According to legend, Hercules attempted to regain his position on Mount Olympus by redeeming himself from some past misdeed.  In accomplishing this Hercules successfully completed 12 outrageous tasks that proved his worthiness.  If fixing the mess that is the BCS had been on his list instead of merely slaying the 9-headed hydra, the ending might have been altogether different.  It’s fitting that if the original “Hurculean tasks” took 12 years to complete, that after 12 years of squabbling and complaining over the BCS format someone finally came up with the perfect solution.  Yes folks, read on as I untie the ultimate “Gordian knot” and provide the means to determine the Men’s Division 1A NCAA Football Champion.  First, let’s be clear on what the issues are that afflict the current system and have to be addressed moving forward.

Problem #1 – Playoff or no Playoff ?
Everyone agrees that playing some type of playoff format would result in a clear National Champion.  The problem however is that nobody is prepared to mess with the “third rail” of college football, the marquis Bowl games.  Having a single BCS Championship game is bad enough, but no one is prepared to go further to undermine the importance of the January classics, the Sugar, Orange, Fiesta and the “Granddaddy of them all”, the Rose Bowl.  Add to that the fact that tacking further weeks on to the end of the season is a non-starter as well.  Injuries, weather, conference play in college basketball and the specter of going head-to-head with the NFL playoffs all mean that an end-of-season playoff is not going to happen. Some have suggested having the playoff occur at the end of the conference season and prior to the Bowl games. As long as the NCAA continues with the pretense that these are “student-athletes” and pay lip-service to an academic component in the lives of their players, this can’t work either as exams fall right in that time-frame. So to recap, forget a playoff.  That is not the solution.

Problem #2 – Non BCS Undefeated Teams
The second major problem that has never been addressed by the BCS is the complaint from the non-BCS conferences that they are not being given any love.  This year, with undefeated teams like TCU and Boise State playing well and undefeated teams from power leagues like Florida and Alabama winning but not doing so convincingly, the problem is magnified and the murmuring that the National title game will not feature the two best teams is heating up.  Even teams from BCS Conferences that have run the table like Cincinnati and until this weekend Iowa create problems because questions remain about their strength of schedule.  Just how good is the Big East? How much stock do we put into wins over Connecticut and Rutgers? In the case of the non-BCS teams, their argument has been that they have no way of proving themselves to the voters because the power leagues won’t put them on their schedule.  Often, it’s too late that fans (and voters) realize just how good these teams are, as in 2007 when undefeated Boise State defeated Big-12 Champion Oklahoma in a classic tilt and last year when 12-0 Utah dismantled an Alabama team that had flirted with the #1 position all year.  As long as their in-season scheduling is entirely in the hands of the individual institution this situation will continue.  Oregon came into this season with realistic expectations of winning the Pac-10 and competing for a National title.  Those hopes were severely damaged in their first game of the season as they scheduled non-BCS Boise State and lost.  It didn’t do much for Boise State’s position in the polls as Oregon’s credentials were immediately questioned, but it effectively took Oregon out of any championship conversations.  Why would Florida or Alabama run the risk of such a scenario?  They are perfectly happy scheduling Troy or Charleston Southern knowing that their in-conference games will bump up their S.O.S. number to an acceptable level.

Solution

For his 5th task, Hercules had to literally deal with a lot of crap in coming up with a solution.  He was required to clean the Stables of Augean that housed tens of thousands of cattle and do it in a single day! I’ve heard of some dirty jobs before, but yikes! He accomplished this by the ingenious, if somewhat impractical idea, of diverting a couple of rivers to flow through the stables.  I mention this, not just as a visual to illustrate the mess that the current system is in, but to set up some seriously out-of-the-box thinking. To solve the current problems, the organizers of the BCS have to institute the…..(drum roll please)… “BCS ELIMINATION WEEKEND”.  Just what is the “BCS Elimination Weekend” you might ask?  It’s a spectacular set of non-conference games, organized and scheduled by the BCS at neutral sites in the middle of November that pits the top 16 teams in the BCS against one another. The purpose is to clarify the strengths of the various conferences and weed out the pretenders from the contenders.  It will help determine prior to the Bowls just which of the non-BCS conferences deserve to be mentioned as National title game contributors.  It would be a television ratings hit and generate a boatload of money for the conferences and all of the networks involved in college football.  It would ensure that the non-BCS teams are given a chance to play the power-conference teams without taking the scheduling completely out of the hands of the schools. Most of all, it would be a rip-snorting, all out battle-royale that would probably produce some of the most exciting football in years.

