Tramel's ScissorTales: Expanded playoff will invigorate college football's regular season
It’s conference championship week in college football, and 10 leagues will determine their titlist.
I assume all 20 teams and fan bases are fired up. I don’t know why they wouldn’t be.
But of those, only six are thinking bigger. Only six remain in the running for the College Football Playoff: Georgia, Michigan, Texas Christian, Southern Cal, Ohio State and Alabama.
There is no apparent path for any other team to even be drawn into the discussion. Sorry, Tennessee, I’m all for you, but the committee has declared Ohio State and Alabama ahead of you, and nothing could change that when the vote is taken deep into the night as Saturday becomes Sunday.
But two years from now, with the playoff expanding from four to 12, everything changes.
With all the bluster over the excitement of the playoff, lost has been the thrills the expanded playoff will provide the regular season.
If we had the same 12-team format in place this very day, at least 16 teams still would harbor playoff hopes. Sixteen!
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That Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game, Clemson vs. North Carolina, that seems meaningless Saturday? The winner would get a playoff berth. Depending on what else happened, maybe even a first-round bye.
The USC-Utah Pac-12 Championship Game? All the talk this week is about the Trojans and securing a spot in the four-team playoff. Make this the 12-team field, and the Utes also are playing for a berth and probably a first-round bye.
The Central Florida-Tulane showdown for the American Conference title, which is being staged for an isn’t-that-nice Cotton Bowl trip? With a 12-team format, UCF-Tulane is for a playoff berth.
Heck, maybe even Boise State, hosting Fresno State on Saturday in the Mountain West Conference title game, would have some hope. If Purdue upsets Michigan in the Big Ten hoedown Saturday, the committee almost surely would vote the Boilermakers over Boise State. But you never know. The Broncos could hope.
And those teams on the sideline this week, the Oregons and Penn States and Washingtons and Tennessees, would be engaged, since they, too, could have a stake in the 12-team playoff.
“This is thrilling,” Bill Hancock, executive director of the CFP, said this week after the expansion was approved beginning in 2024. “A new era of college football is about to begin. I look forward to it.”
I don’t think anyone understands how transformative this is.
Sixteen or 17 teams would be engaged this week? Go back a week. This time last week, with a 12-team playoff, 26 or 27 teams still would have harbored hopes of making the field. Teams like Texas and Cincinnati and Notre Dame and Florida State and Illinois and Washington and Iowa and Houston.
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Go back a week before that, and the numbers increases even greater. Conference championships will mean more, with automatic inclusion for the top six ranked titlists.
For almost a century, college football has acted like an evil king, banishing hope as quickly as possible. Lose in September without blueblood pedigree? Don’t even think about the playoff. Lose twice before November even with status? You’re out of the running.
Soon, those days will be gone. A regular season that has grown stale – too many September mismatches, too many November games void of post-season meaning – will be revitalized.
Former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby helped construct the 12-team model and last year estimated how many teams might still be engaged week by week. I put my pencil to it and came up with as many as 50 on November 1. As many as 40 by mid-November. As many as 30 by late November.
As many as 20 by this first week of December. We’d have 16 or 17 this season on championship weekend, and that’s with only one mid-major conference, the American, in the running.
Dozens of teams and schools and fan bases won’t have to check out of the season in October.
The 12-team playoff will be great. The runway to the 12-team playoff will be even better.
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National Pregame: Kyle Whittingham vs. Lincoln Riley
The Pac-12 Championship Game is a culture clash.
The glitz of Los Angeles vs. the Mormon ways of Salt Lake City.
The tradition of Southern Cal vs. the pedestrian history of the Utah Utes.
The quick-fix of Lincoln Riley vs. the long-term building of Kyle Whittingham.
It all plays out Friday night in Las Vegas, where 9-3 Utah tries to keep the 11-1 Trojans out of the College Football Playoff.
USC, with Riley and likely Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams, has all the hype. But Whittingham never has needed hype.
He was hired as Utah’s head coach 18 Decembers ago and now has a record of 153-73. Whittingham was hired a couple of weeks before Mike Gundy was named head coach at OSU, and now they rank 2-3 in Division I-A longevity, behind only Kirk Ferentz of Iowa.
Remarkably, Gundy’s record of 156-74 is virtually identical to Whittingham’s, and both have substantially raised their program’s stock.
