You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will

by Cowherd, Colin

  Knievel bragged about breaking every bone in his body. That made him a hero. Broken bones are a badge of honor in very few human endeavors and precisely zero sports. Imagine an athlete in any sport bragging about broken bones or concussions or serious injuries. What general manager would say, “Hey, give me that guy”?

  Of course not. Knievel would use it as a pitch to sponsors, and X Games performers take pride in their injuries because doing so is a testament to their willingness to take a risk. A fully intact body means you aren’t going far enough.

  If you aren’t failing, you aren’t trying.

  There’s only one logical conclusion: any linkage between the X Games and mainstream sports is simply an invitation to criticisms and lawsuits. It is the only “sport” that should never, under any circumstances, issue credentials to the mainstream media.

  In fact, the media strategy of the X Games when it comes to mainstream sports media should consist of three words:

  Please ignore us.

  If X Games events continue to be part of the Olympics, they’re going to be judged by the standards imposed by 50-year-old white guys who don’t get it. And let’s be clear about one thing: the Olympics needs the X Games events far more—far more—than the X Games needs the Olympics. The X Games already has the network platform—ESPN. Most winter sports are dying for network support.

  Without the Olympics, luge doesn’t exist.

  Downhill skiing needs the Olympics. Bobsledding needs the Olympics. The X Games has no need for the Olympics.

  Conversely, X Games events are the best thing ever for the Olympics. What better way to attract a younger, hipper, cooler audience than to sandwich the snowboard halfpipe in between women’s figure skating and speed skating?

  A spot in the Olympics comes with legitimacy, whether it’s earned or not and whether it’s wanted or not.

  Q-tips says, Don’t jam this in your ear.

  The X Games should say, Don’t ever confuse me with a sport.

  Get out. Get out of sports and get out of the Olympics. The sooner, the better.

  Eddie Murphy was once the funniest person on the planet—then he decided he would rather be cool. Suddenly he was as funny as re-siding your house. Entourages and bodyguards take the air out of a punch line.

  Good-looking isn’t funny. Neither is 5 percent body fat.

  Funny is disheveled, chunky, uncomfortable. It’s living in Yonkers crammed in a house with too many people and too few rooms. New York City is funny because it’s crowded and often miserably cold. You stay married in New York and fight through your problems. Los Angeles isn’t funny because it’s warm and spread out. People have space. They get divorced and start over and get happy again. Nothing ruins a knee-slapper like being content.

  I was watching that show from years ago on NBC called Last Comic Standing when it dawned on me. The better weather the city had where that particular competition was being held, the lamer the comedians were. Boston or Minneapolis comics were gold. Phoenix Guy was a channelturner. You really think the fact that Canada has given us dozens of hysterical people—and Australia virtually none—is just a coincidence?

  Discomfort creates humor.

  It’s why I think most top comedians have roughly a ten- to twelve-year period to be labeled funniest guy on the planet. Then they become popular, rich, comfortable, and just another dude with a better sense of humor than most people.

  Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, David Letterman, Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Will Ferrell, and Jerry Seinfeld have all taken turns being that guy.

  Eventually they all lose that slight edge after their third six-thousand-square-foot vacation home.

  Someone please beg Zach Galifianakis and Aziz Ansari not to buy a Lexus.

  Southern Exposure

  Everybody has an uneasy relationship with dynasties in American sports. We love to see them so we can either root for them or against them, and everybody feels equally strongly on one side or the other. We always associate dynasties with teams: Yankees, Lakers, Celtics, Steelers, Patriots. But right now, the biggest dynasty in American sports is a football conference.

  And yes, there’s no doubt about it: the SEC is a full-blown dynasty.

  We understand this on a certain basic level. It’s not that hard. We know SEC teams are 9-0 since the advent of the BCS Championship Games in 1998. We know they’ve won seven straight. We know that most of those games have featured dominating performances by the winning SEC team.

