The Press Break Q&A: College Football Scheduling, Coaches Sideline Attire
You’ve got questions, The Press Break has answers! But, if The Press Break doesn’t have answers, I’ll fake it long enough to riff into an actual column.
Before diving in, college football season is just a little more than a month away. Don’t screw it up! Get vaccinated against COVID-19, be smart about social distancing and wearing a mask in certain situations, and don’t cause another season wherein 100-plus FBS games get cancelled.
…Even if last year’s scheduling did give us the unprecedented and awesome BYU-Coastal Carolina game.
My suspicion — not at all confirmed — has long been that programs announce non-conference matchups years out for recruiting purposes; add a marquee schedule as a small but not meaningless part of the pitch, even if the likelihood of those games actually being played is a coin flip.
Pretending that a game needs to be arranged 12 years out for logistical purposes is borderline insulting to our intelligence, though, given basketball has long operated on schedules completed just a few months, if not a few weeks, before the season.
Sure, basketball teams and staffs are considerably smaller and don’t have the equipment to transport. The difference in planning isn’t so significant that it takes literally decades longer for football programs.
And, of course, BYU-Coastal Carolina proved it isn’t necessarily at all. That game — which I ranked the best of the 2020 season at Athlon Sports — should have been a game-changer.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that the TV networks (primarily ESPN) — which, let’s be honest, act as the sport’s central governing body for some intents and purposes — should build a flex weekend into the schedule. Put the College Football Playoff rankings to actual use beyond #content by ranking every FBS program and creating a scheduling matrix around it that dictates high-stakes, non-conference games in the penultimate weekend of the regular season.
Think the old BracketBusters format, but expanded for the entirety of the sport.
This resolves some of the consternation over Playoff positioning and alleviates complaints of they ain’t played nobody!, creates high-profile and exciting matchups, and spares us the annual SEC bodybag weekend. That last point is particular point of contention for me, a proverbial middle finger from the conference to the rest of the nation locked in competitive conference games that same week.
People are understandably really high on Iowa State this offseason. To that end, read Wendell Barnhouse’s feature on the Cyclones in uncharted territory as title contenders.
It’s a fascinating juxtaposition seeing Iowa State garner headlines, while USC flies under the radar. Forget Playoff talk — even in the Pac-12 South, the Trojans have generated less buzz than consensus preseason favorite Arizona State.
Tempering expectations for USC has been the right call for more than a decade now. With Pac-12 media days on the horizon, I’m reminded of 2012 and the insistence that the Trojans would steamroll the conference en route to the BCS Championship Game.
They finished 7-6.
The next year, when Lane Kiffin was firmly on the hot seat, was the last time I viewed USC as possibly underrated, if not overlooked. All the chatter surrounding that team focused on Kiffin’s imminent firing, which came to pass — but USC won 10 games.
Likewise, the upcoming season feels singularly focused on Clay Helton’s job security. Meanwhile, the 2021 team returns Kedon Slovis and is loaded in the receiving corps with Drake London poised for a monster season. There’s no shortage of talent on defense, namely Drake Jackson rushing off the edge.
USC is good enough to win the Pac-12. Iowa State’s good enough to win the Big 12, too, but conquering Oklahoma’s reign of dominance is a hurdle USC doesn’t have in the Pac.
So, the bulletpoint answer to this question: Iowa State is probably better than USC, but the Trojans have a more navigable path to the Playoff.
A serendipitous turn of events, indeed, as the 2005 NCAA Tournament was on my mind while starting a commentary I didn’t end up publishing.
For the uninitiated, a little backstory: The 2005 Tournament pod in Tucson was my first time covering March Madness, and a watershed moment for me in sports journalism. It really marked the first time I truly believed I could cover sports for a living, having produced a series of articles that were, at the time, my best work.
One relevant memory from that weekend, however, was the very first press conference of the event featured Kelvin Sampson, then at Oklahoma. Lute Olson was getting along in age enough that not-insignificant chatter of him retiring in the near future bubbled, and a seemingly perfect fit was Sampson.
I planned a column pitching Sampson as THE guy, and had a question lined up. To a 22-year-old me, it felt highly provocative, so I was admittedly nervous holding the microphone and waiting my turn. The interviewer before me, a jock from an Oklahoma City-based AM radio station, asked something about overly strenuous practices that caused Sampson to ERUPT.
Given I was going to ask about another job next, I was internally terrified. Sampson went on a lengthy diatribe, and I assume from the interaction this wasn’t the first time the radio guy had provoked Sampson with a not-quite-ingenuous question in a setting like this.
To his credit, Sampson immediately flipped on the charm when answering me with a polite and completely empty response about liking Lute, respecting the program and being honored people thought highly of him. So, I didn’t get yelled at.
Anyway, the relevance here is that this week was not a banner moment for the press conference setting. First, a Barstool blogger said to Conor McGregor at the UFC 264 presser, “We know you left the kids at home this time. Are they going to be watching on Saturday night, or are they not allowed to witness the violence you plan on delivering?”
Then, a few days later after dropping a second exhibition loss, Team USA coach Gregg Popovich was asked an antagonistic question that referenced past “blowout[s]” of teams like Nigeria and Australia — a premise that fails to acknowledge the American lineup is rather makeshift compared to past Olympics, and that Nigeria specifically overhaul major overhauls in its national basketball system.
I’ll be attending assorted media days in the coming week, a welcomed change after a year of Zoom calls. Media days are great because they provide much more intimate atmospheres for interviews; podium sessions like Popovich’s produce empty-jargon responses and are often platforms for certain media types to make spectacles of themselves.
I found the topic too uninteresting for the general audience to dedicate its own space, so I opted instead to Bogart this question. Anyway, at media days, I am breaking for my past traditions of wearing slacks and button-downs for shorts (nice ones, but shorts nevertheless) and short-sleeved button-downs. Of the many lessons I hope a majority took away from the pandemic, one is that there’s no need to overdress.
Basketball coaches look considerably classier than baseball managers decked out in team uniforms. That’s a bizarre tradition I’ll never understand. I at least grasp the concept of basketball coaches wearing suits, but it feels somewhat unnecessary.
There are coaches who have cultivated it as part of their identity, which I respect. Surely the majority will adhere to the tradition going forward. But, I anticipate we’ll see a considerable more coaching staffs in polo shirts and cross-trainers.
Choosing an Olympic Games might be a copout, since it’s two weeks over a few hours. Still, I have to go with the 1992 Games in Barcelona.
Those are the first Olympics I remember watching, and I was immediately hooked. The Dream Team was the chief reason, as I had started to really get into basketball around that time. Looking back on it with the childhood nostalgia removed from the equation as much as possible, the basketball tournament alone still entices me for its historical significance.
The greatest lineup ever assembled in the sport with the Dream Team
A young Toni Kukoc entering the national stage
Croatia as a team amid the turmoil of the Yugoslavian civil war
Oscar Schmidt still near his prime
The post-Soviet Lithuanian team winning Bronze behind Arvydas Sabonis, a team that fascinated me so much, I bought their t-shirt almost three decades later
And that’s just in men’s basketball. ‘92 also marked the ill-fated Dan vs. Dave campaign…
…the star turn of Shannon Miller…
…and the harrowing Derek Redmond.
I credit the Barcelona Olympics for really stoking the fledgling love of sports that I still have today.