So much so, that it’s not a big surprise to see Utah in its second straight Pac-12 title game. The Utes beat Oregon a year ago for the title, then played an epic Rose Bowl before losing to Ohio State 48-45.
Speaking of epic, Utah’s 43-42 victory over USC in October is one of this season’s five best games. If we get another one like that Friday night in Vegas, college football fans will be well-served.
“We’re thrilled to be back in the championship, obviously,” Whittingham said. “A lot of things had to line up for us -- they all transpired. Our team did a really good job of taking care of our business.”
The season hasn’t gone Utah’s way. It suffered a season-opening upset loss at Florida, then lost at UCLA (42-32) and Oregon (20-17). But a series of fortunate events propelled the Utes into the Pac-12 title game.
Going into the final weekend, Utah needed to beat Colorado and get some help – UCLA to beat California, Oregon State to upset Oregon and Washington to beat Washington State.
All four things happened, including Oregon State rallying from a 21-point deficit late in the third quarter.
“That was a rollercoaster,” Whittingham said. “When it was 31-10 for Oregon, I got an update (on the sidelines at Colorado). Somebody sent me a gamecast thing on ESPN that said ‘99.3% chance of winning’ or something like that. That was a little bit of a downer.
“Again, we were just worried about what we could control and we were just hoping for the other stuff to happen. … I started to get a steady flow of updates with seven or eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter of our game. That’s when that game was winding down. I couldn’t believe it when they pulled it off.”
Then Washington beat Washington State, and the Pac-12 had a Utah-USC rematch, courtesy of conference tiebreakers.
“Some people say, ‘Well, you backdoored your way into the championship,’” Whittingham said. “No, we won the games we needed to win to get there. I don’t know what ‘backdoored’ means. We won seven (Pac-12) games and the right seven games to get into the championship. That’s our stance.”
Here’s my stance. Whittingham has built a rock-solid program at Utah. The Utes won’t be an easy out for USC.
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Coach on the hot seat: Gus Malzahn
Gus Malzahn found a soft landing when he took the Central Florida job almost two years ago, after being fired at Auburn. Soon enough, UCF was invited into the Big 12, and it seemed like that Malzahn had as clear a path to the College Football Playoff with the Knights as he did with the Tigers.
But Malzahn’s first UCF team went 9-4, slightly below the standards established by the coaching successes of Scott Frost and Josh Heupel (the Knights were 41-8 the four years before Malzahn’s arrival).
The American Conference was a load in 2021, led by Cincinnati. But the American has not been a load in 2022, with Tulane’s uprising usurping the three schools that are Big 12 bound (UCF, Cincinnati, Houston) in 2023.
Malzahn’s 2022 Knights are 9-3 and Saturday play at Tulane for the American title. A victory likely would send Central Florida to the Cotton Bowl, maybe against Penn State, and provide a geographic stage for Malzahn to present his program to his new conference mates.
Big 12 Media Days and the conference title game are conducted annually at JerryWorld, home of the Cotton Bowl.
But lose to Tulane, and UCF will be 9-4 again, headed to some bowl far less prestigious. The heat is on Malzahn to beat the Green Wave and create momentum for the Knights’ move to the Big 12.
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Upset special: North Carolina over Clemson
No one ever took North Carolina seriously as a playoff contender, even two weeks ago, when the Tar Heels were 9-1 and among an exclusive club of eight Power Five Conference teams with fewer than two defeats.
The playoff committee had UNC ranked 13th, behind two-loss teams LSU, Alabama, Utah, Penn State and Oregon.
Then Carolina showed that lack of faith was justified. The Tar Heels lost back-to-back home games to Georgia Tech and North Carolina State, both playing with down-the-roster quarterbacks.
But UNC can exorcise some demons Saturday with a victory over Clemson in the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game. The Tigers won six straight ACC titles before being supplanted by Pittsburgh a year ago.
A Clemson victory would restore order to the ACC, which has a history of being dominated. Florida State won the title in 11 of its first 12 seasons after joining the ACC (1992-2003).
But Clemson is wounded. The Tigers have lost the defensive prowess supplied by 10-year coordinator Brent Venables, and quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei has not been a worthy successor to Trevor Lawrence.
Carolina is a flawed team, but quarterback Drake Maye is a playmaker. Clemson is a 7½-point favorite, but let’s go with the Tar Heels in the upset.
