2012 Fast Food Rankings

It’s been three years and thousands of fast food calories since my 2009 fast food rankings.  My criteria for the rankings this year have changed.  For starters, I didn’t have criteria in 2009.  But in the past three years I became a father of two children. 

Kids change your perspective on a lot of things and fast food isn’t precluded.  So unlike the 2009 rankings, this list factors in the cleanliness of the restaurant, does the restaurant provide a kids menu and bonus points if they have a playground. 

The rankings are exclusive to the traditional fast food establishments.  If you open up the rankings to places like Subway, Chipotle, Five Guys then you bring in every sub, burrito and upscale burger chain in the nation.  I’ll save that ranking for another day. 

You’ll also notice Arby’s and Hardees have been dropped from the rankings.  Nothing against those establishments but I haven’t visited either since the ’09 rankings.  Without further ado: 

1.  In-N-Out – Ranks number one on my list for:  quality of food, consistency of food, and cleanliness.  My best fast food experience of 2011 occurred at the In-N-Out in Santa Barbara. The only knock is their patent discrimination against the Midwest and East Coast.  In-N-Out  recently expanded into Texas, but unless you’re in Dallas the next closest location is Tucson, Arizona. 

2. Chick-Fil-A– Is tops in catering to parents of young children and scores high in quality of food and cleanliness.  Chick-Fil-A staff will deliver your order to your table if they see young children in tow.  Their indoor playgrounds are spectacular.   Every once in a while I’ll get an order that is too greasy or the fries have too much salt, but those are few and far between.

Chick-Fil-A indoor playground

3. McDonalds – McD’s made the biggest jump from 2009.  McDonalds is in a class of one when it comes to marketing to children.  The mere sight of the Golden arches sends my son into a frenzy.   They have the deepest children’s menu and they get bonus points for having the best breakfast.  McD’s has flaws – - their fries are too salty, their service can be poor and bathrooms dirty – but at the end of the day they do a lot of things really well.

4. Sonic – Nobody does chili dogs and flavored sodas better.  But if hot dogs aren’t your thing, Soinc has endless snack-soda combinations.  Sonic is perfect for snacks and good for meals.  If only there were more locations. 

5. Wendy’s – Every time I leave Wendy’s I tell myself I need to go back more.  Wendy’s is consistent but there is nothing on the menu that I love.  I’ve heard their shakes are great, but I’m not a shake guy. 

6. Burger King – The King has just never been able to deliver good French fries.  They also don’t have an alternative bun to sesame seeds (which I’m allergic to).  BK is a very underrated breakfast spot with tasty coffee and cini-mini’s.

7. Taco Bell – Chipolte is slowly making Taco Bell obsolete.  I doubt we see them in my next fast food rankings.

Changing of the Guard — College Basketball Season

With the 2011 college football season ending six days ago, we’re already five days into the 2012 preseason.  For the next eight months I’ll be following recruiting commitments, de-commitments, NCAA investigations, and conference realignment but writing about it is a different matter.  The off-season tends to be more static and frankly difficult to write about. 

Onward to college basketball.  After all, cold Saturday afternoons in the winter bring to mind arenas filled with the smell of popcorn and sweat, not police blotters and high school verbals.  To lead us out of the tunnel, let’s take a look at Indiana through their first six games of Big Ten play. 

IU is a young team, talented enough to knock off the #1 and #2 ranked teams in December.  They won’t lose a player off this year’s squad and will plug in the #2 ranked recruiting class for 2012 .  Considering where Tom Crean started from in 2008, he should be in consideration for coach of the year.  All is not roses.  There are troubling tendencies I’ve noticed since the beginning of Big Ten play:

1. In the words of Coach Norman Dale, your defense is awful.  Is doesn’t take a roster full of five star recruits to play effective team defense.  Look at Wisconsin over the past decade or UVA this season.  A good coach can have average talent playing great team defense.  As a team, IU’s help defense, rebounding and stopping dribble penetration are the worst in the Big Ten. 

2. Ball movement – Maybe I’m a dinosaur, but the best offense involves movement and screens away from the ball.  Crean runs an NBA offense.  Most of IU’s shots are created off the dribble drive and screens on the ball.  Screening away from the ball is essentially non-existent.  The lack of movement makes IU an easy team to defend given their talent level. 

