If We Do Not Make The NCAA Tournament In 2010, Craig Littlepage Must Be Fired.

That's the long and short of it right there.

If you're reading this, you probably already know what it's about, but just to maintain some pretense of journalistic integrity, here's what I'm talking about. So that being said, please do not take this post as an indictment of our new coach Tony Bennett. I'm not pissed off that we hired Tony Bennett. I welcome him with open arms to the UVA community and as a UVA fan, I wish him nothing but the very very best. ACC and national titles galore, all the money Paul Tudor Jones can shove at him, a statue on the Lawn next to Homer, and seven-foot tall recruits with 4.0 GPAs that fall all over themselves to come to Virginia and stay for four years - five, if the NCAA lets them.

But, again:

If UVA does not make the NCAA tournament in 2010, Craig Littlepage must be fired.

I don't need to tell you that this is the ACC. Basketball is king. Football is great, and success in football is a must, but it's ultimately not what this conference is known for. You have to do well in basketball. I also don't need to tell you about our general suckitude in this area. But I will. Since I showed up on Grounds as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed first year, we have achieved precisely one victory in the NCAA tournament. This puts us even with Virginia Tech and Miami this decade, and that's unacceptable, which is why two coaches have been fired in that time frame. In that time we are 58-86 in regular season ACC play. Also terrible. Being hired at UVA is enough to get Bennett onto the front page of ESPN.com, right above the latest idiocy about Chad Johnson, so it's not like we're a Baylor or a Northwestern struggling to stay afloat in a league that keeps us only because it's tradition. There's visibility here, which is a nice way of saying the whole world can tell we suck. You absolutely cannot fail twice in ACC basketball when it comes to picking coaches.

But, you say, Bennett will have been on the job only a year. Not making the NCAA's in one year can hardly be considered failure. He'll have a team full of sophomores and as likely as not, no recruiting class. I expect this to be a common sentiment. If you feel this way, tell me: what would have been success for Dave Leitao? NCAA? NIT? Or a lesser tournament like the CBI? Myself, I expected that Leitao would have this team back to postseason play, likely in the NIT. Most of the team and pretty much all the important parts were returning. All would be a year older. A solid recruiting class was coming in. Most of the really good players in the ACC (Toney Douglas, Tyrese Rice, Jeff Teague, Tyler Hansbrough, etc.) would be gone, out of eligibility or to the draft early anyway. This was ours for the taking. I didn't agree with Leitao being fired because the results this season actually mildly outperformed expectations and because of this window of opportunity to succeed. The timing was wrong.

But Leitao is now gone, and this is not only the second coach Littlepage has hired but the second time he's gone off the beaten path for it. Hiring Tubby Smith or Jeff Capel would have been the easy route, the safe route, and the one that earned Littlepage a feather in his cap as far as the fanbase was concerned. That's not to scoff at the idea, it's to encourage it. There's a reason they were considered the slam dunk, home run hires. They're excellent coaches and they would have listened to our sales pitch. And they would have brought instant credibility. This is different. This is going to take some convincing. Littlepage is going to sit at that press conference tomorrow and tell us he hired the best coach for the job, just as he did four years ago. Nobody's going to believe it, because the folks considered the best for the job are still coaching at the places they coached at last week. The one person who will believe it, who has to believe it more than anyone else in the world, maybe even more so than Tony Bennett himself, is Craig Littlepage. (If he doesn't, then he's a puppet who needs to go anyway.) So the fate of this basketball team is on Craig Littlepage.

The window, however, is now poised to slam shut. How many transfers will there be? No offense to Tony Bennett, but this is a coaching change. There are always transfers and decommitments. If there are not, then hats off to Tony because he will have managed to pull off an unprecedented sales pitch. What kind of a team will we have next year? Who will wear the uniform? Nobody can say for sure right now. But Bennett no doubt was brought in, at least in large part, because he took a previously pathetic Washington State squad to a shock-the-world kind of tourney season. My baseline expectation for Leitao was the NIT, as mentioned above. If Bennett is not an improvement over that, then Littlepage should be fired for overseeing a full decade of basketball failure at UVA.

