10 Things I Want to See in College Football in 2010

Just days away from the start of the 2010 season, a list of things that this fan would love to see this year.  From the serious, to the humorous to the extreme.  Other than hoping for my team to run the table, these are the things that would made 2010 an enjoyable season. 

More Les Miles Please

There may not be a more entertaining man in college football than Les Miles.  Many have referred to the LSU head coach as an idiot and truthfully the only folks I have heard defend him have been wearing a lot of purple and gold.  Miles is as unpredictable in an interview as he is with his decisions on the field.  From his "Have a nice day!!" remarks to his comments on the effects of the oil spill on Louisiana, this guy is gold with a mic in his hands.  You can also be sure that there will be at least one occasion for reporters to be asking hard questions of Les.  The late game missteps have worked and blown up in his face at times.  The only thing you can be sure of is that he will mismanage the clock at some critical junction this year.

My hope is for something truly epic.  Miles starts to call for the victory formation and running out the clock from midfield without realizing his actually trailing.  Or maybe he'll call for a 30 yard field goal attempt with seconds left before his assistants remind him they are actually down 4.  I'm not sure we've ever had a head coach in major college football that is capable of such a mistake.  I'm also not sure Les makes it much further along in his tenure at LSU, so this needs to be the year he does something that is historically dumb.

Boise State Failure or Title Success

One of the most common debates in college football at this moment is the Boise State question.  Do they belong in a title game if they run the table or not?  I won't bore you with another opinion of whether they do or not.  I'm too ready for this topic to be off the table. 

So here's what you need to do Boise.  Either get to the BCS title game this year, or fall flat on your face.  I can't take another unbeaten or one loss Boise that gets to play in a BCS bowl game again.  We've seen it and it only leads to more questions.  It's time to shut this thing down.  It kinda feels like we are at a critical mass here.  I think the media is going to give Boise every chance to get into that title game if they run the table and there aren't too other powerhouse undefeated teams.  So Boise, it's your time.  I could care less if you lose 3 games and disappear from all the ESPN shows or if you play for all the marbles.  Just do one or the other please.  I can't take another offseason of the discussion.  Let's either prove you can play with the big boys in the big game that actually means something or lets see you stumble and lose to teams that the rest of the nation will scoff at.   I don't want to see 400 articles written next year and thousands of hours of talk radio dedicated to "whether or not Boise belongs". 

Something other than mediocrity for Steve Spurrier

The DNA of Steve Spurrier requires that he talks a certain amount of trash per month.  In the 90's, it was all directed at his SEC rivals.  Some of his most memorable quips were about scholarships being "worth more" at Alabama and not being able to spell "Citrus without UT".  Spurrier didn't pick on teams that were likely to be .500 in conference play.  He came after his biggest competition, gave them bulletin board material and more times than not he made them listen to it again after beating them.  Lately South Carolina has been so mediocre that the most likely candidates for some trash talk have been his own players or as evidenced by his recent remarks about Tennessee, programs that will struggle to find a bowl game.

Generally speaking you either love or hate Spurrier.  I've actually been a bit of both over the years.  I'd love to see Spurrier field a team good enough to get his trash talk back to the epic 90's levels, but I could also deal with watching him go 5-7 and throwing his visor 50 times a game.  I don't like mediocre Spurrier.  7-5 and some mediocre to bad bowl does nothing for him.   Lets get one extreme or the other just so we can get some high value entertainment out of this guy before he decides that he'd rather be golfing for good.

On Air Talent at ESPN goes mute

There are a few exceptions, but for the most part the guys commenting on college football for "the worldwide leader" are horrible at their jobs.  Lou Holtz, Mark May, Robert Smith, Kirk Herbsteit, Lee Corso, Desmond Howard and others are just plain tough to deal with week in and week out.  These guys are given jobs because they played or coached the game.   We assume that means they'll be able to break down film, look at games and make reasonable remarks.  Of course, you know what assuming does right?

