Forget What You Thought You Knew About CFB Powers of Old
Look, it wasn't even close, OK?
LSU had a full 90 seconds to prepare its last play while officials fumbled around and figured out where to put the ball. The Tigers had one second left on the clock to get the snap off, score a touchdown, beat Auburn, possibly save the season and definitely save coach Les Miles for at least another week.
One second. It was that defining moment in time you wait for.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
With all that there, when it was time to start the clock...LSU wasn't even lined up. A receiver was jogging down to his position, and time ran out. It didn't matter that LSU snapped the ball and completed a pass in the end zone for an unlikely comeback win. Fans and players went crazy until officials hit them with reality.
It was kind of sad, maybe a little pathetic.
These are hard times for the Bayou Bengals, just like they are for so many of college football's elite programs. It's a strange time in the historical scope of the game, one that should not be happening.
But it is.
Ole Miss crushed Georgia on Saturday, Florida blew a huge lead at Tennessee, and Notre Dame lost at home to Duke. The Irish defense could not stop a team that had no offense, and the crowd was chanting for defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder to be fired.
The disappointment isn't only reserved for fans in Baton Rouge, Athens, Gainesville and South Bend.
On Friday, USC blew a lead to Utah. The Trojans are awful, and head coach Clay Helton is going to be fired, even though it turned out rumors a player punched him were false. Oklahoma has already lost twice. Wisconsin crushed Michigan State on Saturday. Last week, Cal beat Texas, and Louisville flattened Florida State by 43 points.
The Seminoles, trailing by 46, felt the need to kick a field goal in the final seconds to, um, make the score look better?
It's as if the blue-blooded elite of college football, born with all the advantages, money and attention, can't catch a break. (Except for Alabama and Ohio State, maybe Michigan.)
The establishment is in big trouble—crumbling. This could be college football's Brexit moment.
It's enough to almost make you feel bad for many of college football's biggest, most entitled fanbases, which are in a state of unrest now as their seasons are already over. Will they be able to sit quietly while the likes of Louisville, Houston and Wisconsin fight it out for spots in the College Football Playoff?
What's going on here? This isn't the NFL, where the worst teams get the highest draft picks. The best teams get the best of everything in college football. It is a rich-get-richer setup. Nike is not donating big money to Houston, but instead has forked over incredible amounts of cash to build one of the most beautiful, obnoxious football buildings ever.
I have toured the place. I have also toured the facilities at Indiana State, which finally got shower drains that work, doors on the bathroom stalls and a turf surface that isn't held together by duct tape. Facilities have helped turn Oregon, aka Nike U, into one of the top programs in the country.
The Ducks lost at home to Colorado on Saturday. The Buffs, who have all of five conference wins since joining the Pac-12 in 2011, used a backup quarterback to rip through the Oregon D.
This is impossible. But in a lot of cases, it seems to have something to do with next-tier programs developing quarterbacks better and faster than the traditional powerhouses. The second pick in the NFL draft this year, and already one of the hottest players, Carson Wentz, was a quarterback at North Dakota State.
This week, the Bison have more votes for a spot in the Top 25 than Notre Dame.
USC doesn't have a quarterback. LSU never seems to be able to develop one. Texas might be able to develop a quarterback, but we don't know yet. Louisville signal-caller Lamar Jackson, a 50-1 long shot to win the Heisman Trophy before the season, per Odds Shark, is already the favorite.
It's not hard to figure out what's about to happen here, either: Mass firings. It's partly that money will be lost from programs that expect to be in the College Football Playoff. But also, boosters, who are de facto owners of some of these programs, are going to want to exercise their control.
The big money has all the power and can make everyone dance. Expect Miles, Helton and VanGorder to go.
Now, it's not as if all of the establishment is out. Michigan might be OK. Stanford has been winning. Clemson too. There's always Alabama and Ohio State. But the others are falling off at an incredible rate, and maybe we need to rethink exactly how teams got where they are in the rankings and how their players go into seasons as favorites for awards.
Shouldn't everything start from scratch at the beginning of the year? For example, we thought Texas was strong because it beat Notre Dame. We thought Michigan State was a quality team for beating the Irish too. But it turns out Notre Dame isn't good, so that meant those other blue bloods were overrated as well.
The on-field results are showing us that what we thought we knew about certain teams is flawed and in some cases wrong. The traditional power programs are going into each year with too much respect, and it puts everything in place for them from the start. It rigs the system.
Maybe that will change now. The biggest fanbases will have to learn to live with it.
Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @gregcouch.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
