The Battle of Gettysburg between Union Major General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac and Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was fought in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 1 – 3, 1863. By the time Abraham Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg some 4 and half months later to dedicate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery the dead of both sides of the battle were still being buried when President Lincoln stood to speak:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
After only 2 minutes of speaking, President Abraham Lincoln was done, but he said more in those 2 minutes than had been said by an American elected leader about the importance of a government that serves “The People” since Thomas Jefferson put his hand to the Declaration of Independence almost 90 years before.
We here at Coaches Hot Seat have watched with great alarm that in our 25 or so years of adult life that the United States is quickly becoming a place where the Government no longer serves “The People.” Washington DC is turning into a “Roman” capital of sorts where powerful corporations and people spend millions and even billions of dollars to influence our elected officials, often in ways that are in direct opposition to the best interests of The People of the United States. It is now way beyond the Wall Street Bastards or Large Corporations buying up any and every elected official with “campaign contributions.” No, it is much deeper than that as now everyone turns to Washington DC for a handout, a tax break, a subsidy, an advantage, and luckily for people that have a huge monetary interest in buying politicians views, there are thousands of lobbyists in Washington DC (many former elected officials themselves) that are little more than paid whores that will represent anyone and everyone that walks through the door with money in their pocket.
The “government of the people, by the people, for the people, (that) shall not perish from the earth,” envisioned by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg rings very hollow in a country that has a capital full of elected officials that will sell themselves out to the highest bidder in order to get the money to keep themselves in office when they are the one’s that are supposed to be representing The People. Yes, there are some elected and appointed officials in our government that do The People’s work, but the sad reality is that the Washington DC of 2010 is little more than a cesspool full of folks that care about little more than the next election and how they are going to raise enough money to stay in political office.
There is no easy answer to fix the massive problem that is modern day Washington DC, beyond the fact that the American People have in the power of their hands and their votes to turnout the politicians that do not serve us. After it is “us,” The American People that own the United States of America and therefore it is our responsibility to both hold politicians accountable for their actions and to vote them out of office when they do not do the People’s work. The US Government is not the United States of America. The People of the American Republic are the country and it is important that the freedoms and liberties that so many men and women have died for over the years are not given up, which will have only wasted the sacrifices of the brave people that have come before us. As Mark Twain said:
“Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”
Right now most of the people serving in our government do no deserve our loyalty because they care very little about serving The People of the country. When The People again come first on the priority list of our elected officials instead of the stream of lobbyists that practically live on Capitol Hill these days doling out “advice” along with gobs of money the entire Republic is in danger. If the average American ever got a glimpse into how easy it is to gain influence over our elected officials with “campaign contributions” and how all that money directly impacts the laws of our nation and the lives of Americans the country that was founded upon a Revolution might just have another.
On this day of Memorial it is natural and right to remember the sacrifices of those that have made the ultimate sacrifice so that we may live in Freedom. It also is a day to look forward and to make sure that the Government that we own actually represents its owners. As the 7 th President of the Untied States, Andrew Jackson once said:
“As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience, and of the press, it will be worth defending.”
Let us hope that the Government of the United States again becomes something that we can proudly defend and a government that accurately represents the greatness of the country and its owners: The American People.
College football has really become an almost year long sport and the amount of news stories that we have linked in this month of May has almost tripled compared to 2007. There are now a lot of people writing about college football year round and what an embarrassment of riches there is for people to write about the game these days.
Michigan’s Self-Imposed Penalties
Reading through all the news stories and Michigan’s response to the NCAA it looks to us that the violations that UM admitted to were of a very minor nature, but were still clear violations of NCAA rules. From where we sit there is no excuse for a college athletic team, coach and players to break the rules of the NCAA because it is the responsibility of everyone in the program, especially the head coach to know the rules thoroughly.
In fact, if we were a head football coach in college football we would know the NCAA rules cold, because knowing the rules allows the coach to best use the rules to his advantage. The rules that any organizing body sets down for a sport provide the framework and hopefully provide an even playing field for all the teams or individuals in the sport, but our experience over the years is that the people that really know the rules know best how to take advantage of them and to also find new ways to do things that are legal but fall outside of the rules. The NCAA’s recent move to stop the recruiting by several coaches at one time that Auburn was doing was just a reaction from the AU staff finding a new and innovative way to recruit players that was not prohibited by the rules until the NCAA reacted to stop the practice.
The great lesson for other current head coaches and especially assistant coaches with Michigan’s troubles is that the NCAA rules exist for a reason, maybe not always for a logical reason, but the rules do exist and the coach that both knows the rules and is thinking about innovative ways to do things that will not break the current rules is one of the jobs of the head coach. At a minimum a head coach must make a commitment to both knowing and following the NCAA rules to a fault, because to not do so puts the athletic team and thus the University at risk for potential embarrassment and punishment by the governing body that the schools is a member of, the NCAA in this case.
As for Rich Rodriguez’s culpability with the NCAA rules that Michigan has admitted to breaking it is of course entirely his fault because he is the HEAD FOOTBALL COACH AT MICHIGAN. The Buck truly does stop with Rich Rodriguez and if anything goes wrong in the Michigan program whether he knows about it or not it is his fault, as it is with every head coach, because the head coach is the one responsible for the running of the football program. If we had been in Rodriguez’s shoes we probably would not have filed a report of our own responding and reacting to Michigan’s report to the NCAA, but if we were asked to produce something we would have turned in a piece of paper that said something like:
“I am the Head Football Coach at the University of Michigan and thus any NCAA rules violations are my fault because it is I and I alone that is completely responsible for the performance and actions of the Michigan football program.”
Of course, that Michigan had to admit that it broke NCAA rules, even if they seem somewhat minor to us, only turns up the heat on Rich Rodriguez even more for the 2010 season. We still stand by what we said the day that Rich Rodriguez was hired at Michigan. We believe in Rich Rodriguez as a head football coach, but he is one of the worst hires “fit” wise since World War II and the reality of that bad “fit” is something that will be tremendously difficult for Rodriguez and Michigan to overcome. We said a month or so ago that Rodriguez will need a much better than average year in ’10 to return for the 2011 season and that means with all the changes that Rodriguez is still working through with his football team there is at least a 50/50 chance that the UM job will come open in December 2010.
Kansas ticket scandal
There has also been a lot written about the Kansas ticket scandal in the past few days and we don’t have anything to add to the facts of the story, but one of the members of Coaches Hot Seat worked in the ticket office at his school and was not surprised at all about the revelations at Kansas.
There is a reason that so many athletic departments audit their ticket departments on a regular basis, because tickets to college athletic events are about as close a thing to money there is in our society today. Tickets to high demand sporting contests can be sold easily and often anonymously to the general public and that is why that the person that runs the ticket office at college or university should be above reproach legally, morally and ethically.
Beyond the ticket manager being above reproach he/she should also be very comfortable in being audited on a regular basis just like an employee at a bank that has access or oversees the bank’s or clients’ money. The ticket manager should also be able to identify and hire people that have a high degree of integrity themselves because there is a lot that goes on in every college ticket office that requires lots of employee hours to make sure the office is run correctly.
The CHS member that worked in the college ticket office has talked to us over the years about the number of calls that came in on a regular basis from alumni, boosters, ticket buyers, etc., that wanted some kind of special treatment that would lead to either more or better tickets. The person that runs the college ticket office should be someone that can stand up to even the most powerful boosters when they made inappropriate demands, but also someone that recognizes that it is the alumni, boosters and just regular ticket buyers in the public that drives a lot of the revenue for the athletic department.
There are a lot of very good reasons that the college athletic director should be very interested in the ticket office being run in an proper and ethical way, but another reason the AD should be in regular contact with the individual that runs the ticket office is that it is one of the few interfaces with the alumni, boosters and general public and thus gives the AD a window into how his athletic department looks to the outside world. Anyone that has ever run a restaurant knows that often the most important feedback that a restaurant owner can get is from people that normally will not complain when they are unhappy over something. The complaining person will always be there to criticize when something is wrong, but the person that has a bad experience and just decides to keep it to him/herself and then either decides to not return to the restaurant or spends a lot less than they might have is the person that the business owner must reach if he/she wants to truly understand their business. Likewise, with college athletic departments there are multitudes of different attitudes held by the “customers” of the athletic program and a clearer understanding of how the alumni, boosters and general public view the athletic teams the better the entire athletic program can be run.
The ticket office is one of the main channels to the outside world for a college athletic program and any AD that does not know everything that is going on inside the ticket office is not doing his/her job. That any AD would not know about a ticket scandal on the scale of went on at Kansas is either complete and total incompetence or is just someone not telling the truth. Please, if there is someone that can read the Yahoo! Sports story on the Kansas ticket scandal, Ticket scandal rocks Kansas, and come away believing that this is something that could on in a college athletic department that was being run properly then you haven’t a clue to how business in the real world works.
Memo to college athletic ADs: You should be talking to a your ticket office manager on a weekly basis at least and you should know everything and anything that goes on in that office with possible fraud only being one of the reasons to have a deep interest in the ticket office’s operations. Assume the ticket manager is nothing less than a “bank teller” that handles millions of dollars every year and should be treated like any person that handles millions of dollars a year. What was it Ronald Reagan said to Gorbachev? “Trust, but verify.” That should be the ADs mantra when it comes to the college ticket office and if the person running your ticket office is not comfortable with that “Trust, but verify” attitude then you need to find a new ticket office manager.
College Football Hall of Fame Inductees
The newest College Football Hall of Fame Inductees were announced yesterday and from the players and coaches that we remember seeing playing here at Coaches Hot Seat, roughly 1980 forward, this is a very good group.
Desmond Howard – A lot of people remember Desmond Howard for his punt and kickoff returns, but he was also an incredibly difficult person to defend at wide receiver position as well. Anyone that has ever played tried to defend someone that is quicker than them knows how it puts one back on their heels and Michigan made a lot of hay with by using Howard’s speed and quickness to get him and other receivers open for all kinds of pass routes. If we were tasked with defending Howard in both of our primes, our only chance would have been to get right up on the line of scrimmage and use what we call the “reach out and grab the shirt” routine and hope the official didn’t catch the hold! If that didn’t work we would have to go to backup plan, the “pop him in the mouth and hope he is knocked out for a few plays” strategy, which also tends to draw penalties from the officials….. Sigh…. Of course, Desmond Howard should be in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Pat Tillman – What can one really say about Great Pat Tillman? Pat is a hero to all of us here at Coaches Hot Seat and to try and understand the sacrifices he made in his life is hard for us to fathom to this day. Those of us here at CHS that served in the US military did not leave a family or a multi-million dollar payday to do so, and those two things by themselves identify a type of Man we don’t run across very often in 21 st century America. Bill Dwyre of the Los Angeles Times wrote a great column on Pat back in April, Pat Tillman film a haunting blindside, and Bill summed up this Great Man Pat Tillman very well when he wrote:
“He was a football hero, a star safety for the Arizona Cardinals. Before that, he was a free spirit linebacker at Arizona State, whose hair flowed out of his helmet and whose tackles left physical and mental imprints.
When he walked away from a fat pro contract to become a soldier, fighting in the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan, we all swooned. What a guy, what a hero, what a story.
We are so used to pro athletes being incapable of gazing beyond their own navels, unable to fathom anything of importance beyond their next contract and ensuing trip to the jewelry store, that we couldn’t get enough of Tillman. Journalism celebrates the unusual, and this sure was.
Like other writers in the West, I had a head start. I had been face to face with Tillman, had met him, had a feel for him. Once, after an otherwise unmemorable UCLA-Arizona State game, my postgame question, as we walked along, brought him to a stop. I had danced around something controversial and he did what no other athlete, before or since, has done. He called me on it.
“That’s not what you really want to know,” he said. “Ask it again.”
I did, this time straight to the point. He answered the same way. I was now a Pat Tillman fan. Veteran scribe learns from long-haired linebacker.
I laughed when he was taken near the end of the NFL draft and the babblers at ESPN assured all that he was too small to make it. They had likely never talked to him, certainly never been hit by him.
I loved the stories about him riding his bike to training camp and, when he drove, parking his junky old car next to the Beemers and Mercedes in the team lot.
When he died, when the tragedy dripped from the front pages and wept from the TV screens, I fell right in line. It was a story of heroics, the red, white and blue kind. It was more apple pie and Chevrolet than Don McLean, more American than John Wayne.
He wasn’t just a hero. He was our hero.”
Yes, Pat Tillman was “our hero” and we honor him for the grand life that he lived.
