NCAA Football 2012 Season Catch-All

Gumbie wrote:
Enix wrote:

blah blah blah

All this would be relevant except TNs coach is Butch Jones. :)

Yeeesh.

I know nothing about Butch Jones and, apparently, even less about Tennessee football. /facepalm

And here's the one big reason why I wasn't super thrilled with Fresno State's hiring of Tim DeRuyter:

Colorado coaching rumors: Fresno State's Tim DeRuyter, San Jose State's Mike MacIntyre being considered.

I want the coach of Fresno State to be someone interested in building the program there, not using it as a stepping-stone elsewhere.

Not that DeRuyter is necessarily pursuing other options, but some of the other candidates for the job were Valley lifers. Until DeRuyter, there had only been two head coaches of Fresno State for my entire life - Jim Sweeney and Pat Hill. I don't want Fresno to become one of those just-passing-through schools.

It's hard to find excellent people who don't want to advance their careers, in any field.

Utah only had Urban Meyer for two years and he jumpstarted the program. Four years after he left, we went to the Sugar Bowl and beat Alabama. Fours after that we're in the Pac-12 (and that's about all I'm going to say about that for the moment--there's always next year).

Pac-12 Attendance figures are out
and I stand by my statement that UCLA and stanfurd are the worst programs as far as fan support. Furd was the best team in the pac-12 and they drew a paltry 43K. Their stadium is small and seats around 50K, but how is that not a sellout every game? Not only were they a top 10 team most of the year, but it has a great rarity in Northern California sports venues.. PARKING! I don't even think those numbers include the embarassing 31k that showed up to the pac-12 championship game. UCLA despite having high attendance, plays in the Rose Bowl.. capacity 92K and they can't even get 70K to show up despite being the best team in So Cal this year.

I am lame and did some calcs of avg. attendance / capacity in the Pac. Oregon is 1 with over 100% capacity, Cal, Utah, Colorado, and WSU despite horrible seasons still sat over 80%. UW played off campus in Century Field and they still drew nearly 90% capacity. UCLA is dead last with a paltry 74% of capacity and that's 12K more per game than they had last year! They are no doubt the worst and most fickle fans in the country.

Average attendance for Aggie games this year: 87k. Don't worry, we're going to expand.

Football outside of the Pac is just something to behold. Going to Columbus this year was amazing.. and I'm upset I missed going to Tennessee 5 years or so ago when Cal played there (and got their asses handed to them). In 2 years Cal is @Texas and I can't wait to go to Austin to check that out.

If you wanna see fan support, come to Death Valley on a fall Saturday night!

I would love to.. and I'll take any excuse to get near New Orleans to gorge myself. Maybe when Cal makes it to the Sugar Bowl.. (lol!)

Texas has a big stadium, but terrible fans. One of their own players, Kenny Vaccaro, told a paper earlier this year that it's not an intimidating place for opponents.

Obviously, he immediately became my favorite Longhorn ever.

I doubt it comes close to the Ohio State experience.

Coolbeans wrote:

If you wanna see fan support, come to Death Valley on a fall Saturday night!

Since LSU plays 8 home games a year, you'll have plenty of opportunities!

firesloth wrote:
Coolbeans wrote:

If you wanna see fan support, come to Death Valley on a fall Saturday night!

Since LSU plays 8 home games a year, you'll have plenty of opportunities! :)

firesloth wrote:
Coolbeans wrote:

If you wanna see fan support, come to Death Valley on a fall Saturday night!

Since LSU plays 8 home games a year, you'll have plenty of opportunities! :)

Don't hate!

Our OC just became Texas Tech's HC.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Our OC just became Texas Tech's HC. :(

Speaking of Tech, apparently Tuberville left the table during a recruiting dinner and never came back after he knew he had the Cincy job.

http://texastech.247sports.com/Artic...

For all the discussion of which Pac-12 teams suck or have fans that suck, the following comes this afternoon from Darren Rovell via Twitter:

Schools that have sold out of their bowl ticket allotment: Alabama, Notre Dame, UCLA, Iowa State, Stanford, Kansas State.

A later post includes Oklahoma at 100% sold as well.

The Pac-12 championship game was played at a horrible time in inclement weather and on short notice. If your fanbase is spread to the wind, i.e., national, it's hard for them to make a trip to San Fran on a week's notice.

Apparently the Big East is dissolving sooner rather than later.

Catholic schools to leave.

Technically a basketball story, but with football implications. If the Catholic schools leave and make their own TV deal, and basketball deal with MSG, etc... then the football schools who are already scheduled to leave (Louisville and Rutgers) might just go ahead and bolt next year. If the league is gone, there's no more exit fee to pay or anything, so nothing holding them back. Might be tough on the Big 10 and ACC to play one year with an odd number of teams, but the agreements to join seemed to say "join as soon as possible", not any stipulation about waiting until 2014.