We're at a tipping point. The fans wanted Tubby. The fans wanted a splashy hire. They didn't get it. The fans also want a good basketball team. If they don't get that either, support will dry up. Nobody's going to drive an hour from Richmond or 90 minutes from DC or two hours from Hampton Roads or donate any money for a bad basketball team coached by a nobody. Bennett has to be a somebody or this team is going to be at least five years from relevance.

This means he needs to be all in. Not "all in" as in the cheesy motivational slogan employed by Dabo Swinney. Really all in, with a sprinting head start and a cannonball off the high dive. He needs to call the players. Tonight. He needs to call the recruits. Tonight. (Assuming, that is, he is officially no longer employed by Washington State.) He needs a whole wardrobe full of Virginia Cavaliers schwag. He needs to have the Good Ol' Song memorized by tomorrow's press conference. Orange and blue need to be his favorite colors, Thomas Jefferson his favorite President, and Edgar Allan Poe his favorite poet. Coach Bennett needs to be a 'Hoo, not just be employed by the University.

It's the only way to save Craig Littlepage's job.

nothing special today, or so i thought

There's a nice hey-check-out-this-guy article on Sylven Landesberg, should you be interested in the next great 'Hoo baller. Actually not a lot the average 'Hoo fan doesn't already know, but it's nice to see that national pub for a guy who deserves some.

"Does not have potential to be drafted in the first three rounds." That's the evaluation Kevin Ogletree got back from the NFL when he submitted his paperwork. I generally hesitate to criticize our own players who declare early for the draft, because I clearly have very selfish motives in wanting them to stay. But you kinda have to wonder who told Ogletree what, that outweighed that paperwork.

Jeff White has a bunch of interesting stuff courtesy of Al Groh. My take on some of these items:

- Rico Bell transfer. Disappointing that he didn't pan out, because he was one of the highest-rated recruits of the 2006 class, and he chose UVA over an offer list that included Tennessee. Bell was not even on the two-deep this year as a redshirt sophomore and didn't look likely to crack it next year either, which no doubt contributed to the decision. Chris Cook is returning and could get moved to safety, and we are taking a butt-ton of safeties in the '09 class, and Bell saw the writing on the wall. There are a couple exceptions, but that class of '06 is starting to look like a flop these days.

- Also not back: Patrick Slebonick, Jason Fuller, and probably Cary Koch, though Koch is petitioning for another season. Returning to the team: Brandon Woods, Darnell Carter, and probably Yannick Reyering. Woods should be able to carve out some playing time this year - unless a true freshman impresses greatly, he and Ausar Walcott look like the early front-runners for the two-deep behind Corey Mosley and Cook. Carter will have a chance to compete in a wide-open race for spots on the depth chart now that Jon Copper and Antonio Appleby have graduated.

- I'm betting on Vic Hall to get moved to offense this year - the play of Chase Minnifield allows it. Hall can be a dangerous wild card for the offense and just the sort of guy to design a few trick plays around.

This popped up on the official site like right as I'm typing: your new strength and conditioning coach. OK, Director of Football Training and Player Development, whatever, I guess in the spirit of the official name of the stadium we gotta make it wicked long. Gotta love the wild and crazy eyes. The eyes that say "why the hell can you not bench 600 pounds, son?!?!" and the half-smile that adds "oh btw I'm really going to enjoy yelling at you for it." I call that a first step in the right direction.

I'm putting off the VT game preview til tomorrow morning. I didn't realize that it's been fourteen years since we started 2-0 in the conference. Not gonna lie: That's pretty bad. What's weird is that this year - when we're not really all that good - is when we have as good a shot as any to fix that.

yes, Gregg Brandon

Seems we have a new offensive coordinator. The school hasn't made it official, but the Toledo Blade is reporting it.*

For my take on that, scroll down like two inches.

*Yeah, you heard me, Toledo. The one in Ohio. It's not that weird. BGSU is no more than a half hour drive south.

Gregg Brandon?

It's all over the webtubes: the report that former Bowling Green head coach Gregg Brandon has been offered the coordinator position. OK, maybe not all over, but it's out there, and you probably know it by now.

So. Who, now?

