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Now that the bowl games have started, it’s time for the annual discussion of playoffs for college football.

Plus I know my youngest brother thinks there aren’t enough playoff proposals, so I’m adding mine to the mix. I’m sure he will appreciate it.

Introducing:

Some Plan for College Football Playoffs

• Step 1: Combine some conferences so that there will be 8 conferences.
  This step is slightly muddy, because I’m arranging the current conferences without taking this year’s planned changes into account.
  But the overall goal should be achievable.
  • ACC – currently 12 teams. Adds 4 teams to become a 16-team conference. The 4 teams come from half the Big East.
  • Big 12 – currently 10 teams. Adds 6 teams to become a 16-team conference (yet keeps its name). The 6 teams come from the entire West division of Conference USA
  • Big Ten – currently 12 teams. Adds 2 teams to become a 14-team conference (yet keeps its name). The 2 teams come from the Big East (Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, in case you’re wondering).
  • MAC – currently 13 teams. Adds 1 team to become a 14-team conference. The 1 team comes from the East division of Conference USA.
  • MWAC – currently 16 teams. This new conference just combines the 8-team Mountain West Conference with the 8-team Western Athletic Conference.
  • PAC 12 – currently 12 teams. Not scheduled to get any new teams. Maybe it could take 2 teams from the MWAC.
  • SEC – currently 12 teams. Adds 4 teams to become a 16-team conference. The 4 teams come from East division of Conference USA (3 of them) and the Big East (1 of them).
  • Sun Belt – currently 9 teams. Adds 3 teams to become a 12-team conference. The 3 teams come from East division of Conference USA (2 of them) and the Big East (1 of them). May need to rename this one to something ending in ‘C’. I’ll propose GSC for Gulf-South Conference.

  Of course, the 16-team conferences might to share with the other conferences so that everyone has 14 or 15 teams. Or maybe not.

• Step 2: Every conference must have a championship game.

  The championship game becomes the first round of playoffs, so there are 16 teams right there. One of them has to be the best in the country. If they aren’t the best in their conference, they can’t be the best in the country.

• Step 3: Change the major bowl games to quarter-final playoff games.

  This would maintain the importance and tradition of the bowl games.

  • Rose Bowl – Currently PAC12 vs. Big Ten. Stays that way. Everyone is happy.
  • Fiesta Bowl – Currently BIG12 vs. ???. Adds the MWAC.
  • Sugar Bowl – Currently SEC vs. ???. Adds the MAC.
  • Orange Bowl – Currently ACC vs. ???. Adds the GSC.
• Step 4: Change other bowl games to semi-final playoff games.

  This would maintain the importance of the bowl games.

  • Cotton Bowl – Currently BIG12 vs. SEC. Stays that way. Everyone is happy. Would need to add MWAC and MAC into the mix, in case BIG12 or SEC lost.
  • Citrus Bowl – Currently Big Ten vs. SEC. Can’t stay that way. Too bad. Changing to Big Ten or PAC12 vs. ACC or GSC.
• Step 5: Keep the championship game rotating among the 4 major bowl games.

  This would placate the people who like the current BCS format. All 3 of them.

  And it would be the concession they want in order to agree to be the quarterfinal round instead of the semifinal round.

There.

That wasn’t so hard, right?

I’m looking at you, NCAA.

Oh, right…the schedule.

• Conference championship games are the first weekend in December.
• Quarterfinals are the second weekend in December.
• Semifinals are the fourth weekend in December.
• The championship game is the Saturday after New Year’s Day.

I don’t care as much about the schedule. They can keep the games on separate nights like they do today.

The main thing I care about it that the contract does not go to ESPN. It must remain with the over-the-air broadcasters so that regular Americans can watch.

I don’t have fancy-schmancy satellite TV or cable or streaming internet, and I would like to watch the bowl games.

I should have timed this post for last week, when the Tim Tebow topic was more prominent before the Patriots game. Oh well.