A few years back when Pat was still serving in the US Army a few of us here at Coaches Hot Seat were in Los Angeles for a USC football game and we had dinner with a person that was not thrilled with the United States’ war with Iraq. Since there are a few of us here at CHS that spent a considerable amount of time in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s – early 1990s including Operation Desert Storm we always have an interest in the goings on the Middle East and we were interested to hear someone else’s view on the subject.
Somehow Pat Tillman’s name came up during our dinner conversation and that was the first time, but not the last, that we heard that Tillman had become disenchanted with the United States’ war in Iraq and that he thought that the reasons he joined the US military were being undermined by an unnecessary war against Iraq.
Those of us here at CHS never really understood why we invaded Iraq in 2003 and we still do not understand the reasons for the Iraqi war today. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and he treated his people like animals, but we have leaders of countries in the western hemisphere that are no better and we never saw the Bush II Administration taking us to war against those countries. For anyone that has forgotten, it was the Al Qaeda led by the Son of a Bitch Osama bin Laden that attacked the United States on September 11 and how the United States leaped from a small group of worthless bastards that hide out in caves in Afghanistan that actually attacked our country to attacking Iraq and Hussein about 2,000 miles away, that did not attack the U.S. is still a incredibly mystery to us. That about 99.5 percent of the people involved in making the decision to go to war against Iraq were either hiding out in the National Guard or getting deferments during the Vietnam War may answer some of the questions of why the United States has now spent almost a Trillion Dollars to take out a two-bit dictator like Saddam Hussein, but they certainly don’t answer all of them. No, somewhere in the haystack that is the US war with Iraq there is the real reason that the United States attacked a country that did not attack it nor even threatened to attack it or any of its allies, and when we find that real reason we will be sure to let everyone know. Until then, all we know is that we have poured 1 Trillion Dollars down a rat hole and somehow the morons that ran this war didn’t even get us first dibs on the Iraqi oil. Yes, those were Real Men of Genius alright!
Getting back to Pat Tillman we have read a good bit on Tillman’s views of the Iraq war but we have never been able to ask anyone personally that actually knew Pat during the last years of his life on his views of US foreign policy, but someday we may get that chance and we have no doubt that Pat Tillman thought long and hard about those issues during that time. As Bill Dwyre of the Los Angeles Times related in his column, Pat Tillman was not someone that would just take something at face value, and none of us ever should either.
The Coaches Hot Seat Quote of Today is by Socrates and is dedicated to Pat Tillman because it sums up his life so very well:
“I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can…And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same… I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.” Socrates
We have no doubt that even Socrates would have marveled at the principles of a Man like Pat Tillman.
Congratulations to Pat Tillman and his family for an honor well deserved.
Alfred Williams – We don’t remember Colorado LB Alfred Williams very well, but we do remember Bill McCartney’s very tough defenses at Colorado and how they shut down Notre Dame in the 1990-91 Orange Bowl beating the Irish 10-9. He sounds like he was a Hellava football player and worthy of the CFB Hall of Fame.
Coach Barry Alvarez – Anyone that has run into Coach Alvarez over the years knows that they have met someone special and in many ways a person that is a throwback to an America that doesn’t really exist anymore. One thing we always marveled at was how touch Alvarez’s Wisconsin teams played and that we would not have wanted to be on the field against the Badgers, especially on the offensive and defensive lines, when he was head coach at UW. Of course, that is what one would expect from a guy that played LB for Bob Devaney at Nebraska! No doubt, we have always thought since Barry Alvarez finished his coaching career that he was destined for the CFB Hall of Fame.
Coach Gene Stallings – Another guy that is a throwback to another era is Coach Gene Stallings who started his college career by being one of Paul Bryant’s Junction Boys at Texas A&M and finished it by following in the footsteps of Bryant at Alabama. We have had dinner with some of our Alabama friends a number of times over the years and they have wondered aloud about the positive difference it would have made if Gene Stallings had been hired at Alabama to directly follow Paul Bryant in 1982 instead of Ray Perkins who only stayed 4 years at UA who was then followed by 3 years of Bill Curry. In 7 years at Alabama, 1990 to 1996, Coach Stallings went 70 – 25 (we don’t care what the NCAA says about the 1993 season, Alabama and Stallings won 70 games during those years) and returned Alabama to the top of college football. From 1992 to 1996 Alabama finished 1 st four times in the SEC West and played in the SEC Championship Game in each of those years. Coach Stallings just was unlucky that he was coaching against Steve Spurrier in those same years at Florida who was on a roll of his own of 4 straight SEC titles between 1993 and 1996. There is no doubt in our mind that Coach Stallings should be a member of the CFB Hall of Fame and also one would have a hard time finding a better man to boot.
Pebble Beach and Big Sur
Several of us here at Coaches Hot Seat took a trip down to the Monterey Peninsula this past weekend to get a close-up look at Pebble Beach before the US Open shows up in three weeks and Pebble is going to be a great challenge. Pebble Beach is in great shape with all the rain they had this spring and although the rough is not deep it will be challenging because of how small the greens are at Pebble. We are looking forward to a great US Open in June and if they have the same weather we had last weekend, sunny with some wind, this is going to great fun watching the best golfers in the world take on this spectacular golf course all set in one of our (and our wives!) favorite places on the planet, the Monterey Peninsula!
17 Mile Drive looking towards Cypress Point Golf Club
There have been 4 US Open’s played at Pebble Beach but the one that stands out to us here at Coaches Hot Seat is the 1982 US Open where Tom Watson beat Jack Nicklaus with a great shot on the 17 th. Narrated by the Great Jim McKay of ABC Sports.
Boise State President Bob Kustra speaks out on the Bogus BCS a lot better than we ever could as he addresses the Outrageous Revenue Discrimination that is practiced by the BCS.
We here at Coaches Hot Seat can only wonder where in the Hell the people behind and that prop up the Bogus BCS learned their warped ideas about the basic principles of our American Republic. Certainly, these Bastard BCS Boys should not go to bed each night believing that they believe in what America stands for or especially tell their children that they agree with the American founding idea that: “All Men are Created Equal.”
This is very simple: If you believe in or support the BCS then you might as well just rip the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution out of any US history book you own, because you are just throwing both in the garbage. How proud these college presidents must be that support the BCS and then turn around and talk about equality and the importance of treating all the students on their college campuses in the same way as it pertains to access and opportunity. The college presidents that vociferously defend the BCS know who you are and now everyone is learning that you are some of the Biggest Hypocrites in our country today.
Shame. Shame on everyone one of you that supports this Bogus BCS and then claims to be an American. Americans settle championships on the field of play, out in the open, where everyone can see who is the best team in a particular sport each season. The BCS is the opposite of that as it creates a series of Bogus Exhibition games that mean nothing at all and cap it with a manufactured “title game” that is voted on by one group of “Know-Nothings” that are often ignorant of college football teams across the country, head football coaches that watch less football games of teams across the country than your crazy Aunt, and worst of all, computer dweebs writing computer code in the dark while drinking Mountain Dew who come up with even more bogus “Computer Rankings.” Yes, that makes sense in America….If you are a Buffoon or like taking 3 hour lunches and 3 months off in the summer to lay around the beach like our European friends. What is really bad, is that Communist Cuban president Fidel Castro sends his Cuban baseball team out to play in playoff tournaments around the world, but these supposed Americans running the BCS and these shameful college presidents defend a BCS system that even a Communist like Castro would laugh at and wonder what kind of Moron came up with such a Stupid Idea. Throw in the Chinese Communists that are not afraid of real competition and playoff systems for their sports teams and Man, we have some people with some very strange ideas about how sports teams should decide championships and how to act like a Real American….IN AMERICA!
Yes, this all makes perfect sense. The BCS Boys are worse than Communist Fidel Castro and the Chinese Communists! All you Bogus Americans should be very proud of yourselves! NOT! Please, when you rip out the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution from all the books in your homes….RECYCLE! Or better yet take those books down to the local school so that the younger generations can read about and understand things that you clearly never learned!
“University presidents and others who care deeply about what higher education stands for should take a hard look at the chart. The lesson embedded in this chart teaches that it is fine to employ a system, such as the BCS, where the revenue is rigged in favor of some, at the expense of others, regardless of who performs better. That is the last lesson we should be teaching our students.
This chart tells only a slice of the full story of the BCS’s discrimination. The revenue discrimination is even greater when deserving teams are excluded from major bowls. The BCS system is designed to make it virtually impossible for teams from outside of the six Automatic Qualifying Conferences or Notre Dame to ever win the national championship. Further, the Automatic Qualifying Conferences are guaranteed 60% of the spots in the major bowls, and barring a highly aberrational situation (such as occurred last year for the first time), those conferences, along with Notre Dame, for all practical purposes will be given at least 90% of the major bowl spots each year.
In college basketball, where such revenue and access discrimination does not exist, a playoff decides the national champion. But at the highest level of college football, the BCS cartel, which benefits from such discrimination, prevents a playoff from occurring.
As the athletic director of the University of Minnesota was recently reported to have stated: “The BCS doesn’t want to share the money and that’s why there’s no football playoff. Let’s be honest.” I greatly appreciate his candor.
Unfortunately, the BCS speaks with much less candor. For example, a BCS spokesperson stated that “the best reason for supporting the BCS can be summed up in three words: every game counts.” But how do Boise State’s games count under the BCS when four of the past six years we went undefeated in the regular season, and yet never even came close to having an opportunity to compete for the national championship? How did all of those games, and all of those perfect records, count under the BCS? In fact, in two of those four undefeated regular seasons, Boise State was foreclosed from even playing in a major bowl.
But the problem isn’t with the BCS’s spokesperson’s statement – it’s with the system. It is time to revamp the system so that his statement that “every game counts” rings true. This is not a point unique to Boise State. Auburn in 2004, Utah in 2004, Boise State in 2006, Utah in 2008, and Boise State in 2009 all went undefeated but were denied a chance at a national championship by an injurious and fundamentally flawed system.
Many experts believe the BCS system violates U.S. law or at least raises very serious questions as to its legality. Some members of Congress have the same view and the Department of Justice has announced it is looking into the matter as well. Wouldn’t you think that such scrutiny from the highest councils of government would cause the BCS to modify the system to make it fair and equitable, instead of employing politically-connected and expensive consultants to cook up a menu of half-baked defenses?
The inspiring story of Butler’s basketball team tells the story of intercollegiate athletics at its best and what a contrast that is to the BCS. I have tremendous respect for what Butler accomplished, coming within an inch of winning the national championship. Boise State, on the other hand, has not been able to come within light years of doing the same in college football. But it is not because Boise State’s football team is not every bit as talented as Butler’s basketball team – rather it is because our university is never given the opportunity. Year after long year, Boise State football players are eliminated from the national championship not by any losses on the field, but by the BCS system. One of our attorneys, Alan Fishel, called the BCS system one in which even “perfection isn’t good enough.” Unfortunately, he is right, and if the BCS has anything to say about it, he may be right for a very long time. A BCS spokesperson said the current system may remain in place through 2040. In my view, this current system shouldn’t remain in place 30 more days, let alone 30 more years.
We are hoping we can make a difference and help guide college football to a system of access and fairness for all schools.”
We here at Coaches Hot Seat have seen unmitigated gall in our lives many times before, but the letter from the Bogus BCS to Senators Hatch and Baucus makes the arrogance and hubris of the Greedy Wall Street Bastards look pale in comparison (John Taylor at College Football Talk sums up the feelings of many about these BCS Bastards as we reach for the barf bag, BcS to Senators: Mind your own business). At least the Wall Street Bastards have come to the realization that since the American People bailed their sorry asses out of a sling in 2008 and saved them from obliteration which would have put a serious crimp in their annual trips to their multi-million dollar summer vacations to The Hamptons, the South of France, Aspen… (you get the idea!) that the US Government should be able to regulate them to some extent and make sure they cannot ever again show up in Washington DC and say, “Either save us or we are taking down the entire US economy.” (Well, their fun and games in their Las Vegas Casino, all enabled and encouraged by the way by US Government Public Policy and the Federal Reserve flooding the Casino with Billions of $$$$$$, did lead to 8 million Americans losing their jobs and the “Financial Reform” that passed the US Senate still leaves a lot of loopholes the Wall Street Bastards to keep this Vegas Casino open.)
