By Will Miles
12-team Playoff
I hate the idea of a 12-team playoff.
I know this makes me sound like the old man telling the kids to get off my lawn – and maybe that’s a big part of it – but I just am okay with there being arguments and uncertainty around who the best team is. My fear is that the playoff is just going to eliminate all of those arguments.
We’ve seen this with baseball. People might point to Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and the steroid era as when baseball lost its way, but I think a lot of the mystique went away when analytics folks like myself became so good at analyzing the game that it eliminated the ability to have an argument.
The last time I can remember an argument like that in baseball was in 2012 when Mike Trout finished 2nd in the MVP voting to Miguel Cabrera even though Trout was clearly the better player because Cabrera won the triple crown.
The point isn’t that WAR is the best way to measure a baseball player’s contributions (it is) or that a triple crown is relatively arbitrary, especially since RBIs are overrated (they are). The point is that the analytics made it clear who should win the argument.
That’s what we’re in for with a college football playoff. Sure, there will be debates between who the 12th and 13th teams are, just as there’s a debate between the 4th and 5th team many years now. The difference is that who is 4th and who is 5th actually matters because they have a real shot at winning a championship. The 12th place team just isn’t going to ever win because of the imbalance in the sport.
I get that people want to be more inclusive. But I remember the Ki-Jana Carter/Kerry Collins Penn State team in 1994 way more than any of these recent Alabama teams. The Tide teams are better, but it was the argument about whether Penn State was getting shafted when Nebraska was named champion that makes that team live on.
We’re sacrificing that. You may think that’s good or think that’s bad, but it is something that is being sacrificed. I will enjoy the home game in the Swamp associated with a playoff. I’m sure the buzz on campus will be unbelievable. And if a 12th seed makes a run in the tournament, it will be a huge accomplishment.
But we’re giving something up too.
10-year anniversary of the Muschamp Era
I don’t know why, but this week I’ve been thinking about the last decade of college football. For the Florida program in 2011, that means the first season with Will Muschamp at the helm.
We were so naïve back then. Muschamp – coming in to fix the broken program left behind by a worn out, clearly retiring Urban Meyer – saying all the right things and bringing in high quality people. Those teams, led by ferocious defenses but with offenses that couldn’t get out of their way.
Muschamp, who thought that hiring Charlie Weis as offensive coordinator was the wise way to build a program. Weis, who piloted an offense that averaged 25.5 points per game. We thought it couldn’t get worse, but it turns out 25 points was an offensive explosion compared to what was coming from Muschamp’s successor.
I guess the point is that while Florida’s offense may take a step back this season, we should stop and think about where we’ve come from when we try to evaluate Dan Mullen. I want recruiting to improve as much as anyone. I wish Georgia were the perennial underdog rather than the other way around.
But Gator football is fun again. We’re scoring lots of points. Charlie Weis and Doug Nussmeier are not stewarding the offense. Maybe we don’t win an SEC or National Championship in the near future, but at least we know it’s going to be fun.
The SEC 10 years ago
Since I’m on this kick, it was fun to look at where the SEC was a decade ago as well.
LSU and Alabama were ruining the BCS by playing the 9-6 slugfest in Tuscaloosa followed up by two teams from the same conference facing off in the BCS Championship Game. Steve Spurrier was roaming the South Carolina sidelines and still terrorizing Georgia, having defeated Mark Richt’s squad 45-42 to help the Bulldogs open 0-2. Dan Mullen was just starting to turn around Mississippi State going 7-6 in 2011 and Houston Nutt had Ole Miss going 2-10 and then having to vacate the wins due to recruiting violations.
Heck, Bobby Petrino hadn’t had a motorcycle accident yet and was leading Arkansas to a #5 ranking to finish the season with Tyler Wilson at QB. Coincidently, the QB coach of that Razorback team? Garrick McGee, who’s now coaching QBs at Florida.
I guess my point is that a decade is both a long time and not very long at all. After all, Saban is still at Alabama churning out wins, but every other SEC program from that year has a new head coach. Arkansas has gone from a high-flying attack to one that is focused on winning in the trenches. Mark Richt is out at Georgia because he couldn’t win the big game, and now better recruiting Mark Richt is coaching the Bulldogs to better preseason rankings.