Brandon's coaching history, per Wikipedia, the Repository of All Knowledge:

1981-86: Weber State (tight ends '81-'84, '86; special teams '81-'84; linebackers '85; receivers '86)
1987-90: Wyoming (receivers)
1991: Utah State (linebackers)
1992-98: Northwestern (receivers; recruiting coordinator '97-'98)
1999-00: Colorado (receivers, return units; recruiting coordinator '99; passing game coordinator '00)
2001-08: Bowling Green (OC, ass't head coach '00-'01; head coach '02-'08)

So it's been a fairly steady rise, from Weber State tight ends coach to a head coaching position. Not too shabby. What else?

Before I go any further, you should go read the GOB; Mahini beat me to the punch with a little perspective on Brandon and it's worth your time, and it saves me some writing. (But I did my Zaunbrecher one first, har.)

So. That little note at the end of the dailypress.com report: "Brandon uses the spread offense." Calling a coach a user of the spread offense is like calling someone European: yes, they're clearly identifiable as such, but that doesn't mean they all speak the same language. The spread offenses of Mike Leach and Rich Rodriguez are as alike as the Swedish and the Greeks. Brandon happens to be a disciple of the Urban Meyer-style spread, although "disciple" is a little unfair because (link via the GOB) Brandon helped design it.

That offense was put to good use, at least at first. Here's how BGSU's total offense stats look since 2004:

2004: 2nd, 506.3 ypg
2005: 27th, 427.7 ypg
2006: 56th, 345.8 ypg
2007: 53rd, 402.5 ypg
2008: 61st, 359.8 ypg

If you notice a distinct line between good numbers and maybe not-so-good numbers, then you've found out when Omar Jacobs bolted for the NFL.

This offense is something closer to the Rich Rodriguez spread than the Mike Leach spread. It involves heavy doses of the option (a play we run once a season when Mike Groh loses a bet), but more pass-oriented than the flavor of spread Rodriguez runs. Some implications if Brandon is hired:

- There ain't no party like a Vic Hall party cause a Vic Hall party don't stop. Hall, and likewise Jameel Sewell with their running abilities, are reasonably suited to run Brandon's offense. Marc Verica and Ross Metheny are not - their future will be somewhat up in the air if Brandon is brought aboard. Likewise, Tajh Boyd might all of a sudden go "hey whoa cool" and forget about Ohio State. You never know. You don't hire a coordinator just to bring in a recruit, but it'd be a nice little side effect.

- In the same vein, we would need multiple quarterbacks. An option offense means the quarterback gets hit just as often as the running backs, and having both Hall and Sewell fighting for time would suddenly turn out to be a bonus, especially when one of them has their elbows turned to mushy oatmeal like poor unblocked-for Steven Threet at Michigan.

- Already-committed recruits may look elsewhere. You always worry about this during a coaching change. Keep an eye especially on Dominique Wallace, who mentioned not wanting to play in a spread offense. (It's a Rivals pay article.) Understandable, as Wallace is a linebacker-sized bull moose of a running back who prefers running through tackles to running around them.

- The GOB makes some worried noises about the reasons for Brandon's firing - namely, off-the-field issues, and too many of them. Clearly, keeping players out of trouble has not been one of our strong suits. I don't worry about it, in this case. Brandon would be an assistant, not the head coach. I believe discipline issues rest squarely on the shoulders of the head coach. It's his job to keep the players in line. If the assistants aren't handing out proper discipline, it's the head coach's job to set them straight. If you think Groh isn't doing it right, that's another matter, but it's his job, not the offensive coordinator's, to discipline the team. However........

- Last but very, very much not least, is this: I think Brandon is an appealing hire to the administration because of his recent head coaching experience. Why? Because in the not-unlikely event Al Groh is fired in the next year or two, Brandon would become an immediate short-list candidate for the job. You better believe he would. This sets him apart from, say, Ed Zaunbrecher, because Zaunbrecher hasn't been a head coach in a decade and would likely be just shoveled out the door with the rest of the regime. Gregg Brandon, on the other hand, is fresh from a head coaching job that he didn't do too badly at. Whether or not it would actually be a good idea to have Brandon as the head coach is for another post, later down the road. But Littlepage has to like the idea of hiring a security blanket as an offensive coordinator.

game preview: Longwood

Seriously, the worst element of any season in any sport, be it football, basketball, baseball, or hockey, college or pros, is this finals-week hiatus in college basketball. It's a necessary evil, but two weeks without a game in the middle of a season still sucks. Let it be a lesson to those of you who think "well college basketball works around finals week so why can't football have a playoff at the same time?" Fortunately, that's over with, and we can turn to the business of sweating out these nonconference doormats before we start padding the win columns of our ACC rivals.