I see that Tim Tebow has lined up some endorsement deals. However, none of them really captures the spirit of his name. What inspired this post wasn’t an actual endorsement deal. Rather, it was a brewery that named a beer after Tim Tebow, kind of.

I don’t know if that’s the best choice, pairing a beer with a Baptist, but here are some other marketing deals that would be interesting:

1. Tim Tivo: This one should be obvious. Comes pre-loaded with footage of all the Broncos’ 4th-quarter comebacks.

2. Tim Teabow: Not as obvious as the Tivo, but still promising.
   Lipton? No.
   Celestial Seasonings? Close.
   Snapple? Yes – if I have to explain the connection between football and the name “Snapple”, then you’re not going to get it anyway.

   Types of Tea:

   • Rookie Tea – formerly known as Green Tea
   • Golong Tea – Oolong’s football equivalent
   • ??? – what others are there?

3. Tim T. Rowe (Price): financial management company. Not sure what it has to do with football though.

4. Tim Temow: lawn care company. I know the name’s shaky, but I’m running out of steam.

5. Tim Treebow: tree-cutting service. This one’s a stretch too, but it goes nicely with Temow.

I’d better stop there, as I am apparently out of ideas.

Any better match-ups out there?

Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
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Fontgrill.com has been busy lately. “Busy” is, of course, a relative term.

First off, Wes Molebash needed a font, so he got one. Actually, it was not just one, but two fonts – a normal font and a bold version.

Then, motivated by Wes’ fonts and inspired by pro football, we made an imitation font (caution: contains font-like substance).

Three guesses as to which NFL team’s logo inspired this font.
Hint: it’s called Wayne Fonts.

If you want to use it, go download it.

Thanksgiving weekend was a good one for college football, especially for Michigan fans. But there were some other games that spurred some thoughts in my head, so now you get this blog post.

1. I am not a fan of rematches for championships. I don’t care if Alabama is ranked second in the country – we already know they are worse than LSU. If you don’t win your conference, why should you be in the championship game? Think of the conference championship games as a playoff round to get into the national championship game.

   Let some other team have a crack at LSU.

2. If Alabama does play LSU and wins, all that will do is tie the series at 1-1 and we will need a tiebreaker.

   If they do play, I will be cheering for LSU. Partly because of the head coaches (+ for Les Miles, – for Nick Saban) and partly because I want the people who decided to put Alabama in the championship game to regret it. I’ve already seen that game; I want a different one.

3. Same with MSU-Wisconsin. This is a vote against having cross-division games in the conference.

   Hey B1G, add a few more teams to the conference so each division will have 8 members and then we won’t have to contend with this scenario anymore.

4. On a related note: since Wisconsin lost to various teams (including MSU) by Hail Marys Hail Maries hail Mary passes, everyone knows that is their weakness.

   If I were running MSU, I’d throw a few deep passes to start the game. Get ahead early.

5. That Michigan game was closer than I would have liked. And OSU falls to 6-6. Maybe they would have done better this year if they hadn’t hired Adam Sandler as their coach.

   

   Not that I want them doing better or anything.

A 10k is a long enough race that you have some time to think. So while I was running my last 10k, I noted some things.

The main thing is that I appreciate good spectators. Whether it’s a 5k, 10k, half marathon, or full marathon, it’s nice to have people cheering.

What prompted this was the spectator who yelled “Run faster!” to me.

I assume she meant well and wasn’t trying to taunt me. But her words were less than encouraging. So here are my thoughts on how to cheer for a runner.
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There are still a few Warrior Dashes left to be run this year, so maybe this post on how to train for Warrior Dash will be helpful to some people.

Before my race, I was wondering things like “What are the obstacles going to be like?” and “What should I be doing to get ready for Warrior Dash?”

The official WD website said basically not to worry about the obstacles and just be able to run a 5k. It used to say something like “run as far as you can” for training. It looks like they have updated it since then, and now it has an official plan. It has a running part and a strength training part, but no obstacle part. That’s where I come in.

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