Let's get right to it. My friend.
How are you Chip? All right. Let me I talked about this last week.
Unfortunately on Wednesday. This had not happened yet. Jeff Halfley left Boston College where he was the head coach for I think four seasons bowl games in three of the four years to take the defensive coordinator post with the Green Bay Packers and it triggered like end of the college football world scenario. How could you leave and all I could think of is like, you know, it's Boston College, right? That's he didn't leave, you know, Mike Norvell didn't leave Florida State to become the defensive coordinator with Green Bay. This was Jeff Halfley who even though he went to bowls in three or four years, probably a year away from getting got if he doesn't like maybe put up a seven win season. Why did why did people take this as a sign at the end? The world was ending.
Well, I'm glad you asked because I've actually had a lot of time to be able to, you know, have my initial reaction, which is similar to you because guess what? When I heard about Jeff Halfley as like a quote-unquote rising star in the industry, right? It was during his eight seasons in the NFL as a position coach that eventually got him the defensive coordinator job at Ohio State that eventually got him the head coach job at Boston College.
You're right about job pressure. He was on I don't know about hot seat, but he was facing real job pressure going into last season. He gets to six and six and I don't know if you remember this, but they won every game 27 to 24 and their non-conference schedule was UConn Army Northern Illinois Holy Cross. I will say that again because there are zero power conference opponents right there. That is UConn Army Northern Illinois Holy Cross, Michigan State cycles onto the schedule next season.
Missouri will be on a future schedule. There is a term that we use in the coaching industry called restarting the clock. And Jeff Halfley was doing a good career move for Jeff Halfley. But again, that was my initial reaction.
I've had time to be able to reach out to people. The reason why you hear the world is ending everything this crazy is because coaches are reaching out to the NFL and position coaches are reaching out to the NFL. Head coaches are reaching out to the NFL. But the thing that I found that has been the ultimate conversation ender, the NFL doesn't want them. The NFL loves people with NFL experience, except David Tepper. And what I've heard is there are a lot of college coaches, especially at the assistant level who have been trying to escape the sport because of what the sport has become for an assistant coach where you are not making the eight, $9 million a year that the head coach is making.
But the NFL doesn't want them. And so you hear people talk with all the emotion and passion and they are using Jeff Halfley. I mean, it's very similar to politics, right?
Like I've got this big thing. I find something that pops up in the news and I point to it and I say this, this is what I'm talking about. And oftentimes you are missing the mark in your desperation to prove your point.
Jeff Halfley is missing the mark in the desperation to prove your point. But what has been interesting is that in the coaching profession, there are a lot of coaches which have expressed that they are willing to take a pay cut. They're willing to take a demotion to get out of the work life balance for the current college football coaches. But the conversation ender is the NFL doesn't want them. The NFL prefers coaches from the NFL coaching pipeline and a lot of college coaches.
Let's be a little bit cold about this. You're probably a better recruiter than you are a coach. And recruiting is the lifeblood of college football. So yeah, you hear these big voices in the sport that are echoing what the coaching community is grumbling about. But the fact of the matter is Jeff Halfley got this job because of his NFL background. Right.
And that's typical. It's not unusual that coaches come back to college after being in the NFL for the right job, you know, for a higher profile job and then use that to get back to the league. I mean, if Halfley was doing better, by the way, two things about the schedule you laid out from Boston College this past season, one sounded remarkably like Michigan's. And honestly, I'm on a rant, a continuing rant about because now we're in bracket time where we're sitting here. We're sitting here talking about the UNLV competed for a Mountain West championship. They didn't make the game because of people pop up because they had to decide the Mountain West title game participants by a computer. Right.
Go and look it up. But UNLV was right there in the mix. I mean, that was that was a that's that's like playing, you know, a two lane or something like that. Yes, it was not that they were not tackling dummies. Right. They were. But but they kind of were. I mean, yeah. And East Carolina, although it was competitive for about a quarter and a minute it in Ann Arbor. But so because of that schedule and NBC, you know, kind of created this illusion of being good.
Yeah. They all knew that the the the cards were ultimately the house of cards was going to fall down. But I'm curious about this because I heard you guys I was listening to the Cover Three podcast yesterday and you and Bud Elliott were really getting into it. Who could take that job? Did I hear correctly that Chip Kelly's reached out or Bill O'Brien? I mean, that's a big Kelly is the head coach at UCLA. OK, so why would he want that?
