Thoughts of the Day: June 14, 2021

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:

IF THERE HAD BEEN A 12-TEAM PLAYOFF THE LAST THREE YEARS …

The arrival of Dan Mullen as Florida’s head football coach has resulted in three consecutive New Year’s Six bowl games. Had their been a 12-team playoff format in existence when Mullen arrived in 2018, the Gators would have made the playoff all three years.

2020: Last season the Gators were 8-3 after the SEC Championship Game, after which they played Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. In a 12-team playoff, the No. 7 Gators would have hosted No. 10 Iowa State at The Swamp with the winner facing No. 2 Clemson in the second round.

2019: The Gators finished the regular season 10-2 and played Virginia in the Orange Bowl where they emerged with a 36-28 win behind 305 passing yards by Kyle Trask. If there had been a 12-team tournament in 2019, the No. 9 Gators would have packed up their thermal undies and headed to Madison to play No. 8 Wisconsin in a first-round game with the winner facing No. 1 LSU in the second round. Madison in December. Cold.

2018: The Gators finished the regular season 9-3 and were paired with Michigan at the Peach Bowl, where Florida won convincingly, 41-15, as Feleipe Franks played the best game of his Florida football career. If there had been a 12-team playoff, Florida (No. 10) and Michigan (No. 7) would have still met up in the first round but instead of playing in Atlanta, the game would have been in The Big House in December. Cold. Winner of the game would have played Clemson in the second round.

A FEW MORE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE 12-TEAM PROPOSAL

Whereas there is going to be enormous pressure to crank up the 12-team playoff by 2023 – that’s when the working group that came up with the proposal wants it – ESPN has exclusive rights to televise until 2025 and the only network that the CFB can negotiate with until 2025. If ESPN holds the CFP to the current contract, the people at the CFB may decide to take their business elsewhere and you can bet the farm some network is going to come up with Godfather money to make an offer that can’t be refused. CBS, for example, has shown how to successfully partner with Turner for its NCAA Tournament coverage. The result is every game is televised and there is more money to distribute. While we could end up with a poker game scenario where both ESPN and the CFP people try to bluff each other, put your money on ESPN caving and cranking up the new format in 2023 rather than take the chance of being outbid by CBS, Fox or NBC, who, like ESPN, have multiple networks at their disposal.

You would think that after the 2020 experience when Notre Dame joined a conference for the first time in school history then won the ACC regular season and conference championship game that the Irish would think seriously about joining a conference. But, no such luck. Since Notre Dame will be competing as an independent without a conference championship game, under the 12-team proposal the Irish can never been seeded higher than fifth even if they run the table and hold the No. 1 ranking in all the polls. They will have to play a first-round game and won’t have a chance for a bye.

Under the current proposal, the first-round games between teams seeded five through 12 will take place on college campuses and after that – second round (quarter-final), semifinal and championship – games will be played at neutral sites with at least six bowl games part of the process. This is where some tweaking might have to be done because those top four seeded teams that get a first-round bye will not have an on-campus game. If there is enough opposition, the choice will be to play all first and second round games on campus. That would result in fewer bowl games part of the process, which obviously won’t go well with the fat cats in pastel blazers who start showing up at regular season college football games in October. One way to accommodate the bowls would be to add four teams (total 16) and eliminate first round byes altogether but bet the farm that won’t fly.

Under the proposal there are no guaranteed bids to the Power Five conferences. Automatic bids will be given to the top six conference champions, which does open the door for at least one Group of Five champion. Had this format been in place in 2020, both Cincinnati (American Athletic Conference) and Coastal Carolina (Fun Belt Sun Belt) would have been automatic qualifiers while Oregon, which won the Pac-12 and was ranked 25th, would not have made the playoff. It is difficult to imagine the Pac-12 is going to go for this. In the seven years of the four-team College Football Playoff, the Pac-12 has only been represented twice (2014 by Oregon and 2017 by Washington). Among the reasons the Pac-12 forced Larry Scott out as commissioner and hired George Kliavkov is to make sure the league gets represented in future playoff scenarios. If all five power conference champs are included with automatic bids, however, that lessens the chance that two Group of Five conference champs could get in as they would have if there had been a 12-team bracket last year. The Group of Five conferences are going to raise holy hell if a proposal goes forward that lessens the possibility that stars and planets could align for two of their teams to get automatic bids.

Four things are certain in this 12-team format: (1) The scramble for at-large bids will make for a more interesting November; (2) since only the six highest rated conference champs will get an automatic bid, a team with four losses that pulls off a conference championship game shocker won’t get the automatic bid, which would eliminate the possibility of a top four seed from that league; (3) if multiple Group of Five teams make the 12-team field a number of Power Five coaches whose team didn’t make the playoff will find themselves seeking gainful employment somewhere else; and (4) the SEC is going to absolutely love this format, which assures at least two teams from the league every year and probably three.

