College Football Review and Preview

With considerably less free time for watching television due to a wacky work schedule and family obligations, college football has become the only sport I actually have any time to follow.  And of the college games I see, 97.3%* of those involve my alma mater, Auburn University.  Thus, I consider myself at least as qualified to publicly share my views as the legendary Lou Holtz (and he gets paid to do whatever it is he does).

The 2013-2014 college football season came to a dramatic end last week culminating with the Florida State University Seminoles being crowned the final champions of the Bowl Championship Series.  My inspiring Auburn Tigers came up just a bit short and finished the season at no. 2 in the final rankings.

Congratulations, Florida State.

None of the experts ever came close to predicting this matchup for the championship game, yet Auburn was able to prove they were the best team in the Southeastern Conference and earn a spot in Pasadena.  Florida State proved to be a dominant force as the only football team in a basketball conference that I believe is geographically somewhere along the Atlantic Coast.  (Maybe I'm still getting over the loss.)

The Auburn Tigers definitely did surprise a lot of people who follow the sport and this was in large part due to having the two best skill position players in the state of Alabama in their backfield with Tre Mason and Nick Marshall.

Did your head just explode?

Of course Tre is a given, but 83% of you reading this probably don't like my assessment that Nick Marshall is a better quarterback than the Chest Tat King who holds court over in west Alabama.  If so, just ask ESPN.  They have numbers to prove it and numbers don't lie.  My belief is that Nick Saban will not have any trouble at all replacing his 3-year starter because any young man on the depth chart will be more than capable of throwing screen passes to future NFL running backs and letting them run for 20+ yards.

And with that, I just lost nearly 83% of my readers.

For the 17% of you still here, the season as a whole was pretty exciting and produced some intriguing bowl games to end the year.  Central Florida was able to do a great impression of Boise State's 2007 Fiesta Bowl performance and knock off a Baylor team that supposedly should have had no trouble with a team from the American Athletic Conference. And, yes, I had to google UCF's conference affiliation; don't act like you knew it.  In the Chick-fil-A Bowl, we got one last glimpse of Johnny Manziel and the amazing things he can do on a football field as his Aggies pulled out a close call over the Duke Blue Devils led by J.J. Reddick**.

Despite what would have been my preferred outcome, the BCS Championship game turned out to possibly be the most exciting finale to a season since the system's inception in 1998.  Through all its flaws and warts (e.g. Auburn 2004), the BCS was actually pretty good at placing the two best teams in its final game, and that was what it was designed to do.  Remember USC-Texas in 2006?  That was high quality sports viewing.

The new playoff system will have some chinks, though, and some of these are already being discussed.

For example, I as a fan will not have the vacation time nor the financial backing to travel across the country and watch my team play in TWO postseason games.  Who really does?  Therefore, I would be stuck trying to decide if I want to stay home for the semifinal game and risk my team losing and not advancing to the championship, thus seeing no live postseason play, OR attending the first game and witnessing my team in victory,  but then having no money left to go see them play in the championship.  I know these are just horrible, awful, despicable first-world problems, but I do think it has the potential to turn the championship game into a Super Bowl-ish*** atmosphere in that most people in attendance will not actually be fans of either team.

I do, in fact, like the aspect that the playoff participants will be chosen by a committee.  It is my hope that a committee, as opposed to computers, will reward conference champions for accomplishing such a feat.  I'm not in any way into the SEC pride thing like many fans, and I believe if you're not the best in your league then you don't deserve a shot in the finals.  I suppose I'm also progressive enough that I don't have any qualms with the recent appointment of Condoleezza Rice to this group.  Who do you think is a more qualified decision maker, an Ivy League educated former United States Republican National Security Advisor or an aging Pat Dye?  Sorry, Pat, but I think you are more useful shooting dove in Notasulga than expressing opinions on this topic.

Time will tell, but I think the best option would be to institute a 16-team playoff and allowing the higher ranked teams to play at home until the championship.  But you know what they say about bowl prestige, bowl revenue, blah, blah, blah...  I guess that's why I am just a lowly pharmacist and not the NCAA president.

To conclude my 2014 season preview, here is my (somewhat biased and hastily prepared) too-early top 10:

1. Florida State
2. Stanford
3. Auburn
4. Oregon
5. Michigan State
6. South Carolina
7. Alabama
8. Oklahoma
9. LSU
10. Baylor

War Eagle!



*This is a made up statistic.
**This may or may not be their star player's name, although I think his eligibility should have run out by now.
***Am I allowed to use that term?