Should College Football Playoff Games be on Campuses?

Put the College Football Playoff games on college campuses! That's how Nate opens the show before discussing why Miami and Alabama won their first round games. All that and and more on this Christmas episode of Sports Takes with Nate Skates!

Transcript

 This is sports takes with Nate Skates Christmas edition. Still no spin, just straight sports. Spreading a little Christmas cheer on today's episode. Oh, little town of Bethlehem. This is a version done by my good friend Ryan. Lo fi ry. You can find him on Spotify or YouTube. All right. On Thursday's show, what did I tell you? Alabama and Miami were going to win, right? Wrong. That's definitely not what I said. That is the hazard of being a prognosticator predicting college football games publicly. Today we're going to talk about those games and talk about what I was right on, what I was wrong on, which was half of my picks. However, uh, first, what I want to talk about with the playoff is. Thank goodness we don't have to have those atmospheres again for the quarterfinals, right? I mean, who would want that? Who would want 100,000 screaming happy fans at home? Nobody wants that, right? Yeah. What I want to talk about is look at these the atmospheres we had this past weekend in Norman in College Station at Kyle Field in Oxford. See the drone show for the Ole Miss game. I thought that was pretty cool. So the question I want to ask is, I think it's great to have those opening round games at home. I love it. The question I want to ask is, why are we giving home games and the tens of millions of dollars of economic benefit that come along with that? Do you see that in this article that came out, said they were expecting 50 to $75 million in positive economic influx to Oxford, Mississippi, because of this playoff game? Who knows what it'll actually be, but clearly a lot of money coming in. Why are we giving that benefit to seeds five through eight? But we are not giving that benefit to seeds one through four. The teams that really earned it, the teams that really earned home field advantage. I'm I'm great with seeds five through eight getting home field advantage in the first round. Why are we not doing that in the quarterfinal. I mean look at Georgia. If you're Georgia you've gone to both 12 team playoffs as a top four seed. You haven't had a home game yet because of the way the playoff format is. If you're Georgia, you you've got to go play at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. No matter who won that game between Ole Miss and Tulane, they are closer to New Orleans than Georgia is no matter what. Georgia is the road team. Its fans are farther away from that game than Ole Miss or Tulane. If you're Ohio State, you've got to go all the way to Arlington, Texas. Now, that's not exactly a short trip in the car for Miami either. But if this had been Texas A&M. You're looking at a disadvantage instead of an advantage that they should be getting. And I understand we want to save the big six bowl games. Well, the problem with that is and I want to save the six bowl games too. But the problem with that is once you did a 12 team playoff, you were you were writing off the bowl games. I mean, the bowl games are involved in the playoff, but it all really loses a lot of its importance because of the 12 team format. And not every bowl game is involved in the format every year anyway. But to me, the way this needs to be done is don't. Why are we prioritizing the bowl games? I know money, but what we need to do you have the way to fix this to me is one of two things. Since we're not going to get rid of the 12 team format, which I'm going to talk about here in a minute. The way this should work is the bowl games should have the opening round. Rather than the quarterfinals, semifinals, finals or say you want the semifinals and the finals to be neutral site. Okay, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. Well, then make the opening round and the quarterfinals home games make the semifinals and the finals bowl games, and you'll just swap them out every year. Why? There's no reason for the bowl games to have the quarterfinals. I don't like that format. I don't think anybody likes that format, except maybe the bowl games. Now, speaking of that playoff format, I have been firm since the concept of an expanded playoff was being discussed. We did not need a 12 team playoff. I said that on an earlier episode, there was no reason for a 12 team playoff. There are generally 2 to 6 teams. A lot of times it's more like two, three, four who have any real business in the playoff or who really have a shot to win the playoff. Wouldn't it have been a better playoff if we had? Indiana, Ohio State, Georgia, Texas Tech in the playoff rather than James Madison. Tulane. You know, did did we really need some of these teams in the playoffs? No we didn't. I personally felt like the only logical expansion, the only thing that really made any sense for the sport would have been to go to 6 or 8 teams. If you had six teams, then you have an opening round. Top two seeds would have had byes. If you had an 18 playoff, wouldn't have been much different than the 14 playoff. Just with eight teams. There was a lot of complaints, some of it unjustified, about the quality of football we saw this weekend. It is what it is guys, you wanted 12 teams and the worst part about the 12 team format to me has always been these automatic qualifiers and the way it worked out this season, automatic qualifier meant James Madison and Tulane. Did anybody in the United States of America really believe that Tulane and James Madison had any chance of winning this game, these games? No, not unless you're a James Madison or Tulane fan. I mean, I'm no expert. You you heard me on Thursday, I said. Tulane has no shot to win this game. The only chance they had was for Ole Miss to be in such chaos because of Lane Kiffin, that maybe nobody's focused on what they're doing. In the first game, we broke this down in the first matchup. Ole Miss won that game 45 to 10. Tulane didn't score a touchdown till the fourth quarter. Ole Miss had 548 yards of offense. So what happened this game? Well Ole Miss had nearly 500 yards of offense. 