WELCOME TO THE NATIONAL TITLE GAME, 20 DAYS TOO SOON, WITH A `LUNATIC FRINGE'
Oregon and Ohio State know this is bigger than a playoff quarterfinal, as Nick Saban rips the College Football Playoff selection committee and Kirk Herbstreit slams Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe
A labyrinth of streets leads us into the Rose Bowl, only better if snow is atop the San Gabriel Mountains, which remains a national historic landmark assuming an earthquake never erupts. Still, something is weird this year. One end zone has OREGON in green and yellow, while the other end zone has OHIO STATE in scarlet and gray, and the week means it’s a quarterfinal game in the College Football Playoff.
So why is it being treated like the national championship?
Here is where the selection committee badly mismanaged the system. If these teams are two of America’s best, why are they playing on New Year’s Day when Penn State lucks out with a booby-prize team in Boise State? If the sport finally has arrived with a 12-team postseason, Pasadena seems a bogus holiday gift to ESPN. This is because the committee awarded bye weeks to conference champions when, in retrospect, Boise State and Arizona State deserved no such breaks.
One has a blue field. The other has Cam Skattebo. Why?
“I think we have less of a chance, based on the way they seeded the teams, of getting the best four teams in the final four than we did when we just picked four teams,” said Nick Saban, already recalling the old days. “Oregon and Ohio State are probably two of the best four teams in the country, and they’re going to play each other in the round of eight rather than in the semifinals. And that was because we awarded conference champs byes. They should be rewarded by putting them in the tournament, but they should get ranked relative to the quality of team they have relative to everyone else. Then you would have more good games, I think, and a fair tournament when you get to the semifinals and the finals.”
Rather than make Saban the CFP commissioner, we must hear him talk on Pat McAfee’s program. He was only getting started. In a swirl of frantic network fanboyism, Saban and Kirk Herbstreit have lost their sanity in support of Ryan Day. He is the Ohio State coach who somehow has become a kind-hearted pick to win the title when, as I recall, he lost to five-loss Michigan in November and Oregon in September. Ethically speaking, it isn’t the job of two analysts to launch crusades to protect Day’s job, which always is in jeopardy given the university’s top-rated athletic value of $1.32 billion. If we’ve learned nothing else in his first year as a commentator, Saban cannot be told what to say.
“These Ohio State fans, they have a psychotic obsession with Michigan,” he said Friday of Day’s four-game losing streak against the rival. "They need to get therapy or something to go get it fixed because they have a chance to win the national championship. And here you are, nobody is excited about their opportunity to play because of a loss to Michigan.”
Days earlier, Saban said: “Everybody ought to be supporting the hell out of them so that they have the best opportunity to do it and quit all this negative bulls–t. I used to tell the players all the time: Why do you care about what some guy puts on the Internet who’s a fat guy in his underwear living in his mother’s basement? Why do you care? Why does that mean anything to you? Why does that affect you in any way shape or form?”
Then he added: “I think this is probably the most talented team, as long as they play to the standard level on offense and defense. They’ve pretty much got it all. If they play like they did against Tennessee, they’ll have a really good chance to win the championship.”
Slow down, Nick. What stops Ohio State from fumbling again? But in comes Herbstreit, who played ball in Columbus and moved to Nashville because of the local fans. He thinks the program is run by crazies atop a base of more than 11 million, some of whom donate $60 million a year to Day. Um, is Kirk traveling too much on his college and NFL schedules? The other night, he suggested Caleb Williams doesn’t work hard enough and didn’t provide any examples. Now he’s taking on Buckeye Nation?
“I can’t speak on behalf of the lunatic fringe,” Herbstreit said. “I’m not sure how they operate. The lunatic fringe at Ohio State is as powerful as anywhere in the country.”
The lunatic fringe, in his view, also appears on an ESPN show. “ ‘First Take’ tried to fire him. They thought he was done,” Herbstreit said of Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe. “They had him out. They’re trying to find replacements. But here he is. He’s still got his hat on. He’s still coaching.” Shouldn’t he have mentioned that his son, Zak, plays for Day? That Herbstreit is “a friend of Ryan Day” and how they “talk on a regular basis” about subjects beyond football? Journalism does not exist on the “College GameDay” panel.
Said play-by-play man Chris Fowler: “When you hear pundits on this network and other places talking about (Day’s firing) with certainty, it’s nonsense, frankly. The public doesn’t trigger and get rid of the coach, administrators do.”
Does anyone have thoughts on Oregon coach Dan Lanning, who is 13-0 and ranked No. 1? And his quarterback, Dillon Gabriel? Sharpe decided to carve up Herbstreit and Fowler: “Kirk, Chris Fowler, I promise you, if you ever mention any platform that I’m on again and talk about, ‘I wonder what they’re going to say as negativity,’ I promise you, ESPN ain’t got enough bosses to keep me off y’all for what I’m going to say. Don’t play with me.”
Fans of both teams already are trickling into southern California. Day says he “feels confident” after crushing Tennessee and still has the support of athletic director Ross Bjork, who said, “Coach Day has kept the program at the forefront of college football. We have stubbed our toe in some key moments, but that doesn’t mean we’re not running the program at the highest level.” Ohio State lost in Eugene, 32-31, but the defense allowed 496 yards to Gabriel and the Ducks.
“We’re looking forward to the opportunity because it was not a great game for us,” defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said. “And I know, quite frankly, the guys got a little pissed off. They used that game as motivation. So, I’m sure they’re looking forward to another opportunity.”
“I think we’ve all been looking forward to this one, another crack at these guys,” said quarterback Will Howard, who slid to end the game as time ran out. “The way the last one ended didn’t sit right with me.”
I prefer the cool of the Ducks, who could complain about the early Ohio State matchup and suggest major changes in the system. Instead, Lanning says the Buckeyes “don’t have weaknesses.” He likes being in the Rose Bowl and doesn’t care about Day, Herbstreit, Saban, Shannon, Stephen A. and the lunatic fringe. He knows his team is healthy and prepared after a week off, the way life should be for Oregon and backer Phil Knight.
“Being on this side of the country, this is a game you dream of the opportunity to coach in,” Lanning said. “It’s certainly a thrill for me. Obviously, a big fan of our program and influence in our program is Phil, and Phil always told me his No. 1 goal is, ‘Can we get to the Rose Bowl?’ So I’m extremely ecstatic that our team gets to be a part of such a historic game.”
The winner plays Texas or Arizona State in the Cotton Bowl, a semifinal assignment that doesn’t seem as big. And the winner of that game plays Notre Dame, Georgia or Penn State — sorry, no Boise State — in the title game, an assignment that doesn’t seem as big.
This is your national championship, 20 days before the actual game in Atlanta, which happens to be Inauguration Day. Donald Trump? I’ll watch Shannon slug Herbstreit.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.