weekend review

I said some time ago that I wouldn't bother ripping apart the new playoff ideas until they'd settled on a final one - no point in getting worked up over what were obviously leaks of less than half the info.  More economical to blow my stack over something that exists, instead of repeatedly blowing my stack over what might exist.

So they've finally decided on the format and it's so milquetoast I don't really even have a chance to blow my stack.  So I saved a lot of effort, really.  Proud of myself.  And that's saying something coming from me, Mr. GTFO-And-Off-My-Lawn, you rotten kids and your playoffs.  So we have a committee, and they'll play the semifinals at like the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl or something, and then sell the championship game to the highest bidder, and the participants will be decided by a committee just as with most other sports.  Just please say you'll play both the semis on New Year's Day or thereabouts and I'll be a little more placated.  As it is I hate playing the championship on like January 9.  Whose dumbass idea was it to play the game on a Monday?

Things I don't like:

-- That it looks like the Rose Bowl, which will be one of the rotating hosts, will slip further into the future and away from tradition.  This is coming from a guy who thinks that Miami and Oklahoma winning the game in successive years was an unforgivable besmirchment of the game and tradition in general, so maybe you don't care as much.

-- Not enough emphasis on conference champions.  There is a mushy requirement for the committee to give preference to conference champions, but the shitstorm that will ensue when an SEC runner up is picked over a one-loss conference champ is highly predictable, and is the likeliest route to playoff expansion.

This latter point is not because of my getoffmylawnitude - rather, it's because it doesn't do enough to drive Notre Dame into a conference.  And when I say "into a conference" I mean "into the ACC."  Notre Dame's AD Jack Swarbrick got an equal seat at the table in the discussions - 11 conference commissioners and Swarbrick.  (And do you think anyone was really listening to the WAC?)  That in itself is a legit reason to harbor a small distrust of the process, and ensured that Notre Dame will likely get to continue having its cake and eating it too.  Latest on them is that the Big 12 is actually their most likely destination, because the Big 12 will happily let them stay football-independent on the condition that they schedule a bunch of Big 12 teams each year.  If the ACC wants to lure Notre Dame they will have to emphasize the cultural fit - and worse, likely have to kowtow on the revenue-sharing issue, and create some kind of uneven distribution, which as the Big 12 proved creates its own set of problems.

So I'd have to say that the idea of Notre Dame to the ACC is more or less on life support.  The conference is not going to waver on its stand of being in for everything or nothing, and it shouldn't.  Uneven revenue sharing is dicey.  I mean, you offer it to ND as their carrot and you know Florida State is gonna want that action too.  With the uproar over FSU and Clemson basically settled down, it looks like the ACC is a 14-team conference for the near and even medium future.

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-- This weekend it broke that LB Caleb Taylor will transfer to ODU.  In case you're thinking it opens up another spot in the class of '13, it doesn't - it's just part of the attrition that's going to happen in order to free up the spots we're already filling.

-- Tomorrow appears to be D-Day as far as the Teresa Sullivan presidency is concerned.  Prediction: the BOV votes 8-7 to reinstate Sullivan, and we have to wait until Governor McDonnell makes public his decision on Helen Dragas's reappointment before we know whether Sullivan will come back.  As usual, this stuff is like the Supreme Court: anyone who claims to know anything is probably lying.

If reinstated, Sullivan will essentially be bulletproof, but I also think this incident decreases the likelihood her contract will be renewed when it's actually up, which I think is three years from now.

-- It has been a huge weekend for commitments, both to us and to other schools.  There are now 14 commitments, which means the class is close to being closed out.  On Wednesday there will be the standard update, but also an assessment of the remainder of the recruiting season.