141 to 10. And Tulane didn't score a touchdown to the fourth quarter. We already knew what was going to happen in this game. Tulane had 124th rated pass defense. Ole Miss is one of the best passing offenses in the country. We already knew how this was going to end. We'd already seen this movie earlier in the year. Tulane did not have any business in the playoff. They had a good season. Good for them. They were not a playoff team. James Madison. I mean, come on. It was it was 27 to 3. And did anybody at any point in that game when you're watching that game, did you ever say, oh wow, James Madison really has a fighting chance? No. When I was watching that game, within a couple minutes, it was just so obvious that Oregon was going to score virtually every time they had the football. And yes, I know late in the game, James Madison scored some more. Made it look more competitive. It wasn't competitive. It never was competitive. I've heard a lot of argument in favor of the the automatic qualifiers saying, well, there were there were blowouts before the the automatic qualifier or Tennessee got blown out last year. Oregon had been blown out before. Yes. Again, I'm in favor of a four team playoff, maybe a 6 to 8 team playoff, not a 12 team playoff. There were blowouts in the four team playoff. My argument is not oh, those teams never got blown out. But automatic qualifiers like James Madison and Tulane do. No. My argument is even some of those teams get blown out. Even some of those teams aren't up to snuff with the best team that season, or the best two teams that season. What I'm saying here is we maybe didn't know going in. Those teams were going to get blown out. We already do know these teams are going to get blown out. Why are we putting in more teams to get blown out that we already know we're going to get beat horribly. It would have been better for Tulane and James Madison to have been in a decent bowl game against another top 25 team, then to go to Oxford and Eugene and get pummeled in games everybody knew they were going to lose. That doesn't really benefit anyone. I'm not saying I want the playoff to be restricted to power four teams. If we're going to have a 12 team playoff, if we're going to have a 16 team playoff, which is entirely possible because there's a huge push to expand the playoff even further, water it down even further. I think teams like Boise State last year should have a chance to work their way into the playoff. I'm not saying ban all non power for teams. I'm saying you there should not be automatic qualifiers that even possibly can put a team like this in. I'm not sure what we want to do with conference championships. Whether you want to get rid of automatic qualifiers all the way around or how you want to do it, and I'm not going to hash that out here. But we we have to get rid of this. We have to get rid of a situation where you get an automatic bid, especially like I keep picking on Tulane, Tulane. Tulane was not a 12 and zero dominant conference champion. They were 11 and two. They got blown out by Ole Miss. They got beat by a score of 48 to 26 against you. University of Texas San Antonio Roadrunners. That's not a team that needed to be in the playoffs. Okay. So we've got to do something about the automatic qualifiers. All right. Enough of that. Now we're going to break down these games. We're going to start with Miami and Texas A&M. Going into the game I thought this was going to be one of the closest matchups of the entire playoff. I really had a hard time even making a pick in this game. So when I made the pick, I said that the game was going to come down to which of these turnover prone quarterbacks who were going to be pressured by very good pass rushers, turned the ball over more. Whichever team's quarterback turned the ball over less, that team would win the game. I thought Carson Beck would turn the ball over a little bit more than Marcel Reid, largely because of the pressure of the environment. I was wrong. Carson Beck had zero turnovers. Marcel Reid had three turnovers. Uh, Carson Beck's team won the game. He didn't have a stellar day. He didn't have to. He's got a great defense, and he didn't turn the ball over. So I mean, looking at that game, it went kind of how I expected it to. I know there was a lot of, uh, criticism or shock that the score was so low. I didn't think the score was going to be that low 10 to 3. But I was not surprised at all about the defensive nature of the game. We said going into this game that these are two very good defenses who get a ton of pressure and they have some elite pass rushers. And you saw that play out in the game. And Miami's defense had seven sacks. The duo that we talked about on Thursday's episode, Ruben Van Jr and Akeem Isidore Ruben Van Jr had three sacks. Akeem Isidore had one and a half sacks. I mean, Miami was all over Texas A&M. And so I mean, none of that was really unexpected. And Texas A&M did a really good job on Miami and their passing game. And Miami was really trying to get it to Malachi Toney. You know we talked about that last week. He's