Sadly some of the easiest to listen to and most coherent guys that work doing college football for the sports giant are award winning former players and coaches.  They are guys like Chris Fowler and Rece Davis.  Not a coincidence that these guys spent years forming their craft and have started to excel at it.  The problem is they are paired with a either senile ex-coaches or with meat head former players whose only qualification to be in the booth is that they were once on the field.   If suddenly a disease making everyone at ESPN turn mute hit I wouldn't complain.  We could hope Davis and Fowler were out of town when it hit so at least they could put the two most accomplished guys on the air to tell us scores and update injuries.

Houston Nutt Lives the Dream

I've long maintained the belief that Houston Nutt has a specific offensive game in mind that would bring an eternal smile to his face.  A game that would prove once and for all his brilliance in the coaching fraternity.  It's not a game that any other college coach would even consider, but it's one that Houston Nutt dreams about every week.  If only he could pull this game plan off, his career would have immediate validation.  It would be the perfect Houston Nutt game.  The addition of Jeremiah Masoli only makes this dream more possible and I'm convinced that is the reason Nutt took the risk on him.  Nathan Stanley might be a serviceable QB, but he can't deliver on Nutt's dream.

The Nutt dream came consists of no passing plays that don't involve a trick play of some sort.  Tons of run plays.  Tons of trick plays.  Plays with names like "hide the midget double reverse" and "the Nutt flea flicker tackle pass" in which the ball gets pitched back to Masoli, then back again to the left tackle who then completes a 40 yard triple hitch and go.  The final, game winning drive will consist of nothing but trick plays.  A 4 minute, 72 yard drive for a touchdown that consists of 16 straight trick plays and capped by something so absurd I can't even begin to fathom the design of the play.  I'm positive Nutt has been saving his masterpiece for all these years.  It's coming at some point....I just hope we see in in 2010

The Spontaneous Combustion of Nick Saban

The only people in the college football world cheering against this are wearing crimson and white and likely missing multiple teeth.  Saban is the most likely candidate in all of sports to actually rip a reporters head off after a stupid question or to actually explode his own cranium in anger after either a defensive player misses an assignment or a referee forgets to make a call that Saban had pre-ordered.  This guy is wound so tight, he's the only coach I can think of currently in the game that I expect to see pull a Woody Hayes at some point.  I'll be more shocked if he doesn't do it before he retires.

The Tide are national title favorites (Saban hates expectations), their own in state media and fans will expect nothing less than perfection and the coverage of the Tide is as intense as anything you've ever seen in the sport(again, Saban hates dumb questions and frequently berates those that ask them).  If this team finds a way to lose 2 games before December look out.  The coach will be asked a plethora of dumb questions, but ones based on his teams failure for the first time in his tenure at Alabama in which he has any accountability.  The expectations, the pressure and how incredibly tight this man is wound can lead to something we've never seen before in sports.  The literal combustion of a man either while on the sidelines or in the media room.

The Revival of a Rivalry

I'm not a fan of either program at all and probably cheer for them to lose just about every time I catch them on the tube.  That said, when these two teams were good it was must see TV for any college football fan.  It seems that has been gone for more than a decade now.  One of the two or both at times have been mediocre and even poor and the games have not been on the list of games that you alter your schedule for.

By the time these two meet this year on October 9th we will either have another boring ACC game on or a game of national significance.  Miami will have faced Ohio State, Pittsburgh and Clemson all on the road.  If they are 3-1 or better heading into the rivalry game they'll be in good shape.  FSU has a road game at Oklahoma and a home match with BYU.  We need one of these two to be an unexpected undefeated facing a solid one loss team.....or dare I dream, two undefeated teams squaring off.  If we get that caliber of match up between two heated rivals it will be a game that all college football fans will mark on their calender.  It's been a long time since we've seen that.

