Bowl Season Follow Up

Check and make sure the coast is clear. Is there any pro-football being played this weekend? There isn't? Great, that means the time is finally right for me to spring my bowl season wrap up. I couldn't stand the thought of any serious football fan missing my insights into this year's fantastic bowl season because they were too busy with the NFL playoffs. I could have just let those 28 games slide into memory to be brought out and savored again during the long hard off-season. Between some of the historic games we witnessed and my unbelievable success in the prediction biz, I just thought some comment had to be made. So let's first review the stunning performance of my Arbitrary Bowl Prediction Method. Then we'll recap the fun and frivolity of the 2005-06 bowl season with a fake mailbag.

Before everyone starts offering me big money to create a handicapping business or asking if Two for the Money is based on my life, I want to remind everyone that success on any kind of gambling venture is nothing more than pure, dumb luck. My winning record both straight-up and against the spread is no indication of anything other than I happened to be dumber and luckier than the norm. For a full breackdown of my performance check out this handy chart. Some general trends do merit special mention. Picking against the line is hard. I found that if you can't guess the game straight-up, you shouldn't be messing with the spread. The spread exists to make easy picks hard and hard picks impossible. Those folks in Vegas know what they're doing, and if you think you have the line on something figured out, you're probably delusional. Second, I want to make it clear that no matter how the games actually played out, I stand behind my fight song picks. I don't care that Nebraska was 4 points better on the field "Hail to the Victors!" is still better than "There's No Place Like Nebraska" by 13 points and then some. If you want to correct my footballl analysis, that's fine, but I stand behind my fight song comparisons as the best on the internet.

Now on to happier topics. Every college football fan in American has an abundance of highlights and memories from what has been a superlative bowl season. Some will be appreciated over the years as they get brought up time and time again, in sports bars, over tailgate barbecues, and as annoying anecdotes we'll prattle on about to our grandchildren. Others demand comment here and now (actually they demanded comment on like January 5th, but I took an extended holiday). So to revisit all of the fodder for ESPN Classic, here's the first fake Capn's Mailbag. I've been dying to do one of these because I'm a huge fan of letter columns, but I never get any e-mail about my site (that may have something to do with the fact that I never posted an e-mail address on this site). I do hope this starts to generate more audience participation. I hope even more someone will suggest a cute pun I can use as my standard letter column title, so I can turn it into an ongoing feature. So just to be clear these are all FAKE letters from FAKE readers.

Hey Capn, I keep hearing about the coaching matchup in the Orange Bowl as a once in a lifetime thing. Do you think we'll ever see two coaches with more than 350 wins each meet in a bowl game again? - Alex H. Sunnydale CA

I heard the same thing a lot, and I mean a lot, in the lead up to the Geriatric Bowl. The pundits brought up that we had never seen two distinguished coaches go head to head like this before and we never would again. The common thinking being that it's too hard for any coach of a later generation to be that good for that long. There are a lot of reasons to believe that. Coaches don't get big time jobs that young anymore. No team can dominate for decades at a time anymore. And most importantly no one else is close enough in career wins to reasonably reach it within their expected lifespan. I may be the only person in the world who disagrees with this, but I firmly believe we will see many more coaches reach such lofty heights. It will take a few decades but it will happen. I have two big reasons.
1). The human life expectancy just keeps getting longer and longer, and so long as people take care of themselves they seem more than capable of staying active in their chosen profession. I think Bob Stoops could keep coaching into his seventies, and he's averaging the ten-win a year pace needed to break that 350-win ceiling. He's not the only one either, Urban Meyer or Mike Leach could be around for decades (the life expectancy of Mark Mangino isn't as high). Look at Pete Carroll and tell me he couldn't be spry enough to coach up until his 90th birthday party. True no one is close now, but the coaches in the current generation shouldn't be discounted just because of when we assume they'll retire.
2). As soon as we discover the technology to revive the dead, among the first 100 people brought back will be Knute Rockne and Bear Bryant. And if you don't think this is happening then you have never looked a Notre Dame or Alabama fan in the eye when they speak of these men. I know we're talking about loyal Catholics and Southern conservatives here. But they know, not think, not believe, but know, that if those coaches were around today their respective schools would be going 12-0 every year. They aren't going to let a little thing like the will of God get between them and a few more national championships.

Dude, thanks for having faith in the Mountaineers. No one else believes we can beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, but I'm with you,m this is going to be a blowout. -R. Byrd, D.C.
I know it looks a little self-serving to bring this up, but even I was surprised my Sugar Bowl pick turned out right. I was expecting to just lose that one for the sake of staying true to my fight song methodology. After the first quarter I had to check my original prediction to be sure that I had actually called for UGA getting shut out. I had, but not by 35 points! That lead didn't last, but for about an hour there I looked like the smartest guy in the room to all my fellow college football fans.