IU is entering the easiest four game stretch of their Big Ten Schedule.  At Nebraska, Penn State, at Wisconsin, Iowa.   Anything less than 3-1 and IU is probably looking at a sub .500 year in the Big Ten.  IU would still make the tournament given their big December, but backing in the tournament is not something typically done by a team ranked #7 as late as January. 

As long as IU makes the NCAA Tournament this year, the season will be a success.  It won’t be until next Fall when Crean finally goes face to face with typical IU expectations.

BCS Championship Game Prediction

Can someone explain why it’s so hard to beat a team twice in the same season?  I’ve heard this mentioned dozens of times in previews for the National Title game, but the claim is without merit.  It’s a lazy sports talk radio sound bite.  Let’s take a look at SEC rematches from the regular season to the SEC Championship Game. 

We’ve had a rematch of a regular season game a total of six times: 

1999 – Alabama over Florida.  Alabama beat Florida in the regular season. 
2000 – Florida over Auburn.  Florida won the regular season matchup.  
2001 – LSU over Tennessee.  I’ll get back to this game.
2003 – LSU over Georgia.  LSU beat Georgia in the regular season.
2004 – Auburn over Tennessee.  Auburn beat UT in the regular season. 
2010 – Auburn over South Carolina.  Auburn beat SC in the regular season. 

The team winning the regular season game is 5-1 in the rematches.  The exception being 2001 when LSU defeated #2 ranked Tennessee in the SEC Championship Game after losing in Knoxville in week three of the regular season. Now the coach of that 2001 LSU team was none other than Nick Saban. 

So what does this tell us?  At least in the SEC, beating a team twice in the same season is actually really easy.  It happens over 80 percent of the time.  But the only coach good enough to reverse the trend has been Nick Saban.  In the game of the century in November we saw two evenly matched teams as far as athletes.  I think the difference comes down to coaching, because of that,  I think Bama wins Monday night.  After all, it’s tough beating a team twice in the same season! 

Penn State Moving Forward – Where have we seen this before?  Storied program fires head football coach.  Head coaching job gets turned down by first, second, third, fourth option.  Program hires New England Patriots offensive coordinator who has exactly zero days of head coaching experience.  New hire will try to finish the all-important recruiting season as he remains coordinator for the Patriots. 

Penn State may have found a diamond in the rough with Bill O’Brien, but the overwhelming odds suggest they’ll be looking for a new head coach in four to five years.  For one, there is no precedent of success for a Belichick assistant to succeed on his own.  Weis, Crennel, Mangini, Josh McDaniel have all crashed and burned without Belichick.  Even more troublesome for Penn State is the track record of coaches who have taken over a storied programs with no prior head coaching experience at any level. 

On the recruiting front, Penn State has done itself no favors.  Hiring a coach who at the earliest is 11 days away from being able to recruit is going to further cripple this recruiting class.  If New England goes to the Super Bowl O’Brien will have missed out on the entire 2012 recruiting cycle which ends February 1.  In effect, PSU is self-imposing a year sanction on their football program. 

It’s always darkest before the dawn.  For Penn State, dawn could be years and years away.

Auld Lang Syne and the Annual Sports Cycle

The beginning of the new year is never easy.  Christmas parties and time off are replaced with a renewed focus on business and 2012 planning meetings.  The days are dark and the weather is bitter.   

One way I draw comfort this time of year is looking ahead to the annual sports lap around the calendar.  In my 30 some laps around the sports calendar I’ve developed a familiarity with each part of the year.  Every stop along the calendar brings some element of anticipation and excitement you can set your watch to.  Below are some of those stops.

January is the month you watch the Packers play on a frozen turf or the 49ers play in the mud in Candlestick.  It’s about watching the first tour stops of the PGA season at the Bob Hope or the Phoenix Open.   It’s seeing Sydney in the summer time and dreaming of someday going to the Australian Open. 

Buried in the middle of the otherwise brutal January-February stretch is Super Bowl Sunday.  I love everything about Super Bowl weekend.  I love the NFL Network showing replays of past Super Bowls and ESPN running Super Bowl highlights starting with Kansas City vs. Green Bay in the first Super Bowl through Green Bay/Pittsburgh last year. 