Oh, one note before I begin. This blog is, as you know, a hobby not a job, and that means I can do little more to cover this offensive coordinator coaching search than to update the list of names that the various sources cobble together. Periodically I might do like I did yesterday, with a more in-depth look, if enough sources mention the same name. Otherwise, keeping a running list of so-called candidates, with almost zero commentary on the likelihood of their hire, is about the most I can do. If I see a name in a place that carries more weight than a "hey what about this guy" message board post, I'll list it. Here's what there is so far, along with their most recent job:

Ron Prince (former head coach, Kansas State)
Al Borges (former OC, Auburn)
Gregg Brandon (former head coach, Bowling Green)
Ed Zaunbrecher (former QB coach, Purdue)
Jeff Rutledge (QB coach, Arizona Cardinals)
Buddy Geis (former WR coach, Georgia Tech)

OK, so, like, Longwood.

Virginia Cavaliers (3-3, 0-0) vs. Longwood Lancers (5-5, n/a)

Possible starters:

UVA:

It's still pretty impossible to guess what Leitao has cooked up this time.

Longwood:

PG: Durann Neil (6.5 ppg, 1.8 rpg, 3.4 apg)
G: Ryan Bogan (13.7 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 2.4 apg)
G: Kevin Swecker (9.2 ppg, 1.9 rpg, 1.7 apg)
F: Dana Smith (16.1, 7.0 rpg, 1.8 apg)
C: Billy Robinson, Jr. (5.0 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 0.4 apg)

We keep playing this game, every year, but I think we finally got the timing right. In the past we've taken a break from our regularly scheduled ACC programming to go whoop on Longwood in between grueling conference games. That can be helpful if you need to break a long losing streak, but it kinda sucks for the fans.

Instead we now have them after finals week. I really think the AD should be scheduling the creamiest, frostiest cuppycake he can find for the game that follows finals week. We tend to show poorly in these games. Last year we sleepwalked through a lazy win over Hampton. A couple years ago we got blow'd up by Gonzaga and the year before that it was an OT win over Loyola Marymount.

So Longwood, if we must play them (and we've done so every year but one of their D-I existence), seems the perfect opponent for this game, what with their 9-22 record the past two years. But this year, they're a bit scarier. They've actually got wins against teams not named UVA-Wise or otherwise below the D-I levels. Granted, Delaware State (one of their victims) is only 2-12, but nevertheless, Longwood is improving.

You have to worry, for example, about Dana Smith. He takes three-point shots that he frequently misses, but otherwise does just about everything quite well. Take away the three-pointers and his FG% is up north of 61%. Ryan Bogan is on the flip side of the coin - one of those guys who shoots threes better than twos. As with VMI, we are distinctly much bigger than they are. At 225 pounds, Smith is the biggest player suiting up for the Lancers, and they have nobody taller than 6'7" except for little-used forward Brandon Evans. All this likely means we'll see very little of Tunji Soroye and Assane Sene, because Leitao seems to think big guys aren't needed against teams without big guys. Earth to Dave: when you're much much taller than the guy you're guarding, that's a good thing.

Anyway, Longwood, as usual, is a team we should crush, just because we're UVA, and a bad season is no excuse. We've looked respectable in a couple of these losses, but that needs to translate to big monstrous wins against the Longwoods of the world if we're to take ourselves seriously in the ACC part of the schedule this year.

so who's this Ed Zaunbrecher guy?

Since there's a lot of nothing going on at the moment, except for an offensive coordinator search which has turned up nothing beyond idle press speculation, I decided to indulge my curiosity. Before he was brought up in the paper as a possibility, I had basically never heard of Ed Zaunbrecher; now, there's nary a newspaper out there that doesn't think he's at least a candidate, based on his past association with Al Groh. So what the hell; let's see what this guy's all about and if this is a good idea or what.

