College Football

NOTRE DAME GOT JOBBED (And I Like It)

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After enduring two early season losses to Miami and Texas A&M, it became clear throughout the rest of the regular season that Notre Dame was6 one of the twelve best teams in college football. Before entering conference championship weekend, Notre Dame was ranked above the University of Miami (FL) by the College Football Playoff Selection Committee for what many believed was to be one available at-large berth to the tournament.

At the conclusion of Saturday’s conference championship games, the Selection Committee determined that Texas Tech’s ass-whooping of BYU (34-7) allowed Miami to leap past BYU in the rankings. Now, the committee was forced to look at Miami and Notre Dame for the final at-large berth: head-to-head. The Selection Committee was instructed to take another look at the game played on August 31st, where Miami beat ND, 27-24, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.

This game was the season opener for both schools. And now the Selection Committee was looking at a game played at the end of the summer as possibly the deciding factor to determine the final spot in the the CFP.

Based on other metrics both schools were near even. Miami’s two losses were to conference foes, SMU and Louisville. Notre Dame’s two losses were against Miami and CFP participant Texas A&M in the first two games of the season. ND ran the table after those two losses.

By noon on Sunday, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee had made the decison that Miami was deserving of the final at-large berth vaulting over Notre Dame. Neither ND or The U had played that weekend, but somehow BYU’s loss opened the door for the Canes to edge out the Fighting Irish. Miami would play Texas A&M in the first round of the CFP and Notre Dame would likely play BYU in the Pop Tarts Bowl.

If you have been around the block more than once, you realize that college football is a cesspool of backroom deals, good old boy handshakes and political machinations that would make Louis The XVI’s royal court look like a bunch of junior high amateurs in the use of deception and manipulation.

Notre Dame has chosen to be an an outlier in college football by retaining its status as an independent. (Notre Dame and UConn are the only true FBS independents.) Notre Dame has elected to use its brand and its large nationwide fan base to further the goals of Notre Dame. ND makes its own schedule (Though it does have an agreement with the ACC to schedule 5 ACC schools each year.), negotiate its own tv deal and retains every cent of that money, and when it plays in the postseason does not have to share a dollar with any fellow conference members.

Further, when Notre Dame enters into a scheduling agreement with another school it uses its brand as leverage to get the best possible deal. Notre Dame usually prefers a scheduling agreement where the Irish receive two home games and the opponent receives one. Or the Irish recieve a home game and the opponent will host the game at a neutral site. Exxamples of that are Notre Dame playing Boston College at Fenway Park and ND traveling to Met Life Stadium to take on Navy.

Notre Dame is the bully on the block and constantly seeks preferential treatment. For the 2026 season, Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua has already negotiated an agreement where the Fighting Irish are guaranteed a spot in the College Football Playoff if they finish ranked in the Top 12.

But when you are an outlier and you demand preferential treatment and strong-arm deals with other schools, enmity grows.

College football is made up of athletic conferences or alliances. Each alliance operates in the best interest of its member schools. Miami is a member of the ACC with 17 full-fledged member schools. Notre Dame, for its own convenience, joins the ACC for certain sports to raise that number to 18 schools.

If Notre Dame had been a member of the ACC, odds are it would have played in the ACC Championship game and secured an automatic berth.

But Notre Dame does not play well with others.

The Selection Committee is populated by folks who have served as athletic directors and coaches at major conferences. The University of Virginia’s Athletic Director Carla Williams is a member of the Selection Committee. UVA is a proud member of the ACC. (Who knows for how long?)

Does anyone believe that these stewards of college football are going to choose Notre Dame over Miami? If the ACC fails to earn a CFP berth, a Power 4 conference would see its value and marketabilty negatively impacted. The ACC is comprised of 17 schools in football. It has a large tv deal with ESPN. None of the stakeholders in college football want to see the value of the ACC diminished.

When you choose to go it alone and thumb your nose at the rest of college football, Notre Dame is not going to receive an invitation to the party. Join a conference like everyone else. (ND’s quest for superiority through exclusivity.) For a school who has not won a national championship since 1988, Notre Dame suffers from the delusion that it is still the largest program in the land. Georgia and Alabama might want to challenge the Fighting Irish on that conceit.

Miami pays protection money to the ACC (Miami will share CFP money with its ACC brethren.) and to the larger community of college football by being a member of the ACC. When Notre Dame is asked to pay protection money, it tells the friendly and well-dressed folks from the Big Ten or ACC to go fuck themselves. Well, this time ND fucked itself.

