For those of you who follow basketball, let me use an
analogy: George Karl was the coach of the Seattle Supersonics.
They always had a winning record every year, but they never
actually won a championship, and, finally, Seattle got rid of him.
In this situation, if you’ve got a principal who’s done an okay
job but, at some point, the local school council determines, “You
know what? We think that there’s another candidate who can take
us to the next level”, under that standard, as long as they can
document that it was a reasonable choice, then that is going to be
okay.

That rhetoric was said on May 27, 1999, if you care, and there’s some transcripts here.

SCOTT JACOBS

Joey Porter never thought it possible.  Not in his lifetime at least.  He wasn’t alone.

Many believed that a woman would become president before an African American.  Or black American, however you want to say it.  Any way you spin it, politics have spilled onto the fields where our heros play.  Athletes are speaking up like we’ve rarely heard before.  They never thought they’d see it, they can still hardly believe it.

“For America to accept us on that level as people, we went through a whole lot,” said Porter. “You got to understand he’s going to the White House.”

And for a day I’ll be happy to let the NFL’s sack leader speak his mind.  Usually Porter just bashes the opposition, like Denver’s Brandon Marshall, or Matt Cassel, but you have to hand it to the man, he’s backing his words up.  He said Miami would beat the Patriots and they did.  Fortunes have changed so much in Miami that ESPN analysts are begining to take notice.  One ESPN analyst (his name escapes me) has the Dolphins not only making the playoffs but winning the AFC East. One thing at a time buddy.

I can live with an athlete that can back his smack up and I am totally okay with politics from our athletes.  I’ve never been a huge smack talk fan, but if you can back it up, have at it.  All’s fair in love and war, and Porter is loving life right now.  His Dolphins (4-4) are the most excited .500 team in probably a decade.  They’re a game back of three teams tied at the top.  They believe.  They have a quarterback who gives them a shot.  There could be something special in the air.  Special like last night, when what once seemed like the unthinkable, happened.

The Dolphins making the playoffs seemed laughable after last season’s 15 loss debacle.  But thanks to Bill Parcells, Jeff Ireland, and Tony Sparano, Miami revamped their team, traded old parts for new ones, and they got themselves a quarterback.

Look at ‘em now. Road wins over New England and Denver.  Home victories over San Diego and Buffalo.  There’s not a bad win there.  And for a team that was just plain horrible last year, 4-4 looks like 6-2.  They’re begining to believe in Miami.  And maybe things are changing.  Afterall, few expected Florida to go blue.  And yesterday it did.

And I hate to use that word, but maybe, just maybe, change is in the air.

Take a look at the division races for yourself:

AFC East: Three way tie (Patriots, Bills, Jets)
AFC South: Titans in an absolute runaway
AFC North: Steelers looking good after handily beating Skins
AFC West: No one wants it, but mediocre Denver leads it.

Now compare that to last year:

AFC East: Patriots, and it was never close
AFC South: Colts, what a difference a year makes
AFC North: Steelers, when the Browns were finally good for a change
AFC West: Chargers started slow, finished hot

Now we move over to the NFC:

NFC East: Giants, runaway train heading to big things it looks like
NFC South: Panthers looking good early, with no expectations for once
NFC North: Bears look shaky if Orton’s out for any length of time
NFC West: Cardinals, hey division: a little competition please?

Now compare that to last year:

NFC East: Cowboys dominated regular season
NFC South: Bucs did what they had to do to hold off rivals
NFC North: Packers, Where’s number four at?
NFC West: Seahawks prove no one’s in their division.

The point being: change is in the air.  In football, in basketball (where the Hawks are 3-0 after beating New Orleans, and even in hockey (where Martin Brodeur will be out for 3-4 months for a Devils team that doesn’t know what it’s like to live without him) change is all around us.

Like it or not, it has arrived.

And lest us forget: congratulations to Kevin Johnson.  The former Suns great was elected as Mayor of Sacramento on Tuesday night.

SCOTT JACOBS

It’s that time again!  Now that we’ve survived a vigorous two year campaign that was both very heated and very historic, it’s time to move on to the bigger issues at hand: namely, the BCS.  Yup, now that we’ve elected our President-elect in the U.S., our focus now need not shift to a sagging economy or an unbelievably expensive war, rather a system that, ten years and counting still makes no sense.  The BCS.  America’s punching bag.  If the BCS was a person it’d be mocked more on SNL then Sarah Palin ever could.  If the BCS was a party people would call for change, and change would happen.  If the BCS came to a democratic vote by college football fans, coaches, and players all across the country, it would cease to exist.  Instead, because all of those scenarios are either A) Unrealistic, B) Laughably absurd or C) Smart, college football has still not choosen to go the route of a playoff system.