  But it’s my contention that we don’t fully understand the depth of that dynasty. We don’t understand the extent of the gap between SEC football and the rest of the conferences.

  Let’s break it down. By consensus, the second-best conference is the Big 12. We take this as an article of faith. The Pac 12 is finesse, the Big Ten is slow, but the Big 12 is the closest thing we have to legitimate competition for the SEC. The Big 12 sounds big and it sounds good. Texas vs. Oklahoma and all that.

  So let’s take a look at the one game in the season when we know we’re going to get an SEC-Big 12 matchup: the Cotton Bowl. It’s not a BCS game, so the Cotton Bowl has to wait until the BCS teams are decided before choosing one team from the SEC West and one team from the Big 12. It’s often the third-place team in the SEC West against the second-place team in the Big 12.

  Whatever the case, look at the last ten Cotton Bowls. Starting with the 2004 Cotton Bowl, when Ole Miss beat Oklahoma State, and ending with Texas A&M’s rout of Oklahoma in 2013, the SEC has won nine of ten. The average score in those nine wins is 30-17, meaning the SEC team is nearly two touchdowns better.

  And as they say on the infomercials, But wait, there’s more.

  For people who say the SEC’s dominance is a little overstated, think about this: the Chip Kelly Era in Oregon produced not only the highest-scoring offense in college football but a running game that—in results if not style—harkens back to Nebraska in the ’60s and ’70s, or Oklahoma under Barry Switzer. In other words, it’s a tour de force offense that everyone assumes is virtually unstoppable.

  In 2010, the year Oregon reached the BCS title game, it averaged 41 points per game and ran for almost 3,500 yards. The Ducks were good—so good that they were pulling their starters at the half in the majority of their games. If they hadn’t, it’s reasonable to assume Oregon could have tacked on another 2,000 yards rushing.

  But against Auburn in the 2010 title game, Oregon had 75 yards rushing and averaged 2.3 yards per carry.

  You could argue that Kelly’s offense got better and the team wasn’t the best offensive one that Oregon had during his time.

  Fair enough.

  So what happened when Oregon improved? When Kelly got that offense revving at its highest RPM, in 2011, his team finished the year averaging 47 points per game. The Ducks had almost 4,200 yards rushing. This was the pinnacle. This was the juggernaut to end all juggernauts.

  They were putting up these cartoon numbers while, again, pulling starters at the half. The season was a playful romp in a meadow filled with wildflowers, with one exception: the Ducks played LSU at the beginning of that season. In that game, Oregon had 95 yards rushing.

  The next day, September 3, 2011, there was an article in the Portland Oregonian in which Ken Goe wrote, “LSU didn’t just beat Oregon; it beat Oregon up.” Both of Oregon’s starting running backs, LaMichael James and Kenjon Barner, were knocked out of the game with injuries. DeAnthony Thomas, a freshman at the time, was hit so often and so hard he hobbled off at one point and also fumbled.

  Let’s put this in a broader perspective. This was a one-time deal for Oregon. But what if the Ducks had to play another one the next week? What if they had to go back to work Sunday and prepare for Florida or Georgia—and not Utah or Arkansas State—the next week with a battered group of running backs? What would Oregon’s record be if it had to run that gauntlet every year?

  Oregon was doing whatever it wanted to do against any non-SEC team it played. It c
ould have probably increased its offensive numbers by 30 percent if it had played its starters after halftime, and against Auburn and LSU they couldn’t break 100 yards rushing.

  And by the way, in those games against Auburn and LSU, the elite, vaunted Oregon running game was forced to abandon the run. They literally could not run the ball, and they admitted it by not even trying. So instead of pulling their starting running backs and quarterback to take it easy on the opposition, against these two SEC teams Oregon stopped running because they simply couldn’t run. This from the best running game in the country.

