The 13-member College Football Playoff Committee tells us who’s in and who’s out Tuesday night. I’m trying hard to get worked up about this. It’s like getting enthused about a fashion show. There’s Alabama right now, on the catwalk, mouthing, “I’m too sexy for my shirt.’’
The committee will make this judgment four more times between now and Dec. 5, when the Final 4 will be revealed. Then everyone, everywhere will again tell them how stupid they are.
I’m afraid UC’s football legacy during this era of big Bearcats achievement will be, “They were the team that made it most obvious the need for an expanded playoff.’’
Jenkins: Where will UC land in first playoff rankings?
I hope I’m wrong. While I’m hoping. . .
It must be written on a tablet somewhere deep in a Bristol, CT, basement that every playoff should include at least one SEC team, preferably two, and one must be Alabama.
Alabama has a loss. UC does not. ‘Bama’s best win is against 15th-ranked Ole Miss, which isn’t as sexy as UC’s road W over then-No. 9 Notre Dame but, like we said, this is about one team that’s seen as sexy and another that plays in Clifton.
Oklahoma is another catwalk favorite. The Sooners are unbeaten. Their best win is over Kansas State. What?
UC? The Bearcats need a Madison Avenue PR firm. Haul Don Draper out of retirement. (ID Don Draper, win fabulous prizes chosen just for you!) To get national reviews in our town, get arrested. I’m surprised College Game Day was able to find Cincinnati. Thank goodness for GPS.
The Bearcats need to win out and win big every week. They know this, and it has affected their play the last two games. That’s unfortunate. “We’re a better ‘doubt us’ crew than we are a favorite,” Luke Fickell told Yahoo! over the weekend.
That would play very well in the playoff. Now?
Fickell is rightly focused on the day to day. He can control that. Can he control his players, who won’t be anywhere at 7 Tuesday night but in front of a TV?
What would make UC and its fans happy Tuesday night at 7, when the first Sex Appeal Rankings emerge?
* Bearcats ranked in Top 6.
* Bearcats’ upcoming foes Houston and SMU ranked in Top 25. Playoff wannabes all need resume-padding T25 Ws. None more than UC.
* Bearcats ahead of Oklahoma, Michigan State, Ohio State. Those three all have better schedules down the stretch. If even one of them wins out, they would be tough to catch.
* Notre Dame being rewarded for going 7-1 since losing to the Bearcats.
Alabama’s fate will depend on whether it can beat Georgia in the SEC title game. Nobody has made the playoff with two losses. Can Ohio State beat Michigan State, win at Michigan then win the Big 10 title game?
In that respect, college football is in its playoffs now. If only that were true.
Now, then. . .
WHY IS EVERYONE SO PO’D at the Bengals?
Dumb question of the year, Doc.
No, it’s not. Unless you live and die with them game to game and to you, Big Picture means hanging the Mona Lisa on the man-cave wall.
They’re 5-3. Let’s start with that. More wins than last year already. One fewer than last two years combined. They’ve won at ‘Burgh and B-more. If the season ended today, they’d be in the playoffs.
They have a young team with a young head coach and green assistants. Teams like that are going to have results than look like an EKG. Nobody at PBS is accustomed to being good in the NFL. Or accustomed to the demands of staying that way. We’ll find out quickly if the loss to the Jets was a lesson well-learned.
What did you think was going to happen after the win in Baltimore? Opponents would shrink in fear? I actually heard trained journalists last week using sentences that contained the words “Super’’ and “Bowl’’ in reference to the Men. Oh, for God’s sake.
With that kind of perspective, the Bengals could whip the Third Reich and it wouldn’t be good enough. Calm down, yeah?
The team that beat the Ravens on the road is the same group that lost in front of about 20,000 people in Jersey. It’s the same group that will play the Browns here Sunday. If you see any of them enter a phone booth and emerge as Superman, let me know.
What’s a phone booth, Doc?
All you get when you bounce off the walls week to week rooting for an NFL team is a headache from bouncing off the walls week to week. This isn’t SOB, rip Mike Brown, Zac Taylor sucks business as usual. It’s a pretty good team with players that apparently care enough about each other and the games themselves to at least have a chance to fix the mess they made last Sunday.
I actually had multiple folks tell me not to be so “positive.’’ Haha. They wanted me to burn the Bengals at the stake. I told them that was their job.
“I’m not being positive,’’ I told one guy, who apparently didn’t know me all that well. “I’m being rational.’’
If you stated in August that you expected the Bengals to contend for the Big Bowl, you have reason to feel disappointed today. If you thought the way I did, that 2021 was preparation for 2022, when the same young team, armed with lessons learned, would make a big move, then you have no issue with 5-3 at halftime.
Regardless, the Bengals have nine games to prove somebody right or wrong.
HAS IT BEEN A GOOD WORLD SERIES? Were the playoffs exciting? Help me out here.
I’m told the Series resumes tonight in Houston. Game 6, Braves up 3 games to 2. Good.
It’s all a rumor to me, and maybe to you as well. I’m an expert of the first 5 innings of every game. That’s as far as I get before my eye-blinks get long, then stop altogether.
What if the NFL decided to begin all its postseason games at 9 pm Eastern?
That’s the football equivalent of what MLB does to October. (And now, November.)
The fast that it’s an ancient complaint only makes baseball look worse. Manfred says he’s concerned about game length. Then why do games keep getting longer?
From The Ringer a few weeks ago:
The only individual game this postseason to last less than three hours was Giants-Dodgers Game 1 A baseball fan who wants to watch full games for both the ALCS and NLCS on the same day must now commit in the range of eight hours to the project, multiple days in a row. Who has that kind of time on weekdays?
World Series game times so far: 4:06, 3:11, 3:24, 3:45, 4:00.
Not only are the games inexcusably long, they are micro-managed. Every out is accompanied with many megatons of deep managerial thinking and strategy tries. Pitching changes for every conceivable situation. And some inconceivable ones.
I never make it to midnight.
If the mighty Manfred really cared, he’d fix it. He doesn’t. At least say so, and stop insulting our collective intelligence. And let me know tomorrow morning who won.
TUNE O' THE DAY. Aerosmith is among my favorite Greatest Hits bands. I don't listen to Toys In The Attic or Rocks all the way through, but in spots, Tyler and the boys really rock. Such as here.
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