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This past week, more than once, I heard football commentators say that Tim Tebow needed more "seasoning" or as another put it "he had plenty of time to make his mark."
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Say what?
Now here's a player who has more touchdowns throwing and running than any other in the history of major college football. He accounts for 75 percent of the Gators offense. He has accounted for more touchdowns than 85 of the 120 Division 1 programs.
Whether Tebow wins the Heisman, I don't know. I do have a vote for the Heisman. And, if I had to vote today, he'd be my guy even though he's a sophomore. Let's turn off our time machines. The future is now and we're living in an entirely different football world. This is the year of high impact, the year when the "spread" offense run by super skilled quarterbacks (and wide receivers) are the foundation of winning.
Their class or age makes no difference. Dennis Dixon is a fifth-year senior who played baseball for three years. A few years ago, Chris Wienke was 28 when he won the Heisman. The point is, take away Tebow, Dixon, Pat White, and a load of super backs up and down Division I-A and Division II and you've got a huge mountain to climb. Just ask Oklahoma when its freshman quarterback, Sam Bradford, was knocked out in its loss to Texas Tech.
I've said before that the football world is flat, and on any given day a big underdog can turn the tables.
Alabama found out the meaning of the old saying, "It's a short trip from the penthouse to the outhouse." Out came the boos when the Tide players lost to Louisiana-Monroe, as if there was some lock on the win column.
The red elephants could end up matching Mike Shula's trip down mediocrity lane. Everyone is "embarrassed." A pall has settled over the Alabama nation. Take heart, at least you're not Notre Dame -- now 2-9 waiting for Rudy Ruettiger to give them inspiration. Riding Shula out on a rail hasn't created a miracle.
Instead of some perspective, media stories are filled with "what if's."
Nick Saban, who was hired to return Alabama to Bear Bryant-like status, is a superior coach who has proved it over the years. And, he's up against a "tide" of false expectations. After all, 3,000 fans showed up at the airport when he arrived and there were 92,000 at the spring game.
Saban is like a new CEO brought in to restructure and revive a faltering company. It will take time, patience and the addition of quality athletes. As someone once put it, "You aren't going to work miracles with one more genius from Harvard." If hard working people can't do the job then it cannot be done. I'm trying Nick but comparing your loss to 9-11 or Perl Harbor makes this a difficult sell.
Market watchers will remember the late 1990s when technology stocks were zooming upward, primarily based on expectations not real results. Then the bottom started falling out, slowly but surely giving pause to investors to bail. So, a lot of unsuspecting people got hammered. Meanwhile, companies, such as Enron, were riding high based on illusion. The market has come back to earth. What we've seen in football is a market correction. The difference is it has come suddenly not slowly and coaches who haven't adapted are trying to muster their resources. You can't just expect the "team" to automatically be worth more weeks after you bought it. No amount of emotion, tradition or expectation can trump what is taking place on the landscape of college football.
I'm not the football version of Nostradamus or the Great Carnac, but it was obvious the Tsunami of big time change was about to come crashing in. The spread is an inflection point when success trends either up or down. It used to be that upsets were, well, upsets. Now they are the rule. And, as I said before, any of the following played out, more is coming.
As best I can determine, the last time these many top five teams (11) tumbled in a single season was 40 years ago. Consider this: 50 percent of the top five ranked teams in action lost last week to unranked opponents. We are again confronting the morass called the BCS.
Reminds me of Joseph Heller's classic Catch 22. You can't win for losing.
This weekend, the number one game is Kansas and Missouri at a neutral site, like long-time rivals Texas-Oklahoma and Florida-Georgia. The outcomes will help sort out the rankings, the BCS teams, and where they'll end up.
Stay tuned. The fun has only begun. Don't you wish this was going to be decided on the field instead of the minds of coaches, reporters, and some computer model?
