October 16, 2007

Expect abnormal to be norm
College football's craziness here to stay

By Kirk Bohls
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

If you're a college football fan, here's how you should bet the house this weekend.

Michigan State will knock off top-ranked Ohio State. After all, we've already had three different No. 1 teams for the first time since 2000. Surely there will be a fourth.

Baylor will pop Texas. Iowa State will rise up and crush Oklahoma. After beating No. 1 LSU in overtime, Kentucky will lose by 50 to Florida. Upstart Notre Dame will score TWO touchdowns and pound Southern Cal. Third-ranked Boston College will lose, too, and it doesn't even play this week.

We wish we were kidding. Who knows anymore?

College football overnight has become an underdog's delight and a gambler's AA meeting date to be named later. Never has there been a season this crazy, this nutty, where up is down, where being a heavy favorite means absolutely nothing, and schools such as Nebraska are so distraught they're replacing athletic directors in the middle of the season.

Someone has kidnapped reason and logic and is holding them hostage, hopefully until the powers institute a playoff. Could there be a greater need for a 16-team playoff than this year, when even Mack Brown said a two-loss team could be crowned national champion?

Forget the madness of March. We're hip-deep in it. It's only a matter of time until Lee Corso picks the Florida-Georgia winner and puts on a Bucky Badger head. It's gotten that off-kilter.

"There are no upsets any more," Brown said.

Can we have USC and golden boy Pete Carroll back? Will the grinch who stole Nebraska replace it before Ball State boots the Pinkshirts out of Lincoln and starts playing its home games in there? If Michigan doesn't return to form, Russell Crowe is going to get really ticked off and hit someone. Will the guilty party return the real Notre Dame before NBC reneges on its contract and starts televising South Florida's games every week? What's next: " 'ESPN College GameDay,' live from ... Chestnut Hill, Mass."?

It's lunacy, I tell you. Unadulterated wackiness. Ten ranked teams have lost to unranked clubs. At this rate, Todd Reesing is certain to win the Heisman even though nobody outside the Big 12 has ever heard of him. Lou Holtz is going to start making sense. Sheer craziness.

And I'm here to tell it's great for college football. It's boffo for ratings, terrific for ad men, a godsend for ticket brokers.

Now, it's downright lethal for Texas and USC and Notre Dame and Penn State, but the little guys are dancing in the streets. There's not a goalpost safe from Palo Alto to Lexington.

"You look at the NFL, and any team can win any week," Texas defensive tackle Derek Lokey said. "You can't just roll your helmet out there, and the (opposing) team will back down in a corner. The Stanfords of the world, the Appalachian States. Usually we see two or three of those upsets a year. Now we see two or three a week."

Except what's an upset any more?

The playing field has been leveled for reasons beyond the oft-used excuse, the 85-scholarship limit per Division I-A team.

The flood of upsets are the result of the influx of spread offenses that reduce the number of offensive skill players needed; the early recruiting commitments by the marquee schools that overlook late bloomers in their senior seasons at high school; the massive television exposure for non-traditional teams that makes more schools appealing to recruits; the sliding scale for college entrance exams; and recruits' desire for instant playing time.

Brown said a team can be competitive immediately with an athletic quarterback, a few good receivers and running backs and a couple of good cornerbacks.

"Kids want to play," Longhorn defensive co-coordinator Duane Akina said. "The early commitments can work against you. (Smaller) schools don't need to waste their time (on blue-chippers), and they know whom to target. Other schools can be more thorough. And those kids have a sense of loyalty to those staffs."

Akina should know. The Desert Swarm defense at Arizona that he and fellow Longhorn assistant Larry Mac Duff coached had five starters they out-recruited junior colleges for. They stole Tedi Bruschi away from Colorado State and pried Brandon Sanders loose from Cal State Fullerton, and their best defensive lineman from the Scottsdale Community College Fighting Artichokes. Yeah, those Artichokes.

So, yes, there are good players everywhere in college football these days. And it's great for interest.

In fact, we've been so obsessed with and traumatized by this college football season there's a rumor floating around that the Colorado Rockies are going to make the World Series. Come on, we're not that gullible.