First, Zaunbrecher's coaching history, courtesy of Wikipedia, the repository of all human knowledge.

1975-76: Arizona (OL)
1977-79: Purdue (backs and receivers)
1980-83: Wake Forest (OC, quarterbacks, receivers)
1984-90: LSU (OC, quarterbacks)
1991-93: Michigan State (quarterbacks '91, linebackers '92-'93)
1994-98: Louisiana-Monroe (Head Coach - then known as NE La.)
1999-01: Marshall (quarterbacks '99-'01, OC '00-'01)
2002-04: Florida (quarterbacks '02-'04, OC '02-'03)
2005: Illinois (quarterbacks, passing game coordinator)
2006-08: Purdue (quarterbacks, co-OC)

So mostly quarterbacks. With a couple exceptions, he's coached quarterbacks since 1980. Hey, that's good: we're in need of one of those coaches, since Mike Groh handled those duties too. You begin to suspect maybe this is why the media types have brought up this name, yes?

Lot of job changes, though. Lot of job changes. Makes you wonder. Some of them are steps up, the kind you make when you're looking for that higher-profile job that'll get your name in someone's head coaching hat. Zaunbrecher has changed jobs nine times; four of these, I'd consider that kind of up-step: Wake, LSU, ULM, Florida. Wake was his first OC gig; LSU is a better gig than Wake; ULM was his big chance as a head coach; and when you get the chance to go from Marshall to Florida, you take it.

Zaunbrecher's been the unfortunate victim of a lot of head coaching changes, as well. (And if he comes here, you can probably chalk up another one in a year or two.) But check out the list:

2008: Not retained at Purdue when Joe Tiller left.
2004: Followed Ron Zook out of Florida to Illinois.
1990: Swept out the door at LSU with Mike Archer (who in fact came to UVA the next year.)
1976: Hired at the very end of Jim Young's tenure at Arizona; left when Young did that year.

So Zaunbrecher's job changes have essentially been either steps up, or the result of a regime change. Including his own. Speaking of which, how did he do at Northeastern Louisiana?

Zaunbrecher's predecessors there were quite successful; the most successful that ULM has ever seen, as a matter of fact. In five years there, Dave Roberts was 38-19-2, with two Southland Conference championships and three I-AA playoff appearances. His predecessor, Pat Collins, won NE La. a I-AA national championship. Zaunbrecher was hired in 1994 to oversee the team's jump from I-AA to I-A. As you might expect, winning seasons were not in the cards early on, though the Indians did post a couple victories over SEC doormats Kentucky and Mississippi State. In 1996, NE La., being an independent team still, starting scheduling a whole bunch more I-AA teams to boost the ol' win column. This was a moderate success, bringing Zaunbrecher respectable-ish (for Northeastern Louisiana) records of 5-6, 5-7, and 5-6, though they were still getting waxed by the likes of UAB and Louisiana Tech. Apparently tired of five-win seasons (and hey, who isn't?) the NE La. brass let Zaunbrecher go and hired Bobby Keasler, who produced a record of: 5-6. (Keasler then proceeded to break the pattern in spectacular fashion the following year by delivering a 1-10 season.) ULM has never had a winning season since taking the I-A plunge.

So, you can look at Zaunbrecher's tenure there one of two ways. Either he brought that team as much success as they ever had playing at this level of football, or he was never particularly good and artificially inflated his record against the Nicholls States and Portland States of the world.

But the main thing is, what does it mean for us? It'd be nice to say he had any success as a head coach, but if he had, he probably wouldn't be a speculative candidate for a likely dead-end job under a practically lame duck head coach. You can't read anything into that co-OC job at Purdue; basically, his offenses were okay as long Curtis Painter had anyone to throw to, which he no longer does, and anyway he didn't call the plays, Joe Tiller called the plays and it was Joe Tiller's offense and Joe Tiller's show, not Ed Zaunbrecher's. Coaching Curtis Painter to any success at all is probably worth something, because Painter's recruit-guru rankings were wicked mediocre. But we learn nothing from the play-calling. Purdue was a big fan of the five-receiver set; Al Groh probably didn't know you're even allowed to do that until Mike took that trip to Lubbock, Texas and heard all about having the quarterback make throws longer than five yards in the air.