Yes, the Wall Street Bastards have resigned themselves to at least being minimally regulated by the folks in DC, something that has not been done in over a decade, but here we have the BCS Boys led by the college presidents that believe it is their right to treat one particular group of Americans as Second Class Citizens. Oh, how ironic it is that of the 120 schools now playing I-A football, 66 schools have student-athletes that are playing on football teams at “BCS” programs and 54 schools have student-athletes playing at “Non-AQ” football programs, because it is the Candy Ass presidents at the 66 “BCS” schools that go around their campus and the country often preaching Liberal Politics and Political-Correctness to the hilt….except in the sport of college football of course. Got Hypocrisy? Every one of these SOB university presidents does, and in spades!
This reality, that these Hypocritical College Presidents preach to the rest of us and their own student bodies about the“values of fairness and access so often invoked in higher education” (Boise State President Bob Kustra) on one hand, but they are saying that one group of Americans that play at “Non-AQ” schools are somehow not equal to the Americans at BCS schools is beyond outrageous! It is just flat-out Un-American!. Is there really an American that can defend this Bogus stance by these BCS Bastards that these Americans over here are to be treated than that group over there? If so, you are not someone that espouses the values of the American Republic, but are in fact nothing more than more than a person that discriminates against Americans yourself.
Let not anyone forget, that all of the 66 schools that are classified as “BCS” schools receive Billions of Dollars of US Taxpayers’ money and thus all of those institutions and their athletic departments are under the purview of the US Justice Department. Do you think a college athletic department that claims to not get any taxpayer money really doesn’t get any taxpayer money and subsidies? Please, you couldn’t be that stupid! Where else in the history of the United States have we heard someone say that one group of Americans was not equal to another? Who could that have been? That should be easy for anyone that knows anything about US history and here is Exhibit A for the type of person that defines who these BCS Bastards are today.
That’s right, you BCS Bastards that believe that one group of Americans is more equal than another and should be treated in a preferential manner, when all of the student-athletes are attending institutions that receive Billions of Dollars from the US Taxpayer, are no better than former Alabama Governor George Wallace and other Southern Governors that tried to deny Black Americans the right to attend state colleges. All of you discriminatory Bastards of the BCS should be very proud of yourselves, that you are upholding the traditions of George Wallace and others that would deny the fundamental right of America that “All Men Are Created Equal.” Yes, “All Americans” are created equal, EXCEPT with the BCS. Yes, that makes a lot of sense and for you Sorry Sons of Bitches in the media and elsewhere that defend these BCS Bastards we can only wonder what the Hell you tell you children and grandchildren after standing up for such a travesty as the BCS. If you tell them anything about the importance of the Declaration of Independence and its importance to the United States of America then you are both a liar to your children and a massive hypocrite….but let’s not confuse anyone with the facts when there is money to be made and people to be discriminated against.
BCS Director Bill Hancock, Ohio State President Gordon Gee, Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman and Jim “Leader of the Candy Asses” Delany, along with so many others should be ashamed that you stand behind a system in the BCS that treats one group of Americans as Second Class Citizens. Not that we believe that any of the above mentioned men or the other people involved in and support the BCS care anything at all about but their own bottom lines and their own selfish interests. It is impossible on one hand to support the NCAA running championships that determine legitimate National Champions for every sport on these presidents’ college campuses, but somehow college football at the I-A level is different in some way. So different in fact that the above mentioned men believe that the student-athletes on the 54 “Non-AQ” football programs are no better than Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood of whom George Wallace tried to deny admittance to the University of Alabama now almost 47 years ago.
No, George Wallace was not able to keep Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood out of the University of Alabama nor the millions of Black Americans that have followed them at schools across the country, and all those Black Americans were able to attend our colleges and universities because the US Federal Government stepped in and said it is ILLEGAL to treat one group of Americans in a discriminatory way. If you don’t agree with that basic principle then you are indeed a Sorry Son of Bitch.
Take that reality and your arrogant discrimination you BCS Bastards and Stick it Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine. All of you that support the Bogus and Discriminatory BCS are an embarrassment to the United States of America and are Incredible Hypocrites as you preach one thing and practice another. That is outrageous, but when so very few people among these Bastards and people in the Media that support the BCS having not served in the military nor done anything for their country beyond registering to vote, makes it very hard for them to understand the price that has been paid in the past and is being paid right now to secure our country’s freedoms and liberties. When you have spent your entire life on a college campus or within the education establishment it is almost impossible to understand the incredible importance of our Founding Documents (The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution), because once you have seen what the rest of the world is like, you will love your country even more. No, seeing the rest of the world does not include luxury trips to Europe and lying around on the beaches of the Mediterranean!
One thing we here at Coaches Hot Seat know is that the BCS is as Un-American as anything in our country today and its Elitist and Discriminatory Structure should be repulsive to all Americans. That 5 teams could finish the 2009 college football season undefeated and the game of college football does not have a way to determine a legitimate champion in the same way every other sport in America crowns its champion, goes right to the heart of what is wrong with the BCS and with the Candy Ass Bastards that lead it.
No, the BCS is wrong and the Bastards behind the BCS know it is wrong. If the principles of the American Republic actually mean something then our “Elected Leaders” will take action against these evil bastards that stand with George Wallace in discriminating against our fellow citizens. The BCS should be left to “university presidents, athletics director, coaches and conference commissioners?” No, if you are going to discriminate against a group of Americans and you are taking Billions of Dollars in US Taxpayers money then it is the Right of the American People thru our Elected Representatives to act against lawbreakers and people that violate US laws….and we have no doubt they will. Prepare for it you Bastards and prepare to answer to the American People for the Discriminatory and in our minds Illegal BCS that violates several US laws as it pertains to Civil Rights and Competition.
Yes, that is our opinion and we are going to use whatever influence we have to make sure that the BCS Bastards are held to account for their Discriminatory behavior and what we believe to be Illegal behavior. No, Jimmy Delaney and Harvey Perlman, we are not going away. If Delany and Perlman are going to stake their careers on the idea that one group of Americans is not equal and even inferior to another group of Americans, then we are proud to stand on the right and eventually winning side of that argument. You Bastards stand with George Wallace if you like, but history will record where you stand. Count on that!
Keep looking over your shoulder BCS Boys because we are coming! (That’s Coaches Hot Seat on the horses with torches!)
That was so good, how about some more from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid!
Trailer
The Great and Sorely Missed Paul Newman!
And if you have lots of time, The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Americans as a forward-looking people often forget just how bad certain things have been in the past, but with USC now facing the prospect of losing their 2004 Bogus BCS title if Reggie Bush and USC are hit with NCAA sanctions, NBC Sports asked:
Yes, in 2004, just like in 2008 there were multiple undefeated teams left at the end of the college football season and it would take something as Candy Ass as the BCS to not be able to do what even Little League Baseball can do, determine the National Champion on the field of play.
Determine the Champion on the Field of Play? A novel idea? No, an American Tradition except of course for the Candy Ass BCS.
It is always important to remind everyone in this debate just how bad the BCS has been during its history. The Wikipedia BCS Controversies page does that very well and by our count the BCS has gotten it right and crowned even remotely a legitimate national champion less than 10 percent of the time. Thanks to Jimmy Wales and everyone else at Wikipedia for keeping us updated on the BCS and lots of other things!
The first year of the BCS ended in controversy when one-loss Kansas State finished third in the final BCS standings but was passed over for participation in BCS bowl games in favor of Ohio State (ranked 4th) and two-loss Florida (8th). Instead, the Wildcats played in the far less prestigious Alamo Bowl against Purdue. The following season, the BCS adopted the “Kansas State Rule,” which provides that the 3rd ranked team (or 4th ranked team if the 3rd ranked team has already qualified as a conference champion) in the final BCS standings is ensured of an invitation to a BCS bowl game. The rule was first utilized in 2002–03, giving an automatic berth to USC. The rule has only been used five times in all, with Texas earning automatic bids in 2004–05 and 2008–09, Ohio State earning an automatic bid in 2005–06, and Michigan receiving an automatic bid in 2006–07.
The following season, Kansas State finished 6th in the BCS standings but again received no invitation, this time being passed over in favor of Michigan (ranked 8th). Kansas State’s predicament (as well as that of undefeated Tulane who was denied a BCS bid because they played in Conference USA) inaugurated the long-standing media controversies regarding the system.
Florida State (12–1, ACC Champions) was chosen to play undefeated Oklahoma (12–0, Big 12 champions) in the Orange Bowl for the national championship, despite their one loss coming to another one loss team, the Miami Hurricanes (11–1, Big East champions), that was ranked #2 in both human polls. Adding to the controversy, Miami’s one loss came to yet another one loss team, the PAC-10 champion Washington Huskies, leaving three teams with a legitimate claim to play Oklahoma in the National Championship game.
Florida State lost to Oklahoma 13–2, while Washington and Miami both easily won their bowl games, adding more fuel to the fire. As a result of the controversy, the BCS was tweaked in the off-season. A “quality-win” bonus was added to the formula, giving extra credit for beating a top ten team.
In another controversial season, Nebraska was chosen as a national title game participant despite being ranked #4 in both human polls and not winning their conference. The Huskers went into their last regularly scheduled game at Colorado undefeated, but left Boulder with a 62–36 loss. The Buffaloes went on to win the Big 12 championship. However, the BCS computers did not take into account time of loss, so one-loss Nebraska came out ahead of two-loss Colorado and one-loss Oregon, the consensus #2 in both human polls (but 4th in the BCS). Nebraska beat Colorado for the #2 spot in the BCS poll by .05 points. Nebraska was routed in the national title game, 37–14, by Miami. Meanwhile Oregon beat Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl, 38-16.
The Rose Bowl normally features the champions of the Big Ten and the Pac-10. However, because the Ohio State Buckeyes had finished #2 in the BCS, they were set to play in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl for the national championship against Miami (Fla.)[17]
The Orange Bowl had the next pick after the Fiesta Bowl pairing, and #3 (#5 BCS) Iowa was chosen. The Rose Bowl had the next BCS selection. The next best available team to choose was #8 (#7 BCS) Oklahoma, who won the Big 12 Championship Game, to play Pac-10 co-champion Washington State. When it came time for the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl to make a second pick, both wanted USC. However, a BCS rule stated that if two bowls want the same team, the bowl with the higher payoff has the option.[18] The Orange Bowl immediately extended an at-large bid to the number 5 ranked Trojans and paired them with at-large number 3 Iowa in a Big Ten/Pac-10 “Rose Bowl East” matchup in the 2003 Orange Bowl. This left the Rose Bowl to pick Pac-10 co-champs Washington State.[18] Rose Bowl committee executive director Mitch Dorger was not pleased with the results.[18] The 2003 Rose Bowl game had the lowest attendance and first non-sellout since 1944.
The 2003–2004 season came about with much controversy when three schools from BCS conferences finished the season with one loss (in fact, no Division I-A team finished the season undefeated, something that hadn’t happened since 1996, two years before the advent of the BCS). The three schools in question were:
USC was ranked #1 in both the AP and ESPN-USA Today Coaches poll, but was burdened by a collective 2.67 computer ranking due to a weaker schedule. Meanwhile Oklahoma, after an undefeated regular season, was beaten by Kansas State (35–7) in the Big 12 Championship Game. The loss dropped Oklahoma to #3 in the human polls (while the computers still had them at #1). LSU had earned a stronger computer ranking than USC and a #2 human poll ranking, and went on to claim the BCS championship with a 21–14 win over Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl. USC, which beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl, retained its #1 ranking in the AP Poll. Oklahoma (which finished 12–2) had been clearly eliminated from national championship contention, but the split in polls left many LSU (13–1) and USC (12–1) fans displeased, as USC was named the AP national football champion. This incident has been considered a lightning rod of controversy by some sportswriters covering college football.[19]
The college coaches involved in the coaches poll were contractually obligated to award their organization’s trophy and first place votes to the winner of the BCS championship game, LSU. However, for the first time in the history of the BCS Championship Series, the BCS Champion was not a unanimous #1 in the final Coaches Poll as the final vote was 60 – 3 for LSU as National Champion with USC as a runner-up. It is speculated that the three coaches who broke rank–Lou Holtz of South Carolina, Mike Bellotti of Oregon and Ron Turner of Illinois–violating their contractual obligation, did so because they believed that USC was the best team. Meanwhile other coaches followed their contractual obligation under the coaches “poll” and changed their choice of #1 from USC to LSU.
The 2004-2005 regular season finished with five undefeated teams for the first time since 1979. Despite having perfect records, the Auburn Tigers, Utah Utes, and Boise State Broncos were denied an opportunity to play for the BCS championship. Utah was the first non-BCS team to play in a BCS game. However, Utah and Boise State’s schedules were thought of as weaker than Auburn’s (by virtue of playing in the weaker Mountain West and WAC, respectively).