the guy for Miami. And they were really trying to get him the ball. And Texas A&M was really key in on him. Here's what I didn't expect going into the game. We had talked about Texas A&M pass rush and we had talked about their number one in the nation. Third down defense. Miami was only three of 12. On third down, Beck had just over 100 yards passing. Those things held. Held. True. What I did not expect was that Miami would focus on attacking Texas A&M weakness, which was rushing defense. I mean, they didn't have a terrible rushing defense, but that was clearly the Achilles heel of the defense. Mark Fletcher completely took over that game. He had 172 yards rushing on 17 carries. That's over ten yards per carry in the second half. Miami just decided we're gonna ride Mark Fletcher and he won them the game. I mean, this is something I don't understand about other play callers I see all the time. If you have a running back or you have a group of backs and they're gaining a lot of yards, they're having a lot of success. Keep running the ball. Run the football. It's a gimme. Hand the ball off to one of your best athletes on the whole team. Let them get 4 or 5, six, seven yards, maybe more at a time. Let them wear down that defense. And I see so many play callers. You've got a guy who is clearly just hot and he's gassing a defense. And he gets 810 carries in a game, and you go whole stretches of the game where you throw it on first, second and third down. I don't understand that. If I had a running back or a group of running backs and they're really having a lot of success against the defense, I'm going to keep running the football. I don't mean every play, but pretty much until they show me they can stop it, I'm going to run the football. And that has a cumulative effect of wearing down that defense. And that's something Miami was willing to do in the second half. They said, hey, this is working. Keep giving it to Fletcher. And it worked. They didn't say, hey, we're going to just keep throwing the ball because that's what we want to do. No, they said, this is where we can get the yards. We're going to run the football. More play callers need to do that. I would have liked to have seen them give Fletcher more carries in that game. And ultimately the final touchdown, which I thought this was such a great moment in the game. So Malachi Toney late in the game has the big fumble. And I was just I said, oh, I'm so sorry for this. This guy. I mean he's been such a good player all year long. He'd had a good day. He had had the big punt return and to fumble it like that, that just hurt to watch for a guy like that. But then he gets to come back at the end of the game, scores the winning touchdown. And before that you had seen his his fellow players. You had seen guys like Fletcher just really lift him up on the sideline. And they were really focused on building him up and saying, hey, we need you. And he came up really big at the end of the game for redemption. I thought it was just a really great moment. I mean, obviously you didn't like it if you're a Texas A&M fan, but I thought it was a really great moment as an as unbiased observer. So Miami will go on and take on Ohio State in Arlington, Texas on New Year's Eve. So that's going to be a really interesting matchup. We'll talk about the next round matchups on Tuesday. Switching to the Alabama Oklahoma game. This game was a total flip of the game earlier in the year in November and the game in November. We talked about this last show. Alabama had outgained Oklahoma. It was because of turnovers caused by the Oklahoma defense and a missed field goal that Alabama lost that game in this game. Oklahoma, with the struggling offense, outgained Alabama. What ultimately decided this game was a few things one. To me, the main thing was in the second, third, fourth quarter, Alabama's defense took over the line of scrimmage. They went from really getting dominated in the first quarter to they were putting pressure on John Major. Every play I mean, he was running for his life. And the Alabama defense ended up with five sacks. This is a guy who's very difficult to sack. He's very quick. He scrambles well. It's not easy to get him on the ground. And they did it five times. And that pressure helped contribute to some of the mistakes you saw Oklahoma make. The tour had the mind numbing, ill advised throw for the pick six. You had a situation where materia gets out of the pressure rolls, makes a great throw. Guy drops the ball. You just had situations throughout the night, early and throughout the game where mature either misses a wide open guy, a guy drops the ball. There were just a lot of mistakes, and mistakes defined the game for Oklahoma. I mean, talk about special teams. I mean, I don't want to pick on these guys, but the punter and the kicker, I mean, just killed Oklahoma. You've got a situation where you, the punter, just drops the ball deep in their own territory, just drops it. That results in a turnover with Alabama getting the ball deep in Oklahoma territory. You've got the situation late in the game. Fourth quarter punter shanks a punt. Alabama ends up with the ball in like the 35 yard line. Uh and then obviously the kicker send oh you've got the Lou Groza Award winner supposed to be the best kicker in college football. Obviously Georgia fans were going to say Peyton Woodring is the best kicker in college football. The guy misses what should have been a chip shot field goal for a guy of his caliber in the fourth quarter. Then to me, this was as much a coaching issue as it was a kicking issue. Oklahoma gets the ball back. They're trying. They're trying to get ten points