Author: Tbone

“For all sad words of tongue and pen . . .”

. . . The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.”

 

The Flexbone 5/15/12

Reads, Options, and Pitches from around the college football world (ok, mainly the south, but it’s basically the same thing, right?):

– A chart of gross revenues and net profits for the 51 biggest college athletic departments.  Compiled by Year2 on Team Speed Kills, the key should say: green is good, red is bad, right is rich, and up is awesome.  (shorter version:  SC beats CTU . . . AGAIN!)

– One unintended consequence of SEC expansion:  Hoover hired another complete crew of football officials.  Stop and let that sink in for a minute:  We now employ guys that previously couldn’t get hired over Mike Washington.

– Completely ridiculous and yet somehow informing, a look at the relationship between SEC spring games, 2012 prospects, and random Tom Waits lyrics via the guys at GABA.

– What I’m hating on right now:  not really cfb related, but hate, hate, HATE, HATE!

– What’s the dumbest, most smh, thing Dabo Swinney said yesterday?  How about this little bite of word-salad, on the continued non-punishment of Sammy Watkins:

“I think he’s responded very well, but as far as any other comments at this time I’m still in the process, like my statement said, of gathering everything, all my thoughts and all the facts, and meeting with everybody involved, and then making a decision of where we will go from there as far as type of discipline we’ll put in place.”

–  Today’s worst thread on what is an otherwise excellent college sports message board.

–  Today’s best thread on the college football subreddit:  Where did Andy from Toy Story go to college?

Dear Olde Clemson

Our first installment of what we hope will be a recurring feature, we interview the statue of Thomas Green Clemson, located just in front of Tillman Hall in beautiful Clemson, South Carolina:

TRC:   So, Mr. Clemson, can we call you Tommy?

Clemson:  You may NOT!  Please call me Tom.  I will also accept Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Secretary, or as my father-in-law, John C. Calhoun, called me, Mister Carpetbagging Yankee Fancy Britches.

TRC:   Alright, let’s just go with Tom.  How are things today in Clemson?

Clemson:  Well, at present, things are particularly bad.

TRC:  Losing streak to Carolina getting you down?

Clemson:  Oh, nothing like that, I rather enjoy that.  With all the losses to Carolina piling up, there’s a strange little man that comes around here at night sobbing, and I find the dour company somehow uplifting, actually.

TRC:   Strange man?

Clemson:  Ah yes – he talks about his mother a significant amount of time.  Wears pressed khakis and has a rather severe part to his hair.

TRC:   Wait, is it Dabo Sweeney?

Clemson:  No idea – although now that you mention it he does keep referring to a “Dabo.”  I thought it might be a modern local idiom for “a portion of” something because he always seems dissatisfied.  But if he is Dabo, then he is referring to himself in the third person a frighteningly frequent amount of time.  He also has an equally shocking limit to his vocabulary:  it’s mainly a series of grunts and silent screams.  He also slaps himself rather more than I care for.  As I said, strange little fellow.

TRC:   Um, ok, you mentioned that you were upset – what’s got you down?

Clemson:  It’s a particularly large and menacing bird that keeps – ah – relieving himself on me as of late.  Not quite so charming as a pigeon.  It strangely claims to be my deceased father.

TRC:  The bird talks?

Clemson:  Yes, yes it does – but why the soul of my long-dead father would haunt me all the way from our home in Philadelphia is beyond me.

TRC:   Why do you think the bird is your father?

Clemson:  He says so himself.  I hear a rustling of feathers, the jangle of spurs, and just before a large and pungent deposit is made upon my features I hear the unmistakable query of “who’s your daddy?” coming from the monster.  It is unbearable.

TRC:   Sounds awful.

Clemson:  It is!  Although in all honesty it is far better than when the local denizens tie their livestock to my lower legs.

TRC:  Livestock?  Why are they tying them to your legs?

Clemson:  I haven’t the foggiest notion.  They are always particularly smelly and appear ill-bred. I am referring here to both the locals and the livestock.   Flashing wads of cash around and yelling for people named Sammy, Bellamy, or (and let me make sure I’m pronouncing this correctly) Louteek.  These local gentry leave their pigs and goats tied up while they apparently search for these cash-starved gentlemen.

TRC:  This sounds annoying, but I don’t really see what so bad about it, really.

Clemson:  Oh you don’t do you?  Well you haven’t seen what the locals do to the livestock, obviously.  Let’s just say they don’t just milk those goats, friend [shudders].

TRC: [also shudders]  Eh, let’s change the subject, shall we?  Have you heard any of the rumors of Clemson bolting for the Big 12?

Clemson: [slightly raises his voice]  I would appreciate it if you would be so kind as to never raise that subject with me again, sir!

TRC:  Well it is widely rumored . . .

Clemson:  Perhaps so!  But I do not see how my marital difficulties are any-

TRC:  Wait, marital difficulties?

Clemson: Yes!  Perhaps my wife, the former Miss Calhoun, Now Mrs. Clemson, is threatening to leave me again for her former paramour, but I will not discuss it with you of all people!

TRC:  No disrespect intended, Mr. Clemson.  But if I might ask, what does the Big 12 have to do with your wife?

Clemson:  I wish I knew!  But for reasons that have never been expounded to me, that is the nickname that Mrs. Clemson uses for him!

TRC: /quietly departs.

Gone Fishing

Its time for the biannual TRC fishing Trip/Corporate Retreat/Inspiration for the major motion picture, The Hangover.

As such, there will be very little activity here on the blog – but follow us on twitter (@rubrchickens) for updates on our upstate outtakes.

Oh, and if you are hurting for cfb coverage, you can always check out the College Football Reddit, our favorite source for nonsense and news.

The BCS, Version 4.0 (The Definitive Preview)

It’s apparently official, the BCS, as we know it, is dead.