It’s fun to look back at the way things were. But it’s also a reminder of how quickly things change. I do wonder had someone looked back a decade back in 2008 or 2009, would they have been cursing Florida for having found Urban Meyer to carry on Steve Spurrier’s legacy. Things seemed so great for Florida fans back then (and they were), such that we thought those great times would go on forever.
But clearly, looking back 10 years teaches that isn’t always so and that sometimes you end up with Urban Meyer, but sometimes you end up with Ron Zook, Will Muschamp or Jim McElwain.
Let’s hope that’s the lesson Alabama fans realize when they take a look back in 2031.
Home playoff games
The only thing I like about the 12-team playoff is the promise that some of these games are going to be played at home.
There is nothing like waking up on a Saturday morning to all of the RVs coming onto campus, walking around hanging out with various students and alumni during tailgates, and then taking the long walk to the stadium while yelling “it’s great…to be…a FLORIDA GATOR” with all of your temporary friends on that walk. There’s also nothing like going to a party after a big win on a Saturday night in Gainesville.
College is about experiences, and college football is about providing a collective experience for all involved. One of my most significant reservations about the expanded playoff is that the hole in the pit of your stomach when leaving the stadium after a big loss is what makes the jubilation when leaving the stadium after a big win so much sweeter. The loss is a necessary step to enjoy the win.
But big losses are only going to exist in the playoff at this point for SEC teams because 3 and 4-loss squads are going to still have legitimate cases for being included. Yes, Coastal Carolina and Cincinnati will get a shot, but I’m not sure what kind of shot they’ll have coming to Gainesville with a sold out crowd.
What a playoff means for Florida
Dan Mullen talks about the Gator Standard a lot. He’s not being coy in that he means SEC – and eventually National – Championships are the only goal that matters.
I do wonder whether that will change with the introduction of the playoff. I’ve watched this offseason as Mike White defenders have pointed towards his making the tournament as proof that he’s doing a good job at Florida. The argument I’ve made is that making the tournament is actually pretty easy all things considered and that metric shouldn’t be used – or at least not solely – to evaluate White’s job performance.
Dan Mullen likely would have made the playoff in all three of his seasons at the helm at Florida thus far. The first two seasons were masterpieces for the most part, and last year was great at 8-1 until it fell apart the last three games.
The point is that we have to be really honest about what we want from the football program in this new environment. It shouldn’t be that hard to make the playoff coming out of the SEC. Most years, Florida could lose to LSU and Georgia but beat everyone else and have a pretty compelling case that they’re in the top-12 teams in the country. If they beat one of those, then it’s an open-and-shut case.
But if we look at the typical Gators schedule right now, there are only two teams that they are typically underdogs to: LSU and Georgia. 2021 is a special case because Alabama in on the schedule, but moving forward, it’s likely that Florida’s schedule isn’t going to put the Gators in a position to be on the outside looking in all that often.
In some ways, that’s a great thing for Florida. But I do wonder whether that will lower or ratchet up the pressure on a coach who can make the tournament but doesn’t ever go very far once he gets in it.
If nothing else, I said that what makes college football unique is the arguments, and this is certainly one that we know will exist because it exists right now with the basketball program.
Real change the NCAA needs
I detailed in my most recent article at Read and Reaction the change I think the NCAA should really consider: instituting a salary cap on recruiting.
It’s no secret that the powerful programs are getting stronger. Alabama had the best recruiting class in 2011 with 3 5-star recruits and a point total of 298.50. The Tide finished first again (surprise!) for the 2021 class but this time 7 5-stars and a point total of 327.91.
This isn’t isolated. In 2011, only two teams (Alabama and FSU) had more than 3 5-star commits. In 2021, there were four and in 2020 there were six.
As I showed in my article, there is a distinct correlation between spending and both recruiting ranking and winning (as measured by ESPN’s FPI). But as the spending goes below about $1.5 million annually, all of a sudden a bevy of programs start bunching together. Thus, the conclusion I drew is that by capping spending on recruiting, it would level the playing field and reduce the separation of teams at the top that we’re currently seeing.