On the whole, Zaunbrecher seems like a pretty fair candidate, if that's the direction the administration is headed. He's bounced around, and yes, when the coach is fired, the OC bears a share of the blame. But he's got 15 years experience as an offensive coordinator. He's no great shakes, nothing spectacular, but 15 years is 15 years, and it's 15 years more experience than Mike had. And let's face it: "Pretty fair" is probably the best we can hope for, given the coaching situation these days. I see nothing in Zaunbrecher's past that would make me head out to CHO to throw things at Craig Littlepage if he were hired, and that's fine by me.

Post Script: If you want to read some li'l stories about the days when the end zone was uphill both ways, in the snow, then take a look at the CDP today. It's worth a read.

don't these idiots have anything better to do?

It's an outrage, I tell you. More in a bit. First, recruiting. Some slightly overdue updates to the recruiting board:

- Moved DE Will Hill to Verbal. Obviously.

- Moved WR Tyree Watkins from Soft Verbal to Verbal. This here Rivals article is a pay article but dates from after the Mike Groh firing and includes Watkins' comments on the situation. Watkins says, basically, he's committed and will take his official, and if he doesn't like it, he'll "consider other visits." He's not paying for it. I suspect he will like it.

- Dropped WR Justin Brown. We never really were in great shape for him, and we fired his recruiter.

- Added OT Nolan MacMillan, who got hisself an offer. I wish there were more to know about MacMillan, but Scout gives him the One-star of No Bother Look, and that's a step or two better than ESPN, which doesn't even have him in the database. Awesome.

- Moved Lanford Collins from red to blue and changed his position from DE to LB, as we would use him in a Clint Sintim role. ($) Oh, and he listed a top four of us, VT, Md., and PSU, hence the move to blue. Nice.

I will tell you what, with early enrollments and all we probably have about 26-28 scholarships we can hand out. We have 22 commits. Give us Brennan Williams, Morgan Moses, one of either Collins or Luke Kuechly (or, hell, both), and Josh Evans (who is given meh ratings from the services but has something like 38 offers from damn good football teams) and I will be a happy camper.

One addition I did not make was OT Hunter Steward. This article lists the all-Tidewater offensive football team (and congrats to Perry Jones and Tim Smith by the way) and you would guess from it that he's a very logical choice to end up in blue and orange, given that his other choices are indicated as Marshall and JMU. We will see - I'll keep an eye on it, ya know, but his Rivals profile has an interview - a recent one, like, a December one - that says he has narrowed his choices to Marshall or prep school. Which would kind of indicate he doesn't really have a UVA offer after all, unless it came in the last week or so. So we'll see.

Regarding the OC job, Jay Jenkins at the CDP (and thanks to Mahini of the Good Ol' Blog who had the article up first) has three possibilities based on past ties with Al Groh, Bob Pruett, and/or the Commonwealth. One is a very familiar name: Ron Prince. Ed Zaunbrecher has just been let go from Purdue, and coached for Groh many moons ago. Dave Clawson is the third; Doug Doughty also mentions Clawson here, along with the very prudent caution that Clawson, having just been victimized by one coaching change, might not jump at another job where the head coach is in hot water.

This, in fact, is why we are going to find it difficult to find a real talent at OC. We're not going to get some "up-and-comer" looking to boost his resume. Think retread. Notice Prince and Zaunbrecher and Clawson are all guys who have just lost a job, not some bright new mind on the scene. I know little about Zaunbrecher and Clawson other than what I read, but this I know: I was never enamored of Prince's playcalling. Too much sideways stuff.

OK, so what's got me all worked up these days? Congress, of course. I'm already not real pleased with these fools over the auto bailout. I try to keep politics out of the football blog, but I will just say that Sen. Shelby of Alabama is a fucktard. Now, naturally, Congress wants to stick their meddling noses into college football and mandate a playoff. I'm only half mad about this because of my strong anti-playoff feelings. Don't you leaders of the free world have a war to win, a deficit to tackle, a national debt to pay down, an economy to fix, crime and hunger to solve, AIDS and cancer to cure, ANYTHING AT ALL??