Most of the debate centered around Auburn, who went undefeated in the Southeastern Conference, leading to debates over the strength of schedule, a value that was diminished in the BCS before the season. Oklahoma went on to play USC for the title. USC defeated Oklahoma, 55–19. Both Auburn and Utah won their bowl games. Auburn defeated #9 Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl 16-13, and Utah defeated #21 Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl by a score of 35–7. This left 3 undefeated teams at the end of the season, where Auburn finished at #2 and Utah at #4.
Another controversy occurred this season since the pollsters jumped the Texas Longhorns over the California Golden Bears in the final regular-season poll. Texas coach Mack Brown publicly lobbied for the pollsters to give Texas the final at-large bid. Although the Bears, as Pac-10 runner-up, normally would have had first crack at a Rose Bowl berth, Brown lobbied for and got that berth. The lobbying was so extensive that the Associated Press immediately ended its poll’s association with the BCS. California’s cause was hurt when it was less than impressive in a 26–16 victory over Southern Miss in Hattiesburg, Mississippi the night before bowl bids were extended. This was doubly unfortunate because had it been played in September, when it was originally scheduled before being postponed by a hurricane, it would have had probably no effect and Cal would have received the Rose Bowl spot. Weakening their cause after the fact was the 45–31 defeat in the Holiday Bowl to Texas Tech University. Cal played without two of the highest performing receivers in the NCAA,[20] however, this loss was attributed in many press reports to the Bears’ disappointment over being denied their first Rose Bowl appearance in 45 years.[21] Another major issue is the fact that the Pac-10 has considerably weaker bowl tie-ins than all of the other BCS conferences. For example, the Holiday Bowl is the second place Pac-10 bowl and the opponent is the 3rd, 4th, or 5th-place Big XII team, meaning the Pac-10 team can finish just out of the BCS and play an unranked opponent.
Going into the final poll, undefeated Boise State and four one-loss teams (Louisville, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida) were up for a spot against undefeated top-ranked Ohio State in the BCS National Championship game in Glendale, Arizona. Louisville (11-1, champions of the Big East), and Boise State were given less consideration because of a lack of schedule strength, while Wisconsin (11-1, Big 10) was two steps removed from Ohio State (they lost to Michigan, who lost to Ohio State, and Wisconsin and Ohio State did not play).
Michigan lost to Ohio State 42–39 in its regular season finale (Ohio State would go on to claim the Big 10 championship), but was still ranked ahead of Florida but behind USC going into the final ballot. Florida defeated Arkansas in the SEC Championship Game, and number 2 ranked USC lost to UCLA, leaving Michigan and Florida as one-loss teams who both claimed they deserved to play for the national championship against Ohio State. Many pundits denied that Michigan should get another chance to play Ohio State. Others claimed that this would only be a repeat of what happened in 1996 between Florida and Florida State, and that the two best teams should play even if they were from the same conference or if it was a rematch. Ultimately, the BCS National Championship was a meeting between Ohio State and Florida. A mere .0101 points separated #2 Florida from #3 Michigan. This small difference was a result of the human polls (USA Today’s Coaches’ Poll and Harris Interactive Poll) ranking Florida above Michigan while the computer polls had the two teams tied for second.
Michigan, which was automatically guaranteed a BCS at-large berth by virtue of its #3 ranking, went to the Rose Bowl, which they lost to USC 32–18. Florida officially became the national champions by impressively beating Ohio State 41–14. Florida also received all but one of the 65 first-place votes in the final Associated Press poll (the other went to Boise State, who won the Fiesta Bowl over Oklahoma).
At the conclusion of the season, three other one-loss teams were denied the chance to compete in a playoff or to play Florida for the national championship. Wisconsin and Louisville ended the season with only one loss (the same as Florida and Ohio State). Boise State, which received the other first-place vote in the AP poll, was the only undefeated Division I football team.
Because of a BCS rule allowing only two teams from each conference to play in BCS bowl games, highly-ranked Wisconsin and Auburn were not eligible for selection to a BCS game. Wisconsin was excluded because Ohio State and Michigan represented the Big Ten, and Auburn was excluded because LSU and Florida represented the SEC, even though Auburn defeated LSU 7–3 and Florida 27–17 during the season. LSU earned the at-large bid on the strength of its 31–26 victory over SEC West champion Arkansas in Little Rock, while the Razorbacks crushed then second-ranked Auburn 27–10 in Jordan-Hare Stadium. Auburn’s 37–15 loss at home to a reeling Georgia team also destroyed its chances at the BCS.
An omission of the rule still would have not have been enough for Auburn to secure a berth, as Wisconsin would have likely been the final at-large bid. The final BCS poll had seven teams from the SEC and the Big Ten ranked in the top twelve but by the rule only two from each conference were eligible to play in BCS bowl games, offering the opportunity to argue that both conferences are over-ranked, that the Big Ten schedule does not produce a true conference champion, or that the limit of 2 teams from any one conference is inappropriate.
In a wild finish to a wild regular season of upsets, the top two teams in the polls lost on the same weekend for two weeks in a row to close out the regular season, sending the BCS into chaos heading into the selection of the two teams to play for the BCS National Championship Game. On November 23, top-ranked LSU lost in triple overtime to Arkansas. This was the Tigers’ second triple-overtime loss of the season, with the other to Kentucky. The following day, #4 Missouri beat #2 Kansas and took the top spot in the BCS for the following week. This created the interesting prospect of #1 Missouri playing its final game of the season as three-point underdogs against Oklahoma. On December 1, Missouri was defeated by Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship Game. #2 West Virginia was also stunned at home, by unranked Pittsburgh in the annual Backyard Brawl game. Meanwhile, Ohio State, who was idle for the final two weeks, climbed the rankings from #5 to #1. Hawai?i capped off an undefeated season (and the only such team going into the bowl post-season), beating Washington and securing a major bowl appearance for the first time in the school’s history. However, as with Boise State in the previous season, Hawai?i did not play for the BCS Championship because the Warriors’ schedule was deemed too weak.[22] In fact, with Hawai?i’s loss in the Sugar Bowl, the 2007-08 season was the first since the 2003-04 season (and only the second in the BCS era) with no teams finishing the entire season undefeated.
In another irony, #6 Missouri was shut out of the BCS entirely when #8 Kansas was selected as one of three at-large teams. The Tigers finished higher in the BCS standings and had defeated the Jayhawks a week before the Big 12 title game. However, Kansas received a bid to the Orange Bowl; Orange Bowl officials said that they picked Kansas because the Jayhawks had only one loss,[23] while Missouri had two losses, both to Big 12 champion Oklahoma. Since BCS rules do not allow more than two teams from one conference to get a bid, Missouri was ineligible for an at-large bid. Missouri defeated Arkansas 38-7 in the Cotton Bowl. Kansas also went on to defeat #3 Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl by a score of 24-21, making no clear argument either way. Ohio State and LSU came in 1st and 2nd in the final BCS rankings, securing the BCS championship game between those two on January 7.
Before “Championship Saturday,” LSU was ranked #7 and Georgia was ranked #4. However, after #1 Missouri and #2 West Virginia lost, LSU was catapulted to #2 based on a 21-14 win over Tennessee in the SEC Championship Game. Many argued that the Bulldogs should not play in the National Championship game because they didn’t play for—let alone win—the SEC Championship. The Bulldogs and Vols finished with identical 6-2 records atop the SEC East, but Tennessee represented the division in the championship game by virtue of beating Georgia 35-14 in October. Virginia Tech had been ranked #6, above LSU, but had to settle for the #3 slot, despite a convincing win over Boston College in the ACC Championship Game. Voters were likely influenced by LSU’s crushing 48-7 defeat of Virginia Tech early in the season. Computer rankings placed Virginia Tech (0.960) and LSU (0.950) #1, and #2, respectively.[24] The top four teams in the BCS standings were #1 Ohio State, #2 LSU, #3 Virginia Tech, and #4 Oklahoma.
Ultimately, LSU defeated Ohio State 38-24, marking the second straight season that the Buckeyes lost the national championship game to an SEC opponent and the first two-loss BCS champion. LSU received 60 of a possible 65 first-place votes in the final AP poll, the fewest for a BCS champion since 2004, when BCS champion LSU finished second in the poll to USC. Georgia, another SEC team, was second in the poll and received three first-place votes. The final two first place votes went USC and Kansas, ranked #3 and #7 respectively. Missouri, who did not play in a BCS bowl, finished fourth, and Ohio State fell to fifth after losing the championship game.
In the Big 12 South division, there was a three-way tie for the division champion between Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech (all one-loss teams). The winner of that division would likely play in the national championship game if it beat Missouri in the Big 12 Championship Game. Oklahoma lost to Texas 45-35, then Texas lost to Texas Tech 39-33, and then Texas Tech lost to Oklahoma 65-21. In the Big 12, the BCS standings were used to break this tie, causing the teams to jockey for votes in the human polls. In the end, Oklahoma edged out Texas for the right to represent the Big 12 South in the conference championship game. Despite the head to head loss to the Longhorns earlier in the season, the computer rankings ranked the Sooners’ schedule ahead of the Longhorns. Another BCS conference, the SEC, merely uses the BCS standings to eliminate one team in a three-way tie and then use head to head to determine tiebreakers, which would have worked in Texas’ favor.[25]
Going into the conference championship games, only four teams—Alabama, Utah, Ball State and Boise State—were undefeated. However, in the event of an Alabama loss, Utah, Ball State, and Boise State had no realistic chance at a title game berth because their schedules were deemed too weak. As it turned out, Alabama lost to one-loss Florida in the SEC Championship Game, vaulting the Gators to the second spot in the final BCS rankings and a matchup in the title game against Oklahoma. Alabama fell to fourth, behind Texas.
Utah and Boise State both finished in the top 15 of the BCS standings (in fact, both were in the top 10), and were thus eligible for BCS at-large spots. It was generally understood, however, that only one team would get a berth, as it would be hard to justify allowing a second mid-major conference team into a BCS bowl over a BCS conference runner-up. Utah qualified automatically as the highest ranked (in the top 12) non-BCS conference champion and defeated Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Boise State (#9 in the BCS) and TCU (#11) were matched up in the Poinsettia Bowl, marking the first time in history that a bowl featured two teams from non-BCS conferences ranked higher than both participants in a BCS bowl game in the same season (the Orange Bowl matched #12 Cincinnati and #19 Virginia Tech). TCU defeated Boise State 17–16, and Utah won the Sugar Bowl to finish as the nation’s only undefeated team.
After the season, the Mountain West Conference made a proposal at the Bowl Championship Series commissioners’ annual spring meetings in Pasadena, California in conjunction with the Rose Bowl’s staging the 2010 BCS title game. The meetings were held during the week of April 20, 2009. The Mountain West Conference commissioner has proposed that a selection committee replace the polls and computers, an eight-team playoff system put in place, and changes to the automatic qualifier rules.[26] On June 24, 2009, the BCS presidential oversight committee rejected the eight-team playoff plan.[27]
United States Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has indicated that he would hold congressional hearings on the BCS in the future after his Utah team failed to play in the national championship game.
By mid-October, it was obvious that Florida and Alabama would face off in the 2009 SEC Championship Game, and the winner would play in the BCS title game. It was also generally believed that Texas would get the other spot if it won the 2009 Big 12 Championship Game, despite concerns about a weak non-conference schedule and a surprising lack of quality teams in the Big 12. Ultimately, in a repeat of the 2004-05 season, five teams finished the season undefeated—Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, TCU, and Boise State.
Texas won the Big 12 title game, and with it a spot in the BCS title game, in controversial fashion. As the game clock appeared to run out with Nebraska winning 12-10; officials ruled that the time left on the clock was reviewable and ordered 1 second put back on the clock, allowing the Longhorns to kick a field goal for a 13-12 win, a result that left Nebraska coach Bo Pelini claiming that it was part of a BCS conspiracy.[28] Earlier, Alabama had trounced Florida in the SEC title game to earn the other slot.
Despite a convincing season-opening win over eventual Pac-10 champion Oregon, another team in the top 10 of the BCS standings, and having played 13 games rather than the 12 that TCU and Cincinnati had played, Boise State’s schedule was once again deemed too weak for a spot in the championship game. Additionally, it was certain that at least two other teams would finish undefeated due to the SEC title game matchup between Alabama and Florida, as well as TCU having already completed an undefeated season. Cincinnati and TCU, however, both believed they would be in the championship game if Texas lost. Despite being ranked behind TCU going into championship weekend, Cincinnati probably had a stronger claim as it was the undefeated champion of a BCS conference, rather than an at-large team like TCU. Cincinnati did pass TCU to end up 3rd in the final BCS standings, but with the margin as slim as it was and three of the six BCS computers having placed Texas in between the two schools, no conclusions can be drawn as to what might have happened if Texas had lost.