This wouldn’t solve every problem. But it would go a long way towards actually giving the 12th seeded team a shot at winning the championship. Instead, you’ve just got the first round of the NBA playoffs where everyone knows the Nets are going to beat the Celtics, it’s just a matter of whether it happens in 4 or 5 games.
Missing Brian Johnson
In all of the change occurring on the offensive side of the ball with the departure of Kyle Trask, Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney, one person I haven’t heard mentioned all that much is Brian Johnson, who is now the QB coach for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Dan Mullen gets a lot of credit for his QB development, and deservedly so. But Johnson is also the first coach that he has promoted to offensive coordinator that I’m aware of in his coaching career, so he certainly thinks highly of him.
What’s more, Mullen’s biggest successes have come with Johnson coaching those QBs.
In 2013, Dak Prescott played a lot as a redshirt freshman, throwing 267 passes with a QB rating of 126.6. That’s respectable for a first-time player, but Mullen brought in Johnson as QB coach in 2014 and immediately Prescott took off.
Johnson then helped groom D’Eriq King in 2017 at Houston while Nick Fitzgerald struggled at Mississippi State (QB rating = 117.5). Then Johnson came to Florida where Feleipe Franks went from terrible in 2017 to average in 2018 and Kyle Trask blossomed into the best QB Florida has had since Tim Tebow, finishing 4th in the Heisman voting.
I have zero doubts that Mullen is a driving force behind much of the success behind his QBs. But I do find it interesting that Johnson has been on his staff when these guys have really progressed and that the players he’s worked with just rave about him.
I think fans (including myself) took Mullen for granted when he left for Mississippi State in 2009 and assumed that Urban Meyer would keep things rolling with Steve Addazio as offensive coordinator. The offense was okay after that but really lost its spark (also because of Percy Harvin’s departure).
Here’s hoping the same thing can’t be said about Johnson’s departure.
Recruiting hype
Call me conservative or an old man, but I’m not ready to buy into the recruiting hype with the Gators this recruiting cycle just yet.
There is no doubt that there has been a lot of noise on the recruiting trail now that official visits have started up again. Much of that noise has come from Gainesville, where the list of players coming onto campus is a who’s who of the elite players in the state. Florida needs to land a bunch of these guys and I’m sure they will get a fair amount of them.
But when I say “bunch” I mean nearly all of them. I mentioned last week that if Florida got the top 19 ranked players in June to all commit, that would still only put them 2nd in the country. More likely they end up with half of those players and it puts them around 10th, which is right around where they ended up in the 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 cycles.
I know people like following recruiting and I know it can be exciting to think about “what if” when seeing a player on a visit. But there just hasn’t been enough progress for me to get all that excited about visits. Before the fall arrives, those visits have to turn into commitments.
Trevon Grimes released
The Eagles released Trevon Grimes with an injury designation this past week.
Had you hopped on Twitter, you might have seen some Georgia fans gloating a little bit at the news (stay classy, folks). But the reality is that this isn’t the end of the road for Grimes. Because he was released with an injury designation and passed through waivers, he reverts to the Eagles injured reserve.
That means he doesn’t count against the 90-man roster and will have time to develop on the Eagles’ practice squad should they desire to give him that chance once he’s fully healthy. Because he was an undrafted free agent who then suffered an injury, the risk that someone else would claim Grimes on waivers was relatively small and now this gives the Eagles more flexibility.
The road to NFL stardom was always going to be long for Grimes once he went undrafted. But this news isn’t the big deal that some might have you believe.
Tebow at tight end
Speaking of 90-man roster limitations, Tim Tebow is occupying one of those in Jacksonville to the chagrin of a bunch of national sportswriters and some former players.
Yet, reviews on Tebow’s performance have been mostly positive thus far. ESPN’s Mike DiRocco says he seems to know what he’s doing and doesn’t look out of place in camp, which shouldn’t be a surprise for anybody who’s followed Tebow for any length of time. He wasn’t going to do this without having first made sure he wasn’t an embarrassment.
I still think it’s a long shot that Tebow makes the 55-man roster. But those people who wished for Tebow to fall flat on his face are going to be disappointed. But again, anybody who has wished that for Tebow over the years shouldn’t be surprised.
He’s been proving them wrong for years now.