This is probably as good a time as any to point out the Two Truisms of playoffs. Everyone has their own perfect system. Everyone thinks their own system is The Greatest, and everyone wants to share it with the world because it's Perfect and they're waiting for the world to fall at their feet with admiration for saving us from the Abominable Bee-Cee-Ess. If your Perfect Little System doesn't adhere to the Two Truisms, then forget it. It's not going to happen. Accept the Two Truisms, then see if you still like the idea of a playoff:

- Truism #1: It will be BIG.

Do not for a second delude yourself into thinking you can create a cute little four or six or eight team playoff. Here's why. Playoffs have autobids. All playoffs the NCAA has, have autobids. Believe it: None of the BCS conference commissioners will let go of this BCS thing unless all of them get a slice of that pie. So there will be at least six autobids.

Then one of two things will happen. One, the WAC, MWC, and others will cry bloody murder; after all, March Madness includes them, and dammit, so should football. So 11 autobids. That basically means a 16 team playoff, because one at-large bid isn't going to be enough. And what will Notre Dame say about all this?

Or, two, the WAC, MWC, and others will cry bloody murder and get ignored, and that leaves six autobids. Which doesn't fix a damn thing, because that means Texas is still out in the cold, brutha. You need a few at large spots; eight would be the absolute minimum playoff size. You'd actually probably have at least six at-large bids to placate the mid-majors.

And then, take a look at March Madness. You think it's got 65 teams because those are the best 65 teams in the land and they all have a great shot at the title? Hell no. It's 65 because the NCAA couldn't resist the awesome bracket-building, money-grubbing wonder of three weekends of March Madness, baby! It used to be 8 teams. Then it was 16. Then it was 20-some. Then 32. Then 48. Then 64. Then 65. And they're talking of expansion again! Your cute little perfect six team or eight team football bracket will not stay that way.

- Truism #2: It will be home-field sited.

Some people like to claim their little playoff "maintains the integrity of the bowl system" by simply playing the semifinals in Miami and New Orleans and calling them the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl. Why, then you could be the Cotton Bowl champ, Orange Bowl champ, and Rose Bowl champ, all in one year!

I got news for ya: The bowls ain't playin' ball. They're independent organizations. You think the Sugar Bowl is gonna like being the quarterfinals? You would have to get them to agree to this. They're non-profit organizations, and not looking to make a buck - many might simply fold.

And even more important: Fans will not travel twice. You think the ACCCG is so damn empty because there are no VT or BC fans? Of course not: Boston College fans actually helped fill the stadium for the C***** S***** Bowl last year for its best crowd in 13 years. It's so damn empty because it's 1300 miles from Boston to Tampa and the BC fans are going to wait for the bowl game before they spend all that cash and call in dead to the office so they can go. Michigan fans, numerous as they are, are not going to travel to El Paso then Dallas then New Orleans then Pasadena for playoff games.

These are the Two Truisms. If you think you can propose a Perfect playoff system that doesn't take these into account, stop it. It might be fun to think about and wish for. It might be fun to play out each season, like little kids with toy soldiers wishing they had real guns. If you think it's realistically implementable and doesn't take these into account, you're deluding yourself and wasting our time. Every other football division has a big-ass playoff with home-field sites until the championship game. If you still want a playoff, then you must accept that you're:

- Willing to destroy the best regular season in all of sports
- Willing to destroy practically 100 years of unique bowl tradition
- Willing to ruin a great excuse for a lot of people to take a great vacation to a warm spot to go see their favorite team play. Ever traveled to a bowl game? It's a blast. You putter around town, play a little mini-golf. You wear your teams colors at the airport and hi-five total strangers wearing the same colors and shoot dirty looks full of malice at total strangers wearing the other ones. You hit the bars, you go to the game and you enjoy the pageantry. Ever travel to hostile territory? You park your car backwards so nobody sees your license plate, and you hope it's not flipped when you get back.

Playoffs must die.