In a fit of pique and anger, Notre Dame has announced it will decline its bowl invitation proving once again that ND is all about ND. (The bowl system is in a perilous state.)

ND is an exclusive club of one. ND doesn’t need to be in a conference. Well, the Selection Committee just gave you the answer to that.

The next time we see Notre Dame football will be when the Irish visit Wisconsin on September 6th of 2026. The game will be played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay.

Lane Kiffin Is The Real Life Spaulding Smails

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It’s easy to pile on former Ole Miss head ball coach and now current LSU head ball coach, Lane Kiffin, but this fifty-year-old man has a way of oozing douchiness.

There is no other way to describe the face, the posture, the clothes, the trademark visor that on any man of a certain age raises the douche-o-meter, the public relations-inspired bon mots that clatter off his tongue that make any thinking college football fan do a double-take at the source of said comments, his need for prayer to make a decision that had already been made, and Lane Kiffin’s innate ability to conjure the image of Caddyshack’s Spaulding Smails whenever I think of his douchey presence on the old gridiron.

“Fifty bucks says the Smails kid picks his nose.” – Porterhouse

Lane Kiffin is not alone in college football. The sport is decorated with glad-handers and gamblers, nepo coaches and Neanderthals, savvy agents and college presidents lacking savoir faire, millionaire money-grubbing coaches and greedy parents pimping out their sons to the highest bidder. The game is a flim-flam scam and fans fund these slight-of-hand schemes that make coaches, agents, athletic directors, athletic conferences, television networks and now some teenage players a vast amount of money.

College football is rudderless. Whatever rules exist are made to be broken. Million dollar mega lawsuits are as much a part of the game as is hiring a graduate assistant coach at a barely able to survive salary. As much as society attempts to push college football into the future, the sport resolutely and fiercely clings to its past.

Pay players. Create a transfer portal that favors the players. And the immediate reaction from the administrators and coaches that govern the sport is: This is a completely lopsided relationship. Coaches can no longer bury a kid on the depth chart, because another program is going to give that kid an opportunity. A volatile system of supply and demand is now a real concept in college football.

A college football head coach can no longer act like Steve Spurrier and play golf every day. Just ask former Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze how his short game is.

The stakes are higher. The demand for wins are higher. And the money to be made is in the stratosphere, which creates more problems.

College football is now a sport where a team on the brink of a possible national championship-run and ranked 6th in the nation, Ole Miss, is losing its coach to a conference rival, LSU. The season isn’t over, the College Football Playoff has yet to begin and Ole Miss is hiring its defensive coordinator, Pete Golding, as Lane Kiffin’s permanent replacement. Golding will have to stave off attempts by Kiffin to immediately abscond with other Ole Miss assistant coaches to Baton Rouge. Golding will have to re-recruit his Ole Miss players to stay at Oxford and not take the Kiffin cash in Baton Rouge.

Ole Miss players, alums and fans have waited generations for something like this to happen and the reality on the ground is that Ole Miss’s national championship aspirations have been cut off at the knees. How does this happen?

How does Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), with ten conferences and 136 schools, have no rules in place to prevent a circumstance such as this from happening? The majority of players are now given one transfer portal a year, that runs from January 2nd thru January 16th, to decide whether to stay or go.

Coaches are bound by nothing. If Louisiana’s governor, LSU’s new school president and new athletic director show up to Casa Kiffin with a $91 million-dollar contract for seven years, which they did; that’s going to buy a lot of purple and gold visors (Lane Kiffin ain’t paying for a visor.) and the Kiffin family is hopping on a private jet to Baton Rouge — only days after a victory in the Egg Bowl — to be anointed the saviors of LSU football.

Kiffin will now be the second-highest paid head coach in college football with an annual salary of $13 million dollars. Only Georgia head coach Kirby Smart is above Kiffin on the coaching salary pedestal.

The Bama Boys: Kirby & Lane

The Kiffin Buyout:

If LSU fires Kiffin without cause, it would owe him 80% of his remaining salary, which would be paid out in monthly installments through 2032. The deal does not include any mitigation or offset clauses that would reduce the cost if Kiffin got another job, fully guaranteeing his compensation. LSU would not have to pay him if he was fired for cause. – From nola.com

The good old boys at LSU sure don’t care about handing away another large chunk of change if Kiffin fails with the Tigers. Fifty million to Brian Kelly apparently didn’t make anyone blink. And then in a few years — it could be two years with the crazy nature of college football — LSU might be on the hook for another monster buyout to Kiffin.