Rich Rodriguez wins the Big 10

To those of us outside Big 10 country it feels an awful lot like a one team league lately.  It's been Ohio State and a bunch of teams that were either incredibly boring to watch or incredibly medicore (often both).  Nobody outside of the Buckeye State wants to see OSU back in the Rose Bowl or national title game.  Penn State needs to show me QB before I believe they can contend.   Iowa and Wisconsin are good, solid football teams, but I could use most of their games as sleeping aids. 

Enter the need for Rodriguez and Michigan to win the Big 10 this year.  Rich Rod likes to run his mouth and say things that get under peoples skin.  To be honest, I think the guy is a first class jerk.  I still would rather see him win this year than anyone else in that league.  The Big 10 desperately needs something to spice it up.  That spread option offense working for him, along with his mouth and his ability to seem like a total ass make him the perfect candidate to make things interesting in the Big Bore.  He's all the things The Sweater is not, and right now that's what is needed from that conference.   Football fans in other parts of the nation might even know who was playing who each week in the Big 10 if we could get an arrogant, winning Rodriguez.

Lane Kiffin Setting Himself Up

Not many folks are ready for USC to hit the skids like I am.  If you watch much ESPN, you've had these guys shoved down your throat for nearly a decade.  No matter who you cheer for, this gets old.  So you'd think I'd be the last to hope the Trojans would succeed this year. 

If USC has a stellar season, Lane Kiffin won't be able to help himself.  He'll run his mouth from sunrise in New York to sunset in Cali.  The guy had a squad half as talented as Florida year ago and continued to jab at Urban Meyer.  He's about to go through 4 or 5 of the toughest years a coach can have.  If he was smart, he wouldn't run his mouth once this season knowing what the sanctions will do to his team in the future.  Even if he won 10 or 11 games he'd shut up, act humble and hope that his fellow coaches would have mercy on him when he's got walk on players starting at key positions in 2013. 

Lane is not smart, so that won't happen.  If he wins big in 2010 he'll talk trash like he's starting a dynasty.  He'll give bulletin board material that's good enough to last a decade.  This is what I'm cheering for.  I want Kiffin to solidify himself as the most hated man in the Pac Whatever.  I want guys like Harbaugh and Chip Kelly to have no alternative but to beat him by 50 when they can and to laugh about it in their post game pressers.   I can watch Lane succeed for one year if I know I'm about to get 3-4 years of some of the most intense suffering to follow.  It would just add more amusement to it to have multiple clips of smiling, cocky Lane in his first season that the networks could play during every drumming he takes.

The Explosion of the BCS

The BCS has probably worked more often than it has not.  That said, it's still a system that has huge holes in it and generally stinks.  It's political, opinion based and still contains no answer for one of the biggest "what if's" in the game.  If three teams emerge from the BCS conference with no losses or all with one loss, how do you determine which one gets screwed.  College football is still the only sport played at this level that has no playoff.  It's the only one that voters have so much power in.  It's the only game played that at the end of the season you can find yourself asking if the guy with the trophy really earned it or not.  When you really step back and look at how the sport determines it's champions and compare it to every other competitive college or pro sport around the world it's mind numbing to think that we continue down this road.  I know it's not happening, but while we are dreaming can we please blow up the BCS?

The only way I know that happens this season if for the following teams to all be unbeaten and begging for a chance to play at years end.

-One of the two from the SEC in Florida or Alabama

-Ohio State (no other Big 10 team would be as big of a deal getting left out)

-Texas or Oklahoma(now we are at 3 powers, one getting totally screwed)

-Oregon or some other unbeaten Pac 10 team

If a school like Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Florida or Ohio State gets left out of the national title game after running the table something will be done.  Auburn didn't carry the weight in 2004 that those schools do at this moment.  Oregon would surely get screwed in this scenario and just add to the frustration.  If they all are one loss teams, someone will be able to make excuses for the system and say stupid things like "well if they had just won them all it wouldn't have happened".  I'd rather see my team win it all, but if I can't I want to see the scenario that blows up the BCS and this year I think this is it.