This is going to be different this week. Lots to talk about from the college football side.
1) Back to school: Okay, here goes, if I can find a decent starting point.
Maybe now the higher-ups in college football have figured out that this is college football, not March Madness. With only twelve teams, the stuff the NCAA Selection Committee uses to fill a 68-team bracket in March does not work here. So, folks, here are some thoughts and remedies to help fix this mess that may not include the words “add more teams”.
First, eliminate automatic bids. I don’t mean to go all weepy-eyed on Notre Dame, but you just don’t treat them as if they are some Anywhere State U in a Group of Five conference. If you took just the top twelve, Notre Dame and BYU would be in. Notre Dame has way too much history and way too much earning power from advertisements to be cast aside as if they were some team that began college football ten years ago and this is their first year in FBS. I’m sorry, but James Madison and Tulane over Notre Dame and BYU? Wrong.
2) As an aside, how in the world did Miami (Fla.) not make the ACC final and 7-5 Duke did? Again, wrong. Whatever their criteria, wrong.
3) Second, eliminate the conference tournaments. Yes, that was a great Big Ten battle Saturday night. I am a Big Ten fan/alum here, so this further qualifies me to make this claim. The only thing noteworthy about the SEC game is that it almost knocked Alabama out of the playoffs. As for the Big Ten, so now Indiana is #1 and Ohio State is #2. Otherwise, as I previously stated, the committee should want a #1 vs #2 in the national final, not a conference final. Thank goodness Ohio State (again, I have an unhealthy dislike for this football program) fell to no lower than #2.
Do this and see what happens before you expand to 16 or 20 teams. The conference tournaments work better in March Madness. Even those stupid play-in games work, though I still maintain they are unnecessary. Yes, bubble teams will whine if they don’t make the bracket of 68, but that will happen no matter how big the bracket is. 68 teams offer more leeway and less chance of grossly unfair seeding practices.
4) One more thing. I was watching a Notre Dame podcast Sunday and they were talking about Notre Dame opting out of any bowl game they get invited to because they didn’t make the playoffs. So did Iowa State and Kansas State, both of whom got fined $500,000 from the Big 12 Conference for not going to a bowl game, according to the Boston Globe. The ND podcast expressed worry that college football will degenerate into this sort of thing, not wanting a bowl game if you don’t make the playoffs. According to ESPN, the Fighting Irish would have played in the Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando against BYU. Meanwhile, my alma mater, Michigan, plays Texas in the Cheze-It Citrus Bowl, also in Orlando.
5) And I can’t wait to see two 5-7 teams in bowl games out of necessity: Mississippi State and (gulp) Rice. Rice University in Houston is a scholarly school with a stadium that once hosted Super Bowl VIII. The late President Kennedy gave his “We will land a man on the moon and bring him back home safely by the end of the decade!” speech at Rice. Commenting on doing hard things versus easy things, President Kennedy said “Why does Rice play Texas?” As in the early 1960s as today, not much has changed. Except that we put men on the moon in 1969.
6) Remember him: What do you think is the hardest hit in NFL history? Whatever you have seen, it cannot compare to the hit Chuck Bednarik of the Eagles laid on Frank Gifford of the Giants on November 20, 1960. The hardest hit in the AFL? That honor goes to Mike Stratton, a former Buffalo linebacker. In 1964, one year after demolishing the Patriots in the AFL title game, the San Diego Chargers took on the Bills at old War Memorial Stadium (the “Rockpile”) for the 1964 championship. Keith Lincoln, the San Diego running back who bludgeoned the Pats in ‘63, opened the game with a 38-yard run.
Near the end of the first period, Lincoln took a flat pass out of the backfield from Tobin Rote, and was immediately blasted by Stratton and fell on the floor. Lincoln had two broken ribs and would not return. That play, plus a Stratton pick late in the first half, powered Buffalo to a 20-7 victory and the first of two straight AFL titles for the Bills. Stratton played 11 years in both the AFL and NFL. He was a six-time AFL all-star and was the symbol of the powerful NFL-style defense the Bills became until the merger just ahead on the horizon.
7) Denver won again, ten in a row now. They are back as the #1 seed. There are a wide variety of publications about why Denver wins the tiebreaker over the Patriots. It is NOT common games. It is NOT strength of victory. It is conference record. The Broncos have one more win than the Patriots. If the Patriots square that up before season’s end, then common games come into play. Drat that opening week loss to Las Vegas.
8) This just in from ESPN: the Patriots-Ravens game in two weeks has been flexed to Sunday night on NBC. Hardly a surprise.
9) I don’t care if Kansas City was eliminated from winning the AFC West on Sunday, breaking a nine-year hold on that honor. Wake me up when the Chiefs are totally eliminated from the playoffs. If that happens. Low-seeded playoff teams sometimes win Super Bowls. Ask the Patriots if that ever happens.
10) If you were enterprising enough, you perhaps watched both the Las Vegas-Denver game and the Pittsburgh-Baltimore game and said to yourself, “(naughty word redacted)!!! How did the Patriots ever lose to Vegas and Pittsburgh?!”
11) It’s too bad that Daniel Jones got hurt, and the Colts’ season is on life support. But go back a few years and listen to former Colts radio voice Bob Lamey call a few Colts-Patriots games, and you’ll remember why you probably still hate the Colts.
12) Liberty High School. That’s the secondary school in the city I reside in, where Jordan Love cut his football teeth. The Packer quarterback is creeping up on MVP watchdogs. Love joins Cody Kessler, Derek, and David Carr as notable NFL quarterbacks from right here where I’m sitting.
13) Tennessee loved their win over Cleveland, until they found out at year’s end that they no longer hold the top pick in the 2026 draft.
14) Need more time to figure out what exactly the Browns have in Shedeur Sanders.
15) Attaboy, J.J. McCarthy. That’s more like it.
16) Geek of the Week: Did anyone catch JaMarr Chase’s reaction to the two picks Joe Burrow threw in the 39-34 loss at Buffalo on Sunday? Seriously, I didn’t see any, maybe you did. The Bengals waited all this time to get their franchise quarterback back, and he throws the game away in a matter of a few minutes. If you throw something to someone this week (a snowball?), make sure you throw it OVER anyone in front of them.
17) For Jalen Hurts to play like he did Monday night, he looked like anything but a defending champ.
18) Meanwhile, it’s still hard to get Charger fans to games at SoFi Stadium. They are mostly still down in San Diego County. Monday night wasn’t that bad. There were plenty of green shirts in the crowd, but a lot more powder blue shirts too, maybe half and half.
19) Big game next week. Rematch of New England and Buffalo. This time it’s in Foxborough.
The game opened in Las Vegas with the Patriots a 1.5 point favorite.
Twenty-four hours later, Buffalo is now a 1 point favorite.
The general betting public still likes Josh Allen more than Drake Maye.
20) The Globe said Tuesday morning that Mike Vrabel is 6-0 in his career as head coach in games immediately following a bye week.
Add it up, and what do you get? Don’t spend next Sunday afternoon doing anything that doesn’t involve being planted in front of your flatscreen. Welcome back to meaningful December football.
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Covering Boston Sports since 1997. Native of Worcester, Mass. Attended UMass and Univ of Michigan. Lives in California. Just recently retired after 40 years of public school teaching. Podcasts on YouTube at @thepic4139
