AUBURN | So a 12-team college football playoff is coming. Oh sure, its still got to go through a couple of more committees before it gets ultimate approval, but there’s no doubt it’s coming.
It’s already got the green light from the people that matter in college football including the SEC, which along with the Big Ten, will likely benefit the most from the new format.
What’s hard to believe is we’ll have to wait at least three years before it can be implemented. If 2020 proved anything, a college football season can be put together in a matter of weeks and schedules can be reworked days in advance.
Why wait until 2023 to take this much-needed step? Do it for 2022.
My only other knock on the proposal is that the selection committee won’t make adjustments to keep from scheduling rematches or games between teams from the same conference.
That would have stunk for Auburn, Georgia, and really college football, to see those two teams play a third game in 2017, especially if it was just a quarterfinal matchup.
Putting those criticisms aside, there’s a lot to like about the new format. I think my favorite part is that Notre Dame won’t be eligible to be a top four seed under the proposal. It goes to the top four conference champions.
With all due respect to Allen Greene and Irish fans, you want to be an independent and play a cupcake-ish schedule every year, you don’t deserve a bye.
Of course, the best part is giving more teams an opportunity to play on college football’s biggest stage. That includes Auburn, which would have made it in 2017 and had near misses in 2016 and 19 under the new format. Perhaps Bryan Harsin can have the Tigers playing consistently better and up those numbers in the future.
From a general college football perspective, the new format creates several new points of controversy to talk about instead of the incessant droning about the top four teams every week. Now, it will be about the top four seeds/byes, the next four that will get to host first-round games and the battle for the final four spots and what conferences will earn two, three or even four bids.
It’ll give the Group of 5 much more coverage as its top teams and conferences vie for one or possibly two of the 12 spots.
So much of college football, even in September, is focused on the playoffs and the the top four spots. The new format brings a lot more teams into the discussion including as many as 25-30 that will still be in contention over the final 4-5 weeks of the season.
That’s better for college football, and makes for many more compelling and important games in October and November, not to mention all the huge conference championship games in December.
I seriously can’t wait.
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In today’s musical journey, we go back 26 years to the release of one of the most successful and best-selling albums of all-time. On June 13, 1995, Alanis Morissette released her third studio album, Jagged Little Pill. The album totaled over $30 million in sales worldwide, which ranks among the top 20 of all-time and the second-highest from the 1990’s behind The Bodyguard soundtrack. Jagged Little Pill won five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and is ranked No. 69 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album has been re-released twice, an acoustic version was released in 2005 and a musical stage production based on the album premiered in 2018 and was nominated for 15 Tony Awards the following year. The album was one of the first released under Maverick, a recording and entertainment company founded by Madonna. It made Morissette the first Canadien to reach double diamond in sales.
Morissette was born June 1, 1974 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada to a teacher and high school principal. She has an older brother and a twin brother, born 12 minutes earlier. Morissette, who started playing the piano at age 6. attended Catholic school through grade 8. In 1986, she was a cast member on Nickelodeon’s You Can’t Do That on Television and competed and lost on Star Search in 1990. She made a movie with Corey Haim in 1988, Just One of the Girls, but it wasn’t released until going straight to video in 1993. She was signed by MCA Records Canada but her first two albums in 91 and 92 were both released exclusively in Canada and weren’t big hits.
After MCA dropped Morissette, she travelled to California and connected with co-writer and producer Glen Ballard in an effort to move on from the teen pop sound of her first two albums. The pair hit it off and got into a routine or writing and recording a song each day, often in one or two takes at Ballard’s personal studio in Encino. Ballard’s house was near that of Robert Kardashian, who represented O.J. Simpson in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, which took place while they were recording. The lead single, You Oughta Know, features Flea on bass and Dave Navarro on lead guitar. It reached the Top 10 and won 1996 Grammy Awards for Best Rock Song and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Although there are several candidates as the subject of You Oughta Know including Full House’s Dave Coulier, Friends’ Matt LeBlanc and ex-NHL player Mike Peluso, Morissette has said she’ll never reveal him. The album includes a number of hits in Hand in My Pocket, Ironic, You Learn, Head Over Feet and All I Really Want. Ironic was the highest charting single from the album, reaching No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard 100, and its video won three MTV Video Music Awards in 96. The album is described as post-grunge with themes of aggression and poor breakups, and hope.