  In a way, our understanding of SEC dominance is similar to our knowledge of the health risks of soda. On a surface level, intuitively, you know it’s bad to drink soda. But if you dig a little deeper, you find that it’s a tsunami of dental and physical decay. It’s an absolute disaster for your body. Drinking one or more soft drinks per day not only increases your risk of obesity by 30 percent, but a twelve-ounce Coke has nearly 40 grams of sugar. The recommended daily intake for women is 22. So, a woman would double her recommended sugar intake with just one soda for lunch.

  Similarly, we all know the SEC dominance is thorough. We know the numbers—9-0 in title games, seven straight, routinely crushing the Big 12 in head-to-head matchups.

  But wait, there’s more.

  In February 2013, Dirk Chatelain from the Omaha World-Herald wrote a really good article that indicates we haven’t seen anything close to the end of this SEC dynasty. In fact, what we’ve been seeing might be closer to the beginning than the end.

  Here’s where it gets scary: the Sun Belt is exploding with young football talent. The numbers are mind-boggling. Georgia, with only nine million people in the state, produced over the past five years an average of 115 BCS-level, big-boy Division I recruits. Over that same time span, California—population: thirty-eight million—produced roughly the same amount.

  It’s absurd. Georgia is in the same ballpark as California, and California has four times the number of people, and California is a talent-rich state for high school football. Chatelain’s story also notes that Minnesota, Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska are all down.

  There are Plains states we consider to be eternally fertile in football. Take Oklahoma, where they live and die with football. How does Oklahoma stack up? Five years ago, according to rivals.com, Oklahoma was producing twenty to thirty recruits a year. Two years ago it had sixteen. For the 2013 signing date, just ten.

  The gap is widening. The SEC is getting stronger. Depending on what side you’re looking from, it’s either a problem that’s getting worse or an advantage that’s getting better.

  But wait, there’s more.

  When Alabama beat Notre Dame in the BCS title game, it was easy to forget the particulars amid the ritualized slaughter that took place. This great showdown between the revitalized Notre Dame program produced a game that was 35-0 shortly after halftime. Once the game was over and Notre Dame was exposed and everyone was finished with all the bowl games, I wondered what would have happened if Notre Dame had had to play Florida, Ole Miss, or Georgia the week following the blowout loss to Alabama. What if they’d had to play any SEC team the following week?

  Notre Dame was undefeated in the regular season and reached the national title game, but it would have been an underdog to at least four SEC teams. The Irish would have been underdogs to Ole Miss. Remember, Ole Miss destroyed Pittsburgh and gave Alabama a real push. Notre Dame should have lost to Pitt and might have lost by 50 to Alabama if Nick Saban hadn’t backed it off.

  We all know the SEC is better, but when it’s placed in context, the dominance is so stark that it’s sometimes easy to ignore. And it’s not getting any better. This disparity is huge, and it’s growing. The Oregons of the world that just roll over people, bury the playbook, and sit their starters—they can’t move the ball against the SEC teams.

  And that Auburn team that held Oregon to 75 yards rushing? The Tigers weren’t even the No. 1 defense that year in the SEC. They were third.

  But wait, there’s more.

  Where is the competition going to come from? Who out there can—pun intended—turn this tide? The Big East is falling apart. The Big 12 is gasping for air. The Midwest is losing population and recruits.

  Where? Who?

  The only teams I see with an opportunity to puncture this bubble are either Urban Meyer/Ohio State or USC. Meyer is an extraordinary recruiter and he will dominate what’s left of the topflight Midwest recruits while dropping into the South to poach a few major guys just because of who he is and what Ohio State stands for.

  The advantage for USC is this: they don’t have to compete against a bunch of college-football monoliths for California recruits. They’re one of the few colleges from Denver to the west that is committed and all-in on football. In a good year, USC can get eight to ten of the top players in the state of California. And they can do that every year. Even Alabama is not going to get the top six players in the South—they have to battle everyone else for them.

