND is basically on its backup OL and DL and its best offensive player is playing at 60% or so. There are a lot more paths to victory for the Buckeyes than for ND.

There's something particularly delicious after the last 30 years of mostly misery that Notre Dame is the first team in college football history to win two major bowl games in one season (I know it was never possible before) Playing with pretty much a backup offensive line and one remaining starter on the defensive line and they beat Georgia and Penn State back to back, holy hell.

Pretty much every possible complaint about this format can be solved by getting rid of the pointless conference championship games, which in case anyone needed a refresher were invented pretty much from nowhere by SEC commissioner Roy Kramer 30-odd years ago to make TV money. There was never a competitive reason for them to exist. Getting rid of them enables the calendar to move up so the first round of the playoff can be the current CCG weekend (or the current Army-Navy weekend) and the second can be the one the first round was. That enables you to move both those rounds to campus sites and enables students to be on campus for them, which I view as a must. Then the semifinals can be at 2 cool bowl sites (presumably the Rose and Sugar) on New Year's, and the title game can be back where it was in the 4 team era. No need to fight with the NFL for time slots. It also nukes any reason to reserve byes for anybody. No one is playing some made up "extra" game, so you can seed the bracket however you want without worrying about "devaluing" title games. Would it be hard to determine conference champs this way? Sure. But 1) it wouldn't be so difficult if the conferences didn't expand beyond all reason*, and 2) who flipping cares who wins a conference in this sport now except as a means to get to the playoff? You think any Georgia fan will really care years from now that they were 2024 SEC champs when they lost a quarterfinal game? Determine the auto bids by tiebreaker or CFP rankings or whatever you want. The problem is no one in any of the conferences has any incentive to do this, so we'll keep those games and whatever the next format is will be clunkier than this one because of it. * Also, if the B1G and SEC didn't decide to mutilate other conferences for money right after this format was proposed, the byes would probably have been Oregon, Ohio State, Georgia and Texas and no one would've batted an eye.

It's kinda fitting considering certain circles of the college football Internet have included the two fan bases arguing with each other over who should be ranked higher for much of the season. I guess we'll find out who was right.

Tonight was the first time sports has made me cry since the World Series and damn I missed it.

According to Mustache Man, Ohio State is 2 point underdogs against Texas. I'm rarely at a loss for understanding a line, but I'm bewildered by that. ETA - now he's showing Ohio State -6. I don't know what I saw before.

I think that was clearly a "we don't want to make that call at this point in the game" decision. Anything short of the dirtiest possible hit was gonna get overlooked there.

Whoever wins is already looking at a 2 day rest disadvantage against Penn State, and the next game is a week from tomorrow. With the obvious caveat that public safety comes first, they should clearly be trying to play the game as soon as they can to not exacerbate the issues those teams are already facing.

Every stupid pro SEC narrative has been crushed to pieces with its champion against Notre Dame the last team to play. Feels like a trap.

I've never hated a signing more and been proven so correct. The Cubs had just gone through 2 postseason runs in which they rode their closer like a rented mule and then they signed this guy and said right off the top that he'd never pitch back-to-back days because they were scared of him getting hurt. And then he got hurt anyway 2 months into a 2-year contract, and before July was out he'd thrown his last pitch in the major leagues. What a stupid decision that was.

I think the Cubs' computers know all this too, and that's why they were perfectly fine trading away Paredes.

With Beck they probably would be. It actually opened as a pick 'em. As much as people will talk about the Beck factor, Notre Dame is looking like they're going to have 2 of the 9 preseason starters along the two lines available for this game because injuries have taken out all the rest of them. That seems like a lot to overcome for a team so dependent on defense and running the ball.

I badly want Texas to yak it up against Clemson so we can ask why a team that beat zero ranked opponents and only one team that seems to be clearly at least good (A&M) was in. But somehow that wouldn't be the discussion even if that happened.

This was a stupid discussion when Notre Dame was on the other end of it and it's stupid now. Indiana was in because Alabama lost to TWO crappy teams (Oklahoma and Vanderbilt) and didn't have enough good wins to make up for it. If they had lost to only one crappy team and to Tennessee, then they're in and no one really bats an eye. But they lost to two. If Ole Miss had just beaten a Kentucky team that literally beat no other power-conference team all year - and got utterly trucked by the same Louisville team that SMU beat - then they're in and no one really bats an eye. But they didn't. If South Carolina had beaten any of the 3 teams they lost to, then maybe they're in. (This is probably the one team I feel bad for, because the refs arguably screwed them out of the LSU game.) But they didn't. If we're going to ban every team that ever takes a lopsided playoff L from the playoff, we're going to be running out of teams very quickly.

If you're going to have a several-rounds-long playoff that starts after Thanksgiving and ends in January, there is essentially no way to do it without going head to head with the NFL at some point. The semifinals, taking place in the Cotton and Orange bowls, were placed on a Thursday and Friday, Jan. 9-10, in order to avoid the NFL, which should make for some interesting attendance situations.

Technically there is nothing stopping that if the players and coaches both agree. In the Penn State player's case, it seems as though he had to leave in order to go on visits and pick his next school. And as Derwood points out, there's an academic calendar in play as well.

Sammy Sosa released a statement today apologizing for using steroids (without actually saying the word 'steroids'). Literal moments later the Cubs released a statement inviting Sammy to the next Cubs Convention. Look forward to seeing him at a game. https://www.marqueesportsnetwork.com/a-major-update-on-sammy-sosa-and-the-cubs-tom-ricketts/

It wasn't even code. Hawkins might as well have been wearing a baseball cap with "MATT SHAW FOR THIRD BASE" on it.

Unfortunately that's how the game is played now. It's pretty much the same strategy Boston used to win the championship last year, they just have better players so it works.

And you thought we were done with Mustache Man after COVID 5-7 Louisiana Tech will play in the game instead.

What a weird-ass coaching carousel. Scott Frost going back to UCF. Rich Rodriguez going back to West Virginia (his last tenure there ended with lawsuits!). Bill Belichick (?!?) going to North Carolina. Dan Mullen reportedly on the verge of signing with UNLV. Glad I'm not invested in any of those choices.

As UMF said, I'm sure the Cubs aren't looking at this knowing they will make no effort to keep him after a year. But by the same token Tucker probably isn't going to be signing any kind of extension after seeing the money Soto got unless it's what he expects to get in free agency.

I was never of the mind this trade would be followed by a signing. That doesn't mean I'm against the trade, though.

Carolina is favored over Dallas this weekend, which I only bring up because it's the first time since 2022 they've been the betting favorite in a game. Mission accomplished, boys.