Again.

What was originally a three-bowl pact between the Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta to try to arrange a national championship, then became a four-bowl pact once the mighty TV dollar spoke, and then further morphed into a four- bowl snooze fest married to a pseudo plus-one game; all of that is now gone.

Well, it will be gone in 2014, anyway.

Sort of like the Afghan War: It’s over, but it aint really over.

As we have always and consistently said in this space, the bowls, the BCS, no really stick to the BCS, a National Playoff is the only way to go. Here at TRC we’ve never always said as much.

It seems straightforward enough, with two bowl-hosted semifinals leading to a stand-alone national championship game. However, the devil may be in the details (seeding? hosting? ranking systems?) and many are already predicting that the conference commissioners will screw it all up, and we will end up with a needlessly complicated system that no one can explain or even understand.

But it doesn’t have to be that way – it could be a really simple system. Let me demonstrate the way the BCS 4.0 system should (and based on history most assuredly will) work, in a simple three-step graphic process. Feel free to print this out for future reference in 2014 and beyond:

First, we need to designate what bowl game will host the #1 v. #4 game. It’s a simple determination as the following chart illustrates:

#1 v. #4 Bowl Site Determination

Now, with that out-of-the-way, we can select the site of the #2 v. #3 game. Behold the simplicity:

#2 v. #3 Bowl Site Determination

With the hosting bowls now determined, selecting the teams for those semifinals is relatively straightforward:

Let’s just admit it up front, ok?

Note two things: First, the game on the left can be the #1 vs #4, or it could be the #2 vs #3. Then the other one is . . . the other one! Simple right?

Second thing to notice: Most everyone is left out of the process. This is, without a doubt, the biggest and most charming attribute of the whole system. We can ignore all the Wake Forests, San Jose States, Akrons, and Clemson Universities and just concentrate on the big name schools that have a realistic argument for the title. Sorry, WAC, MWC, ACC, MAC, Big East, Atlantic 10 or whatever – your conferences haven’t figured into the national title picture in ages, and really that’s best for everyone, isn’t it? True, we’re leaving the ‘Media Darling’ slot in the playoff, but that’s not any of y’all – it’s just a thinly-veiled moniker that actually means the “ESPN selection.”

And nine times out of ten ESPN is gonna pick someone from the SEC, Pac12, or B1G, right? Thought so.

So anyway, you can ignore all the BCS hype and all the rankings hoopla and just fill in your championship brackets after the last week in November, 2014.

Just use the charts we’ve already provided.

Foto (well, GIF, actually) Friday

MI6 gets paid, and with style:

Arkansas AD Reverses Course, Hologram of Bobby Petrino to Coach 2012 Squad

Artist Rendering of Proposed "Bobby Petrino Hologram"

On Tuesday, University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long announced the hiring of John L. Smith as the head coach for the 2012 Arkansas Razorbacks.  Smith, a longtime mentor of, and most recently an assistant for, shamed former coach Bobby Petrino, comes to the job after a scant few weeks as the head man at FCS Weber State.  In announcing the hire, Long cited the desire to maintain continuity in the program, which is a fancy way of saying he wants to maximize next year’s championship potential for the talented players currently on campus.

We’ve been critical of Long previously in this space, but without weighing in on the right-or-wrong of the past fire and the current hire, we must acknowledge the genius of what he has done.  Long has artfully and successfully shifted the blame in the entire fiasco away from himself and his lax management of Razorbacks Athletics program and pinned it all on Petrino.  And now that he has fired Petrino, he wants Petrino’s program to continue, so he somehow managed to keep a reasonable fascimile of Petrino at the helm.

Pretty slick trick, isn’t it?  Fire Petrino, but still have Petrino’s Hologram running the team?

Let’s review what we know about the Arkansas Athletic Department under Jeff Long:

– Hired a coach with a documented history of questionable business ethics, and then acted shocked to discover those business scruples bled into the coach’s personal behavior.

– Allowed the head coach to run up impressive phone charges while sexting for months on the company account.  Presumably no one inside Razorback athletics reviewed the bills for this public university?

– Failed to manage the hiring of department employees.  In fact, was so uninvolved in the process that this same head coach was able to hijack the system and elevate one candidate above a myriad of other applicants.

– Allowed university funds (totally $20,000.00 by some accounts) to be used to help fund this new employee’s wedding or engagement party (or something, this part gets murky in the public reports)

– Allowed a press conference where the coach created false impressions and withheld important information from players, fans, and employees of the university.

– Released the details of an incident involving the head coach without waiting for all relevant information to be collected (little things like police accident reports, for example).

Doesn’t really paint a flattering picture of the state of the Razorback Athletic Program and AD Long’s management prowess, does it?

Nevertheless, the AD took to the podium at his presser a couple of weeks back, and without a hint of self-reflection or acceptance of blame, forcefully condemned the coach he chose to employ.  And now, within a fortnight of the bitter firing, he announces the hiring of Petrino’s longtime confidante.

We may not have Bobby Petrino running the show for the Hogs anymore, but we have the closest thing to him that Jeff Long could get.

Arkansas Set to Announce Old Assistant Coach as New (Interim?) Head Coach

From multiple (and slightly credible) sources, the University of Arkansas is set to announce its new (and potentially only interim) head coach later today.  Its John L. Smith, who preceded Bobby Petrino at Louisville before bolting to Michigan State under somewhat controversial circumstances.  Petrino then bolted Louisville for the NFL, then bolted the NFL for Arkansas, and then got caught bolting a young assis . . . he he he this is a family blog, right?

John L. Smith, not to be confused with the myriad other John Smith’s out there, was recently hired as the head coach at Weber State, which he is now bolting without ever coaching a game.

In other words, Razorbacks: Situation Normal.