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Football
The Week that Was
By Tony Gerdeman

Can you smell it in the air? That's football! Be careful though, if you take too deep of a whiff, you'll drown from the humidity.

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There were more important happenings this past week than this Boise State piece by Dennis Dodd, but nothing else this past week bothered me as much as what was written and quoted in this article.

It's basically your typical Boise State story, but this one has a little bit more focus on the pressure that the Broncos are under thanks to their #5 preseason ranking and the fact that if they lose their opener to Virginia Tech, their BCS hopes are presumably over.

Regarding the high ranking, this is what Head Coach Chris Peterson thinks of it, “That doesn't really help our situation.”

Which is complete and total bullcrap. The high ranking absolutely helps their situation and to say it doesn't is either idiotic or disingenuous.

The one thing that Boise State has been fighting for over the past five or six years is the respect that is displayed in a preseason poll. Starting highly-ranked in the preseason is the only way his team will ever get a crack at a national championship, and it took his team quite a while to get here. To act like he wants nothing to do with it, or that it's just a number, flies completely in the face of his university's president and athletic director actively and openly complaining that they aren't respected enough. Now that he has it, he doesn't know why he'd want it?

Maybe he's scared. He's at the very least worried.

“Petersen knows, though, that one of the program's most effective weapons is gone. Anonymity.”

"'Yes and yes,' the coach said with some dejection when asked the season's ultimate question: Is it true you can't sneak up on people anymore and, if so, does that bother you?”

"'In our league [recognition] happened a long time ago,' Petersen continued. 'Now it's outside of our league.'”

Let's hold a pity party for Captain Sad Pants.

This is like a rapper buying his son the $400,000 Lamborghini for his 16th birthday that he's been asking for since his was 13; and then once he gets it, he complains because now the cops are going to notice him more than ever.

What did you think would happen?

Don't get me wrong, fans around the nation really don't respect your program, but they're not the ones who have to prepare to play a now-perennial top ten program. The folks on your schedule certainly respect what you've built and will prepare to their fullest when it's time to play you.

Fortunately for you, Coach Peterson, you only have a two-game season.

Which brings me to the most infuriating part of Dodd's article. Boise State president Bob Kustra, who is one of the most oblivious people college football has ever seen, said the following about Boise State having no room for error, while BCS teams do: “It's simply an unearned advantage.”

An unearned advantage? I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have never heard of a more asinine college football-related statement in my lifetime—and I've watched a few of Les Miles postgame press conferences, mind you. Kustra doesn't just take the cake, he takes the bakery, sets it on fire and then collects the insurance.

This statement could only mean that he views the schedule that Boise State plays to be on par with any other BCS conference team. Of course, he may have a point—after all, his team will play two BCS conference teams this season! (Wait, let me do some math here...hold on...according to my calculator, every other BCS team will be playing four or five TIMES more BCS teams on their schedule than Boise State.)

That doesn't really sound fair to me.

Nor unearned.

The only thing unearned in all of this is Boise State's place in the college football world.

Imagine if certain race car drivers only had to run 150 laps while everybody else runs 200 laps. Does that sound fair to you? (If we were to really put it to scale, it would probably be closer to 50 laps to everybody else's 200.) Obviously, the car running 50 laps is going to finish pretty high every time out, but who wouldn't in that same situation?

As I've said before, even though Boise State is clamoring for it, the absolute last thing they should want to see is a playoff. It's easy enough to win in a one-off game against a professional BCS choker, but there's no way Boise State is going to get through three of the nation's top ten programs in successive weeks.

But that's another rant for another day.

Until then, Kustra needs to cram it with walnuts.

*** ***

While I'm in a ranting mood, let's talk about this piece on grayshirting from either a television station or a newspaper (I can't tell which) somewhere in Louisiana.

If you're unfamiliar with grayshirting, it's the process of signing a kid, but not letting him enroll until the winter or spring following the football season. Coaches use it as a way to remedy their oversigning, or as a way to KEEP from oversigning.

The article completely buries the lead and misses the point when it paints grayshirting as some evil plot from coaches, and completely ignores the REAL evil plot, which is oversigning.

From the article's opening paragraphs:

“LSU coach Les Miles defended himself against recent media criticism of the football program’s oversigned recruiting class Tuesday, saying “it’s not a bad thing” for a player to be asked to grayshirt to comply with NCAA roster and signing class limits.”

“Miles has been lambasted by some media since he asked offensive lineman Elliott Porter, a member of the 2010 signing class, to sit out of school in the fall semester and join the program in the spring. The Archbishop Shaw product was asked to sit out after he had gone through summer school.”

“This practice is commonly called “grayshirting,” where players stay out of school for a semester and start the clock on their careers in the spring semester, allowing them to still have five full seasons to play four season, just a semester late.”