There's two. Chip Kelly is a target for the Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator job. And it's possible that he might not get that, you know, go back to coaches want out. And the NFL is like, ah, we're good. And he was an NFL head coach at two different stops.
Really good. The Chip Kelly. But he was good. I mean, anyway, Chip Kelly is set that to the side for a second. Bill O'Brien is one of reportedly five candidates who interviewed yesterday. Bill O'Brien would love to be the head coach at Boston College. He is currently the recently hired offensive coordinator at Ohio State.
Ryan Day had his signing day press conference today. He said that he could not shed any more light on Bill O'Brien's candidacy at Boston College. But if he stays with the Buckeyes, he will be the offensive coordinator and primary play caller with the big headline being that Ryan Day is willing to give up play calling duties. I think Bill O'Brien would be a good hire for Boston College. And I think that given the scenario in the cycle, that's not a bad spot to land for a program that is short on investment, short on resources, not playing the same game that Florida State Clemson and Miami are.
It does have a long, proud tradition in history. And so if you're Bill O'Brien, you know, you're not ladder climbing, right? If you're Bill O'Brien taking that job, then you are at least knowing that you're getting a coach with a track record of knowing what he's doing as opposed to trying to get an up and comer that's that's never had a power conference job and might not understand the shortcomings. Bill O'Brien, who is at Alabama, you know, who is back and forth between the NFL and college, who is at Penn State. He is supremely aware of the difference between Boston College and the very top of the sport. And so if he wants that job and he's willing to take that job, I think Bill O'Brien would be a good landing spot for Boston. I mean, would be a good landing spot for the Boston College program, given late in the cycle, losing Jeff Halfley, everything else. So here's the thing about O'Brien is that he probably is immune to this being a career ender, right? Because the chances are chances of it going well enough at Boston College to stay there for any length of time to I mean, to rehabilitate your your career, to become attractive as an NFL head coach. You know, if you're a head coach in B.C. and you can manage to win like eight legitimate games, not eight games where you beat, you know, three or four of the worst teams in the ACC, of which there may be several next year contenders for that with as big as the league is going to be. And then, you know, squeak away for conference for non-conference wins against the likes of that they played last year. You can always get out of games against Michigan State who actually isn't that good anyway.
You might want to keep that one on your schedule. And maybe he can rehabilitate if he wants to go back and be an NFL head coach. Or maybe he just wants to be a head coach for another five, six years and then retire.
Like, I thought when... Ken? Well, I was gonna say, Bill O'Brien was born in Dorchester. He grew up in Andover.
He went to Brown. I mean, he's obviously his long history with the Patriots. I think it's a culture fit, as they say.
Okay. I mean, you talk about tradition. I mean, there have been... Tom Coughlin was the coach at Boston College. There have been Jack McNell, not the younger Jack McNell, the older Jack McNell, who I think might have been the coach when Doug Flutie, you know, you know, through that miracle pass that beat Miami. They have had really good programs in the past.
I mean, who was... Jankowski, right? When Steve Logan was there and Matt Ryan, Mattie Ice were there. Look, they've had really good programs in the past. It's just been a while. And frankly, I don't see Boston College ever returning to the top. Let me get to the top, because this is another thing you guys talked about.
And this is not even the big news, but it's smaller news that could become something big. The SEC, I teased the Wonder Twins. You remember the Wonder Twins from Saturday morning League of Justice cartoons, right? These were purple cartoon characters, and they could form different shapes.
And like, one was always, like, had something to do with water, and the other was an animal. But the Wonder Twins, the SEC and the Big Ten, are forming some sort of a, I don't know, a working group, an alliance, a watchdog situation. What's the end game for those two leagues getting together and keeping an eye on things as a unit?
I'm glad you asked, Adam, because now I'm able to unveil what I have as what I think the best possible name for this. It is, in their own descriptions, an advisory board, okay? And they are advised, they cannot put in any rules, but they can advise both the SEC and the Big Ten on how to vote for certain issues, on how they should feel about certain issues.
It is a voting bloc. Sounds like an alliance to me. Well, I guess what the alliance worked in that it delayed the college football playoff from expanding in a way that would have gotten Florida State into the college football playoff. I mean, if the alliance's goal was to keep Florida State out of the college football playoff in the 2023 season, congratulations, you got it. But here's what we're calling it. Are you ready for this?
