Sad Day – Cowher Resigns
As many of you know, I am a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Well, today is a sad day for me because Bill Cowher resigned. His daughter is close to graduating, and I believe he will return in a couple years to coaching as one of the highest paid coaches in the league. We will have to see what happens, but I wish Bill Cowher the best in his future.
Hugh Hewitt – Football Playoff
Hugh Hewitt blogs about a football playoff.
It is because of those rare and wonderful upset underdog stories that the BCS should move to a playoff. Boise State should have the right to keep on winning and achieve not just a great win over OSU, but a place in sports lore and even more in the mythology of achievement. The college presidents who invent excuses to keep that from happening really ought to reconsider and attend to the interests of the athletes and the fans.
In fact, apparently there is funding ready for it:
Nike is said to be ready to fund a 16 team play-off, as I am sure many other corporate giants would be willing to do. The television revenues would be enormous, and could benefit far more students and schools than just the 16 schools competing.
I think 16 teams is too many, but I think 8 would be great, and I think ANY team that goes undefeated against 11/12 Division 1a opponents should automatically get to be in the playoff.
Nick Saban to Alabama
After repeatedly telling reporters that he would not take the Alabama job, they finally offered him enough money that it was a no brainer for him. Besides, college coaches are college coaches. Saban is a college coach. He improved that Dolphin team but he got a good glimpse of the NFL and could see that the players only cared about money. They don’t have the passion that college players have.
Anyway, Alabama is a contender again. Not to sound like an Alabama fan (I’m not), but they only had 3 starting seniors this year and a lot of other SEC teams are losing their QBs over the next 2 years. By 2009, the Tide could be a Top 5 BCS team and it wouldn’t surprise me if they are your 2011 National Champions.
The bigger impact I see is on other coaches. That contract is drastically going to change the economies of scale for coaching salaries. That in turn means that all you doaners out there need to up the ante even more so that your team will be able to keep the coach you have to hire a decent one. Any remotely decent coach is going to require 2-3 million now just to sign, and good ones will want deals like Saban got.