By the time Greg Gumbel is announcing the NCAA tournament field you’re starting to see glimpses of the coming of spring.  The weather is getting warmer and it’s staying light later.  Virginia Tech gets snubbed by the Selection Committee and you spend that first Thursday and Friday of the tournament rooting for the big upset. 

April comes in like a lion with the first weekend giving us the Final Four and the beginning of the baseball season.  Then we get the Masters where I already feel warmer just thinking about the green of Augusta.  Late April gives us mint julep’s and over-sized hats at the Kentucky Derby along with the NFL Draft.   

May brings the familiarity of the baseball season.  Monday night games in Fenway with a sun kissed Erin Andrews and Peter Gammons talking about some prospect in the Cape Code league.  It also brings the Indy 500 which symbolizes the beginning of summer.  Along with grilling burgers and dogs, Memorial Day also brings us the College Football preview magazines which reminds you football season is just around the corner. 

Does anything define the mid-summer better than the U.S. Open in late June or Wimbledon the following week? You get the continual drum that is Baseball Tonight at the end of every day of the summer.  Presidential election years give us the Summer Olympics which means watching Bob Costas work 120 hours weeks and actually caring about swimming relay races.  

As the summer winds down in late August the sports year comes to life.  Mike and Mike start previewing each NFL team and you thumb through a fantasy football magazine on your August vacation.  The countdown to that first Saturday in September begins and I delusionaly write about Notre Dame being a top ten team. 

Friday nights in September have an undefinable excitement to them.  Maybe it’s the sounds of the high school football game from your backyard or the cooler nights.  The Saturday mornings are crisp as you watch College Gameday and prepare for the day ahead.  Next thing you know the leaves are starting to turn and you’re picking out pumpkins and raking leaves. 

Humans are creatures of comfort and few things comfort me more than sports.  The annual sports lap is a constant in our ever-changing lives and reminds us of the things we have to be thankful for as we re-engage in the daily grind.

Grading the Disappointing Notre Dame 2011 Season

Brian Kelly was dealt a difficult set of circumstances for 2011:  Michael Floyd’s DUI in the spring, heightened expectations, and a four way QB competition with no one starter good enough to distinguish itself.   In hindsight Kelly would probably like a mulligan on each one. 

Michael Floyd’s DUI: Floyd was involved in his third alcohol related incident back in the spring.  To the surprise of even the more passionate ND fans, no suspension was handed out.  Looking back, that was a mistake.  The general belief was Floyd would be handed a two game suspension to start the season.  This would send the message that no player is beyond reproach and there are consequences for negative actions. 

The football gods didn’t smile on Kelly’s decision to forgo punishment.  The South Florida and Michigan games were two of the most inexplicable losses I can remember a team suffering.   The odds of ND losing those two games in the fashion they did were almost at the Act of God level.  You wonder if a break or two would have gone their way had Floyd been suspended? 

Heightened Expectations:  Every year, Notre Dame faces heightened expectations, it comes with having such a broad appeal nationwide.  Brian Kelly would be wise to tone down expectations in the years ahead and not fan the flames.  Be more Holtz and less Weis. 

Jimmy Johnson talked about how he would shake his head when reading comments from Holtz about how ND could never keep up with Miami’s speed.  Johnson claimed those Holtz teams from the 80’s had more speed on their bench than Miami had in their starting lineup.  The Holtz created perception placed Holtz in a no-lose situation.  If ND won, Holtz out-maneuvered Johnson despite a lack of talent.  If ND lost, they never really had a chance given the extreme level of talent for the Hurricanes. 

Kelly should sell 2012 as a transition year.  By the time ND takes the field against Navy, he should have the media believing anything better than 6-6 is a reach. 

The Quarterback Situation:  I don’t blame Kelly for his handling of the QB situation.  How do you bench Tommy Reese when he is 11-1 as a starter?  In hindsight it would have been good to get Hendrix more time but whether that would have improved ND’s record is debatable. 

Where Kelly is accountable is for the seeming lack of development in the play of the quarterbacks.  The difference between Tommy Reese at Michigan and the Reese we saw against Stanford and Florida State was stark.  If there is a silver lining from the disappointing season, it may be that there will be no QB controversy in 2012. 

