Archive for December, 2010

New York–I’m up here for a few days doing some work for The CBS College Sports Network and getting ready for the College Football Hall of Fame dinner tonight.

It’s a great event and just about everybody who works in the sport  is in attendance. We should be talking about another great college football season and the anticipation of what looks to be an incredible BCS championship game between No. 1 Auburn and No. 2 Oregon.

But what are we talking about today during this large gathering of college football people? We’re talking about a damned computer that wasn’t programmed right.

The problem is simple: One of the computers (Wes Colley’s rankings) that is used in the BCS formula did not properly update its information. The formula was missing one game. As a result LSU  was No. 10 and Boise State was No. 11 in Sunday’s final standings. The error was caught, corrected, and new standings were released on Monday with the position of  the teams reversed.

The error did not …

Continue reading Time for BCS to re-think its use of computer polls »

I’m sure they are doing a little fuming this morning in Fort Worth, Tex. And to me this would have been a goood year to have a four-team playoff with 1. Auburn vs.  No. 4 Wiscinson or Stanford and No 2 Oregon vs. No 3 TCU. The two semifinal games would have been played on New Year’s Day. It woild give us a more satisfying post-season because a team like TCU would get its shot.

People always ask me how these pairings get made. And believe it or not there is a selection proccess and it goes like this:

**–Auburn and Oregon are chosen as the top two teams to play for the BCS championship.

**–The two bowls which lost their designated conference championships (SEC, Pac-10) go to the front of the line and get to “replace” the teams they lost. The Sugar (SEC champ) picked first and replaced Auburn with Arkansas (10-2), the highest rated remaining SEC team. The Rose (which lost Oregon to the big game) had to take TCU (instead of Stanford)  as a replacement team because the new …

Continue reading Auburn-Oregon: The game (almost) everybody wants to see »

I can’t believe that I’m writing this, but here is the last Fearless Friday Forecast for the 2010 regular season:

1. Auburn vs. South Carolina (SEC championship): I didn’t think the SEC championship game could ever get better than the last two between Florida and Alabama. In both cases the winner knew it would be in the BCS championship game. But this game is just as big because of some additional storylines:

**–The controversy surrounding Auburn quarterback Cam Newton, which has subsided just a little with a controversial ruling by the NCAA that he is eligible.

**–Auburn having a shot to play for its first national championship since 1957 and perhaps getting payback for 2004, when the Tigers went 13-0 and didn’t a chance to play for the crystal football.

**–Auburn having a chance to give the SEC its fifth straight national championship.

To those good story lines you add the return of Steve Spurrier–The Head Ball Coach–to the game for the first time in 10 years. He won it …

Continue reading Auburn beats South Carolina in an instant classic »

There are a lot of people in Athens, Ga., Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Los Angeles, Calif. who are going to get mad at this statement. But here it goes:

Based on what  its investigators have determined, the NCAA got it right with Wednesday’s ruling on Cameron Newton.

Early Wednesday afternoon the NCAA announced that Auburn’s quarterback was eligible to play immediately. That statement became necessary because on Monday the NCAA determined that a violation of amateurism rules occured when Newton’s father had conversations with a former Mississippi State player about a possible pay-for-play scheme. The NCAA informed Auburn of this and the school, as it must, declared Newton ineligible on Tuesday (How they kept that secret is amazing). Auburn petitioned the NCAA to reinstate Newton as soon as possible. The NCAA  committee that determines these types of things granted that reinstatement on Wednesday.

That was the process.

The NCAA enforcement staff has been investigating this case …

Continue reading Why the NCAA got it right in the Cameron Newton case »

Nobody asked me but:

1. Steve Spurrier has a chance to make history (again) at the Georgia Dome: The No. 1 story line heading into Saturday’s SEC championship game is whether or not No. 1 Auburn can stay undefeated and give the conference a shot at its fifth straight BCS title.

The No. 2 story line is whether or not Auburn quarterback Cameron Newton, with everything swirling around him, can lead his team to a victory and, in the process, lock up the Heisman Trophy.

Almost lost in this game is that South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier has a chance to win his seventh SEC championship, exactly 10 years after he won his sixth and final one as the head coach at Florida. Spurrier’s seven SEC titles would move him past Vince Dooley and John Vaught on the all-time list. Spurrier would be second only to Bear Bryant who won 14 SEC championships (13 at Alabama, 1 at Kentucky).

For the first time at the SEC championship game, Spurrier is here but is not the headliner. I’ll bet he likes …

Continue reading Spurrier could make history (again) at the Georgia Dome »