the tindog coffeehouse

I’ve largely stayed away from all the various NCAA conference expansion and/or realignment rumors floating around the interwebs the last few months because, well, they’re just rumors. One day you hear the Big Ten is going to steal the University of Texas away from the Big 12, the next you hear Texas is going to the SEC. One day the Big 12 is imploding, the next it’s expanding. Publicly, athletic directors declare their undying love for their conferences, but then they’re supposedly working vigorously in the shadows to broker a million other deals. And all the while, state legislators are trying to influence the process for their own particular benefit.

Is this college sports or As The World Turns?

The latest rumors have the Pac-10 asking Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, OU, Oklahoma State, and Colorado to be their new BFFs, thus elevating the Pac-10 to a 16-team superconference and completely decimating the Big 12. That would leave Baylor out in the cold, a result that doesn’t sit well with Waco’s state senator, David Sibley, who is apparently now fighting to have the Bears superglued to the other Texas teams. Meanwhile, the Big Ten, which has been rumored to be courting everyone from Texas to Nebraska to the North Dakota School for the Deaf, is supposedly focusing its efforts on Notre Dame. And Boise State, which was a lock for the Mountain West, is putting its plans on hold to see how everything else shakes out.

And of course, everything in the previous paragraph will be null and void by the time you finish reading this post.

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At the beginning of this year’s college football season, I looked ahead at the impending Texas Longhorns schedule and wrote that “it comes down to this: The Horns have to win. Period.”

Forget the National Championship. If the Horns want to win the Big 12 South, they have to win all three of those games [Tech, OU, and OSU]. Any misstep there, and the Big 12 tie-breaker rule that bit ‘em in the butt last year could do the same again.

Also, the schedule allows no room for error since the last four games will essentially be givens against weaker non-ranked (or lower-ranked) teams. In other words, if they fall early to OU or get tripped up in Stillwater, a blowout victory against Central Florida isn’t going to help them; there’s nowhere to go but down. …

The only way Texas can ensure they will end the regular season with a higher BCS ranking than OU is to go undefeated. And even if they do win the Big 12 with one loss, that single loss will probably be enough to keep them out of the National Championship. So it really comes down to winning every game, not just the biggest three. As Yoda says, “Do or do not… there is no try.”

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After two Texas Tech football players recently posted negative comments on Twitter, coach and head pirate Mike Leach banned his team from tweeting altogether and also suspended offensive lineman Brandon Carter indefinitely.

Naturally, the story generated a lot of interest in the media and around the Internet at a time when the Red Raiders are still dealing with the aftermath of losing their second game of the season. But was it the right move?

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The cover of the September issue of Texas Monthly proclaims of Texas Tech coach Mike Leach: “This crazy pirate may be the best college football coach in the country.” They got the “crazy” part right, but I definitely wouldn’t say he’s the best coach in the country.

Granted, he’s very good at what he does, and he deserves a certain amount of recognition for that. If nothing else, his ability to recruit virtually unknown players and turn them into one of the most dominant passing offenses in the nation is worthy of admiration.

But NCAA records are one thing; results are quite another. At some point, those billions of passing yards have to translate to meaningful wins, and that’s where Leach has so far come up short. Sure, they beat Texas last year in what was arguably one of the biggest games in the country, but at the end of the season, all they had to show for it was a shared Big 12 South title and a loss to Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl. In fact, in the nine seasons Leach has coached at Tech, they’ve never outright won the Big 12 South division or played in a BCS bowl game.

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I wondered at the beginning of this year’s college football season how accurate EA Sports’ NCAA College Football 09 for the Wii was at predicting the outcomes of the real games. Each week, I played the game as the University of Texas versus their scheduled opponent for the week and then compared that score to the real score.

A few of the Wii scores were fairly close to the actual ones (Florida Atlantic, Rice, Texas A&M) while others were way off (Arkansas, Missouri, Baylor), margins of error probably not too different than what you’d get from ESPN and other “expert” prognosticators.

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Texas coach Mack Brown wasn’t happy. Because of an odd tiebreaker rule in the Big 12 Conference, OU will play Missouri for the Big 12 Championship with a shot at the National Title game should they beat the Tigers. The Longhorns, meanwhile, finish behind OU even though the Sooners lost to the Horns in October and will likely end up in the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State.

That, apparently, isn’t a good enough consolation prize for Mack:

I’m really disappointed for our kids that two teams we beat this season will be playing for the Big 12 Championship. I’ll try to explain it to them, but most importantly, my message will be that you’ve done enough to put yourself in position to play for the conference championship, you had a great season and there still is a lot out there for you to play for. …

Since this situation has never happened before in the Big 12, I think the conference should follow the lead of all of the other BCS leagues with championship games (ACC/Conference USA/Mid-American/SEC) in how they settle three-way ties. I think their systems are fairer and give more credit to how the two highest ranked teams performed against each other on the field.

I have to wonder, though: Would Mack and all the other angry Longhorn fans feel the same way if they had come out on top?

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