Their fans seem a little unresponsive, but UMD’s women’s hockey players said they enjoy the cutouts of fans at AMSOIL Arena, which include some dogs, to celebrate the Bulldogs. The women (4-2) open the second half of the schedule at Minnesota January 4-5, then return to AMSOIL Jan. 15-16 against Ohio State. The UMD men beat them home, facing St. Cloud State January 2 and again January 8.

The absurdity of the NCAA football championship scheme blossomed to unprecedented levels last weekend. In case you haven’t heard, and may not be at all interested, you might share my disdain for a platform that has become an automatic promotional gimmick for certain few universities, mainly Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and one extra, usually Auburn, LSU, and sometimes Notre Dame.

There is no doubt Alabama is the No. 1 football program in the country, and Clemson is sort of 1A, as the two of them seem to dominate winning the bowl playoffs, which is a system where a selection committee picks four teams for two semifinal games, and then the winners play for the championship. One year, Alabama got in and won even though they had lost s couple games and didn’t even qualify for the Southeast Conference playoffs, but still got voted in.

Frankly, I am sick and tired of watching Alabama and Clemson play annually for the title. And I have suggested a remedy many times, but it’s time to bring it up again. There are five Power 5 conferences, and they are the Southeast Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big 12 (which used to be the Southwest, with Texas, Oklahoma, etc.) the Big Ten, and the Pac-12.

All of the media folks voting on the polls get almost all of their information from ESPN, and it turns out ESPN has a contract to promote the SEC, so it’s no wonder their announcers annually report that the SEC is so good that a team with one or even two losses might still be good enough to win the national title. They say that while they ignore, overlook, discredit and ridicule the Pac-12, which is mostly on the West Coast, and their games often start at 9 p.m. in Central time, and 10 p.m. on the East Coast, where ESPN and the media heavies are based. They don’t broadcast many Pac-12 games, and they rarely if ever consider them for the polls. By ignoring them, they can overlook promoting them for the playoffs.

I became hooked on the Pac-12 when I got a chance to attend an Oregon game against Nevada in the Chip Kelly coaching era, when he instituted a rapid-tempo no-huddle offense that exhausted the defense and drew ridicule from coaches up to and including Alabama coach Nick Saban, who said Kelly and Oregon should be ruled illegal because they play so fast the defense gets exhausted, so it’s not fair. I wrote at the time that last I checked, the offense made as many plays as the defense.

The whole Pac-12 has evolved to be the most exciting conference in the country, with the most creative and explosive defenses in the country also. Their offenses overrun defenses and make them look bad, and I believe they would do that to the best SEC teams, too.

The year that Chris McCaffrey was a superstar at Stanford, I hustled home from UMD hockey games and caught Stanford as often as possible to watch him run. At the end of the season, I remember watching an ESPN announcer saying he had never heard of McCaffrey until broadcasting one game at the end of the season. That’s what I’m talking about: If a national ESPN broadcaster had never heard of him or seen him even on highlights, how could he be fair in judging him? He is now a star for Carolina, and Teddy Bridgewater’s play would be made much easier if McCaffrey could get over an injury.

Anyhow, so now we’re back, and going into last weekend, the word was Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State and Notre Dame were the top 4 teams and likeliest to be named Sunday. Trouble was, Clemson, which lost early to Notre Dame, crushed Notre Dame Saturday 34-10. That seemed to open the way for Texas A & M to be the fourth team. But nope, the committee voted the same four in. Didn’t matter that Notre Dame got whipped, or that Alabama barely beat Florida 52-46 in overtime in the SEC playoff. Both got in.

So Alabama will play Notre Dame, and Ohio State will play Clemson. In a way, I would love to see Notre Dame beat Alabama and Clemson beat Ohio State, because then Clemson would play Notre Dame for the THIRD TIME this season! Ridiculous.

My solution is that first, the rules should be changed so that only one team, designated as champion from its conference, could qualify for the semifinals, and in the ratings, those conferences would be ranked 1-2-3-4-5. Whichever one is declared fifth would play the fourth ranked team, with that winner advancing to face the No. 1 team, while the 2 and 3 teams met in the other semifinal. And if a top team gets beat in its league playoff, or has lost to another semifinalist, it doesn’t get invited.

That way, we would have the champion from the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 all in the running, and if a conference is the strongest, with the best parity top to bottom — as I believe the Pac-12 is — then their winner with one or two losses would get a shot at winning the national title.