Everett Golson was and still is the only Kelly chosen QB on the Irish roster.  By the end of spring camp, Kelly should name him as the starting QB.  As we’ve seen, waiting till the final week before the season opener to name your starter just invites a QB controversy the first time an interception is thrown. 

Lack of hitting in fall camp:  The one consistently negative trait of Brian Kelly coached teams is their penchant for starting slow in September.  One theory may be the lack of full contact drills in practice.  A quote from Kelly this August indicated he did less hitting than past years because this was a veteran group.

Notre Dame opened the season like a team not comfortable with contact.  Countless missed tackles, dropped punts, and fumbles cost ND the South Florida and Michigan games.  If I could pick one area for Kelly to change in 2012, it would be starting the season strong.  More contact in practice could go a long way in furthering that goal. 

Early prediction for 2012:  Notre Dame will most likely enter 2012 with their youngest team since 2007.  They’ll be led by a red-shirt freshman QB surrounded by an offense void of any real play-makers.  They’ll face a schedule featuring road games at: Oklahoma, USC, Michigan State.  Home games against:  Michigan, Stanford, BYU.  And a neutral site game against Miami.  Expect most pre-season publications predicting 6-6 or 7-5.  I predict 8-4. 

The third year of a coach’s tenure is when you start measuring the worth of a coach.  Ara Parseghian said by the third year the team will have taken on the coach’s personality.   2012 will mark the first season where Kelly recruits get the bulk of the playing time.  I think the pendulum begins to swing in Notre Dame’s favor in 2012.  Close losses will finally start to become close wins.  Notre Dame will start finding ways to win games instead of lose them.  And the disappointment of 2011 will give way to unbound optimism for the future.

Champs Sports Bowl Preview

One of the more clichéd statements in college football is the “if you have two quarterbacks who could be your starting QB you don’t have any starting quarterbacks.”

For the second time in the past five years ND entered the fall with four potential candidates for the starting QB position.  In both instances the season was a disappointment.  While I don’t blame Brian Kelly for his handling of the quarterbacks this season, I think privately, Kelly would love a mulligan on the 2011 season. 

In a way, the matchup with Florida State in the Champs Bowl is a lame duck game for Notre Dame.  There seems to be a consensus forming (and I agree) that redshirt freshman Everett Golson will be Notre Dame’s starting quarterback in 2012.  If true, that makes the FSU game the de facto tryout for the back-up QB position for next season. 

The quarterback position is the main reason why ND finds itself playing at 5:30 on December 29 as opposed to after the New Year. But if there was a more disappointing team in 2011 than Notre Dame, it was Florida State. 

Back in August, I didn’t know which way FSU would go this season.  On one hand they had a coach in his  second year who ended 2010 by soundly beating Florida and South Carolina.  As always FSU was loaded with talent and faced their traditionally light ACC schedule.  Conversely, Jimbo Fisher is in his second year at FSU, has no prior head coaching experience, and lost his starting QB to the first round of the draft. 

Fisher came to FSU from LSU as an offensive guru, but FSU’s defense is the only reason they won eight games this season.  Bobby Bowden was at FSU for 34 seasons.  If Fisher wants to last four seasons his offense (mainly his offensive line) needs to improve dramatically.  So while an 8-4 ND vs. an 8-4 FSU isn’t evoking memories of their ’93 Game of the Century, there is still plenty on the line. 

1. Recruiting – Win your bowl game and you win the month of January in recruiting.  We saw this last year when ND used the momentum from their win over Miami to pick-up their top three defensive recruits.  In 2008 was ND’s Aloha Bowl win with Manti Teo in attendance the key to landing the top defensive recruit in the nation? 

2. It’s Florida State – There seems to be a healthy dislike between the ND and FSU fanbases.  For what reason, I’m not completely sure.  The saying goes, you hate in others what you hate in yourself.  I think both programs see some of their worst traits in each other.  Both seem to be annually overrated.  Both can live in the past when their programs were truly dominate.  And both always claim to be one year away from reclaiming past glory.  The winner of the Nostalgia Bowl gets bragging rights for the foreseeable future. 

