College football thoughts, Part II

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent sports editor

Yesterday’s college football thoughts centered around Urban Meyer, conference title games, the College Football Playoff and Central Florida’s self-proclaimed national championship.

Today, I’ll address a few other topics, starting with Michigan.

Michigan Wolverines

One way or another, it’s going to be an interesting season in Ann Arbor. Jim Harbaugh is in his fourth season and has yet to sniff a division title, much less a Big Ten championship. Fans are restless.

One has to wonder what’s going to happen if the Wolverines lose two or three conference games again. It could happen, because Michigan State and Penn State are road games. Wisconsin is a home game and will be a challenge, and Nebraska could give Michigan some problems. Then again, maybe Michigan will pull things together and have an outstanding season.

As head coach, Harbaugh has yet to defeat Ohio State. Four straight losses to the Buckeyes wouldn’t exactly go over well up north.

One more thing about Harbaugh – he has a track record of success, but he hasn’t been any one place for very long. Three years at San Diego, four years at Stanford, four years with the San Francisco 49ers, and now four years with Michigan. One could easily and accurately argue that moves from San Diego and Stanford were moves up, while Michigan could be argued as “There’s no place like home”, since he played there in the 1980’s. It can also be argued that his personality grates on the wrong people.

More on the college football playoff

It’s not a perfect system, but it seems to be better than the previous way things were done. At some point, it’ll probably expand to eight teams. In the meantime, questions remain. If you don’t win your conference, should you qualify for the playoff? If you finished 13-0 on a schedule loaded with easy opponents, should you get in? What about Notre Dame, a team that doesn’t belong to a conference and only plays 12 games?
The point is, someone is always going to get left out, regardless if it’s four, six or eight teams.

By the way – many Ohio State fans were unhappy with the playoff snub last year. I’m an Ohio State fan and I don’t believe they deserved to get in the playoff, simply because they lost to Iowa by 31, and it really wasn’t that close.

Bowl games

Are there too many? Yes. Do I try to watch at least some of each of them? Yes, because I love college football.

There will be 40 bowl games this season, and 43 next season. That’s a lot, and it means 6-6 and 5-7 teams will go bowling, again. What makes even less sense is the fact that many of the smaller bowls are actually money losers for participating schools, who are forced to buy thousands of tickets and hope their fans will purchase them. Then there’s team travel, acommodations, etc, which isn’t cheap.

While Alabama may be a lovely state (I’ve never been there), from a fan’s standpoint, spending money around the holidays to go to the Dollar General Bowl in Mobile might not be appealing, especially when it’s on television.

Bowl games used to be a reward for a great season. Then it became a reward for a good season. It’s to the point where if you had a remotely average season, you’re going to a bowl game.

But, I suppose it depends on how you look at it. If you’re team hasn’t been to a bowl game in years, it’s exciting. If you had conference or national championship hopes and wind up in the Camping World Bowl, it’s a huge letdown.

Schedules

One of unique things about college football is scheduling. Outside of league or conference games, the possibilities are endless. Most of the big time schools have no problem scheduling lesser teams, then beating them to a pulp. The lesser schools will take their lumps in exchange for a hefty paycheck.

A couple of non-conference schedules caught my eye, including Wisconsin. The Badgers play Western Kentucky, New Mexico and BYU. WKU was 6-7, BYU was 4-9 and New Mexico was 3-9. Oregon will play Bowling Green, Portland State and San Jose State, three teams that went a combined 4-34.

Occasionally you’ll see the top schools square off early in the season, but for the most part, if a team plays a loaded conference schedule, it may not want to make things more difficult with a tough non-conference schedule.

The triple option

In the 1970’s, plenty of teams were running the old triple option. Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma are prime examples of teams that ran the wishbone offense, which was breathtaking when it was run properly and to its full potential. Nebraska used the Option-I in the 80’s and 90’s, and it was devastating.

So what happened to it? In a nutshell, it went out of style. It was effective, but could be contained by a team with lots of speed of defense. Of course, any offense can be at least slowed by a fast defense team.

Now, Army West Point, Georgia Tech and Navy run a form of the triple option (the flexbone), and opposing teams dread it. Since so few teams run the true quarterback under center, read the tackle, read the end option, it’s difficult to simulate in practice. You basically have to stop everything you’re doing to prepare for one specific game, which takes me to this point – why don’t programs that have traditionally struggled try it?

If you’re going 2-10 or 3-9 every season, what do you have to lose? You’re probably not sending a lot of players to the NFL anyway, so why not find kids that can run the triple option, or be taught how to do it. Many high school quarterbacks already run the read option, so they at least have some knowledge of the concept. You’d immediately put most opponents at a disadvantage, at least defensively.

If you have any thoughts on any of the above subjects, feel free to email me at sports@thevwindependent.com.