Last week, the University of Hawaii was in Sydney, Australia, for the purpose of opening the college football season against California, and all we were looking for was a taste.
Most of us just wanted a sip of the game, knowing that the remote location wasn’t going to give us that sense of tradition we like to experience each new season. The stadium wouldn’t be packed with alums, there was no Grove as in Oxford, Miss., where female students parade around in sundresses and their male counterparts wear ties because that’s what they used to do; there was no running down the hill like they do at Clemson, no spelling out Ohio with a guy armed with a sousaphone dotting the eye, no boat travel to the game for the short walk to the stadium, as in Seattle.
Instead of a taste, ESPN shoved a firehose in our faces and turned it on full blast with incessant promotional bombardments screaming about its slate of games coming up this weekend that will make it the most fabulous opening weekend of college football ever experienced in human history.
According to them.
No thanks to ESPN, the start of the college season is always anticipated by sports fans in this country, and it’s fair to say a lot more of us are interested in the start than what passes as the finish of the season with 40 bowl games, including participation by 62.5 percent of all teams that play major college football.
Do you remember the San Jose State victory over Georgia State in the AutoNation Cure Bowl last December? The Spartans beat four bowl division teams to qualify for that extra game. How about Appalachian State defeating Ohio in the Camellia Bowl, how many times have you replayed that one in your head?
With or without the endless sappy hype of ESPN, the season is on, so here’s a look at what we might expect, starting with our home boys.
Rainbows on the horizon — Meaning, we’ve had the stormy years under the authoritarian Norm Chow approach that ignored the history of success at the school in spread concepts. The sun is rising, an offense that reflects the concept top high school players understand is back in vogue and this team will get better, soon.
First year coach Nick Rolovich gets it. Live Aloha, Play Warrior makes sense to his team. Understanding how to get the most out of quarterback Ikaika Woolsey — he didn’t look like the same confused, timid guy he appeared to be a year ago — and players like Diocemy Saint Juste gives the “Bows a chance. The hunch here is they an outside shot to win five games and pull a conference upset nobody expects — possibly a road game against either San Jose State or Air Force.
The Selection Committee — that decides which teams get to play in the four-team playoff takes more justified criticism. The 12-member committee includes five athletic directors of teams involved, four of them actively involved, while the chair of the group is a former AD. Ten are white men and by the way, remind me why former Secretary of State and former Stanford provost Condeleeza Rice gets to jump in on this. When does Bernie Sanders get to toss in his two bits?
The Joy of Six — Feeling it once again for Nick Saban, who may very well retire with more national championships than anyone, including a guy who previously coached at Alabama.
This would be Saban’s sixth championship, the second time he won back-to-back titles and if that seems redundant, sorry, he’s built for this. A disciple of Bill Belichick, Saban understands the soft spots in opponents and the tipping points in recruiting that build great teams. He’s a little like college football’s answer to Phil Jackson. He’s not the coach you want at a place with a rugged past and not a lot of funding, but if you have everything and need someone to make it all work at the highest level, he’s the guy.
The Threat to ending Saban’s domination of the game is Ohio State coach Urban Meyer who will become the first coach to win multiple titles at more than one school. Saban got one at LSU, all the others at Alabama, but Meyer has two from Florida and is closing in on his second at Ohio State. He can out-recruit anybody and if Saban doesn’t win this year, Meyer will.
Playoff preview — All of it balances on votes from the accursed Selection Committee, so none of this prediction business can follow a pattern as in the NFL where committees are replaced by what teams actually do on the field and rankings are considered meaningless.
The hunch here is that No. 1 Alabama turns away No. 4 Florida State — the Sooners get there by virtue of their home victory over Clemson — and No. 2 Ohio State dispatches No. 3 LSU to get to the title game takes it the last five minutes when it stops itself with a turnover on a potential game-winning drive.
If it doesn’t happen that way, assume my judgment was clouded by the stunning array of the great games in college football’s opening weekend. It sounds like the most important development in the history of the game.
