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Monday, May 19, 2008
College Game Day coming to ATL?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Okay. We’ve got two more weeks before we shut this thing down for our summer break. So, other than the fact that Big Brown is a lot of horse and that the Braves are unbeatable at home, what did we learn over the weekend?
1. College Game Day coming to the ATL? The folks at ESPN like to keep their options open and insist no decision has been made. But I’m hearing that the College Game Day boys are coming to Atlanta on Aug. 30 as part of the run-up to the Clemson-Alabama game at the Georgia Dome. That’s going to be a fun weekend of football around here. Georgia Tech plays Jacksonville State (and Ryan Perrilloux) on Thursday, Aug. 28. There will be plenty of high school football on Friday. Georgia will play Georgia Southern in the afternoon (I’m guessing) on Aug. 30 in Athens with Clemson-Alabama as the nightcap back in Atlanta.
2. Tech’s game with Jax State looks a lot different: About a week ago Georgia Tech’s opener with Jacksonville State looked like a pretty good way for Paul Johnson to make his debut as the head Yellow Jacket. But now Jax State has gone from having no quarterback to lining up behind center with Perrilloux, the MVP of the 2007 SEC championship game. That should sell a few more tickets to the Thursday night event and give new defensive coordinator Dave Wommack something to think about this summer.
3. The Dawgs are buying up ASU season tickets: I talked to Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson the other day. He says his fans are fired up over Georgia’s trip to Tempe on Sept. 20. “Shoot, we like playing teams from the SEC,” said Erickson, who won a pair of national championships at Miami. “I just wish Georgia wasn’t so good.” Erickson told me that a lot of people from Georgia are buying up Arizona State’s season ticket packages, some of which are as cheap as $99. “Something tells me Georgia is going to have a pretty good crowd here,” Erickson said.
4. Joe Pa says he’s fine. But will he catch Bowden? Turns out that Joe Paterno’s trip to the hospital last week was for dehydration, which is not uncommon for folks his age (81). But reading the report on Paterno and meeting with Florida State coach Bobby Bowden down in Amelia Island last week made me wonder: Can the Penn State coach (372 career wins) catch Bowden (373 wins) this season? I say no.
The best possible season I see for Florida State is 8-4 with losses to Virginia Tech, Clemson, Florida and maybe Wake Forest. Ditto for Penn State with losses to Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio State and either Michigan or Iowa. If both win their bowl games, Bowden still has a one-game lead. But what if they are TIED going into the 2009 season? Then the beat goes on because neither of these guys is going to back down unless they are forced to do it.
5. A playoff will come, but not because of pressure from fans: Florida State president T.K. Wetherell said last week that financial pressures will be the thing that finally forces Division I-A football to adopt some kind of playoff to determine the national championship. Wetherell, who has long been in favor of a playoff, made the remarks to a group of media attending a forum in Dallas sponsored by the National Football Foundation and the Football Writers Association of America. Wetherell is right in this respect. The thing that ultimately creates change in football is not fan pressure, which is considerable on this issue, but the financial pressures that are only going to get worse in college athletics. The last time there were major financial pressures college football added a 12th regular season game. Four years from now, when the new BCS contract will be negotiated, the powers that be will have to go to the marketplace with a new product in order to command a lot more money. That will be a “Plus One,” where two teams are picked to play for the national championship AFTER the bowls, or a four-team playoff. It is inevitable.
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