3.  Bowl Winning Streak – As unfulfilling as ND’s #2 ranked 2008 recruiting class turned out, they have the chance to be the first class since the 1990 recruiting class (Bryant Young, Jerome Bettis, Aaron Taylor, Reggie Brooks, Tom Carter) to win three consecutive bowl games.  Of course bowl winning streaks (and losing streaks) are relative.  As opposed to the 1990 group which won the Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl, the 2008 class has a chance to win the Aloha Bowl, Sun Bowl and Citrus Bowl.  Not exactly comparing apples to apples. 

Prediction – Looking at this objectively ND is justified in being a slight underdog.  They lost their offensive coordinator, they are starting a lame duck QB and are traveling to FSU’s backyard.  But therein lies the hidden beauty of a bowl game.  There is no way to predict how 19-22 year olds prepare for essentially an exhibition game after three weeks off. 

If I have a prediction, it’s that the winner of the Champs Bowl will head into 2012 overrated based on the Bowl win.  You can also count on Notre Dame being a completely different looking team when they take the field in 2012.

Hoosiers

If you are only watching one clip on Youtube in 2011, make it this chill inducing clip of Watford’s shot to beat Kentucky synced to Hoosiers .  If there is a better sports clip on Youtube this year, I haven’t seen it. 

It’s been a week since IU stunned Kentucky in what will probably be the best game of the 2011-2012 season.  The significance of the win for IU is tough to understate.  The IU program has been off the radar since 2007, but in a sense the program hasn’t been relevant since the mid-90s. 

Sure Mike Davis was able to take Knight’s players to the 2002 Title Game, but that miracle tournament run really signified the end of the Knight era.  I think we’ll look back in a decade or so and point to Watford’s buzzer beater as the re-birth of IU basketball.  If that’s the case, this clip will really appreciate with time. 

Similar to Holtz beating #1 ranked Miami in 1988, IU over UK had all the elements of a program altering win.  (1) Beating a consensus #1 team like Kentucky.  Prior to the IU game, some UK fans were hinting at an undefeated season; (2) Dramatic finish; (3) The term “Signature win” gets throw around loosely by fans.  The tendency being to assign the signature label the first time a coach has beaten a meaningful opponent.  IU fans storming the court in 2009 & 2010 after beating Minnesota and Illinois is a good example. 

How do you know when a program gets their signature win?  Like the Kentucky game, when it happens, you don’t even have to ask the question.

The Most Interesting Man in the World

If Time or Newsweek hasn’t named their Man of the Year I have a nomination.  In almost 30 years of following sports I can’t remember a story quite like Tim Tebow. 

Have we ever experienced a more polarizing athlete?  The collective sports media has seemingly rooted against this guy from the day he was drafted.  Sports talk radio hosts were essentially gloating after Tebow was stymied by the Lions.  Take a look at some of the anti-tebow comments from the media over the past six weeks: 

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone:  When Tebow [turned] in one of the worst performances in the history of quarterbacking, there was something perversely satisfying about the spectacle.  Witnessing the Tebowmania phenomenon get pulverized under a torrent of ruthless hits….was a little like reliving Clarence Darrow’s savage cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey Trial.  In both cases you came away feeling sorry for the defeated, but it was something that had to be done. 

Steven A. Smith, ESPN:  He is a starting NFL QB because of a popularity contest….this kid can’t play starting QB for an NFL team.  This kid is garbage and you know it. 

Mark Kiszla, The Denver Post:  So maybe we need a new definition for Tebowing.  It’s a prayer for mercy.  Please, in the name of heaven, bring us somebody who can actually play quarterback.  Right here, right now, Tebow is the worst quarterback in the NFL.

Merril Hoge, @merrilhoge: Sitting watching tape of the Broncos from last season.  It’s embarrassing to think the Broncos could win with Tebow.

Why so critical of Tebow?  Why has ESPN in particular been so quick to praise the pro version of Cam Newton but so convinced Tebow is failure at the NFL level?  For me it’s hard to udnerstand how anybody could be rooting against the guy. 