Coolbeans wrote:

If you wanna see fan support, come to Death Valley on a fall Saturday night!

QFT. I had the privilege of watching UAB beat LSU on a beautiful Saturday night. UAB lined up to kick the winning field goal at the end of the 4th qtr and I could not hear myself think because of the roar coming from that stadium. Unbelievable.

I have been to Auburn, LSU, Vanderbilt, UAB, Florida State, Penn State, Va Tech, and Nebraska. LSU was the craziest.

Uh Oh. Getting nervous DSGamer?

Carlbear95 wrote:

Uh Oh. Getting nervous DSGamer?

If he leaves that would honestly be a shock. He's made a big point out of saying how much he regretted the first time he left. He grew up in Corvallis and his father coached at Oregon State. He's basically got a lifetime job as long as he has an 8 win season every couple of years. I'm not sure that Wisconsin would be a giant upgrade, honestly. But I'm partial to the West Coast, so I don't know.

Not terribly worried overall.

I've been looking at possible realignment scenarios. What if the major conferences don't stop at 16 teams? This is a possible 24 team per conference layout.

SEC

Alabama
Arkansas
Auburn
Clemson
Duke
Florida
Florida State
Georgia
Georgia Tech
Kentucky
Louisville
LSU
Miami
Mississippi
Mississippi State
Missouri
North Carolina
North Carolina State
South Carolina
South Florida
Tennessee
Texas A&M
Vanderbilt
Wake Forest

Pac-12

Arizona
Arizona State
Baylor
Boise State
BYU
California
Colorado
Hawaii
Kansas
Kansas State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Oregon
Oregon State
Stanford
TCU
Texas
Texas Tech
UCLA
UNLV
USC
Utah
Washington
Washington State

Big 10

Boston College
Cincinnati
Connecticut
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Iowa State
Maryland
Michigan
Michigan State
Minnesota
Nebraska
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Penn State
Pittsburgh
Purdue
Rutgers
Syracuse
Virginia
Virginia Tech
West Virginia
Wisconsin

The others can reclassify. Kind of sad to think about. But the logic is that if the goal of expansion is more TV sets, why stop at 16 teams?

What would those conferences even mean, then? When you play someone within your conference every 5 years. Would be better to have a bunch of 10 team conferences and mandate no FCS games. Mandate games across conferences in order to ensure some level of crossover and a vague idea of which conference is actually better.

DSGamer wrote:

What would those conferences even mean, then? When you play someone within your conference every 5 years. Would be better to have a bunch of 10 team conferences and mandate no FCS games. Mandate games across conferences in order to ensure some level of crossover and a vague idea of which conference is actually better.

Divide each conference into three divisions of each teams each.

Each team plays every team in its division every year. That's seven games that count toward conference standings.

Each team gets 3-4 more games each season -- other conference rivals, in-state cupcakes, Notre Dame, FCS schools, etc.

Top three teams in each division plus wild card advance to conference playoffs.

Three conference winners plus a wild card advance to national playoffs.

It's probably also time to de-couple basketball and non-rev sports from the football teams for conference purposes. You can't really justify the travel budgets of wrestling, gymnastics, lacrosse, baseball, etc.

Cynical post removed. Grumpy old dude is grumpy and nostalgic for the old Pac-10/Big-10 Rose Bowl.

Oso wrote:

Cynical post removed. Grumpy old dude is grumpy and nostalgic for the old Pac-10/Big-10 Rose Bowl.

I didn't see your post, Oso, but I feel your pain. I miss the hell of the 8-team ACC basketball tournament.

A little shocked and surprised Gary Anderson from Utah State is likely going to Wisconsin. Not that I'm upset he didn't come to Cal, but he made it very clear to the press that he wasn't going anywhere and planned on staying at Utah State this year. Can't imagine his players are all too happy at this point.

Huh. He's been on radio here talking about staying and the positive impact it has on recruiting. I think his coordinators just turned down jobs too. Maybe they knew something. Pretty lame on his part if he goes (and even interviewing), but I guess nothing should surprise me anymore when it comes to coaches.

It's been all over the local news here. Time to learn a little about Gary I guess

The NCAA has rejected Oregon's version of the Willie Lyles story as well as their suggested sanctions; they will now have a formal hearing.

Rumor is that Chip Kelly will flee to the NFL.

Seemed to work out well for Pete Carroll. I still think look out for Chris Peterson to Oregon if Kelly does in fact leave.

As much as I want to not see Chip Kelly at Oregon, I really wonder if he can run his style of offense in the NFL. QBs are too expensive to have them be a constant running threat the way he likes them at Oregon, and defensive ends in the NFL are a heck of a lot faster than the ones Oregon plays against in college. Also, can he find a team with enough cheating offensive lineman?