How It Would Work

A BCS Selection Committee would be formed and be modeled along the lines of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Committee, comprising representatives from all of the affected conferences.  Their job would be not just to match-up the teams by seed, but create games that would be of regional interest and provide the necessary information to produce the Bowl game pairings and ultimately the National Championship match-up at the end of the season. After the third BCS Poll comes out (this year November 1st), the match-ups would be announced and the top 16 teams in the standings would be paired together. The games would be played two weeks later over the course of three days from Thursday to Saturday.  Two games each on Thursday and Friday and four games on Saturday. If you win that weekend you continue to be considered for the Championship game, lose and you are eliminated from consideration.  Since no one would know prior to the season which 16 teams would be involved, no games could be pre-scheduled for that weekend.  The committee would therefore also match-up all remaining teams from the affected conference in a series of games played on home fields with those locations being balanced among the conferences and rotated yearly.  Going back to the top-16, based on the standings after Week 3 this year, some of those match-ups could have included Boise State (BCS #7) vs LSU (#9) giving the country an idea of how strong the WAC is and whether their win over Oregon was an early season aberration. Cincinnati (#5) vs Oregon (#8) pits the top teams in the Big East and the Pac-10.  What about a game between TCU and Texas played at the new Texas Stadium in front of 100,000 fans? The bottom line is that everybody wins with this solution and it takes the BCS organizers off the hook when it comes to the mid-majors.  It’s effectively a playoff but it doesn’t conflict with any of the obstacles to a post-season tournament.

Are you convinced? It’s said that after Hercules completed his 12 tasks, one of the gods tried to cheat him out of his reward and all his work almost went for nothing. It’s unlikely that this will be anything more than a great idea on paper because we are dealing after all with the geniuses at the NCAA. But if it does happen, remember where you heard it first.

My favourite story of the week was hearing Markus Naslund was coming out of retirement. He and Peter Forsberg recently decided to come out of retirement to play in the Swedish Elite league. They are playing for their home-town team Modo.  Modo is in last place in the league and in financial trouble, so the two ex-NHL’ers decided to suit up for free to help out their old team. With so much greed and selfishness in sports it was great to hear a feel good story.

Being a cynic by nature maybe the above story wasn’t my fav. nothing made me laugh more this last week than hearing that former presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer was hired by the BCS to as BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock put it,  “highlight the positive aspects of the BCS.”

Finally, the 2010 NFL Draft board received some much needed help in slotting the upcoming crop of QB’s.  Jimmy Clausen getting punched out this last week has draft gurus scrambling.  With his mother acting as his left tackle, he still couldn’t avoid the rush.  For any who have questioned his pocket presence this should seal the deal.  With this development look for Jimmy to go in the 5th or 6th round at best, unless the Raiders take him in the first round.

Its truly amazing this guy is still getting paid to offer his personal brand of alleged insight. His idea of colour commentating makes me long for my childhood when the sound didn’t work on our TV and my father chose not to fix it for a couple years. In fact during yesterday’s Colts/Texans I relived those abusive childhood years and muted the guy. I think it was the incessant use of that clever insightful expression ‘gee whiz’ that finally got to me. Hang em up Dan, its time.

Well if Mr. Bettman wasn’t a buffoon enough by completely ruining the sport of hockey, he has now embarrassed the baseball historians. Its’ not enough to reduce the historical aspect of hockey by moving teams to non-hockey markets where the only ice people care about is the one they put in their coke, instead of having teams in Canadian markets where they actually play the sport, You see Mr. Bettman has now decided to have a hockey game at Fenway, the  icon stadium of baseball. What was he thinking about, was he hoping for a contest to see if Zendeno Chara can jump the green monster as if he is going to jump the bench or maybe he is a hugh Neil Diamond fan and wants to hear ,“sweet caroline”, sung by 15000 frezzing Bostonians .  The point of having outdoor hockey is to bring us back to pond hockey times, therefore an oval football stadium is what is needed , not a nostalgic baseball park. If this is his idea of getting hockey on a the map,  then its time for Bettman to hang his “skates” before he is hung out to dry!!

The Grey Cup, Canada’s largest annual sports and television event, takes place this Sunday at six pm eastern. It regularly draws a Canadian viewing audience of about 4 million persons which, as far as Canadian audiences go, is higher than Super Bowl ratings.

The Grey Cup is the trophy awarded each year to the champion of the Canadian Football League; but it hasn’t always been that way. Donated by the then Governor General of Canada, Earl Grey, in 1909, it was initially to be awarded to the Rugby Football Champion of Canada. For the first 45 years of its history, football teams from various leagues in Canada could bid to compete for the championship and the trophy. In the early years, the winners were teams representing universities and even local athletic associations. Since 1954, however, only teams that are members of the CFL have been allowed to compete for Earl Grey’s Cup.