Captain, could you help me out here? Why does Brady Quinn's sister and A.J. Hawk's girlfriend Laura Quinn seem so familiar to me? Everytime ABC puts her on screen I shout out that she reminds me of someone. My friends are getting annoyed, but I know she strongly resembels someone famous. So take a look at a picture and tell me, who does she look like? -Jeff, Indiana
That would be Brady Quinn. I'm not kidding. The brother-sister combo have the same eyes, mouth and jawline. I haven't seen a pair of siblings this eerily similar since Donnie and Marie. If anyone else feels creeped out, just imagine how A.J. Hawk will feel once he figures it out.

I am outraged! How could the officials ruin the Alamo Bowl for Michigan like that? It wasn't just the last play, they had been blowing calls all night. What can we do to get some better officiating in these big games? -Nick, U of M alum
I don't know if I accept your premise. What I saw happen to Michigan in the Alamo Bowl was the same thing I saw happen to every other team in every other bowl. Since bowls use officiating crews from neutral confrences, it takes teams a while to figure out what they can and cannot get away with. Nebraska's coaches and players figured out the Alamo crew before Michigan did. As someone who followed that whole game, I was just waiting for it to be over I didn't expect Michigan to attemp The Greatest Play in College Football History and neither were you, so I don't know how we can get mad at the officials for assuming the same thing. At that point there were about a million ways that game could have ended and only a tiny fraction of those could have resulted in a Michigan victory. We were all shocked by the ending I have yet to hear one satisfactory explaination of what the officials were supposed to do. I guess these are just the things you have to live with as a sports fan. But still I am seriously impressed that Michigan has The Greatest Play in College Football History stored in their playbooks. The only other team I know of to have something like that in their standard practice reptoire is Ohio State, who supposedly practice what they call "The Last Play on Earth" once a week. Hmmmmm . . . Michigan and Ohio State each have some totally insane play lined up for when they have one shot to win a big game. Do think they each drew those up with the other in mind?

Hey man, I have been watching the Trojans all season and I'm seriously feeling the vibe. I think we are the only team in the history of college footall to have all the players and tools to win three championships in a row. Can you think of anything that could stop us, aside from Vince Young playing maybe the greatest individual game in college football history? - George Michael Bluth, Newport Beach California
Ouch, talk about irony. To answer your question the only other thing that may have hurt USC, is the kiss of death ESPN laid on them by calling them the greatest team of all time before the season was over. In this painfully shortsighted article.

Dear Captain, I noticed Ivan Maisel also used fight songs as a factor when he predicted the Rose Bowl. Both of you made the same pick. So tell me did you copy him or did he copy you?
I also saw the piece to which you refer. I had no previous knowledge of Ivan Maisel making this call when I wrote my predictions and I know he wouldn't even know I exist. So I have to imagine this is one of those cases of great minds thinking alike.

If you're the Captain of History, then you should be able to tell me whether or not the 2006 Rose Bowl was the greatest game in college football history? -Howard Z.
No.
Oh yeah everyone is going nuts about this year's national championship game. Since we live in an age of hyperbole it was almost inevitable that this game would be crowned as better that every game in the preceding 136 years of intercollegiate football. Much of the praise is well deserved. Any game that has a player or team pull off a fourth-and-national championship play in the last minute has to be on the short list. But let's review a few important factors. First of all, as exciting as the second half was, the first half seemed disorganized and sloppy. Games like the 1971 Oklahoma-Nebraska "Game of the Century" were great top to bottom. Second, the fact that the game lived up to the hype doesn't make it better, it only proves how ridiculous the hype machine was. No one could legitimately expect such a fantastic game, so in retrospect if the game had been any less of an all-timer then we all would have been disappointed. The punditocracy might have ruined our enjoyment of a fantastic game just because they couldn't pull in the reigns on their hyperbole machine. I'd rather have a game like the 2003 Fiesta Bowl when expectations were down but the drama was through the roof. Speaking of the Fiesta Bowl that had so many great shifts in momentum that turned into memorable moments. The two moments everyone will remember from the 2006 Rose Bowl are Reggie Bushes careless lateral (a perfect illustoration of the poor first half execution) and Vince Young's game winning run. Another thing, the game seemed to end too soon. It felt like Texas simply had the last hot streak of the game. I know people were openly rooting for overtime, just so we could get our fill. Yet another adavantage the 2003 Fiesta Bowl had. Also, can I say something about controversy. I think having something to argue about after the game always enhances its memorability, think Stanford-Cal or Tom Osborne going for two. I'm sorry but "Should Reggie have gone for it in the fourth?" doesn't compare, not to that, or even to the, that's right, 2003 Fiesta Bowl. Trust me, no controversy helps a games noteriety more than "the official's cost us that game" controversy. I think the 2006 Rose Bowl is so good it desrves to be in the Top Five College Football Games of All Time. Which are . . .
5.2006 Rose Bowl Texas-USC
4.1935 SMU-TCU
3.1984 Orange Bowl Miami-Nebraska
2. 1971 "Game of the Century" Nebraska-Oklahoma
1. 2003 Fiesta Bowl Ohio State-Miami (but you all saw that coming)

In most mailbags this is when the ombudsman signs off with some clever phrase. I don't have one, but I'll gladly take suggestions. No "Kneel before Zod"s please. Until next time,
The Captain of History