Unrelated to the title game was the controversy regarding the bowl selections. While at #6, Boise State was able to earn an at-large berth, the announcement that they would be playing #4 TCU in the Fiesta Bowl caused an outcry, as the two “BCS Busters” would be matched up against each other and would thereby be denied the opportunity to face a top team from one of the six BCS conferences, instead providing a rematch of a non-BCS bowl from the previous year (see above). Placing two teams from non-AQ conferences in the same bowl also contradicted the previous assertion that non-AQ schools are less likely to receive at-large bids because the bowls prefer the superior drawing power of the big schools and their highly mobile fanbases—hence undefeated Boise State’s omission from the BCS the previous year in favor of two-loss Ohio State. For this reason, some are calling this match up the “Separate but Equal Bowl,” or the “Fiasco Bowl.”[citation needed]
Here at Coaches Hot Seat Central we have our DVR’s running constantly to pick up any college football games and programs that show up on TV throughout the year and this week: Virginia Football – The Building of a Program, first’s episode showed up. A couple of us watched that first episode last night and this promises to be great entertainment for football junkies. It is being broadcast on Comcast Sports Net which on our DirecTV package has about 40 regional channels around the country and if you have any kind of decent cable or satellite package you should be able to find this interesting show. Comcast Sports Net:www.comcastsportsnet.com/pages/main
Here’s the Trailer for Virginia Football: The Building of a Program
We have made no bones about the fact that we here at CHS think a lot of new Virginia head coach Mike London, while he was still an assistant at UVA and before he did a great job at Richmond. We are expecting big things out of Mike London and his new staff at Virginia, which at UVA means building a program that can compete for the ACC Championship every year and also go to a good bowl game each season as well. No, London will not be able to turn around UVA overnight, but we do expect to see a different Cavaliers football team this fall and a squad that other teams in the ACC will not want to play. As former Clemson and Arkansas head coach Danny Ford once said: “I want to coach a team that opponents don’t look forward to playing.”
We fully expect Virginia under Mike London to become a team that opponents don’t look forward to playing.
Look for Virginia Football: The Building of a Program with your DVR and record it, because it looks like it is going to be a very interesting program to follow in the offseason.
Thinking about the University of Virginia the area of the United States between Roanoke and Virginia Beach in the South, the Blue Ridge Mountains in the West, Washington DC in the North and the Chesapeake Bay in the East is one of our favorite parts of the country and we try to take our kids and family there no less than once every two years. A couple of us here at Coaches Hot Seat were stationed in Virginia Beach for training in the US Navy and we quickly found out that the state of Virginia is both a stunning place to travel thru with its history and beauty, but also a state that has lots of very good golf courses! Right in the middle of the above mentioned areas is Charlottesville, VA which is the home of the University of Virginia and Thomas Jefferson’s home Monticello.
When visiting the great city of Charlottesville we also visit UVA and Monticello and although we have been to both places dozens of times we never tire of it. Just like we never tire of visiting Washington DC and seeing the Mall and the Monuments to the heroes of our country, Monticello is a very special place because it is the home of one of our country’s greatest founders, Thomas Jefferson. The entire state of Virginia is a must see for all Americans, whether it be former President’s homes, Civil War battlefields, the Washington DC area, the beaches on the Atlantic or Bay or Colonial Williamsburg, it is hard to go wrong in the state of Virginia and with that unpaid for commercial we will leave you to your own travels!
Of course, Thomas Jefferson wrote the most beautiful words ever written by a man or woman in the history of human beings on planet Earth:
Declaration of Independence
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
The only problem is, the vast majority of the Bastards that purport to represent the American People and uphold the worlds of the Declaration of Independence do everything but. Many are little more than working for the last son of a bitch that came thru the door putting money into his or her pocket and with that understood you now know why the United States of America is in a world of hurt right now. When the American People are again represented by people that actually work for them (and it is a WHEN not IF because these Bastards cannot continue on their current path without destroying the country, which WE will not let them do) and not the moneyed interests that so dominate our political life is when WE will have out country back.
As a very famous American patriot and politician told us many years ago, “Stay close to Jefferson,” and so we shall.
The Amgen Tour of California is back for 2010 as the top cyclists are racing their bikes across the State of California in 8 different stages starting in the north in Sacramento and ending up in Southern California.
Interesting thing though, here we have the Tour of California that is made up of bicycle riders (most of them Europeans that probably have a dozen Speedo bathing suits at home and take 3 hour lunches when home) and they settle the champion of the Tour of California on…..THE FIELD OF PLAY! Yes, that is damn ironic that we have a bunch of bicycle riders, mainly Europeans, that battle like Hell thru all the stages and at the end the champion is crowned on the field of play! Hmmmmm, is there any sport in America that is different than that? Oh, that’s right ONLY ONE: college football, which is run by the biggest group of Candy Asses on the Planet. These Real Men of Genius play a regular season involving 12 games, they then shut-down the top teams for a month which is followed by teams flying around the country to lay around pools and visit theme parks and then playing in meaningless exhibition games. Yes, that makes sense….IF YOU ARE A MORON… No, sorry about that….we just insulted Morons everywhere! No, these BCS Bastards are much more insidious than that…they are very simply, an embarrassment to the United States of America. In every sport on the planet, save for college football, again run by Candy Asses that should be ashamed to call themselves Americans, championships are won, lost and earned on the field of play.
Can anyone imagine Lance Armstrong competing in a bike race and then after the regular season of the race taking a month off and then flying to a different site to race against one other bicyclist to determine a champion in a meaningless exhibition match too boot? Please, Lance Armstrong is not a Candy Ass. Jim Delany is a Candy Ass and in our humble opinion a Pompous Ass. That makes Jim Delany a two-time loser and no, if Jim Delany was coaching a sports team in the United States, we would put him in the same category as Lane Kiffin. Both are Pompous Asses and Arrogant Jerks that are full of themselves and both are the opposite of what an American should be.
Yes, that is our opinion and if someone has already or will ask us to provide them with everything Jim Delany and the other BCS Boys have said about the BCS going back to the early 1990s, we of course would be more than happy to hand that over to the authorities. Yes, violating the Sherman Antitrust Act is a felony and since college football does not have an Antitrust Exemption, that means anything that these Candy Ass Afraid of Real Competition where Real Men Settle Things” (That would be on the Field of Play Jimmy Boy since you clearly don’t have the guts or courage to understand that basic American principle) said about the operation of the BCS is fair game. It is great fun to read through those old newspaper articles to see former and current BCS Boys bragging about the BCS and what it really was and is today….GREAT FUN!
“In other words, innocent monopoly, or monopoly achieved solely by merit, is perfectly legal, but acts by a monopolist to artificially preserve his status, or nefarious dealings to create a monopoly, are not. Put another way, it has sometimes been said that the purpose of the Sherman Act is not to protect competitors, but rather to protect competition and the competitive landscape. As explained by the U.S. Supreme Court in Spectrum Sports, Inc. v. McQuillan:
“The purpose of the [Sherman] Act is not to protect businesses from the working of the market; it is to protect the public from the failure of the market. The law directs itself not against conduct which is competitive, even severely so, but against conduct which unfairly tends to destroy competition itself.” [6]
The Sherman Act is divided into three sections. Section 1 delineates and prohibits specific means of anticompetitive conduct, while Section 2 deals with end results that are anticompetitive in nature. Thus, these sections supplement each other in an effort to prevent businesses from violating the spirit of the Act, while technically remaining within the letter of the law. Section 3 simply extends the provisions of Section 1 to U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.
Section 1: “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.”[14]
Section 2: “Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]“[15]
Now call us stupid (but most certainly not Candy Asses!), why does it strike us that the BCS violates the Sherman Antitrust Act? Because if you read Sections 1 and 2 of the Act above it sounds like that is the very definition of the BCS.
We look forward to watching the rest of the Tour of California on Versus this week as it winds it way down the state of California. It is great fun to watch real men compete for a championship, something that Jim “Buy Him a Rose Candy Ass” Delany would know nothing about!
Europeans = Real Men that win championships on the field of play
Californians = Running a real championship with the Tour of California
The Candy Asses Running College Football = Not even up to the Europeans or the Californians!
Now, that is REALLY embarrassing!
Oh, that’s right, let’s go sit by the pool and get a drink with an umbrella in it instead of playing for a legitimate championship. Memo to those Morons: Vacation is vacation. If you are sitting by a pool or visiting a theme park before a football game IT IS NOT A FOOTBALL GAME! Yes, you with the umbrella drink in your hand! You are a Candy Ass! If you want to go on vacation, do it in the offseason like the coaches and players do in every other sport on the planet!
Oh, that’s bad, but a Candy Ass is a Candy Ass and the King of the Candy Asses is Jim Delany!
Now that’s funny and that is also our opinion! Oh, this is great fun!
There were a lot of things that came out of Jim Delany’s meeting with the press yesterday at the Big Ten meetings but two things stood out to us:
1. The Big Ten is worried about changing demographics and that adding teams in the “Sun Belt” might be an option – Sorry Big Ten, once you get South of Missouri or Maryland we cannot imagine that there is a school that would exchange its current situation with what the Big Ten offers.
Vanderbilt? Please, Vandy is a very good school in the great town of Nashville, but…..not going to happen.
Georgia Tech? Come on, Georgia Tech is not going to send its sports teams to the north to play football and other games! If Georgia Tech goes anywhere it goes to the SEC if that conference expands and if we were the SEC we would be very interested in adding the Yellow Jackets. The SEC conference is now headquartered in another great southern town, Birmingham, but long-term the SEC headquarters will probably end up in Atlanta near the new College Football Hall of Fame and their SEC Championship Game at the Georgia Dome and having a conference member right down the street in Ga. Tech would make great sense. Georgia Tech would bring a lot to the table for the SEC, namely great academics and very good athletic teams, and in one of the biggest cities in the United States.
Kentucky? Now here’s a real wildcard because Lexington, Kentucky is kind of in the South and kind of in the North, but don’t tell anyone in Kentucky that we said that. If Kentucky had a little better academics it would be a no-brainer addition to the Big Ten and if we were the president and AD at UK we would jump at the chance to get away from the SEC in football, to get into a slightly better b-ball conference and to become part of a group of schools in the Big Ten that were better academically. Yes, Kentucky makes sense, but would the politically-correct college presidents in the Big Ten vote to allow UK to join? Who the Hell knows!
Maryland and Missouri? It is our impression that both schools would jump from their current conferences to join the Big Ten and it would make a lot of sense for both schools to do so. Both have very strong basketball programs and they have very good academics so both would be a good fit in the Big Ten.
Texas? Please! Next! We doubt that Texas is going anywhere, because if it hired good head coaches for its athletic teams it should always have 1 of the top 3 teams in every sport in the Big 12 and it would make little sense for the Longhorns to go to the SEC, forget about the Big Ten!
Are there any other schools that would make sense for the Big Ten? Well, if you really wanted to become a powerhouse conference that stretched from the Atlantic Seaboard to the American Heartland we would look at the following schools in order:
Notre Dame
Missouri
Rutgers
Nebraska
Maryland
Syracuse
Kentucky
Boston College
Pitt
UConn
Yes, Boston College. BC has very good academics, competitive athletics and Boston is a huge TV market.
Who will the Big Ten eventually add if it expands? We haven’t a clue, but if we were guessing we would bet that they will add Notre Dame in everything but football which would include a deal where the Irish would get less money from the conference overall, they would keep their TV money from NBC, and the Bogus BCS and all their other sports teams would have a better place to play than the Big East. Notre Dame would then be covered by the Big Ten Network just how they cover all the other schools, including the Irish football team, and Notre Dame would be a full member of the Big Ten except for football. Besides that…
Notre Dame (in all sports except football)
Missouri
Rutgers
Nebraska
Maryland
Syracuse
New Big Ten: 16 athletic teams in football and 17 athletic teams in all the other sports.
2. The second thing that caught our attention and didn’t surprise us at all was Delany’s comment that a championship game for football was not a driving force behind the expansion study. Oh, what a surprise! No doubt, the Candy Ass presidents put that thought in Jim’s ear, because we just can’t have anyone thinking that we are expanding the Big Ten to add a championship game that would bring in 10+ Million Dollars to the conference! No, it is not the reason behind expansion the presidents proclaim! Of course, these very same presidents were right there for adding a 12 th football game, for expanding the NCAA basketball tournament and another dozen hypocritical things that would bore all of us, but we all know this is just part and parcel when you do business on the fantasyland that are America’s college and universities.
