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Story Archives: Sportsmanship taking another hit
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Sportsmanship taking another hit
Sportsmanship (the little bit that seems to be left in the world of sports) is taking another hit with college football's stubborn and idiotic refusal to implement a playoff system.
Oklahoma scored 60-plus points the last five games of the season. But I don't fault Bob Stoops, he really had to do that.
The bottom line is, when you are trying to impress certain people who are determining which two teams out of at least four deserve to play for a national title, you better score some points - especially if you lose to one of those teams during the regular season.
Would a playoff system end teams running up scores? No, but I think coaches would take their starters out earlier if they did not feel they had to make an impression with how many points they are scoring.
Hey, it worked for Steve Spurrier at Florida and it's still working today.
It's all about style points.
And I believe more coaches are going to see that if you don't score a lot of points no matter who you are playing then you are not going to catch the attention of the computers (because it certainly has nothing to do with humans, right?)
And don't tell me the regular season would have less meaning with a playoff system. Obviously, Texas beating Oklahoma during the regular season had no meaning this year.
So now we are down to Florida against Oklahoma, which should be a really good championship game, despite the fact we are having to wait almost an offseason for it to be played.
In a playoff system those two teams would have a real good chance of being the final two when the dust settled.
And what a mess it would have been if Penn State had finished unbeaten.
Maybe the final result it would not have been so bad if we would have had some decent games to go along with it in those "sacred" bowl games.
But Alabama against Utah in the Sugar Bowl? Did we not learn from last year's Georgia-Hawaii contest?
Alabama against either Southern California or Texas would have been a marquee matchup.
The final coach's poll was certainly interesting.
Mack Brown had his Texas team at No. 2 behind Florida. He had Oklahoma No. 3 and Texas Tech at No. 8.
Texas Tech's Mike Leach had his team No. 2 and Texas at No. 5.
Randy Edasall of Connecticut had Oklahoma at No. 3. Take that guy's voting card away.
LSU's Les Miles had Florida at the top, followed by Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama and Southern Cal.
And Philip Fulmer got his final shot in on Alabama, dropping the Crimson Tide from No. 1 to No. 5 after their valiant effort against Florida.
Getting back to sportsmanship in general, what is the deal with players acting like they just did something special after an ordinary play or all the taunting that seems to be going on now.
You received that scholarship to make big plays, don't act like it's something you've done that just won the ball game.
Great, you just made a sack on first down - go back and line up and get ready for second down and make the same play again - then I will be impressed.
I guarantee that same guy showboating and taunting a player after an outstanding play will be the same guy pointing fingers at his teammates the next series when that other teams does something impressive.
All that chest-pumping, gloating, glaring and posing just tells me one thing - you don't make that kind of play often enough. |
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