The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

I found it utterly hilarious to listen to the ESPN talking heads discussing the college football national championship game from last night. It's as if they were all involved in a you-got-it-more-wrong-than-I-did shouting match. "You picked Alabama!" "Oh yeah?!? Well, you picked them by 50!" "At least I knew who Trevor Lawrence was!" "I said Lawrence was a better quarterback than Tua!" "Oh, no you didn't! You never even uttered his name!" Then there were "experts" who went the denial route, saying, "I still can't believe it happened. I'm stunned. I woke up today and thought, 'Was I dreaming?'" Just admit it, you drank the Nick Saban/Alabama Kool-Aid and were wrong, as Donald Trump would say, "bigly!" I admit, before bowl season began, I thought Alabama was going to win the title. After watching the semifinal games between the Tide and Oklahoma, as well as Notre Dame a...

We're still about a week away from knowing which four teams will be going to the college football playoff, but I'm already beginning to hear murmurs of Ohio State being able to sneak its way back into the 4-team format, but unless complete and total chaos ensues on Saturday, I don't think that should happen. Living near Columbus, Ohio, hopefully this blog doesn't get me into any trouble, but whether we're looking at resumés or the eye-test, I don't think Ohio State has proven itself to be one of the four best teams in the country. First off, let's look over Ohio State's resumé. The first ranked team the Buckeyes played since the national championship game last year was in game #11 of this season, a loss to visiting Michigan State. Their only win against a ranked team this season came in their final game against Michigan. In the Buckeye's 11 wins this season, only four have come against teams with winning records (8-4 Northern Illinois, 7-5 Wester...

When discussing the new playoff committee's top 25 rankings on Tuesday night, ESPN analysts Danny Kanell and David Pollock debated about whether TCU or Oregon should currently be ranked 4th in the country and agreed that both teams should be ranked ahead of Alabama at this point. Fellow ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstriet, however, disagreed, and said, "If you were to ask me who I think is the better team, I'd say Alabama is better than Oregon or TCU. That's just a gut feeling, an eye-test kind of thing" (just paraphrasing). I usually respect Kirk Herbstriet's opinions, because he tends to be unbiased. Even though he's an Ohio State graduate, he's never been shy about criticizing his Buckeyes and the Big Ten conference when he deems it necessary. However, I strongly disagree with him here. What's the point of teams scheduling tough out-of-conference opponents if they're not going to be rewarded at season's end by beating these teams, simply beca...