Georgia Repeats As National Champion

Two numbers stand out – – 65 and 589 – – as in 65 points scored by Georgia and 589 yards of offense rolled up by Georgia in last night’s CFP Championship game.  The game was a beatdown of epic proportion.  TCU fought their way into the CFP tournament and let me be clear:

• TCU belonged in the CFP bracket.
• Their presence there was no fluke.
• They proved their mettle beating a very good Michigan team a week ago.

Having said all of that, TCU was outmanned at virtually every position by Georgia and many of the Georgia second-stringers were better than the TCU defensive opponents.  Some folks will take the result of a Georgia victory by 8 TDs as a signal that TCU’s conference – the Big 12 – is a JV conference as compared to the SEC.  While I tend to agree with the premise that the top and the middle of the SEC is significantly superior to every other conference in the country, I think there is a more important focal point for last night’s debacle.

As I said, TCU belonged in the CFP; their résumé said they were one of the 4 best teams in the nation as of early December.  Now, imagine for a moment if the 12-team playoff bracket that seems to be locked into existence as of 2024 were in effect this year.  Remember, there will be lots of pressure on the Selection Committee to be “inclusive” with their invitations such that teams from outside the so-called Power 5 conferences get shots at the CFP tournament.  Put all that together and ask yourself how inviting a game might have been this year between Georgia and the twelfth-best team in the country given that Georgia was primed for a win-or-go-home contest.

I understand the desire for expansion of the CFP.  I also understand the money that will accrue to the college football consortium when there are more playoff tournament games to offer up for bids to the “broadcast partners”.  What I fear is that there are going to be more routs akin to what took place last night.  I like college football as much an anyone, but I tuned out in the 4^th quarter of the game because it was no longer interesting.

Had I been a Roman citizen in the first century, I probably would have found other things to do instead of going to the Coliseum to witness:

• Lions 54          Christians 0

Next up …  Reports say that Mat Ishbia has agreed to buy the Phoenix Suns (NBA) and the Phoenix Mercury (WNBA).  When that deal closes, it will be the end of the Robert Sarver saga in Phoenix where Sarver stood accused of running an organization that had the atmosphere of Delta House in the movie, Animal House.  You may expect to read and hear loads of opinionating about how “the good guys have won” in that circumstance and how there is a sea change in society about how bosses and owners can be “held accountable” for societally inappropriate behavior.  Be sure to check your blood sugar levels after you read lots of that sort of stuff in the near future.

Here in Curmudgeon Central, the view is often just a tad off in a different direction.  In this case there are two different directions.

1. Sarver and his minority owner-partners paid $401M to buy the Suns’ franchise in 2004.  The reported sale price for the franchise(s) in 2023 is $4B.  If Sarver only owns 50% of the Suns, he will walk away from the settlement table with a cool $2B.  Somehow, I doubt that he has been “punished” sufficiently severely that he might never engage in such improper behaviors ever again.
2. Just last year, the NFL’s Denver Broncos franchise sold for a reported $4.6B.  In case you need a hand, that is 15% more than what Ishbia is paying to buy the NBA Suns.  That leads me to wonder:

Is Ishbia paying way too much for the Suns?

Did Greg Penner and his wife get the bargain of the century buying an NFL team for only 15% more than a middling NBA team?

            Those amounts of money are like Monopoly money to me; I have no sense of what it means to be able to contemplate deals of that magnitude.  But I do know this:

• The owners in the NFL basically have a license to print money; unless I cannot do addition and subtraction, I do not see how it might be possible for an NFL owner to make less than tens of millions of dollars in profits every year – – at least until the tax accountants get hold of the numbers and depreciate everything down to the paper clips to conjure up a paper loss.

Speaking obliquely of the NBA, I have been pleased and surprised to see that referees have been retrained to call traveling violations in NBA games in 2022/23.  Someone went to the rule book and noticed that it should be a violation – penalized by loss of possession of the ball – for a player to take 4 or even 5 steps toward the basket without dribbling the ball.  Such happenings  had gotten to be almost commonplace in the NBA as of last season.

The league says that they have made traveling violations a “point of emphasis” for this season.  I for one find that emphasis as a positive for the pro basketball game and I hope that the league continues to tell the officials to emphasize those sorts of calls.

One more NBA-related item today …  Kevin Durant thinks that “entitled NBA fans” need to be quiet about things like players taking time off for “maintenance” and just enjoy the games.

• Memo to Kevin Durant:  Some NBA fans may indeed be entitled trust-fund brats.  However, no NBA player is in a position to rag on any other human on Earth for being “entitled”.  That is the height of hypocrisy – – and NBA players like you know lots about “height”.

The other head-shaking part of Durant’s harangue is that he seems not to understand the concept of self-incrimination.  Here is part of what he told ESPN in an interview:

“Fans have become more entitled than anything. So, they’re starting to question our motives for the game, or how we approach the game. The ones that do question — like who are you? Just shut up and watch the game tonight. We go as hard as we want to go. We go as hard as our bodies allow us to go at this point.”

“We go as hard as we want to go.”  And if you don’t want to “go hard” and I paid $250 to see you play on that night, you take my criticism as my “entitlement”?

Finally, let me close today with an observation by George Best – the man who Pele said was the best footballer that Pele ever saw:

“In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol, and it was the worst twenty minutes of my life.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………