College Football: Ignore the Noise

After BEVO went after Uga and Texas went after Georgia in the Sugar Bowl it's all over.  Except the talking.

"Georgia is one of the four BSECT teams"

"But they didn't care against Texas"

"UCF's loss to LSU proves they don't belong"

"But they had a backup QB"

"But they were missing nine starters"

"Ohio State proved they should be in the playoff"

"It's about the best teams"


Drown it all out, because all of it is bunk.  The fact of the matter is this:  No team markedly changed the narrative for them that had already been litigated at length, prior to any of these games being played.

Georgia? A very good team that lost against two of the best teams they faced and expected to be rewarded for that because SEC, or something.

Ohio State? A very talented, but flawed team that got inexplicably hammered by Purdue.

Notre Dame? A physically challenged team who nevertheless ran the table and deserved their shot at the big boys.

Oklahoma? A team with defensive challenges who avenged their only loss against a team that was good enough to play in a NY 6 bowl and, as such, deserved a chance to get a shot.

UCF? A Group of 5 school who went undefeated for 25 games straight and came within a score of knocking off a Top 10 caliber P5 team despite missing their team's most valuable player.

LSU? Freakishly talented and deep, but not yet at the level of Bama.

Alabama and Clemson? Clearly the two best programs in college football right now.


None of these narratives regarding any of these teams changed over the course of the bowl season, in fact, in many cases they were confirmed.  This is true despite what the hot take crowd is now spewing out.

So don't believe all of the excuses that Paul Finebaum and others are going to make for Georgia. Not being sufficiently motivated to play in a game after talking trash about other teams is a team flaw. If Georgia wasn't up for Texas after talking all the trash they did then that says more about their program than the system itself. They should have wanted to come out and prove to the world that they are one of the four best teams instead of relying on the FOUR BSECT TEAMS hype from Kirk Herbstreit et al.

But they didn't.

In college football there is so much fun and good on the field. Teams playing fun football games that play out as if the teams have been heavily drinking since the night before. Strange plays that make you sit up and shout at the TV, tragedy, human drama, all of it self-contained in something that's not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

You're reminded of that when you think about Tyler Trent, Purdue super-fan and inspiration to many who died on the first day of the year from his third fight with cancer. Those are things that are important, not the score of some game played between men who, in many cases, will never play this game again.

On the field, college football had a down 2018, like pretty much everything else about the year it was just "meh".  Sure there were brilliant individual moments, but no single week was out-of-this-world bonkers in a way that made us all laugh with joy.  For the most part it was a slog. A slot of inevitability that Clemson vs. Alabama was going to determine the Championship once again and that we're all pretty much had about as much of that as we can handle.

Even Bama and Clemson fans appear to be bored with it, as the secondary market for tickets is spitting out prices that are lower than face-value. Granted, some of this can be marked-off as bad venue selection.  Levi's Field in Santa Clara has logistical and historical-tie issues that wouldn't be noticed had college football decided to play this game at say, the Rose Bowl.

But, play it they will.  For most of us it will be too late in the evening on a Monday night  and therefore our viewing will peter out somewhere around halftime.  Which will be a fitting end for this wet fart of a season if you really think about it.



Housekeeping: I went 23-26 with 2 NC during bowl season. I did hit several upsets on the ML which left my bankroll pretty much intact. The beginning and the end of the schedule was harsh, especially the last day where all of the games started promising, and then fell into a heap in the second half.

As I stated before, I will not be analyzing or making any predictions on the CFPI Championship game.

On to college basketball and horse racing.