Last weekend, I watched Oregon get a late invited to replace Covic-19-stricken Washington in the Pac-12 playoff against Southern California, and the Ducks held off the USC Trojans 31-24 in a wildly exciting finish Friday night for the Pac-12 title. On Saturday, I watched Stanford take a 17-3 lead over UCLA at halftime, but Chip Kelly is now back in college, coaching UCLA, so I kept watching. Amazingly, the Bruins scored 31 straight points in the second half, to take a 34-17 lead in the fourth quarter, only to have Stanford rally for two passing touchdowns in the final 2:34, the second with 18 seconds remaining, to tie the game 34-34. In overtime, Stanford scored a touchdown but UCLA came back and also scored a TD to tie it 41-41. Second OT, and Stanford scored to take a 48-41 lead, and this time, when UCLA struck for a touchdown, Kelly chose to go for a 2-point conversion to win the game. They failed, about a foot short, and Stanford won 48-47.

Would have been a great bowl game, or playoff game.

Bulldogs back home

The UMD men’s hockey team started off 5-0-1 in the NCHC pod round-robin at Omaha, but the Bulldogs lost to Colorado College 4-1 in their third game in four days, then they lost a 2-0 lead in the third period for a 2-2 tie against Omaha, and lost in a shootout. In their final game, UMD had a rematch against North Dakota, after beating the Fighting Hawks in a 2-2 tie that came down to Nick Swaney’s second-round shootout goal, and this time the game had an anticlimactic ending, as North Dakota scored on a deflected right point shot with 49 seconds remaining to lose 2-1.

Kobe Roth, who scored five goals in the first four games, missed two games and played with an upper body injury as the Bulldogs offense fizzled. They played well, though, and when Omaha beat Colorado College 3-0 Monday, it ended the pod play with all teams playing either nine or 10 games.
North Dakota wrested the top spot with a record of 5-2-2-1 — which means wins, losses, overtime wins, and overtime losses. The shootouts only give you an added point for standings, and don’t count as a tie-breaker in NCAA rules. UMD is second, tied with St. Cloud State at 5-2-2-1, followed by Omaha at 5-3-2-0, CC at 2-3-2-1, Denver at 3-5-1-1, Miami and Western Michigan both at 2-6-0-2.

Great competition, and UMD is primed and ready for the second half, which will start with a series at St. Cloud State opening two weekends of home-and-home battles between the two rivals.

Vikings at New Orleans

The Minnesota Vikings were pretty certain they’d beat the Chicago Bears last Sunday and have a real shot at making the playoffs as they head into their final two games of the season. Instead, they ran into a very similar opponent in the Bears, who have a powerful running back in David Montgomery who is very similar to the Vikings Dalvan Cook. Neither defense could stop a good college team, which left it all up to the quarterbacks — Kirk Cousins of the Vikings and the formerly demoted Mitch Trubisky of the Bears.

Interesting match, because Cousins is good when his blocking lets him stay in the pocket to make a decision on passing, while Trubisky is at his best when forced to run out of the pocket and improvise. It was an exciting game, with the Bears defense coming alive to hammer Cousins 11 times, and at the last minute finish, they chase him back until he flung a hail Mary off balance. It made it to the end zone, where guys from both teams had a hand on before it bounced to Bears Sherrick McManus for an interception, to end the game and give the Bears a 33-27 victory.

That leaves the Vikings 6-8 and they go to New Orleans for a Christmas Day game against the recovering Drew Brees and the 10-4 Saints. The Bears are 7-7. The Vikings next week play at Detroit, and their chances of making the playoffs as a wild card team are very, very thin.

After the exciting college football games last weekend, I also enjoyed watching the Los Angeles Chargers against the Las Vegas Raiders. My main reason was that Justin Herbert, the rookie from Oregon drafted and signed as a backup by the Chargers, has been outstanding and could be the rookie of the year in the NFL. He has something like six games where he’s passed for over 300 yards, and he did it again against the Raiders. But when the Raiders lost their quarterback, they summoned a recently acquired backup — Marcus Mariota. He was a standout for the Tennessee Titans until they decide to go with Ryan Tannehill, who has done well. But Mariota was outstanding in leading the Raiders back into that game, where the Chargers finally won 30-27.

Herbert was 22-32 for 314 yards and two touchdowns for the Chargers and Mariuota was 17-28 with one touchdown coming out of the bullpen. Mariota also led the Raiders in rushing with 88 yards. The neat part is that Mariota was Chip Kelly’s ace at Oregon before Herbert came in, and Herbert said Mariota was his idol when he was in high school. Two Oregon quarterbacks doing their thing, head to head.

Well, have the merriest of Christmases, and we’ll reconnect next week.