The CFP Field Is Set…

Well, we now know the participants in the College Football Playoffs.  I think the Selection Committee’s work was made a tad easier when Baylor beat Oklahoma St. on Saturday; had the Cowboys finished 12-1 as a conference champion, there could have been a debate with regard to Oklahoma St. or Cincy.  As things turned out, Cincy became the obvious choice.

The two most impressive showings by teams in the CFP last weekend were the ones seeded at the top.  Alabama scored 41 points on a Georgia defense that had been allowing less than 8 points per game and it was not some sort of fluky game that produced that scoring outburst.  Alabama gained 536 yards in the game and converted on 7 of 14 third-down situations.  I was surprised at the ease with which they moved the ball.

The other big-time performance was by Michigan.  I never thought that Iowa was going to win the game, but I thought the Iowa defense could keep it close.  Well, that didn’t happen.  When Michigan got 2 TDs in the first quarter on a 4-play drive covering 85 yards and then another on a single play for 75 yards, it was pretty clear that the Iowa defense was not up to the onslaught that was happening.

The first round of the playoff will be on New Year’s Eve.  The fact that there are three weeks until game time has not stopped the sportsbook oddsmakers from posting lines for the games.  In case anyone is interested this far in advance, here are the game times and the opening lines:

• (3:30 PM EST) Cincy vs. Alabama – 14 (58):
• (7:30 PM EST) Michigan vs Georgia – 8 (43.5):

There were two coaching departures relatively local to the DC area in the last several days and both were a surprise.  Bronco Mendenhall resigned as the head football coach at UVa.  He has been in that job for 6 years; he took over a program that was in tatters and had Virginia in a New Year’s Day Bowl Game in 2019 when Virginia also won the Coastal Division of the ACC.  Often when a coach “resigns”, that turns out to be either a face-saving announcement or possibly an indication of a slightly more generous buy-out than what was contractually called for.  If either of those situations obtain here, there was certainly no indication of it bubbling beneath the surface.

The other coaching surprise was that Maryland fired Mark Turgeon as the head basketball coach.  He has been in that job for 10 years and posted a 226-116 record which is not normally a “firing offense”.  Maryland fanboys will applaud the firing because Maryland fanboys have – – and have had for at least 50 years – – unrealistic expectations for their basketball team.  Turgeon only took the terps to the Sweet 16 once in those 10 seasons and that is a “firing offense” in the minds of the fanboys; they expect Final Four appearances to happen with some sort of regularity.  After Gary Williams won a National Championship at Maryland, the fanboys turned on him when there were no encore performances.

Danny Manning will take over the job at Maryland on an interim basis; he had been an assistant under Turgeon.  He has some ACC head coaching experience in his past; he was the coach at Wake Forest  for 6 seasons.

Making this change even more surprising is that Turgeon was given a contract extension through the 2025/2026 season back in April of this year.  Given the expectations of the fanboys, this is not an attractive job.

I am trying to blend in some college basketball viewing time as we get to that part of the college basketball schedule where there are real games and not scrimmages that count as official games.  I have not seen a whole lot of Duke big man, Paolo Banchero, but I have seen enough to say he is the closest thing to Zion Williamson I have seen on a Duke team since Zion went to the NBA.  Banchero is big and strong and amazingly “athletic”/”agile”.  They list him at 6’10” and 250 lbs.  I’ll buy the height listing, but I’ll take OVER on the weight.  I really like the guard tandem for Duke this year too; both Trevor Keels and Jeremy Roach are very good and fun to watch.

The only problem with watching Duke basketball this year is that this is Mike Krzyzewski’s final year and that ceremonial and maudlin overhang on the games has already been done to death.  Make no mistake, Mike Krzyzewski deserves a “Farewell Tour” in his final season as much as any coach in any sport deserves one; I have no problem with the concept.  My problem is that there are so many chapters in that book.  What needs to be said has already been said.

Gregg Drinnan was the sports editor of the Kamloops Daily News until that newspaper went to the great recycling bin in the sky; he now publishes a blog called Taking Note.  Recently he “took note” of the fact that the Cowboys/Raiders game on Thanksgiving this year drew an audience of 38.5 million folks.  Then he added:

“Just in case you were wondering why neither the NBA nor the NHL played any games on what was American Thanksgiving.”

Finally, apropos of nothing, here is a Tweet from humorist and culture critic Brad Dickson:

“Alec Baldwin now says he never pulled the trigger of the gun on the ‘Rust’ set. Maybe O.J. Simpson can help him search for the real trigger puller.”

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