Behind all of this hypocritical BS is what we call “The Candy Ass” Factor. We here at Coaches Hot Seat are in agreement with about 90 percent of what college and university presidents are doing on their college campuses, and even though the country has been have a tough time economically lately, if you take out finances, there has been a renaissance of sorts in higher education in recent years. We often don’t agree with the politics of most college/university presidents but we would much rather have a Liberal college/university president creating an atmosphere on college campuses that encourages open discussion and free speech than the opposite side of the coin that would restrict people from saying or acting how they believe appropriate (within the law of course).
The real problem is that “Political-Correctness” dominates many of our college campuses and far too often presidents and leaders at schools do not do enough to encourage an open conversation on campus, but rather because of their political leanings see one side as being right and the other side as being wrong. In the classes themselves, most college professors are way to the left of President Obama, which is OK with us, but as long as the welcome all political and moral points of view into their classrooms we could really care less that they campaigned for George McGovern back in the day! Here at Coaches Hot Seat we prepare our kids to take on the challenges of life head-on and we are confident that a college professor or university president that has spent his/her entire life on a college campus will not be able to intimidate someone that has had a proper education and upbringing when they arrive at college. Colleges and Universities in the United States should be places where students are challenged, both in their opinions and beliefs, but also in how they live their lives, and one of the great things that worries us here at CHS is that many of our college campuses are led by people that have very little experience in the real world. No, a college campus is not the real world.
“It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst’s enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and to the conduct of the public’s business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation’s thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.
Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support. “There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university,” wrote John Masefield in his tribute to English universities — and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to towers or to campuses. He admired the splendid beauty of a university, because it was, he said, “a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.”
A few days ago we posted a video of Paul “Bear” Bryant and said that is what a head football coach should sound like. The above video of President Kennedy is what a President should sound like.
Getting back to Jim Delany’s comment that the Big Ten conference expansion is not being driven by the idea that more than 11 teams would allow the conference to create a championship game let’s imagine for a moment that our college campuses were not run by a bunch of Candy Ass presidents that fear competition: In that instance Jim Delany would say something like:
“Absolutely a championship game is a reason to expand the Big Ten conference, because we believe a championship should be settled on the field of play and if we divide the conference into two halves and the winner of those two divisions met a title game we would crown a real champion.”
No, instead we get Candy Ass pabulum from Jim Delany, but then that should surprise no one because Delany is part of the biggest group of Candy Asses in America today, the Candy Asses that support the Bogus BCS. Maybe Jim Delany did play for Dean Smith at North Carolina, but that doesn’t automatically mean he has the guts or the courage to have the college football national championship decided on the field of play. No, Delany like most of the college presidents that often have never worked a day in their lives off of a college campus or within the educational establishment are scared to death of real competition and they keep supporting easily the biggest Candy Ass invention that has ever come down the pike, the Bogus BCS.
We are of the opinion here at Coaches Hot Seat that the Candy Ass component of our college campuses in America today where “Political-Correctness” rules the day is a major threat to our country. Likewise, anyone with a working brain that would support anything as Candy Ass and Bogus as the BCS also only hurts the country because they are saying that championships in sports should not be won on the field of play. The BCS is in fact just an extension of the world-view of the vast majority of college and university presidents that grew up in the 1960s, the Age of Aquarius Crowd lit large that are often divorced from the realities of modern life in America. If you really believe that something as Candy Ass as the BCS is the appropriate way to determine the champion in any college football, then why don’t we do it that way in every collegiate sport? Why indeed… Let’s go to the facts as Joe Friday would say for the Candy Asses that don’t have the guts to settle championships on the field of play, and that is directly at you Jim “Candy Ass” Delany, the King of the Candy Asses and lover of Beauty Queens and Parade floats made of roses….in our humble opinion here at Coaches Hot Seat!
As you can below it is not only the BCS Boys that have been up to no good with the college football postseason, but the NCAA has gotten into the act by licensing 35 BOWL GAMES to involve 70 I-A college football teams! OUTRAGEOUS!
Let’s go to the numbers. As you can see below for a few of NCAA Division I Postseason Championships we have looked at: Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, Lacrosse, Soccer, there is a very common percentage number of teams that participate in the Postseason Tournament Playoff (Did you catch that Candy Ass BCS Boys which includes any Candy Ass head coach that doesn’t have the guts to settle the College Football National Championship on the field of play! Yes, sadly there are a number of Candy Ass head football coaches that like laying around the pool and visiting theme parks rather than what a real man would want to do, settle a championship on the field of play) and that percentage number for the below sports is 23.86%. Of the below 5 Men’s Division I sports 23.86 % of all the teams in the sport are picked to play in a Postseason Tournament Playoff (Memo to the Candy Ass college presidents that support the BCS: That is P-L-A-Y-O-F-F for every sport on your campus EXCEPT for college football but let’s not confuse anyone that has lived in an Ivy Tower his/her entire life with the facts!).
Let’s quickly look over the below numbers and then turn to the Candy Ass BCS….
NCAA Championships
Baseball Division I
Teams – 292
Teams in Postseason Tournament – 64 Teams
Percentage of Teams in Postseason Tournament – 21.9 %
Basketball Division I
Teams – 334
Teams in Postseason Tournament – 65 Teams
Percentage of Teams in Postseason Tournament – 19.5 %
Hockey Division I
Teams – 62
Teams in Postseason Tournament – 16 Teams
Percentage of Teams in Postseason Tournament – 25.8 %
Lacrosse Division I
Teams – 58
Teams in Postseason Tournament – 16 Teams
Percentage of Teams in Postseason Tournament – 27.6 %
Soccer Division I
Teams – 196
Teams in Postseason Tournament – 48 Teams
Percentage of Teams in Postseason Tournament – 24.5 %
And now to the Candy Ass BCS. The NCAA chooses somewhere between 19 and 29 percent of the teams playing in any 1 sport to play in a Postseason Tournament Playoff (That is spelled P-L-A-Y-O-F-F for the folks that have spent most of their careers debating the difference between Plato and Cicero at faculty meetings which is a pretty good standard for anyone stupid enough to support the Candy Ass BCS…unless of course you are making a lot of money off the backs of “student-athletes” or you are a Candy Ass BCS college president that rather likes his/her ass being kissed by bowl representatives!).
How many teams get an opportunity to play in the 1 postseason game that decides the Bogus BCS National Title? Well, that should be obvious! 2!
So, that means that for every other sport on every college campus in the country roughly 24 percent of the teams have an opportunity to play for the National Championship in a Postseason Tournament, but in college football 1.67 % of the teams have an chance to play for what is not even a legitimate championship (and will be noted so in history college football books! The BCS * will be there just as there will be a ** for all the national titles won by the subjective polls before the BCS…you can count on that Candy Asses!)
Let’s look at the Bogus BCS numbers…
Bogus BCS
Football Division I
Teams – 120
Teams in Postseason Tournament – 2 Teams
Percentage of Teams in Postseason Tournament – 1.67 %
Teams in Postseason Total – 70 Teams
Percentage of Teams in Postseason – 58.3 %
Is there anyone that can look at the above numbers, not counting Candy Asses and people making money off the backs of “student-athletes,” and claim that the BCS is anything but Bogus? Didn’t think so and that is why the American People in huge majorities say that we need a Postseason Tournament Playoff (That is P-L-A-Y-O-F-F for anyone that hasn’t been paying attention!) in college football and that is exactly what the American People are going to get. We just cannot imagine that any college or university president is going to put at risk the federal financial aid that his/her institution now receives, even including some of the Pompous Ass Candy Asses, that parade around at bowl games like peacocks looking like buffoons (The presidents that do that know who you are and we know who you are too…as does anyone with a pair of eyes!). If you want to stay with the BCS, fine…then run your college or university without US Taxpayer money, which makes the decision to institute a playoff way above Jim “Candy Ass” Delany’s level or even the college and university presidents. No, this is going to come down to college and university trustees that will have to make the call, continue with the BCS and operate without the US Taxpayers money, or move to a P-L-A-Y-O-F-F like every other sport in collegiate athletics. We all know which way that decision will go no matter what the Candy Asses that support the Bogus BCS think!
As for the 35 bowl games that the NCAA licensed that will match-up 70 football teams, if you were looking for another reason that the United States of America is heading down a very steep slope look no further than this asinine decision of the NCAA to approve any bowl from any moron that shows up on its doorstep with 5 dollars in his back pocket! 70 of 120 teams mean that 58.3 % of the teams playing I-A football will be participating in the college football postseason which is beyond absurd and only passes along a message to current and future college football players that they achieved something,…WHEN THEY HAVE NOT! 6-6 teams that have a win over a I-AA school should not be playing in the postseason. Isn’t that obvious? Sadly, it is not and just like the college basketball coaches wanted the NCAA Basketball Tournament to be expanded to as many teams as possible so that more coaches could claim they achieved something (when they didn’t!), college football coaches just love yelling “bowl-eligible, bowl eligible!” How do you know the United States is headed down? When grown men run around yelling “bowl-eligible, bowl-eligible” after winning 6 football games is a sure sign to watch out below! Sorry, when we here at Coaches Hot Seat were average on our high school and college sports teams our coaches did not let us celebrate when we had ACHIEVED NOTHING, but then our coaches did not celebrate mediocrity or tolerate it for that matter. Another sign that the Candy Asses are driving this train…for the moment that is!
Yes, that is absolute madness and the people that support the Candy Ass BCS that stops college football from settling the National Championship on the field of play as do all Men’s and Women’s sports in every other NCAA sport are the folks that are right in the middle of the downfall of American, but who’s counting anymore as long as one can watch a parade and crown a beauty queen! These people don’t even have the guts of the young women that play college sports (nor our daughters that play softball, soccer and other sports that decide their champions on….THE FIELD OF PLAY!), but some football coaches do have the audacity to yell at their players and say he doesn’t have guts or is not laying it on the line… No, it is YOU, the Candy Ass college head coaches that DON’T HAVE THE GUTS to settle the college football National Championship on the field of play. That is the difference between a sure-fire Candy Ass and a Real American. A Sure-Fire Candy Ass likes or loves the BCS and a Real American knows it is Bogus.
Very simply, if you support the BCS means you are a CANDY ASS! That is simple enough and is self-evident to the vast majority of Americans, but most Americans would never trade laying around a pool and visiting theme parks when it came to their kids have the opportunity to playing for a winning a CHAMPIONSHIP in the sports that they play. That is the primary difference between someone that has spent his/her entire life on a college campus or in the educational establishment and doesn’t have a clue to how the real world works, which is about .000000000001 percent of the population. We all know, the non-Candy Asses that is, that the vast majority of Americans that still believe championships should be played for and won on the field of play and that is what we would expect Real Americans to believe because Real Americans that would storm the beaches at Normandy or Iwo Jima are not Candy Asses.
Support the Candy Ass BCS and 70 bowl games if you like. But sure the Hell don’t call yourself a MAN or even a REAL WOMAN. Because you are not a REAL MAN or WOMAN if you support the Bogus BCS. No REAL AMERICAN MEN and WOMEN don’t lay around a pool when there is a championship to be played for and won, as do the REAL MEN and REAL WOMEN that play every other sport in college athletics. Yes, the American spirit is still alive, but it is not in the offices of any college head coach that supports the Candy Ass BCS and it is certainly not on most college campuses today.
Washington’s expansion of Husky Stadium
The University of Washington is out with a new plan to renovate Husky Stadium without the use of taxpayer dollars, New Husky Stadium plan uses no taxpayer dollars – Seattle Times and UW Husky Stadium RFP, and although UW AD Scott Woodward should be applauded for coming up with a plan that could work if enough dollars could be raised, we don’t believe they are not thinking enough out of the box in Seattle.
There are a few of us here at Coaches Hot Seat that spent several years working and living in Seattle during the dot.com madness and we got to attend a number of Washington football games and got to know a number of people in the business community. There are huge amounts of money that have been made by people in Seattle over the past three decades and Washington has targeted around $200 million dollars total to renovate Husky Stadium with about $50 million of that coming from donations and the rest being raised from issuing bonds. We hate to say it when the American economy is struggling so, but $50 million dollars is chicken feed compared to the wealth that exists within 10 miles of the University of Washington campus.