There are a number of story lines in this, the 97th Grey Cup.

Can the Alouettes win a second Cup in this their seventh chance over the past decade? How much impact will Rider Nation invading Calgary have on the outcome of the game? Will this be the end of the line for so many veterans in the Montreal line-up, if they manage to win?

The story line I’m most interested in is the impact of this game on discussed changes to the Can-Con rule. There are 42 roster spots in the CFL, three of which are occupied by the QB’s. The other 39 though need to be made up of 20 non-imports (mostly Canadian-born) with the remaining 19 spots taken up by American recruits.

Further to that rule, it is also required that of the 20 Canadians, seven need to be starters. The proposed rule change has the seven Canadian starters reduced to four. The Riders have been making a case recently both vocally and by their play that that would be a ridiculous idea.

Historically the non- imports have been utilized on the offensive line, as place kickers and safeties. Uniquely, the Riders use Canadian players in many of their skill positions. Most of their receiving core is home-grown talent, and even after losing their most dangerous receiver Winston Dressler (an import), for the year, they haven’t missed a beat. The Riders, on top of putting a high premium on Canadian talent, have taken it a step further. Over a third of the non-imports on the Riders are Saskatchewan-born. Further to that, the practice roster is also loaded with local recruits. Why? They are being groomed to be the next wave of great Saskatchewan talent.

So while many want to change the Can-con rules, there is no point. What is really needed is for other teams to put the same premium on grooming and developing home-grown talent. There is no doubt that a country of over 300 million could supply more than enough talent to flood the CFL. The real question though is: is that necessary?

While it is true that football is a game that showcases athleticism, it requires an equal measure of precision and savvy. These are qualities that are often developed to a greater degree in individuals of lesser athleticism. There is plenty of room for both types of player in the CFL. There is no reason to further drop the amount of required non-import starters (already been done once in the 90’s). If they really want to change the rule, why doesn’t the league require each team to have a minimum of seven Saskatchewan-born players on each team? If you want true quality play, that’s the only answer!

As college football winds down and rivarly week and Bowl games approach, let’s see what we can look forward to in the coming weeks ahead.

The New Orleans secondary will be facing their stiffest challenge this year.   If Matt Ryan can do damage, imagine what Tom Brady and his arsenal will do Monday Night !

Drew Brees

Looking for a real track meet on Monday Night.  His numbers will be great just to keep up with the Patriots.  Very important to have a nap Monday to stay up and watch this one !

Matt Cassel

Coming off a great game against the champs, look for him to put up some numbers even though the Chargers defense has been improving of late. 

RBs

Adrian Peterson

Quite simply – the Bears are going to be the cubs when Mr. Peterson and the Vikings O-line get done with them on Sunday !

Brandon Jacobs

Denver has given up big rushing yards lately, and with Jacobs at 6′4 and 260 pounds – who wants a piece of that coming at you ?

LeSean McCoy

He looked like the real McCoy against the Bears on Sunday Night.  Look for Philly to exploit their newfound success.

Jamaal Charles

If you need a back, he’s starting to show some of the toughness he’s been lacking since he was drafted last year plus he can take kickoffs to the house for an added bonus.

Chris Johnson

We have to respect the yardage leader in the league this year, and his offensive line ain’t bad either.  Titans have to control the ball to keep it out of Warner’s hands.

WRs

Mike Sims-Walker

I’m getting carpel tunnel syndrome spelling his name every week, but he keeps producing !  Not too many teams run the ball on the Niners.

Randy Moss

Because Tom Brady is his quaterback, they’re on Monday Night, and he’s Randy Moss !!

Robert Meachem

Too many weapons on the Saints to stop. Meachem is emerging as one of Brees favorite targets.

Greg Jennings

He’s been lighting it up lately, Mr. Rodgers always throws the ball to Jennings’ neighborhood.

Vincent Jackson

Kansas City is bringing their police chief with them to arrest Jackson for the crimes against the secondary he performed last month.   Look for him to be a repeat offender. 

TEs

Vernon Davis

He’s been tearing up the league in a year tight ends have been dominating.

Tony Gonzales

Just a gifted athlete who knows how to get open and run after the catch. Starting to build nice rapport with Matt Ryan.

Kevin Boss

Boss always flies under the radar.  We just bought a radar detector from Home Depot, and we found you Kevin Boss ! 

Hope you have success in your leagues this week.

VV 

IS HE THE BEST EVER?

Video suggestion from  A. Czonka

One of the better dunks so far this year!