I believe the anti-Tebow sentiment has largely to-do with Tebow’s overt display of faith.  I think he offends many of the left-leaning sports media.  Tebow goes beyond the clichéd statement of “first wanting to thank the lord…”  After Tebow’s last second win against the Jets, he was asked if this was his most proud moment.  Turns out it was helping start a hospital for orphans in the Philippines. 

Those who cover sports often advise to never learn too much about your favorite athlete.  I don’t think that applies with Tebow.  The more I read about him and watch him, the more convinced I become he is one of the greatest public advocates for Christianity in my lifetime.  Much like the Founder of Chick-Fil-A who foregoes profits to close his stores on Sunday, Tebow truly walks the walk.

It’s tough to predict if Tebow will be Denver’s starting QB five years from now.  But even if he never wins another NFL game, his unwavering faith and ability to silence critics over the past month has only strengthened my faith.  And if I can say that, I’m guessing there are tens of thousands of Americans who feel the same way. 

Of all the Tebow stories I’ve heard, the most interesting is the story of his birth.  This is from Austin Murphy’s 2009 Sports Illustrated article on Tebow: 

Bob and Pam Tebow conceived their fifth child. It was a very difficult pregnancy. “The placenta was never properly attached, and there was bleeding from the get-go,” Bob recalls. “We thought we’d lost him several times.” Early in the pregnancy Pam contracted amebic dysentery, which briefly put her in a coma. Her doctors, fearful that medications they had given her had damaged the fetus, advised her to abort it. She refused, and on Aug. 14, 1987, Pam delivered a healthy if somewhat scrawny Timothy Richard Tebow.

“All his life, from the moment he could understand, I told him, ‘You’re a miracle baby,’” Bob recalls.

“‘God’s got a purpose for you, and at some point I think He’s going to call you to preach.’

“I asked God for a preacher, and it turns out he gave me a quarterback.” 

Looking back, Tebow’s dad was wrong in 2009.  It turns out God gave him both.

The Downside to a College Football Playoff

December is a popular time of year for sports talk radio and internet writers to make their annual plea for a college football playoff.  This assault is usually led by general sports fans who dabble in college football for the big games.  I should know, I was once that guy.  My advice, be careful what you wish for. 

To the average football fan, the concept of an eight team playoff is flawless.  You take six conference champions, two wild cards and have a three week tournament to crown a true champion. 

The Quarterfinals are hosted by the higher seed.   The semi’s bring the remaining four teams together at a single venue (rotate the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Orange) to guarantee attendance.  And then the Finals are hosted 10-12 days later.  

Sure an eight team playoff sounds great on paper but let’s think long term.  As soon as that first eight team field gets announced you’ll inevitably see a couple things happen:

Populist Outcry – Sports talk radio, the internet, and ESPN will explode about how the ninth place team deserves a spot in the field.  College playoff administrators will be labeled corrupt.  Congress will demand answers why the ninth place team, with a better record against Top 40 teams and a tougher SoS than team X was left out. 

If it can happen with college basketball over the 69th best team in the field, imagine the outcry in college football. 

Playoff Creep – Money and the public cries for “fairness” will cause the expansion of the playoff field.  College leaders always tend to make decisions for the present rather than the future.  This is inevitable and it will kill the golden goose that is college football.  Here’s why it would happen:

When Division I-AA was formed for football in 1978, the original playoffs included just four teams.  Four years later it was doubled to eight teams.  By 1982 it was already at 12 teams.  By only its ninth season the I-AA playoffs were expanded to a 16-team format.  In 2010 the NCAA expanded to include 20 teams. 

Now that four teams could potentially play five playoff games, you can count on the NCAA eventually expanding the first round of the FCS to 32 teams. 

To see what this means for the regular season, take a look at James Madison this year.  JMU is a strong 1-AA program from the SEC of the FCS, the Colonial Athletic Association.  JMU is a program on the rise but 2011 was one of their worst teams over the past seven seasons.  JMU was 7-4 yet got an invite to the FCS playoffs.  They won their first round game and hung close with North Dakota State before losing in the quarters. 

For JMU alumni, the two playoff weekends were exciting but at what cost?  The expanded playoffs essentially makes September through mid-November a glorified exhibition season for the perennial FCS powerhouses.  Barring a collapse, as long as you can get your team playing its best football at the end of the season, you have a shot at the title.