The money is absolutely astonishing and the terms of the buyout packages — favoring Kelly and Kiffin — are similar to what Putin is looking to leverage from Ukraine. Kiffin’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, should give a tutorial to Putin.

What’s even more astonishing is that LSU appears to routinely move the douche-o-meter with its most recent head football coach hirings:

— Ed Orgeron

— Brian Kelly

— Lane Kiffin

That’s hard to compete against.

Right now, Lane Kiffin is the face of college football. Let’s just say that isn’t necessarily a good thing for the sport, but no one seems to care or has the power to rein in a cluster fuck of a sport.

College football is inhabited with a cavalcade of Spaulding Smails wannabes.

Lane “Spaulding Smails” Kiffin

Michigan Lands $5 Million Dollar Michigan Man

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The figures are in and Michigan Man, Jim Harbaugh, has signed a seven-year, $35 million dollar contract with a $2 million dollar signing bonus. The deal also includes a provision where Harbaugh will be eligible for a 10 percent raise after the third and fifth year of his contract.

Harbaugh will not be the highest paid coach in college football, and that is better optically for the university and its coach, but Harbaugh won’t be shopping the clearance rack at Walmart for his khakis.

Watching the press conference today, there was a rising tide of good feeling and bonhomie associated with the selection of Harbaugh, but the cold, hard reality of Michigan football will eventually rear its ugly head.

This is not a school that hired Jim Harbaugh to win the Big Ten’s East Division, but a big time football program desperately in need of validation through a Big Ten championship and a national title. (This isn’t We Are Marshall.) Somehow, I don’t get the feeling the folks in the SEC are too worried about the resurrection of Michigan when Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide reloads year after year.

With Harbaugh at the helm, Michigan’s alums and fans expect to win a national championship, but are these people in touch with reality and the present landscape of college football? Harbaugh will need to challenge the power of the SEC, compete for elite recruits and make Michigan a destination for future pros. What high school quarterback, with NFL aspirations, wouldn’t want to be mentored by Harbaugh? Will that be enough for Harbaugh’s program to beat the SEC and Ohio St. for recruits that can make Michigan a perennial powerhouse? Michigan football is an unwieldy beast that has a voracious appetite for success, and this beast will not hesitate to devour a struggling Michigan man.

Want To Be an NFL Owner?

At the New York Jets press conference announcing the firings of General Manager John Idzik and Head Coach Rex Ryan, owner Woody Johnson started speaking extemporaneously about former Jet, current Patriot, and All World cornerback, Darelle Revis, who will be a free agent.

Johnson committed a blatant act of tampering, but what surprises me is the sheer stupidity of most NFL owners. Woody Johnson  has proven to be at the top of that class. Purchasing the Jets for $635 million in January of 2000, Woody Johnson has proven himself to be a poor communicator and an inept manager of a professional sports franchise, but his net worth makes him a Teflon Don that has a boot on the neck of Jets fans for years to come.

A person who lacks charisma and leadership skills will be tasked with hiring the next coach of the New York Jets. Johnson has hired Charlie Casserly and Ron Wolf as old school NFL consiglieres to assist him, but Woody Johnson will have the ultimate say as to whom replaces Rex Ryan.

If Woody Johnson wasn’t an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, would he ever amass wealth in today’s world?

In the United States, there are perhaps a few hundred people who can purchase an NFL team. I am not one of those people, but I am supremely confident that I could run the New York Jets more efficiently than Woody Johnson and the Atlanta Falcons better than Arthur T. Blank. After dismissing Mike Smith as head coach, the Falcons have decided to go in a different direction and bring in edgier players. How soon we forget Mike Vick’s dogfighting scandal, Bobby Petrino walking out on the team, and the culture of chronic dysfunction that plagued Arthur T. Blank’s Dirty Birds before Mike Smith took over the sideline.

The most successful NFL franchises are owned by men who can identify the right front office talent, hold employees accountable, and get the fuck out of the way when they have no fucking clue what they are doing.

The Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and the Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam are perfect examples of egocentric jag-offs who refuse to get the hell out of the way.

With his ubiquitous Jets hat, Woody Johnson has the air of a prep school dilettante who has found a club sport to occupy his time. The Jets give Woody street cred at the country club, but he lacks the ability to make difficult decisions. Woody rakes in the bucks for the RNC, but the Jets chose to stay under the salary cap for the 2014 season.

Rex Ryan should have been fired when John Idzik was named general manager two years ago. Idzik did not want Rexy as his coach, Rexy did not want Geno Smith as his quarterback, and Woody didn’t know what the hell he was doing. The Jets have a weak owner, and weak owners are routinely punished in the NFL, which should be in line with Woody’s political views.