in just a couple minutes. So you got to move quickly. I understand Venables making the decision to kick the field goal rather than try to score the touchdown. You're going to have to score the touchdown at some point anyway. But I understand wanting to save time and not run out the clock. Kick the field goal. What I don't understand is it was really windy. Your kicker had just missed a field goal that had to be in his head to miss a field goal in that situation. You decide to kick the ball on third and five. I know you want to save time, but that is a 51 yard field goal in a very windy stadium. For a guy who just missed a much easier kick in a very serious situation. You put a lot of pressure on your kicker to make a 51 yard field goal on third down. I would have at least tried to get a few more yards. Yes, you may have run some clock or hey, get the first down, but what you did was put your kicker in a situation. It's already in his head. He's got a kick, a 51 yard field goal with all that wind. It to me, that was a really bad decision. And it doesn't matter if you save a little time. If you don't make the field goal you have to have the points. So I would have at least tried to get a little closer, if not gone ahead and gone for the touchdown. You're going to need it anyway. So anyway, I thought that was a bad decision. On the positive side, guys who made good plays. I thought Deion Burks for Oklahoma. Wide receiver played a phenomenal game. I mean not just the touchdowns. I mean he's making great catches. Staying in bounds. So he played phenomenal. I thought a lot of the Alabama players played really well. Uh Brooks their wide receiver had two great plays for touchdowns. So there were a lot of good performances in this game to go along with the mistakes. But this is something you saw it in Miami and Texas A&M. There were a lot of wind in both those games. I don't want to say whether it was the wind or the pressure, but in both those games you saw kickers really struggle, miss a lot of field goals, and some of those very obviously were impacted by wind. But I also think this is the College Football Playoff and there's a lot of pressure on these guys. So I think we're gonna see if that comes up again later in the playoff. As far as the Ole Miss Tulane game, I mean, I don't have a lot more to say about that. It is what it is. I'm happy for Ole Miss. I would have felt really bad if after the whole Lane Kiffin saga, they lost in the opening round to Tulane and their season ended. So I was happy for Ole Miss. Here we go again. Another rematch. Um. I know the College Football Playoff committee doesn't want to do the seeding based around avoiding rematches and things like that. I really wouldn't mind if we did a little bit of that. We didn't really need to see Tulane and Ole Miss again. We didn't really need to see Oklahoma and Alabama again. And now we're going to see Georgia and Ole Miss again. So here we go. You know. Oh we'll look at that matchup more on Tuesday. But I was rooting for you in your first round Ole Miss. I definitely won't be rooting for you this time. The Oregon James Madison game I don't have any more to say about that. So we're through the first round of the playoff. Oh, the second round is coming up New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. We're going to talk about those games next week. I'm also going to talk about whether or not the bye week is a good thing or a bad thing. There's a lot of talk about is the bye week actually hurting these teams? Um, or is it helping the teams? So we'll talk about that on the next show. We'll talk about all these matchups. But with it being Christmas, I want to shift gears a little bit. We talked about with the play off, how I feel like it should be exclusive to how I feel like it should be. Only the best four teams, or the best six or the best eight teams. And we shouldn't just include everybody. Now, I want to talk to you about something that is not exclusive. And that is what that song, oh Little Town of Bethlehem is talking about. Uh, I believe that the most important part of Christmas is in the name, and that is that God sent his Son Jesus as a gift for everyone. Jesus gave up everything he had in heaven to come be born as a baby on earth for us. And there is no greater act of love, of charity, of kindness than God sending His Son for us. And I believe that the message of Christmas is a message of hope, a message of inclusivity, of salvation for all. No matter what you've done, no matter who you are, God sent His Son for you. I firmly believe that. And so on this Christmas show. Uh, I didn't want to go a show without telling you what I think Christmas is really all about. I really think the greatest gift you could ever receive is Jesus Christ in your life. So whatever your beliefs are, we welcome everybody on the show and anybody to comment, be a fan. But I felt like it would be a mistake on my part to not share what has been the greatest gift in my life, a gift that I have certainly not deserved or earned. To not share that gift with all of you. So I hope this Christmas that you will. Whatever your beliefs are, you will consider that. And while you're enjoying lots of football, that you will take some time with family and enjoy it and think about what it's about and I hope you'll tune in next show. Oh, we're typically doing a show on Tuesday and Thursday. Thursdays Christmas won't have a show this Thursday, but, uh, we will have shows coming out later. This should be a show on Tuesday. Uh, playoff preview, if you will. So if you tune in to that, we'd love to have you. So Merry Christmas everybody, and we'll see you next week.