The Unintended Consequences – Don’t get me wrong, were a playoff system to come into being, those first couple years would be fun.  An eight team playoff really would make late December/early January must see TV. 

But then we’d have the inevitable playoff creep.  Even a 16 team playoff field would give us participants like the 2007 Michigan outfit that started the season losing to Appalachian State and Oregon at home.  Or the 9-3 Oklahoma team this year that is amazingly still a top 16 team despite losing to Texas Tech and beating no one.

Like college basketball, regular season football games would take on little meaning and provide no lasting memories.  Notre Dame gets their hearts torn out by a last second Michigan touchdown in Week Two…..no big deal, we’ll get them in December.  USC losing at Oregon State in 2008 would have been meaningless. 

We could see powerful USC or Alabama teams resting their starters against Notre Dame or Auburn in the final game of season.  Go back to 1993 after Notre Dame beat FSU in the next to last week of the year.  Holtz could have benched his entire team against Boston College the following week and they’d only drop from a #1 seed to maybe a #3 seed.  After all, you have to be fresh for the playoff push. 

Maintaining the Status Quo – Every system has flaws.  In the current BCS, “every game counts” except the Bama/LSU Game of the Century, where we get a rematch.  But even when the BCS is wrong, is that entirely a bad thing?  Diehard college fans enjoy comparing nuances like conference strength of schedule or which team had the better loss.  It’s part of what makes Saturday’s from September to December so compelling. 

For all the bad said and written about the current BCS set-up, college football is doing something right.  Unlike college basketball, college football popularity has exploded over the past two decades.  It’s something the populist crowd should be mindful of before declaring a playoff the end all be all solution.

The Case against Urban Meyer

Consider this more of a hypothetical exercise.  Coaches with a 104-23 career record (with the majority of those wins coming in the SEC) don’t suddenly forget how to coach.  Meyer is going to win games at OSU.  But the hype over Urban Meyer going to Columbus is approaching Barack Obama 2008 proportions.  On Monday afternoon I saw a man literally strutting around the streets with an Ohio State hat and jacket on. 

Too much hype can be a dangerous thing.  In 2008, with Obama running away with the election, Republicans gave up fighting an irresistible force.  Instead they decided to actually help elevate the Obama hype into the stratosphere.  Take the short term pain for the longer term gain.  The thought is, once expectations become so great, the only possible result can be disappointment. 

Urban Meyer is dangerously close to facing unrealistic expectations.  Below are some of the potential pitfalls lying await. 

1. NCAA Sanctions – If you’re Meyer, why not wait to hear what the final NCAA sanctions will be against OSU?  What if the NCAA docks the Buckeyes 30 scholarships over three years and a second year of bowl probation?  30 less scholarships would be an anvil around OSU football for the next seven years which is probably a year or two longer than Meyer will stay in Columbus. 

2. Following Jim Tressel – It’s difficult following a coaching legend.  It’s even harder when the legend was as underrated as Jim Tressel.  Tressel’s winning percentage at OSU is almost identical to Meyer’s at Florida.  In the last six seasons at OSU, Tressel won at least a share of the Big Ten every year.  That doesn’t even include the national title he won in 2002 or the BCS berth in 2003.  Jim Tressel is no Ron Zook. 

3. Michigan – Programs can have a down season, but beat your dreaded rival and the season is almost perceived as a success.  Tressel only lost to Michigan once in nine years (2003).  Meyer is facing a whole different animal with Brady Hoke.  He won’t have the luxury of facing Rich Rodriguez or the back end of the Carr era.  Losing to Michigan can undo an otherwise successful 10-2 season in a hurry. 

4. Health Concerns – This element has been discussed by the media.  The pressure in Columbus will make Gainesville seem small-time.  Having driven through the Columbus sports talk radio zones dozens of times, there is no off-season for OSU football.  It’s the first and really only sport in quietly one of the biggest cities in the Midwest.   

Meyer to OSU is almost a perfect storm of rising expectations.  Beat Michigan and win the Big Ten every year and Meyer will be carrying on what Tressel established.   Anything less and OSU fans will probably view the Meyer era as a letdown.  Welcome home Urban