Mike Grimm

Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm (R) is looking for a job, and he’d bring some Staten Island win or I’ll toss you off the third deck leadership to Met Life Stadium.

Rex

I would hire Rex Ryan to lead my team when he learns clock management, his sideline doesn’t constantly appear like a NASCAR pit crew on Adderall, and he takes an interest in grooming a quarterback.

I would hire Rex to make a socially acceptable sex tape, but he might refrain from making a sexually explicit fetish video as it could be potentially career damaging.

NFL Blues

The NFL bores me. The NFL is a chameleon that will alter its product for the greatest Return On Investment. Fantasy leagues explode and the NFL quickly shifts to a league that loves the pass and hates the run. Tackling is treated as a necessary evil, but we sure don’t want to alienate our viewers with images of players leaving the field unable to remember their own names, the name of their wife sitting in the Family Section, or the name of their girlfriend in Section 202.

Prep Schools

Woody Johnson gives prep schools a bad name.

Quick Hits: Michigan Lands a Michigan Man

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How much does the University of Michigan value a Michigan man to lead a football program that has fallen to the depths of being a bottom feeder in the Big Ten?

Reportedly Jim Harbaugh will receive a six-year, $48 million dollar contract from his alma mater, which would make him the highest paid coach in college football. According to USA Today, Alabama’s Nick Saban is the nation’s highest paid college football coach at $7,160,187. In the NFL, Forbes has New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton atop the money list with an average salary of approximately $8 million dollars per year.

Harbaugh’s deal appears to equal the best paid coach in the NFL, and will surmount any current deal in college football until Alabama quickly gives Nick Saban another raise. If Harbaugh was such a Michigan man, did the school need to provide him with the highest salary in all of college football to prevent him from pursuing another NFL opportunity?

The argument will be made that for Harbaugh to forego his dream of winning a Super Bowl – and achieving football Valhalla – Michigan not only needed but had to go to any heights to hire a coach that could potentially resurrect a Big Ten program that now has more in common with Rutgers than with in-state rival, Michigan State. Eight million dollars will make any decision easier, but has anyone considered that Harbaugh is a Michigan man and shouldn’t need dirty, filthy lucre to return to idyllic Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor is clearly not an idyllic destination for any football coach. Michigan never embraced Rich Rodriguez as a Michigan man, and just fired a Michigan man, Brady Hoke. This is an athletic department struggling to find an identity, and has struggled to solve the two issues that undermine all athletic departments: the search for an effective athletic director and a winning football coach.

Harbaugh’s yearly salary is pocket change to the Michigan Athletic Department. Harbaugh will become one of – if not the – most powerful figure on the Michigan campus. He is a Michigan man, which is such a crock of self-pretentious bullshit perpetrated by Michigan alums and fans, that it makes me want to watch Michigan State and Ohio State kick the crap out of the Wolverines for decades to come.

It doesn’t matter that Jim Harbaugh is a Michigan man. It’s far more important that Harbaugh is a good football coach, which he has demonstrated at the University of San Diego, Stanford and with the San Francisco 49ers. In essence, $8 million dollars bought Michigan a Michigan man. Money talks and any Michigan man will listen to the sweet siren call of money.

Disclaimer: I strongly dislike Michigan alums and fans with their self-aggrandizing visions of their university and its athletic teams. To tweak these people, I’d like to utter four letters to these Bo Schembechler boobs: NJIT

Quick Hits

Dunkin’ Donuts is the official coffee of Liverpool FC in the Premier League. It’s nice to know that John Henry’s ownership group has allowed Masshole Nation to invade the shores of Great Britain.

It now appears to be socially acceptable to appear in a sex tape but not a porn movie.

I saw Santa Claus kissing Mommy under the Christmas tree. After wrapping all of the gifts and presents, placing them under the tree, and making sure Santa and his reindeer have fresh cookies and milk, no one is kissing anyone.

How many people cook a goose for Christmas? I’ve cooked a goose and it’s not easy to get it right.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie rooting for the New York Rangers. 

The New Jersey Devils have three head coaches (Lou Lamoriello, Scott Stevens and Adam Oates). The New York Rangers are the hottest team in the NHL and own an eight-game winning streak heading into tonight’s tilt versus the Dallas Stars. The Rangers only have one head coach.