If we were running the athletic department of Washington we would be shooting for a complete renovation of Husky Stadium, in the $300+ million dollar range that UW first targeted a few years ago, and we would also expand the plans for the Stadium that would include things beyond suites, premium seating and selling the naming rights. As you can see from the below photo of Husky Stadium, there is a tremendous amount of land around the stadium and the University of Washington is located in a spot in Seattle where a lot of people would want to work if they had the opportunity. Therefore, in addition to adding suites and premium seating to an “expanded” Husky Stadium (not reducing it as has been proposed) we would be making plans to add:
1. Office space for a corporation or several companies – Yes, there is an office space glut to some extent in Seattle right now, but private Class-A office space close to the University of Washington is in short supply and coming up a plan that included office space along Lake Washington could draw in some of the massive amounts of wealth in Seattle (and in other cities like San Francisco/Silicon Valley that at the moment do not have strong attachments to UW). We are thinking high technology, medical and surgical, finance and other corporations that would pay a premium price to be so close to the University of Washington and Univ. of Washington Medical Center and to be in such a great spot (on Lake Washington but still close to downtown Seattle).
2. Second, we would look into adding into the UW renovation plan condominiums that could be purchased by people/companies that would work in the offices just mentioned and could also be sold to UW alumni as a place they could stay when they were coming to Washington football games and/or visiting Seattle. Across the United States there are very wealthy UW alumni that would love to have a place so close to the Washington campus and how could one do better than having a condo right next to Husky Stadium and the campus?
With the amount of space around Husky Stadium there is plenty of land to build both office space and condominiums and still leave open the east side of the stadium and the view towards Lake Washington. There are also ways that Washington could limit their potential downside involved in the risk of building office space and condos by transferring that risk to developers that would pay UW up front and let the developers take the risk of renting the office space and selling the condos. An agreement could easily be made where Washington would have right of first refusal on the companies that would rent the office space and the condos could be offered to Washington alumni and boosters first for a period of time before they were put onto the open market.
Several years ago the last Washington AD, Todd Turner, put together a plan with HOK Sports to renovate Husky Stadium, UW AD unveils Husky Stadium drawings, and although the new plan is not much different from the old one, we don’t believe it reaches far enough for new ideas that could bring in new wealth to Washington and allow for UW to do all of the renovations they want to achieve.
Just a thought…but we do know, even with Washington President Mark Emmert (and future NCAA president) shaking the money tree in Seattle almost as well as anyone possibly could, there are still massive amounts of wealth that UW hasn’t even talked with yet.
All we say is…THINK BIG and THINK Out of the Box if the folks at Washington want to make a big splash with the renovation of Husky Stadium…
Before we touch on the continuing Lane Kiffin mess again, we must say that although we haven’t a clue to what will happen with conference expansion, the reporting and writing around the Big Ten’s expansion plans and how other conferences are reacting to the Big Ten has been superb. Because it is the offseason we have had the time to read fully most of the stories on conference expansion and today’s writers and columnists covering the game of football have to be some of the best that have ever covered the game. Many of them have taken the writing and reporting skills they learned in and after college and have turned what used to be a backwater that only a few people dared cover, the coverage of the regional and national stories in college football, into some of the best news coverage in the country today. Unlike the chicken scratch that one sees here at CHS and at other blogs, the writing and editing has really come of age in recent years and it is now almost at a level of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, which is saying a lot. If you are a subscriber to Coaches Hot Seat and read the stories we link each day, then you already know this….
Keep it up boys and girls….
Why the Tennessee fans were so pissed off when Lane Kiffin left for USC
There has been a lot said and written about the Tennessee fans reaction to Lane Kiffin leaving for USC, but no one has really addressed what really pissed off the Vols’ fans when Kiffin high-tailed it out of town after only 1 year on the job.
On the general idea of Lane Kiffin taking the USC job over remaining at Tennessee, we have no problem at all with him coming to the conclusion that both USC was a better job than UT and that Kiffin would fit better and be more comfortable on the West coast. That belief does not change the reality of Lane Kiffin’s behavior upon being hired at Tennessee: the taunting of other coaches and programs, the flaunting of the SEC conference’s rules, his outright disdain for doing things the right way and probably the most important, his careless attitude toward the very important position that the head coach at Tennessee holds in the state.
The Tennessee fans, mainly students, but also some older fans reacted very negatively to Kiffin’s reaction for 2 different reasons:
1. The first reason is that most fans when jilted by a head football coach for another school, especially without any warning, react in a very negative way and that is what we all saw on TV and in the press reports once Kiffin announced he was leaving for USC. Dennis Franchione got the same kind of reaction from Alabama fans, as did Nick Saban when he left the Miami Dolphins, and so on… That the Tennessee fans really reacted so angrily toward Lane Kiffin and his family was for another reason though….
2. The second and primary reason that the Tennessee fan base acted so angrily towards Lane Kiffin leaving for USC was that the UT Trustees, the UT Administration and Tennessee fans and boosters violated the basic principles by which a majority of them live their lives by when they bought into and supported Lane Kiffin as the head coach of the Vols. Several of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have been to Knoxville many times for football games and during business trips, and we have also traveled thru the state of Tennessee a number of times including many visits to Nashville and Memphis. Our impression of the people of Tennessee has always been very positive and that impression is one of the reasons we were stunned that Kiffin was ever hired by Tennessee in the first place, but as we all know now a combination of Lane Kiffin’s agent and the Tennessee AD Mike Hamilton not doing a full background search led to Kiffin’s hiring. Mike Hamilton called Pete Carroll we know for sure and he called a few people about Monte Kiffin, but Hamilton made a fatal mistake by not calling people that would have had an unbiased opinion on Lane Kiffin. If Hamilton had made those calls we believe that Kiffin would have never been hired at UT nor would he be the head coach at USC today. (We will have to say in this spot that we have always had a lot of respect for the AD at Tennessee Mike Hamilton and that we believe he works very hard to do what is best for UT, but Hamilton has a weakness that many people in power do today. They do not talk to enough people that are outside of his immediate chain of command at Tennessee and a select group of boosters and fans that donate a lot of money to UT. Talking to those folks is great and necessary, but getting opinions from many different sources is paramount for decisions makers when they are making very big decisions and hiring a head coach at a I-A university is the biggest decision of all.)
After Kiffin was hired and had been on the job for a month or so the Tennessee Trustees, Administration, fans and boosters violated their basic principles by continuing to support Lane Kiffin, even after everyone knew that the guy was a Pompous Ass that had no business being the head coach at any I-A school, forget about school in the SEC. That none of the Tennessee Trustees or Administration had the guts to stand up and say that Kiffin’s actions and behavior were unacceptable in public says more about the nature of the world we live in today, where political-correctness and going along to get along is more important than folks in decision making roles and in places of power just telling the truth as they see it.
The same thing that went on at Tennessee under Lane Kiffin goes on today among our elected leaders, because behind the scenes in the offices of US House Representatives and US Senators people in both parties are wondering how they are going to tell the American People that they have promised things to people that we cannot afford and that they have run up a pile of debt we can never pay back. They hem and haw about doing things to solve the problems of the country which is often only to gain political advantage, but deep down our elected leaders that really give a damn don’t have a clue to what they would say or do to solve the United States’ fiscal problems which threaten the very future of the nation.
As Abraham Lincoln was said:
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
No, there are very few political leaders that have the guts and the courage to bring The American People the real facts as it pertains to our deficits and debt. In fact, these Elected Leaders, including many supposedly conservative Republicans, scheme endlessly on how to create new government programs and to spend more of the taxpayers’ money. Most people in political office got involved in politics to “do things” and that makes cutting budgets and being honest about the facts opposite to why they got into government in the first place. Don’t expect anything of real substance to happen until the country faces a real crisis, like a monetary or debt crisis, only this time around we may wait so long that there will be nothing that can be done to stave off another deep recession or even depression.
Getting back to Lane Kiffin, the facts are that there was no one with enough courage at Tennessee in a position of power to stand up and say what was obvious to everyone knew within 60 days of Lane Kiffin being hired by the Vols. Namely that Lane Kiffin was a terrible fit for the school and he was acting like a Pompous Ass and to continue him in that position, even if it would have cost a lot of money to fire his ass was a terrible thing to do. No, the folks at Tennessee just swallowed hard and they violated their own basic moral principles on how they would expect their own children to act and behave. And to think until Pete Carroll bolted for the Seahawks Kiffin was coming back for another year at Tennessee, with no one having the guts to stand up and tell the truth.
A funny thing happens when you violate your basic principles. When you are popped in the mouth with the reality of what you have been denying, you get pissed off and everyone from the Tennessee student to the UT Trustee got popped in the mouth after Kiffin left for USC after he had been mouthing off and acting like an idiot for an entire year. Hey, we would have been pissed off as well if we had been lying to ourselves and the lie we were hiding from jumped up and stuffed itself right in our faces.
That is why the Tennessee fans were really pissed off at Lane Kiffin. He made them look like idiots for putting up with his outrageous behavior and attitude and then when the first offer came along he said, “So long its been nice!” Sorry, we just would never hire someone in a prominent position like a head football coach that we did not fully check out and if someone like Lane Kiffin was the head coach at one of our schools, you can take it to the bank that the AD and university president are going to hear about that in spades.
The entire Lane Kiffin fiasco at Tennessee should be a great lesson for ADs because first of all, hiring a coach off the recommendation of an agent, a few phone calls to people that would not say something bad even they were thinking it, and a gut feeling is not the way to hire a football coach. An AD must talk to dozens of people, even down to trainers and other low level personnel if he can possibly reach them (you can if you try because we do it all the time) to see what a head football coach is really like. How a head football coach or anyone else in power treats the small people, the powerless folks that are behind the scenes will tell you all you really need to know about a coach or a person. The folks at Tennessee didn’t do their homework on Lane Kiffin and made a rash decision in hiring him and gave up the basic principles of most Tennesseans in the process.
That is why the Tennessee fans were so pissed off. Yes, they were mad at Lane Kiffin, but they were really mad at themselves for being played as chumps and for violating their basic principles to support a football coach.
I don’t think we can say that about USC, because it knew exactly what it was getting with Lane Kiffin, which makes Kiffin hire by the Trojans even that much more puzzling.
No, we wouldn’t even hire Lane Kiffin to take out the garbage, but then who would hire a Pompous Ass that has proved himself to be a Pompous Ass? Answer: USC
As for Lane Kiffin’s $4 MILLION DOLLAR Salary, there are 120 coaches in I-A football and here is where Lane Kiffin fits into our Coaches Salary Rankings for the 2010 season:
Top 25 Highest Paid Coaches I-A Football
#
Coach
School
Age
Conference
Salary
1
Mack Brown
Texas
59
Big 12
$5,100,000
2
Nick Saban
Alabama
59
SEC
$4,200,000
3
Urban Meyer
Florida
46
SEC
$4,100,000
4
Bob Stoops
Oklahoma
50
Big 12
$4,100,000
5
Lane Kiffin
USC
35
Pac 10
$4,000,000
6
Les Miles
LSU
57
SEC
$3,900,000
7
Jim Tressel
Ohio State
58
Big Ten
$3,800,000
8
Mark Richt
Georgia
50
SEC
$3,400,000
9
Kirk Ferentz
Iowa
55
Big Ten
$3,300,000
10
Bobby Petrino
Arkansas
49
SEC
$2,950,000
11
Brian Kelly
Notre Dame
49
Ind.
$2,750,000
12
Rich Rodriguez
Michigan
47
Big Ten
$2,750,000
13
Gary Pinkel
Missouri
58
Big 12
$2,700,000
14
Houston Nutt
Ole Miss
53
SEC
$2,700,000
15
Gary Patterson
TCU
50
MWC
$2,500,000
16
Paul Johnson
Georgia Tech
53
ACC
$2,500,000
17
Jeff Tedford
California
49
Pac 10
$2,400,000
18
Greg Schiano
Rutgers
44
Big East
$2,250,000
19
Jim Grobe
Wake Forest
58
ACC
$2,250,000
20
Bo Pelini
Nebraska
43
Big 12
$2,100,000
21
Steve Spurrier
South Carolina
65
SEC
$2,200,000
22
Gene Chizik
Auburn
49
SEC
$2,200,000
23
Frank Beamer
Virginia Tech
64
ACC
$2,200,000
24
Ralph Friedgen
Maryland
63
ACC
$2.050,000
25
Turner Gill
Kansas
48
Big 12
$2,000,000
Yes, that makes sense! In the BIZARRO-WORLD! It does make so much sense that Lane Kiffin is working in La-La Land where you can do nothing at all and make $4 MILLION A YEAR….and your Daddy can pull down $2 Million as well working for a guy that hasn’t done anything to deserve $4 MILLION a year! Yes, this is the BIZARRO WORLD! (Not that Lane would be the head coach at USC if his Daddy wasn’t there keeping an eye on his boy!)