You would think that if we can elect a black president in the U.S. we could do away with the BCS, but unfortunatley the two don’t go hand in hand.  We can change history, but we can’t overcome the worst, most hair-pulling system in sports.  We can go to war with other countries with the hope of coming up with peaceful solutions (or something supposedly like that), but we can’t find peace in college football, where the fans, coaches, and players are just dying to get a chance to ‘earn’ their national title.

All across the nation in Tuscaloosa, Lubbock, Gainseville, Los Angeles, State College, Stillwater, etc. the college football pundits are buzzing.  And they’re not doing that “bzzzzzzzz” thing that Georgia Tech fans do when a kickoff occurs.  No, they’re buzzing again at how we still have the same horrific system in place that is fun to curse out, but not nearly as enjoyable to play out.

But maybe there is change in the air.  On Monday Night, during ESPN’s attempt at looking like a wannabe sports/election channel, they interviewed Obama and asked what he would change in sports.  One thing, Chris Berman basically asked, is all you could change.  Obama’s response:

“I think it is about time that we had playoffs in college football. I’m fed up with these computer rankings and this and that and the other,” he said. “Get eight teams — the top eight teams right at the end. You got a playoff. Decide on a national champion.”

And thus, hope springs eternal.

Kind of.

Whether Obama has any pull whatsoever on ‘changing’ a system that is as stubborn as a stubborn can be is highly debatable.  Whether college football presidents, and conference presidents would even entertain the idea of letting Obama have a say is probably laughable.  But I think it’s safe to say that he will fight for (or at least, entertain the notion) of fixing this mess.

Pete Caroll, who’s team made the title game three years in a row, winning two consecutive titles, before losing in epic fashion to Texas, is fed up with the system.  His USC Trojans have shutout three of their last four opponents (Washington State, Arizona State, and Washington) and they actually dropped from fifth to seventh in this week’s BCS standings.  Caroll is baffled, as am I, how you can mutilate three teams the way USC has, and drop?  Like seriously?  Are we really going to go there?

Meanwhile, Penn State fans are sweating out the prospect of their team  running the table in the mediocre Big 10, and not making the title game.  A friend of mine brought up a valiant point that if Alabama runs the table all the way to SEC title game, and Florida does the same and then beats Alabama, that the Gators could feasibly jump Penn State.  Furthermore, if Texas Tech and Alabama don’t lose again, Penn State won’t have any chance to prove whether they’re great or not.

Texas Tech plays Oklahoma State this weekend and Oklahoma the next, so the prospects of them winning ‘em all are not likely.  Not yet at least.  And Alabama looks like they’re ready for a potential slipup.  I don’t put it past LSU to sneak up on the Tide and win this weekend.  USC is seventh, even though they lost like a million years ago to an Oregon State team that actually controls their own destiny in the disappointing, and borderline atrocious Pac 10.  Such is the beauty of college football, where a team could contend for a national title and actually lose their conference!

But yeah, let’s just keep the BCS going.

Or… or, we could put together a playoff field that looks something along the lines of this, and play out a title on the field:

Alabama, Texas Tech, Penn State, Florida, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, USC, Utah… or something like that.

It’s like that great line in Remember the Titans, when Denzel Washington  says, “let ‘em play ref.  Let ‘em play!”

Will the college football big shots ever let them play?  When you find out, you let me know.  In the meantime, I’ll continue to  buy those lotto tickets.

And the day I win the lottery, maybe college football will come to their senses.

SCOTT JACOBS

“Yes we can,” Barack Obama said.  And tonight, yes we did, elect Obama our next president of the United States.

Whether you liked him, loved him, or hated him, he’s the new man in charge.  Whether you cry listening to his speeches, gag listening to his words, or just don’t care either way, he’s going to be sworn in as our 44th president of this great country.

I personally feel tonight was an incredible night.  We found out tonight that racism is a dying breed.  We found out that people can overlook skin color, and experience, and unite behind a man that inspires the uninspired.  We will go from the man who couldn’t speak to a man who is an incredible speaker.  We will go from a former pro sports owner, to a man who’s never owned any team.  But now, Obama has done it.  He won Florida, and it didnt’ even matter.  He took Ohio and it actually didn’t matter either.  He claimed Virginia when few thought it possible when this crazy journey began.

I want to believe that the man will be the next JFK.  I want to believe that he will transcend race, and change the world for the better.  I want to believe that he’s bigger then parties, a man of his word, and someone who will provide the change he has promised.

As for what happens next?  Well, who knows.  But when the next college football team claims the BCS title in January, and when the NFL crowns its Super  Bowl champions in February, they will be invited to the White House.  Not to meet President Bush, but President Obama.  You just let that sink in for a minute.  In the meantime, from a sports perspective, we anxiously await the answer that we will soon get answered: just how much does he like sports?

It’s one of the many questions that he now has four years, and maybe even eight, to answer.

Barack Obama, the next president of the United States.