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Ranking the conference title games
1. Southern Cal vs. Utah in Las Vegas, 7 p.m. Friday, Fox: The Pac-12 does the playoff committee a big solid by playing this on Friday night, and not at 9:30 p.m. (Oklahoma time) Saturday. That would be some bleary-eyed votes.
2. Texas Christian vs. Kansas State in Arlington, 11 a.m. Saturday, ABC: Two more new faces in Arlington. 2020 was OU-Iowa State. 2021 was OSU-Baylor. If 2023 brings two more newcomers to the Big 12 Championship Game, who would it be? Texas-Central Florida? Texas Tech-Brigham Young? West Virginia-Cincinnati?
3. Louisiana State vs. Georgia in Atlanta, 3 p.m. Saturday, CBS: A rather meaningless game, other than seeding. LSU can’t get into the four-team playoff, Georgia can’t fall out.
4. Purdue vs. Michigan in Indianapolis, 7 p.m. Saturday, Fox: Let’s hope this is better than the 2021 Big Ten Championship Game, won 42-3 by the Wolverines over Iowa.
5. Clemson vs. North Carolina in Charlotte, 7 p.m. Saturday, ABC: The Tar Heels haven’t won the Atlantic Coast title since 1980. Can they end the drought?
6. Central Florida at Tulane, 3 p.m. Saturday, ABC: With Cincinnati losing coach Luke Fickell, the Big 12 needs the Knights to prosper even more.
7. Fresno State at Boise State, 3 p.m. Saturday, Fox: The winner goes to the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl against a Pac-12 team.
8. North Texas at Texas-San Antonio, 6:30 p.m. Friday, CBS Sports Network: Next season, both programs move to the American Conference, along with Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, Rice and Alabama-Birmingham.
9. Coastal Carolina at Troy, 2:30 p.m. Saturday, ESPN: Coastal coach Jamey Chadwell apparently is interested in the open Liberty job.
10. Toledo vs. Ohio in Detroit, 11 a.m. Saturday, ESPN: If Ohio wins, it makes seven schools that have won the last eight Mid-American Conference championships. Only Northern Illinois has won twice in that span.
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Mailbag: More Lincoln Riley
Lincoln Riley remains a sore spot for Sooner fans, who continue to take umbrage with my theory that Southern Cal needs to win the Pac-12 Championship Game for the good of college football.
Jim: “I’m willing to bet most OU fans feel the same as I do. We don’t care if Alabama or Ohio State are in the football playoffs, as long as SC is NOT! Sorry to disagree my friend, but that’s how we feel.”
Tramel: Oh, I completely understand. But feelings are emotions, and emotions rarely are a good barometer of what's best for the overall good. Rational thought is what’s best.
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The List: Conference-title game upsets
College football’s conference championship games rarely produce memorable upsets. But they occasionally happen. Here are the seven biggest:
1. Big 12 1996: Third-ranked Nebraska, 10-1, had its eye on a third straight national title. But unranked Texas, 7-4, pulled a 37-27 stunner, setting up a Florida State-Florida national title game.
2. SEC 2001: The crazy finish of the 2001 season was capped by LSU’s 31-20 victory over second-ranked Tennessee. The 10-1 Volunteers appeared headed for a national-title showdown against Miami. Instead, Nebraska, which didn’t even win the Big 12 North, played the Hurricanes. LSU entered the SEC Championship Game with an 8-3 record.
3. 2013 Big Ten: Not a massive upset, but massive repercussions. Michigan State was 11-1 and ranked 10th but beat unbeaten and second-ranked Ohio State 34-24, knocking the Buckeyes out of the national-championship game against Florida State.
4. Big 12 1998: Texas A&M knocked Kansas State out of the national championship game, with a 36-33, double-overtime upset. KSU was 11-0 and ranked No. 2. A&M was 10-2 and ranked 10th.
5. Big 12 2003: Kansas State’s 35-7 upset of OU didn’t so much affect the playoff picture – the Sooners made the national title game anyway – but it stunned a sport that was placing the Sooners among the greatest teams of all time. KSU was 10-3 and ranked 13th, while the Sooners were 12-0 and a unanimous No. 1.
6. 2005 ACC: Unranked Florida State was 7-4 but stunned fifth-ranked Virginia Tech 27-22. The Hokies, who had been 10-1, slipped to the Gator Bowl.