“Holding two fingers less than an inch apart, Colorado football coach Dan Hawkins said Monday that is all that separates the Buffs from returning to “the national stage” as a program.
“Guys, trust me. We are that far away,” Hawkins said. “Nobody wants to be close to having a good marriage, and nobody wants to be close to winning football games. We’ve just got to build a little confidence, build a little momentum.
“We had a good spring. We are way faster than we’ve ever been. All our numbers were way, way lower than they’ve ever been before. Our strength numbers continue to go up. I think our guys are very poised, and they’ve got to have a great summer.”
Uhhhhhh Dan…… What? We follow all of the major college football programs as closely as we can, and although we think a lot of you Dan…
You have a ton of work to do if the Buffs are going to have a winning season in 2010.
Not to contradict Dan Hawkins, but the Buffs were already starting at a pretty low point as it pertains to speed and strength in comparison to other teams in the Big 12 conference and if Colorado hopes to have a winning season or to compete in the Big 12 in 2010 then there would have to be one Hellava complete turnaround with the CU football program….and we just don’t see it…..yet.
In our wanderings across the country we often stop into college campuses and check-in with our contacts and anonymously talk to people that work in or around I-A football programs and for about 90 of the 120 I-A teams we have a pretty good handle on how things have been going since the end of the 2009-10 season and now spring practice. We actually keep a ranking here at Coaches Hot Seat and update it when new information comes in from one of our contacts or members and among the 90 programs that we are able to rank on a 1 to 10 scale (10 = having a great offseason & 1 = terrible offseason) only 25 to 30 schools are ranked 9 or 10. We have never written about these Offseason Rankings before, but Colorado’s ranking right now is: 6
Lots of work to do for your Buffs in the summer Dan if CU wants a bowl trip in 2010, which is what Hawkins needs to return in 2011. Maybe you should make sure that the leaders on your team, like your son Cody, get after the Buff players this summer to make sure they report ready to play this fall. There is on very easy way
1. USC’s Kiffin making $4 million per year – Well, we reported that over a month ago on the CHS Blog, 2010 Coaching Salaries. There are some coaches at private schools that we have to make an educated guess at on their salaries (or with a little help after buying a beer or two!), but at USC we have a pretty good handle on things…..
Now that this $4 million dollar salary number for Lane Kiffin has been confirmed the obvious question is:
“We have some news for Lane Kiffin, the “Better be coming with Lane Gang” and the folks in the LA Media. Any random idiot off of the streets of Santa Monica, whether he was a smoker of Gunjaor not, could with USC’s 2010 football scheduleWIN 9 FOOTBALL GAMES without breaking a sweat and that means that Kiffin and the “Better be coming with Lane Gang” should easily be able to win 10 games plus. Not that we are counting here at Coaches Hot Seat….(Oh, yes we are counting!) or that anyone in the Los Angeles media will be doing anything for the foreseeable future but puckering up and kissing the asses of the folks at USC!”
Anyone random person off any street in America could win 9 games at USC in 2010. How many wins will the $4 Million Dollar Man get in ‘10? If it 9 or less then the folks at USC have a lot of explaining to do!
2. In Michael Lev’s second report on the Lane Kiffin interview with Real Sports, More from Lane Kiffin profile on “Real Sports,” Lev details how the Tennessee fans reacted to Kiffin leaving UT for the USC job. While we wouldn’t condone anyone threatening Lane Kiffin or his family, we certainly cannot imagine that any Kiffin was surprised about the reaction of the Tennessee fans. After all, it was Lane Kiffin that arrived at Tennessee acting like a Pompous Ass that had been raised by wolves and he left the same way. If Lane Kiffin had acted in an appropriate way when he arrived at Tennessee, with class, with poise, with humility…or rather like a human being that was actually raised by parents that did not allow their children to run wild over them (believe us, we see kids like Lane Kiffin everyday and they just like Lane were never taught how to act in a civilized society. Yes, this is a disease and when Tennessee hires a football coach that acts like a Jackass, and that football coach doesn’t know he acts like a Jackass because his parents let him act any way damn he pleased when he was growing up, it only encourages young kids to act like Jackasses because they say, “Hey, he can’t be that bad, he is the head football coach at Tennessee!”) As we tell our kids, Jackasses get hired in this world because there are people stupid enough to hire them. By the way, if there is anyone in or at Tennessee that thinks hiring Lane Kiffin was the right move? If so, please contact us, because we would love to hear the reasoning behind the line of thought!
9 wins in 2010. That is Lane Kiffin’s goal. No, that is the minimum number of games that USC must win in 2010 to equal what Bozo the Clown could win if he was hired by Mike Garrett to coach the Trojans.
If USC has a losing season….then we hope the buyout is not too high on Kiffin’s contract, because it might very well be utilized!
We have gotten a hold of two new coaching contracts in the last week or so:
Now those are two coaches that have “Earned” the right to be head coaches at the I-A level in 2010, with Tuberville proving long ago that he is one of the top coaches in the game. Here’s an example of the Bizarro World that we are now living in: Lane Kiffin is making $2.35 MILLION DOLLARS more or almost 2.5 times as much as Tommy Tuberville!
Lane Kiffin’s Head Coaching Record (2 1/4 years): 12 – 21 (.364)
Tommy Tuberville’s Head Coaching Record (14 years): 110 – 60 (.647)
Yes, we now living in the Bizarro-World where a guy, Lane Kiffin, with a .364 career winning percentage is making $2.35 MILLION DOLLARS more than a coach, Tommy Tuberville, with a .647 winning percentage! Oh, the Absolute Madness! Anyone that thinks this makes sense, please contact us so we can have a team of psychiatrists sent over to your house so they can get right to work on you!
We will hopefully have our assessment of new I-A college head coaches for the 2010 season out soon. We have come up with a new way to rank the new head coaches that promises to be very entertaining!
Can one ever listen to Keith Jackson and Frank Broyles to much? No! This one is from the 1985 Iron Bowl, Alabama vs. Auburn, Mike Shula at QB: (We hope that Keith Jackson and Coach Broyles are doing well!)
We would like to wish all of the Mothers out there a Happy Mother’s Day!
The Coaches Hot Seat quote of the day is:
“God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers.” Jewish Proverb
How so very true.
There have been a lot of testaments to Mothers over the years but one that stands out to many of us here at Coaches Hot Seat was the one included in President Richard Nixon’s Farewell Speech to the White House staff and Nation on August 8, 1974. Although no one here at CHS was even out of elementary school in 1974 and none of us recall watching Nixon’s Farewell Speech live we have seen it a number of times in the media and as it was dramatized by Anthony Hopkins in the movie Nixon.
In Richard Nixon’s Farewell Speech he said about his Mother:
“Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother. Well, I guess all of you would say this about your mother — my mother was a saint. And I think of her, two boys dying of tuberculosis, nursing four others in order that she could take care of my older brother for three years in Arizona, and seeing each of them die, and when they died, it was like one of her own.
Yes, she will have no books written about her. But she was a saint.”
Again, how so very true.
Even on the darkest day of his life and of his Presidency Richard Nixon knew the important role that his parents played in his life and one cannot help but wonder how someone born to Quakers could have wandered so far afield from the lessons he was taught in his youth. No doubt, Richard Nixon wondered that to himself a number of times during his political career.
We are confident that in 2074 historians will look back at the Nixon Presidency and the 1970s and wonder how such a troubled and conflicted man could have been brought down by a “third-rate burglary.” Of course, it wasn’t the break-in at the Watergate that brought down Richard Nixon, it was Richard Nixon himself. Fortunately, Oliver Stone took the time to make a moviee about Richard Nixon with Anthony Hopkins in the starring role and although we would not call the movie entirely accurate, it is as close as one could get to portraying one of the most talented, visionary, ambitious, and conflicted men in American political history. Without a doubt all of us here at CHS are convinced that Richard Nixon’s opening and trip to China altered both US and world history and that trip is still paying huge dividends today. Even in modern day Communist China one can see what will eventually become a country that will be almost completely based upon a market system with an advancing middle and upper class which will fundamentally change the world for the next century. Sometime in the next 50 years China will eclipse American in total GDP but if the U.S. continues to manage the very important relationship with China, as the past 6 Presidents have done and Obama has up to this point, it will be the US and China leading the world, and hopefully for the better for both countries. Of course, if the United States does not get its fiscal house in order in the next decade, we are destined to become the Great Britain of today which is now little more than an afterthought on the world stage after once ruling the world.
Here is Richard Nixon’s Farewell Speech in 1974 as portrayed by the Great Anthony Hopkins
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mothers out there!
On a related subject…..
Here is our favorite scene from the movie when Richard Nixon visits the Lincoln Memorial during protests against the Vietnam War
More on the “Beast” in a moment….
Here is the trailer for the movie Nixon
People can say what they will about the maker of Nixon, Oliver Stone, but one cannot say he doesn’t take on some of the toughest issues that have in the past and do today face our country. Many years ago a couple of us here at Coaches Hot Seat were intrigued with Wall Street after Mr. Stone made a movie with the same name. We are confident many of you remember seeing this movie at one time in your life:
Wall Street trailer
Now Oliver Stone is back again with another movie, Wall Street 2, that hopes to capture the essential nature of today’s US financial system, which to us here at CHS has been allowed to turn into little more than an unregulated Las Vegas Casino that in its current form threatens the very future of the American Republic. As we said earlier a couple of us here at CHS got to see the inside of the Belly of the “Beast” that is Wall Street and we came to learn then and believe today that the Greedy Bastards on Wall Street, which is now a lot more than just a few bankers and traders in New York City, would not only sell out their own mothers to turn a Buck, they would bring down the United States as well.
As one of our Greatest Americans Thomas Jefferson said long ago:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
Thomas Jefferson was right then as was Henry Ford over 100 years later when he said the following two statements:
“Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.”
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
Yes, “Wall Street” as it is currently configured poses a danger to the American Republic, even a Clear and Present Danger to those that are paying attention, but there is very little the American People can do to avoid the wrath of the Greedy Bastards because they own most of Congress lock, stock and barrel. After all, when you give people a lot of money, you certainly want something in return….right? Well, the Wall Street Bastards are getting plenty for all those bucks.
There has been much made of the “Financial Reform” bill that is now up for debate on the floor of the US Senate but don’t think for a second that anything in the House or Senate “reform” bills addresses the very serious problems of Wall Street the threats it poses to the country. The Wall Street banks are still “Too Big Too Fail” no matter what the writers of the “Financial Reform” bills tell the American people and everyone knows that the Wall Street Boys are confident that they can gamble and take huge risks, often with the “People’s Money” and that they will be able to keep all of the massive profits from their casino operations, but if something goes wrong, they will just send the bill to all of us. Does that sound fair or even American to you? Of course not, but why would anyone expect that these Greedy Son of a Bitches on Wall Street would give two rips about America. As we said, we have seen these Wall Street Bastards close-up behind the scenes and they care nothing for the country, the American people or anything beyond how much money they can put into their pockets before the market closes each day.
Will the current “Financial Reform” do anything to prevent the next financial meltdown? No, not a chance and since it lets the Wall Street Bastards off almost completely and doesn’t address the outrageous and continuous bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Ignoring the Elephant in the Bailout, NY Times, May 9, 2010) anything that will emerge from the Congress on fixing our badly warped financial system will be little more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Our only recommendation to American People is that they just stay clear of these Wall Street Bastards because they will destroy all in their path, especially if get between them and their only God, the almighty $$$$$. Hopefully, last week’s “glitch in trading” as it was called was another lesson learned by the American People, but we rather doubt it. Please, that was no more a glitch than the Sun surprising anyone by coming up in the morning! It was just another opportunity for one of these Wall Street Bastards to manipulate the Las Vegas Casino that used to be the American capital markets but is now little more than a Roulette Wheel that has the American People holding the bucket for any losses that the house takes! Find more on these subjects at a great new website:http://www.madashelland.com/
Wall Street 2 trailer by Oliver Stone
If you doubt any of the above, just listen to what MIT Professor Simon Johnson has to say about these Wall Street Bastards in this C-Span Video, http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/292877-1, or if you are interested enough you can pick up his book, 13 Bankers, The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. Very scary reading that will piss you off royally, as it should!
