{"id":104205,"date":"2018-06-28T06:56:28","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T11:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=104205"},"modified":"2018-06-28T06:59:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T11:59:27","slug":"college-football-thoughts-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2018\/06\/28\/college-football-thoughts-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"College football thoughts, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong>independent sports editor<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s college football thoughts centered around Urban Meyer, conference title games, the College Football Playoff and Central Florida\u2019s self-proclaimed national championship.<\/p>\n

Today, I\u2019ll address a few other topics, starting with Michigan.<\/p>\n

Michigan Wolverines<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

One way or another, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverines have yet to beat the Buckeyes.<\/strong> Photo courtesy of Ohio State<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One has to wonder what\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

As head coach, Harbaugh has yet to defeat Ohio State. Four straight losses to the Buckeyes wouldn\u2019t exactly go over well up north.<\/p>\n

One more thing about Harbaugh \u2013 he has a track record of success, but he hasn\u2019t 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 \u201cThere\u2019s no place like home\u201d, since he played there in the 1980\u2019s. It can also be argued that his personality grates on the wrong people.<\/p>\n

More on the college football playoff<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a perfect system, but it seems to be better than the previous way things were done. At some point, it\u2019ll probably expand to eight teams. In the meantime, questions remain. If you don\u2019t 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\u2019t belong to a conference and only plays 12 games?
\nThe point is, someone is always going to get left out, regardless if it\u2019s four, six or eight teams.<\/p>\n

By the way \u2013 many Ohio State fans were unhappy with the playoff snub last year. I\u2019m an Ohio State fan and I don\u2019t believe they deserved to get in the playoff, simply because they lost to Iowa by 31, and it really wasn\u2019t that close.<\/p>\n

Bowl games<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Are there too many? Yes. Do I try to watch at least some of each of them? Yes, because I love college football.<\/p>\n

There will be 40 bowl games this season, and 43 next season. That\u2019s 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\u2019s team travel, acommodations, etc, which isn\u2019t cheap.<\/p>\n

While Alabama may be a lovely state (I\u2019ve never been there), from a fan\u2019s standpoint, spending money around the holidays to go to the Dollar General Bowl in Mobile might not be appealing, especially when it\u2019s on television.<\/p>\n

Bowl games used to be a reward for a great season. Then it became a reward for a good season. It\u2019s to the point where if you had a remotely average season, you\u2019re going to a bowl game.<\/p>\n

But, I suppose it depends on how you look at it. If you\u2019re team hasn\u2019t been to a bowl game in years, it\u2019s exciting. If you had conference or national championship hopes and wind up in the Camping World Bowl, it\u2019s a huge letdown.<\/p>\n

Schedules<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Occasionally you\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n

The triple option<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In the 1970\u2019s, 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\u2019s and 90\u2019s, and it was devastating.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s difficult to simulate in practice. You basically have to stop everything you\u2019re doing to prepare for one specific game, which takes me to this point \u2013 why don\u2019t programs that have traditionally struggled try it?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re going 2-10 or 3-9 every season, what do you have to lose? You\u2019re 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\u2019d immediately put most opponents at a disadvantage, at least defensively.<\/p>\n

If you have any thoughts on any of the above subjects, feel free to email me at sports@thevwindependent.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent sports editor Yesterday\u2019s college football thoughts centered around Urban Meyer, conference title games, the College Football Playoff and Central Florida\u2019s self-proclaimed national championship. Today, I\u2019ll address a few other topics, starting with Michigan. Michigan Wolverines One way or another, it\u2019s going to be an interesting season in Ann Arbor. Jim Harbaugh is in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 21:16:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}