7. 2011 ACC: Who remembers when Clemson was an underdog? The Tigers were in 2011, when they were ranked 21st with a 9-3 record but routed No. 5 Virginia Tech 38-10.
8. 2005 SEC: Third-ranked LSU’s national-title hopes had been dashed by Texas’ victory in the Big 12 Championship Game earlier in the day. And the 10-1 Tigers played deflated, losing to No. 13 Georgia 34-14.
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What do NBA Rookie of the Month Awards mean?
Santa Clara Williams was named the NBA’s Western Conference Rookie of the Month for November.
Not bad, considering that in the 2022 NBA Draft, West teams drafted seven players before the Thunder took Santa Clara at No. 12.
Roll call. The Thunder took Chet Holmgren No. 2 and Ousmane Dieng No. 11. The Rockets’ Jabari Smith went No. 3, the Kings’ Keegan Murray No. 4, the Blazers’ Shaedon Sharpe No. 7, the Pelicans’ Dyson Daniels No. 8 and the Spurs’ Jeremy Sochan No. 9.
The West award comes down to three players: Santa Clara, Smith and Murray.
Here’s how they rank:
Minutes per game: Smith 30.1, Murray 28.6, Williams 25.6.
Points per game: Smith 11.7, Williams 10.7, Murray 10.6.
Rebounds per game: Smith 7.0, Murray 3.9, Williams 3.2.
Assists per game: Williams 2.6, Smith 0.9, Murray 0.9.
Field-goal percentage: Williams .524, Murray .398, Smith .353.
Three-point percentage: Smith .344, Murray .317, Williams .295.
Seems like a close race. Particularly with Smith and Santa Clara. I’ve got no qualms with anyone who voted any which way.
But the rookie-of-the-month award got me to thinking. How much of a predictor is it for future stardom? Especially in the wake of Josh Giddey’s rookie season.
Remember, Giddey dominated the Western Conference Rookie of the Month awards a year ago, winning the first four before injuries shut him down. Giddey won for November, December, January and February.
Giddey was helped, of course, by the preponderance of Eastern Conference rookie stars. Scottie Barnes, Cade Cunningham, Franz Wagner and Evan Mobley each won the award once. Giddey’s only real competition was Jalen Green, who finally won in March when Giddey was injured.
But still, Giddey had to produce to win month after month, and he did. Is that a sign of continued NBA success?
The award has changed over the years. Occasionally, an award is given for April. And through the 2000-01 season, the award was not split between conferences. Just one rookie of the month.
Eight players have been named rookie of the month six times. All became superstars, as you’d expect: Carmelo Anthony, Tim Duncan, Blake Griffin, LeBron James, Damian Lillard, Chris Paul, David Robinson and Karl-Anthony Towns. Robinson won six when the award was not split by conference. If you don’t remember the Admiral, what a ballplayer.
Anyway, three players have won the award five times: Luka Doncic, Kevin Durant and Ralph Sampson. Sampson is best remembered as a flop, but that’s unfair. He was an all-star his first four years in the NBA before injuries derailed his career.
And now we get to Giddey territory. Here are the players who four times were named rookie of the month: Caron Butler, Terry Cummings (before 2001), Giddey, Brandon Jennings, Donovan Mitchell, Shaquille O’Neal (before 2001), Ben Simmons, John Wall, Trae Young and Andrew Wiggins.
Not all superstars. Not all stars. But all good ballplayers. Who’s the worst of the bunch? Probably Jennings, who averaged 16.6 points a game his first six seasons, before he became a journeyman. Butler and Cummings were two-time all-stars. Wiggins is a one-time all-star but has averaged 19.2 points a game for his career and has been reinvigorated as a Warrior mainstay.
The Thunder wouldn’t cash in Giddey’s potential for Jennings’ career. But the rest? If Giddey turns out as good as Butler or Cummings or Wiggins, sold.
And if Santa Clara keeps winning rookie of the month awards, even better.
The honor is full of players whose careers didn’t skyrocket. There’s the occasional Kevin Knox or Willy Hernangomez. Tyler Ulis or Yogi Ferrell. Marquese Chriss or Rodney Hood.
But that list gets short when it goes to two-time winners. And it disappears when you’ve won four.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Expanded College Football Playoff will bring sizzle to regular season