An expanded playoff is a step in the right direction and it might prove to be the only thing that saves the bowl games from becoming an extinct species. Bet the farm that in December we will see a record number of players from Power Five schools opt out rather than play in a bowl game that isn’t part of the playoff. Fewer stars means bad TV ratings. If the current system remained in place, it would only be a matter of time before the only bowl games that would exist would be for Group of Five schools where the players don’t realize that a week in Shreveport any time of the year or an opportunity to have toes removed because of frost bite while playing a game on Boise State’s Smurf Turf in late December is not a reward, but punishment.

SCOTTIE LEWIS INVITED TO NBA COMBINE In two seasons at the University of Florida, Scottie Lewis averaged 8.2 points and 3.1 rebounds per game, not exactly the kind of stats that wow you. Proof that the NBA drafts on athleticism and potential as much or more than productivity is the report by Jeff Goodman of The Stadium that Lewis has been invited to the NBA Draft combine June 21-27.

Lewis is listed as the No. 80 prospect in the 2021 draft by ESPN. Since the NBA draft lasts only two rounds with 60 players taken, that would indicate Lewis is seen as a developmental project, most likely a free agent who will be assigned to the G-League unless he is unexpectedly productive in the scrimmages at the combine and slips late into the second round.

Goodman, one of the better connected college basketball insiders who has excellent sources in the NBA, projects Florida’s Tre Mann as the No. 16 pick in the draft, taken by the Boston Celtics.

GATOR MEN FINISH 4TH, WOMEN 7TH IN NCAA TRACK

Behind a brilliant effort from freshman sprinter Joseph Fanbulleh, the Florida Gators finished fourth at the NCAA Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, marking the 15th time in Mike Holloway’s 19 years as the head coach the Gators have finished fourth or better. Fanbulleh finished seventh in the 100 meters with a 10.26 time, then won the 200 meters at 19.91, the 10th-fastest time in collegiate history and the sixth best time in the world this year.

Saturday, the Florida women had a strong day to finish seventh, the seventh consecutive year the UF women have finished among the top ten nationally.

Florida will pick up somewhere around 150 points in the Learfield Director’s Cup standings thanks to track and field, which, combined with the NCAA championship in men’s tennis, regional championship in softball and making the NCAA fiend in baseball, women’s tennis and both men’s and women’s golf should move the Gators well past Kentucky and into fifth place nationally.

OVER, UNDER, AROUND AND THROUGH THE SEC

Arkansas: The unthinkable happened in Fayetteville. No. 1 Arkansas (50-13) blew out North Carolina State 21-2 Friday night dropped back-to-back one-run games to lose the super regional in the most stunning outcome of this year’s NCAA tournament. This was the first time all season that Arkansas has lost a series.

LSU: Paul Manieri’s hall of fame coaching career came to an end in Knoxville when the Tigers (38-25) lost both games of the super regional to Tennessee. Reports that retired Oregon State coach Pat Casey has been offered the job have proven erroneous. All eyes at this point are on Louisville coach Dan McConnell and Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco. Bianco, a Sanford Seminole and Indian River Community College grad, was the catcher on LSU’s College World Series team in 1989.

Mississippi State: A trip to the College World Series is on the line today when the Bulldogs (44-16) and Notre Dame (34-12) face off in the decisive game of the Starkville regional.

Missouri: Tulsa graduate transfer defensive back Akayleb Evans has committed to Missouri. Evans played in 30 games over four seasons at Tulsa.

Ole Miss: Ole Miss (44-22) ran out of pitching at the Tucson super regional as Arizona teed off Sunday night to bring the Ole Miss season to an end in game three.

South Carolina: Due to the pandemic, South Carolina’s athletic department operated at a $27 million deficit in 2020-21. This is the first time South Carolina has had a deficit since Ray Tanner became the athletic director.

Tennessee: The Vols (50-16) knocked off LSU twice in the Knoxville Super Regional to advance to the College World Series for the fifth time in school history. The Vols will face the winner of Monday’s super regional game between Dallas Baptist and Virginia in the first round in Omaha.

Vanderbilt: The Commodores (45-15) are headed to Omaha for a chance to win the third national championship in school history.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: All season long, but especially since the NCAA regionals began and advanced through super regionals, I’ve been shocked at the number of called strike threes with men on base. It’s one thing to swing and miss. At least the hitter gave himself a chance to make contact and either foul the ball off or put it into play. The called third strikes aren’t necessarily on pitches that back door their way across the plate or that may or may not have nipped the corner, either. How many times over the weekend did I see a batter watch a pitch somewhere around belt-high and straight down the middle all the way into the catcher’s mitt without once lifting the bat off his shoulders? There have been record numbers of strikeouts in this collegiate season and while I don’t have access to all the analytics, I would love to see what percentage of the strikeouts have been called. And, since I’m on the subject of strikeouts, I have to ask this: whatever happened to choking up on the bat with two strikes, cutting down on the swing and making sure the ball goes into play? I’m not sure I saw anyone with two strikes Sunday choke up on the bat and try to make contact.