In the New Era Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, Boston College loses to Penn St. because the Eagles have had a peculiar inability to successfully complete extra-point attempts. In OT, the Eagles missed a PAT wide right. High school teams can do this shit right. I thought wide right only applied to Bobby Bowden’s Florida State and former Buffalo Bills kicker, Scott Norwood.

In a silent protest, NYC cops continue to turn their back to NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. I guess silent protests are alright unless you’re a St. Louis Ram holding his hands above his head to protest the grand jury’s decision regarding Michael Brown.

Have taken a shine to Southern Tier’s 2XMas beer.

I am a devout believer in the Great Pumpkin, but I fear pumpkin beer. It’s like drinking your grandmother’s spice rack.

Sage or thyme on a roasted turkey? Or perhaps both?

I tried to watch a PBS documentary on Richard Pryor and it had a narcoleptic quality to it. How can anything about Richard Pryor put a person to sleep with the exception of Brewster’s Millions?

Johnny & Chevy

Watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation the other night, and I disliked this in 1989 and still hate it in 2014. Christmas Vacation is a poor Randy Quaid second cousin to Vacation and European Vacation. In 1989, I never thought that the actor who portrayed Rusty would become one of 2014’s highest paid sitcom stars, which is The Big Bang Theory‘s Johnny Galecki.

Yesterday at Larz Anderson’s Outdoor Skating Rink in Brookline, Massachusetts, the skaters were moving in a counter-clockwise fashion to Led Zeppelin. Back in the day, I used to rock out to organ music at Mennen Arena’s public skate.

Pulled pork does not belong on pizza.

If I referred to a Trader’s Joe employee as Magnum P.I., would anyone get the reference?

The Last Remaining Narragansett Del’s Shandy

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Last night I drank the last remaining Narragansett Del’s Shandy. The fridge is now bereft of that summer concoction and reality is starkly reminding me that summer is nearly extinguished.

I refuse to relent. And I will deny the advent of fall until I see some jackass New Englander wearing fleece and a wool hat on a 65 degree day, and then I will still object to the impending appearance of autumn. 

To slow the advance of autumn, there are Russian troops crossing over the border into the Ukraine. Are these the Boys of Summer or the Dogs of War?

College football is waiting to explode over Labor Day weekend, and that might result in a few high ankle sprains amongst tailgaters leaping off sports utility vehicles to save that last Narragansett Del’s Shandy from the hands of a beer neophyte.

 

 

This is a world in flux, but rest assured there will be a Labor Day weekend traffic stop to catch that inebriated college football fan driving back from his alma mater’s opening game. We will be warned, but how can one final Narragansett Del’s Shandy put us over the edge? It’s lemonade for cryin’ out loud! Alright, with a little beer.  

The SEC has kicked off tonight with Texas A&M traveling to Charleston to take on ol’ ball coach Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina Gamecocks. In the NFL, the New England Patriots are traveling to Met Life Stadium, to take their rightful place in the Jimmy Garoppolo Debutante Ball, where the New York Giants will try to knock off Jimmy’s Vera Wang gown in both teams’ final exhibition game. The Giants are 4-0 in the preseason, and that is a bigger crock of crap than Russia denying any knowledge of Russian troops invading Ukraine. Putin is a bad man, in both the literal and Urban Dictionary sense, and the Giants are a bad football team.

Bad attributed to the New York Football Giants does not have any connection to bad ass or bad motherfuckers. Those could be used as descriptors of the crazy motherfuckers, who shot Suge Knight, at Chris Brown’s post MTV VMAs party. Suge Knight did play college ball at UNLV and two NFL replacement games with the Rams, and maybe his hit men were good union men who finally wreaked vengeance for Suge crossing an NFLPA picket line. 

Suge Knight Back in the Day at Lynnwood High 

 

In New England labor news, Arthur T. is more popular than Bill Belichick. And if you’re not familiar with Arthur T, then you’re not from New England. After the Logan Mankins trade, even Arthur S. is more popular than New England’s penny-pinching coach. 

 

Arthur T.

 

Detroit Tigers ace, David Price, surrendered nine consecutive third inning hits to the Bronx Bombers in Wednesday night’s 8-4 loss. The Tigers prevailed 3-2 in Thursday’s matinee, but the Yankees look ready to scrap their way to an October wild-card run in The Captain’s final season. Would Putin root for the Yankees or support the Boston Red Sox? Leaning to the Commie Bastard being a Red Sox fan, so he could wear the socks to May Day.

And here is the question that I wrestle with at night: If Suge Knight and Vladimir Putin were to endure facial transplant surgeries and swap visages, would the world be a better or worse place?