The gist of the article is detailing the way Miles told incoming freshman offensive lineman Elliott Porter that he needed him to grayshirt—and this was after he was already moved into his dorms, which then forced Porter to ask for his release and try to find somewhere else to go to college.

But that's not what really bothered me about the article. We all know Les Miles has character issues—he went to Michigan for crying out loud, so I don't really feel the need to stoke that tire fire anymore than it's already burning.

My issue is with the way the practice of oversigning was just glossed over in the article, and how perhaps the most ethical way of dealing with oversigning was actually vilified.

Yeah, offering a grayshirt is a jerk move that late in the deal, but it very much beats getting cut. At least the student athlete was given a choice in the matter. Normally in the SEC, they aren't.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't recall the Big Ten ever outlawing grayshirting as the article indicated. You just never hear about it because it isn't used to fitting 27 players into 24 slots.

And it certainly isn't discussed half a year after national signing day.

I guess I should probably just stop getting upset about it, because the NCAA apparently has zero problem with it or else they'd step in and do something about it.

I wish the NCAA would think about the children for once.

*** ***

Rich Rodriguez—he's Michigan's current head coach as of Friday morning at 11:45—heads to Seattle for a Saturday sit down with the NCAA. If you want to know everything about it, you can find it her..

It doesn't paint a pretty picture—but then, it IS about Michigan.

The crux of the conversation?

“U-M has admitted to four major violations in Rich Rodriguez’s football program. The school is protesting a fifth: that Rodriguez failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance. That charge likely will be the prime topic of conversation Saturday, because it goes to the heart of U-M’s defense: that the violations were mostly unintentional.”

With the recent news of the same goings-on at West Virginia since 2005, there is no doubt that the NCAA is going to wonder how it can be unintentional when he has ALWAYS done it.

Per the article, Rodriguez will simply argue that the rules were hard to understand and that he didn't know he was doing anything wrong—which always works [eye roll].

If that's going to be your defense, why not swing for the fences and just plead insanity? Tell them the day before you sat down to read the NCAA's rules on the matter, one of Mike Barwis' wolves bit you and gave you rabies; so it's no wonder that you wouldn't remember every word of the handbook, given the tainted blood now coursing through your veins.

And if that doesn't work, there's always the Chewbacca Defense.

*** ***

I guess while we're on the Maize and Blue train to nowhere, I should mention that former five-star defensive back J.T. Turner has asked for and been granted his release from the Michigan football team. That makes him the third former five-star cornerback (Donovan Warren, Boubacar Cissoko and J.T. Turner) to leave Rich Rodriguez's program before their eligibility was up.

Add in the transfer of former four-star safety Brandon Smith after last season, and the fact that Rodriguez couldn't get two other defensive back prospects (Adrian Witty and Demar Dorsey) into his university, and it almost seems like Michigan is where defensive backs go to die.

Or it's at least where they go to get repeatedly beaten.

Assuming they can even get into school, of course.

But don't worry, one of these years Rich Rodriguez will be able to stock the bare cupboards left by Lloyd Carr.

Of course, he's actually stocking it now, but just can't seem to keep the canned foods from leaving.

*** ***

This made me chuckle. Reggie Bush apologized to USC Athletic Director Pat Haden for his probation-inducing actions recently over the phone.

"He's really contrite," Haden says of Bush, who plays for the New Orleans Saints. "He knows he made a series of mistakes. It wasn't just one mistake. It was a series of mistakes.”

"He told me, 'If I could turn the clock back, I would. If I could give the Heisman Trophy back, I would.'"

Yes, if only there was some way to return a statue to the organization that gave it to you. But who even knows how to get in touch with the Heisman people? And how do you even transport a statue that is over a foot tall and weighs 25 pounds? I assume there's like some super-helicopter that could be used in situations like that. Maybe the type that installs air conditioners on the roofs of skyscrapers? But good luck getting clearance on a flight from New Orleans to wherever these Heisman people are, all the while dangling a dangerous chunk of bronze machismo a hundred feet below the helicopter.

*** ***

I think my favorite blurb of the week comes from the University of Florida, where they're still looking for a guy who can convert )in short-yardage situations on the ground.

“Three-yard runs might be the toughest aspect of Tim Tebow's game to replace.”

“During the past three seasons, short-yardage and goal-line situations went almost exclusively to Tebow. With Tebow gone, the Gators will have to find someone to take his place.”

“'Are we ready to go into a game in a goal-line or short-yardage situation? No, but we've got to get there in a hurry,' running backs coach Stan Drayton said.”

Maybe Urban needs to better recruit quarterbacks who can move a pile, or who at least have a nose for the endzone?

It's clear that Tim Tebow was the best quarterback ever for this offense. As an aside, I think Toby Gerhart might have been number two if given a chance.

*** ***

If you're interested, here's an article about the Miami Hurricanes' first scrimmage of summer practices.

The article fails to mention it, but I'm guessing the swag-o-meter was redlining.

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