My team, Virginia Tech, didn’t even make the coveted AP top 25, let alone the playoffs. Therefore, I did not have a dog in this fight (no allusions to former VT quarterback Michael Vick intended).
Still, it was a pretty exciting game, especially watching Ohio’s third-string quarterback, Cardale Jones, outplay Oregon’s first-string and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, Marcus Mariotta.
The Buckeyes’ season seemed lost in November when quarterback J.T. Barrett broke his right ankle in the regular-season finale. They had already lost their regular starter, Braxton Miller, to a shoulder injury before the season even began. They had no choice but to turn to their third-stringer, Cardale Jones.
(New York Times, January 13, 2015)
But I’d seen enough of the way the Ohio Buckeyes dominated the first half, offensively and defensively, to feel certain that there was no way the Oregon Ducks could overcome the halftime score of 21-10.
The Ducks made it interesting early in the third quarter, though, when they quacked up a quick 10 points to come within one. In doing so, they displayed a little of the seemingly invincible force that helped them drown the Florida Gators 59-20 in their semifinal game. But, before I could finish a bathroom break, the Buckeyes had responded with an even quicker 14 points of their own, and it was all downhill for them, or upstream for the Ducks, from then on.
Ohio ended up winning 42-20 – complete with an unsporting score with mere seconds to go, which seemed like payback for the way the Ducks ran up the score on the Gators….
As impressive as Jones was, however, Ohio running back Ezekiel Elliot deserves honorable mention. For he virtually carried his team to the national championship on his back with 246 yards and four touchdowns.
But the most interesting thing for me about last night’s “final” is that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice served as the only woman on the 12-member committee that devised the NCAA’s new playoff system.
For the first time ever, the highest level of college Football has a playoff system, something the fans and media have desired for years. This is the first year of the College Football Playoff, a four-team playoff that consists of two national semifinal games and a final.
The top four seeds were, in order, Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State … were selected by a committee.
(CNN, January 11, 2015)
Particularly noteworthy is the howling protest her appointment incited among influential male chauvinist pigs – like former Clemson coach Tommy Bowden and former Auburn coach Pat Dye. Reports suggest that they remain wedded to the Neanderthal belief that only men understand what makes Football competitive … and profitable. Which is why they must just roll their eyes at Condi’s shameless lobbying for her “dream job” as commissioner of the NFL….
But nothing vindicated this new playoff system quite like having Alabama and Florida State knocked out in semifinal games on New Year’s Day. After all, these two teams would surely have played for the national championship under the old (BCS) poll and computer-driven system.
Moreover, this championship game generated so much hype, I would not be surprised if more people tuned in last night than will tune in to watch the Super Bowl in a few weeks. Not to mention that, instead of the traditional salad of post-season bowl games claiming to crown a national champion, this game finally crowned the NCAA champion with the same certainty with which the Super Bowl always crowns the NFL champion.
This brings me to my abiding pet peeve about the big business of college football masquerading as an amateur sport. This excerpt from “Reggie Bush Forfeits Heisman Trophy,” September 16, 2010, explains why.
___________________
There’s nothing amateur about college football. It’s a multibillion-dollar business for Christ’s sake! More to the point, the people who are generating its revenues are not the university presidents, athletics directors, or coaches who, incidentally, make millions of dollars in salary and endorsement deals. Instead, they are the poor, mostly black athletes whose raw talent colleges exploit to pack 100,000 fans into their stadiums on game day.
I have always felt that it is tantamount to modern-day slavery for universities to recruit poor and, all too often, uneducated athletes just to play Football and not compensate them for their services, especially considering they rarely get an education…
But this indentured servitude is made much worse by branding these poor players – who generate tens of millions for their respective universities – as cheaters for accepting a little cash on the side. Mind you, those offering the cash are often boosters just trying to make life easier for the players to enable them to perform better for their universities. Not to mention that, if the NCAA were to penalize all college players who accept such gifts, there would be no college Football (or Basketball) worth watching.
The hypocrisy inherent in this is beyond shameful. Universities should be required to compensate student athletes in direct proportion to the way owners of professional Football teams compensate their players.
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Therefore, I hereby call on the NCAA to form another special committee to rewrite the rules governing the relationship between colleges and so-called student athletes. Because it’s unconscionable to continue exploiting these athletes as nothing more than indentured servants – most of whom end up even more indebted, if not indentured, after their service.
After all, they not only graduate with degrees not worth the paper they’re written on; they actually enter college aiming to do nothing but make themselves more marketable to professional teams – as the star of last night’s game, Cardale Jones, asserted in a refreshingly honest tweet years ago:
Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come here to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS.
(8:43 AM – 5 Oct 12)
Of course, classes could indeed prove pointless for Jones now that he’s a national champion quarterback. The only lesson left for him to learn is that he must strike while the iron is hot and go pro. Mind you, classes would not have proved so pointless had fate not intervened to injure Ohio’s first and second-string quarterbacks (as reported above), giving him a chance to shine. As it stands, chances are very good that ninety percent (or more) of his teammates, who share the same attitude and approach to classes, will never earn a penny as professional Football players….
Finally, I would be remiss not to note that three of the four teams selected for this inaugural playoff competition (namely Alabama, Florida, and Ohio) all featured black quarterbacks. Not to mention that both NFL teams in last year’s Super Bowl featured black quarterbacks.
Accordingly, I am happy to use this occasion to declare that I am finally over another of my pet peeves. After all, racism in the NCAA and NFL was such that teams invariably reserved this pivotal position for White players, deeming blacks not intelligent enough to play it. Imagine that….
NOTE: Reporters and pundits invariably hurl indignation at black folks for going on rioting sprees to vent frustrations over systematic racial injustice; and rightly so. Therefore, you’d think these same reporters and pundits would hurl even more indignation at white folks for going on rioting sprees to express jubilation over a sports championship (as they did in Ohio last night); yet few of them do. What’s up with that?!
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Reggie Bush…
Student-athletes graduate poor … and dumb