  Yes, coaching is important, but to compete in this new world, recruiting is key. If he survives, I think Lane Kiffin is a good enough recruiter to keep USC going through all the NCAA issues it had. They kept him around because they know the history of college sports: if you have qualms about a coach, at least find one who can recruit. If he leaves, you know he’s leaving players behind for the next guy. It’s great to have a Bobby Knight type, someone who can coach like crazy but can’t recruit, but when he leaves, you’ve got no players and no Bobby Knight to coach them.

  It’s the best advice I can give an athletic director: if you’re going to fail with a coach, at least fail with one who can recruit.

  Either Ohio State or USC could possibly build up an arsenal that has an SEC-level appearance. But if you look through a wide lens, it’s daunting. The South has always had a religious zeal for the sport, but this is getting ridiculous. The amount of revenue being raised, the salaries being paid, the championships being won, the talent being produced—it’s in danger of getting out of hand.

  But wait, there’s more.

  If you listen closely, you can hear little murmurings of what I would call fear around college football. Meyer was recently quoted as making some statements that could be construed as criticism of other Big Ten coaches for their lack of aggression on the recruiting trail. Meyer is clearly a cutthroat recruiter; his first order of business as Ohio State coach was to flip several recruits from other Big Ten schools, which some coaches suggested violated a gentlemen’s agreement between the coaches in the conference. And that’s the thing about Meyer: he’s coached in the SEC, so he knows recruiting has nothing to do with being a gentleman.

  In early February of 2013, Meyer was a guest on a Columbus radio station. He was discussing an upcoming meeting with Big Ten coaches. Here is what he said:

  Our whole conversation needs to be about “How do we recruit?” When you see eleven of the SEC teams are in the top twenty-five, that’s something that we need to continue to work on and improve.

  Do you hear a little fear, or at least concern, in those words? Can’t you hear him saying, “Fellas, help us out a little here?” He’s saying they have to get some of those players from the South, or they’re never going to catch those guys. He’s saying he can’t be the only one fighting the fight, or else he’s bound to lose it, too. If only Ohio State and Michigan are capable of putting together top ten recruiting classes, those kids are going to start to go somewhere else.

  The northern-climate schools used to have it good. Real good. Twenty-five, thirty years ago, the places to play were mostly cold and drizzly: Notre Dame, Penn State. Washington, Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan. What happened? I’ll tell you what happened: ESPN happened.

  When ESPN decided to go full-bore into televising college football, the landscape changed. When the network went from televising fifty games to close to five hundred, the kid who wanted to be on television didn’t have to go to Penn State and suffer t
hrough terribly cold winters. You no longer had to go north to be on television. You could have 74-degree fall days and get maximum exposure.

  It takes a lot of factors to build this kind of dynasty. And like most dynasties, we either love them or love to hate them. There’s no middle ground. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, it’s the SEC’s world. The rest of college football is just trying to find enough oxygen to survive in it.

  Reduction Junction, Love Your Function

  Robert Irvine is a celebrity chef who—like nearly every celebrity chef—owes his fame to television. He has a Food Network show called Restaurant: Impossible, where he storms into struggling restaurants and goes commando on their staff and business model in a made-for-TV attempt to resurrect their lagging fortunes.

  Irvine brings an acerbic tongue and a successful formula. It starts with three words: Less is more.

  Trim the menu. You don’t need eight different penne pasta dishes and four different risottos. Figure out what you do best and stick with it.

  If only the sports world could figure this out. Can someone please cut back the menu, reduce the noise, pare the fat?

  We’re catering to an audience of indiscriminate gluttons. We’re on a steady diet of more: more broadcasters in the booth, more playoff games, more expansion teams, more bowl games, more teams in March Madness.

  If sports were a restaurant, its menu would have five pages of chicken entrees: chicken Marsala, chicken Parmigiana, chicken cacciatore, chicken Milanese. On and on with the chicken dishes.

  We’ve gotten duped into thinking more is better.

  More is not better. More is simply more.