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Before you dive in here, I've already written a lot about Saturday's game in my Saturday night wrap and my Sunday morning thoughts and Mitchell gave his postgame thoughts right here. So we'll focus on some bigger picture stuff and national stuff in this post.
1) I want to take a minute to praise Eli Drinkwitz. There's been a lot of that done, but I'm doing it for a different reason here. He picked the bowl game that would let his players be home for Christmas and New Year's. A lot of fans don't like it and that's fine. Who knows, maybe there are even some players who don't love it. But he did what he thought was best for his players at the end of a brutal season. In a profession without a lot of human beings, Drinkwitz seems to be a human being. It's not just this issue. He's been up front about the COVID stuff. He's generally shared injury information. He's had a healthy perspective on this all year of "We want to win every time we play, but it's a weird year and there are things more important than wins and losses. We want to play and we're going to try our best, but this isn't life and death here." And that counts a lot with me. I love sports. At times I get emotional over sports. But over time, I've also gained a lot of perspective. They're games. None of us are solving major problems or impacting anyone's lives in real significant ways. He seems to get that. When a lot of coaches are standing up and whining about this or that, telling us things like they didn't even know when election day was, pretending that we are all too stupid to possibly understand why they might run a speed option on fourth and two or play zone instead of man, Drinkwitz seems to be a reasonable human. I appreciate that. I think Mizzou fans should too.
2) As far as the actual bowl game, it's fine. I don't have strong feelings over whether it's better or worse than playing Indiana in the Outback Bowl or NC State in the Gator Bowl. They're all just kind of there. Iowa's a good team. It would probably get you the most recognition for a win of those three teams. But nobody outside of the team and our message board is going to remember who won or lost it in three weeks. Let me address the reasons the bowl game choice does NOT matter:
*The trip. There is no trip this year guys. They're going in for a couple days and they're going to see the hotel. There are no activities or sightseeing or anything like that. The destination city really doesn't matter because you're not going to see the destination city.
*The chance to play in a recruit's area. Can you name one single player who has ever chosen a school and said "I wasn't going to go there, but then they played the Taxslayer Bowl 25 minutes from my house and I thought, wow, I should really go there." It just doesn't matter. Missouri already plays a game every two years in Florida. If they want to schedule another one, there are a million teams and they can play there. And there are probably some recruits in Tennessee too if you want to hold on to the idea that this somehow is a factor.
*The money. Teams get reimbursed for their expenses and then their bowl profits go into a pot and it gets split 14 ways. SOMEONE was going to the Music City and someone was going to the Gator and someone was going to the Outback. And that money's all going in the same pool. The big factor is to get as many teams in the big money (playoff and NY6 bowls) as you can because that's what impacts the league's bottom line and the individual payouts. Also, I was told this morning that the SEC has insurance on most of its postseason events in case they were to be canceled due to COVID. So most of the money is going to be there.
3) Since we're on the topic of the playoff, let's talk about it.
The four teams I knew would get in got in. There really wasn't any drama. Honestly, the only drama all season was whether Ohio State was going to play. Because you could have picked the Buckeyes, Bama and Clemson to the playoff 10 months ago. And then you'd have had a pool of five teams that would have been Oklahoma, Florida, Texas A&M, Georgia and Notre Dame and you'd have felt pretty confident that the fourth team was going to come from that group.
Most people seem to object most to Notre Dame being there. I think you're objecting to the wrong team. Notre Dame deserves to be there. They have the best single win in college football this year, having beaten Clemson. And yes, Clemson was without Trevor Lawrence and that's a factor, but DJ Uiangaleilei (no I'm not going to check if I spelled that right) was pretty damn good in that game and Clemson still has the second or third-most talent in the country even without Lawrence and that's a damn good win. They also beat North Carolina, which was a top 15 team. Their strength of schedule was 13 and Texas A&M's was 10. The strength of record, according to the playoff show yesterday, was 2 and A&M was 3. Notre Dame had two chances against an elite team and won one. A&M had two chances against an elite team (Florida still counts) and won one. The resumes are almost identical. Taking A&M wouldn't have been wrong, but neither is taking Notre Dame. The main objection people have to Notre Dame is "Well Alabama smoked them in 2012 and Clemson smoked them in 2018 so they don't deserve another chance." That's dumb. The same people complaining that's why Notre Dame shouldn't get in this year spend a whole lot of time complaining that we spend too much time looking at names and judging on history rather than judging on this year. THIS Notre Dame team earned it.
The team you should have a problem with is Ohio State. The Buckeyes played six games. They played two top 20 teams in Indiana and Northwestern and they won both games, but didn't win either convincingly. They had to pass four fewer tests than any other team to get to this point. Would they have won the other four games? Probably. But not definitely. Oh, that Indiana team that was the best win? The playoff committee found it unworthy of a New Year's Six bowl spot. There's no way to justify OSU being in other than "Well, we think they're one of the four best teams." Fine. If that's the case, don't even play games. Just say before the season, "At the end of the year, these are the four teams that are going to compete for the championship because we think they're the four best teams." If you're not selecting teams based on who actually did enough to deserve to be there, what the hell are we even doing?
4) If I were a one-man playoff committee, the fourth spot would have gone to Cincinnati. Are they the fourth-best team in the country? Probably not. But they beat everyone in front of them. Is it their fault that they don't get to play a team like Alabama or Georgia or Clemson during the regular season? Not really. They played UCLA in the non-con the last two years. They faced Ohio State in 2019 and Michigan in 2017. They aren't scared. But they weren't allowed to play non-conference games this year so all they could do is play the teams they were allowed to play and beat them. They did. But what the playoff committee showed this year is that they want no part of giving the little guy a chance. It's not a playoff. It's a Power Five Invitational. If you aren't in one of those five leagues, you have absolutely no chance to play for everything. Not only was Cincinnati not in, it was behind two-loss Oklahoma and THREE-LOSS Florida. I think Florida's a good team. They very well might beat the hell out of Cincinnati if the two teams played. But if playing the games doesn't count, why play them?
Even worse than Cincinnati was Coastal Carolina. The Chanticleers went unbeaten. They added a game against BYU, putting their entire season on the line, because it was the only way they thought they could prove themselves. Coastal beat Louisiana...which beat Iowa State at Iowa State...and Coastal was ranked two spots below Iowa State. What. The. Hell. Are. We. Doing?