Yes. The Super Two Advisory Board, which spelled out is STAB, because what is it going to do to college athletics? So the STAB is going to operate in a couple of different ways. The STAB is very important for the future of the college football playoff because we don't actually have a guarantee for the college football playoff beyond the 2025 season. We have reports of media rights partners would like to be a part of it. But, you know, when ESPN issues a report that ESPN is interested in buying up all the college football playoff, that's interesting because I think there are others in college athletics who think they should go to multiple bidders, especially with this expanded playoff, you know, an NFL model, so to speak, where you allow everybody to go together, you package it. So the future of the college football playoff, also six plus six versus five and seven, you know, those decisions in terms of how the playoff is formatted, the SEC and the Big Ten want to make sure that they are working together. Also, the future of name, image and likeness.
Why do I think this is significant? Because the STAB was created right after the NCAA came after Tennessee. And so I think the STAB is a power move to say, Hey, hey, hey, you, you really want to do this?
You really want to spend your time nitpicking over name, image and likeness when we all know where this thing is headed in in a few years. And then finally, the STAB wants to make sure that the SEC and the Big Ten agree on all of the finer points of what the future of college football and college athletics at the highest level looks like. And honestly, I think that the STAB is a great sign that some of the most powerful people in college sports have learned from their mistakes of 2020. That when the conference commissioners at the highest level were not talking to each other or trying to make moves to be the first one through the gate to do one thing or another was chaos. Big Ten cancels, then uncancels. Pac-12 follows and follows. Like, I think that the STAB shows that the SEC and the Big Ten are not going to have the same situation that we had in 2020 when Alabama shows up in the national championship game, having played a full season and Ohio State had played four games.
Well, real quick about that, and I'm not going to belabor this point, but my reading of that was that the five major commissioners did get together and thought that they were going to wait. And then the Big Ten goes and tries to be holier than thou. Right. Right.
Your read, my read, his read, the point is they weren't talking. Well, they did it first, but the Big Ten didn't apparently like what they heard and said, nope, we're going to be holier than thou. We canceled. SEC, ACC and the Big 12 went, we're just going to wait this out.
We might play. The Pac-12, who's joined at the hip, was anyway. Now they, I guess, technically are part of the Big Ten. Anyway, one more thing. Oh, I also think the STAB is not super impressed with Charlie Baker's big proposal because there was another line in the STAB's official release that was like, we have gotten together because of pending litigation, previous lawsuits and proposed in governance proposals. And I only know of one widely available governance proposal that they would be not so thrilled with.
And I think it's the one that Charlie Baker did, which you heard Bud Elliott say sounded like somebody was turning in a project late, like a lot of surface level stuff, not a lot of details, but let's just check all the boxes on the grading rubric and get like fives out of 10 on everything across the board. Here's the truth of the matter is that what happened yesterday or two days ago, whatever it was with the NLRB in the regional office in, I guess it was in New England, by declaring Dartmouth basketball players, men's basketball players as employees is just the beginning. We will have collective bargaining for college athletics. Maybe it'll just be revenue sports. Maybe it'll ultimately just be football and men's basketball, to be honest. But that's coming and that's going to be the biggest game changer we've got in college athletics, but we're still going to watch the games because it might just be football. It might just be, I think it'll be basketball too.
I think it'll be meds. There's too much money involved in the men's basketball tournament for that right now. That's true. That's true.
And if 60 schools separate or maybe more, I don't know. I can't help but think that there are schools in the SEC that are going, well, why is Vanderbilt here again? But somebody's got to lose.
I keep pointing this out. Somebody's got to absorb all the L's and Vanderbilt is there for that. Don't make me tap the sign. As they say, take the check. Take the losses. Absolutely. Somebody has to.
It's just, it's reality. Who's winning the Superbowl, Chip Patterson. I don't, I don't invest.
I'm not asking you to wager. I'm not, I don't, I just, I don't, I don't jump on the other side of Patrick Mahomes. Okay. But real talk, better quarterback, better defense, better coaching.
Who says no to any of those? Better quarterback, better defense. Yeah. You are three for three in that regard. So they're the, but they're the underdogs, strangely enough. Everyone hates us. No one believes in us. Uh, chip Patterson, you're the best man. Sounds good. Y'all be well.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-02-07 17:50:46 / 2024-02-07 17:57:52 / 7
