CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: SFBadger96 on January 05, 2018, 12:27:26 PM
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Call this the honorary Craig James "worst team to ever play in the Rose Bowl" thread...
What was the statement some commentator made during the season that sticks out to you by making you cringe at just how stupid it was?
For me, it came at the end of the ND/LSU Citrus Bowl. Above average Notre Dame, flawed in many ways, gets away with a broken play touchdown to seal a comeback against above average, flawed in many ways LSU.
Rod Gilmore (paraphrasing), "looking back to the Notre Dame team that lost to Alabama in the 2013 national title game, that team was just not big enough, not ready for prime time. Brian Kelly has definitely fixed that; this team is ready for prime time." Seriously? Winning a traditional upper tier, but not elite bowl game between two flawed, up-and-down teams has some relation to an imbalanced championship game several years ago? Put 2017 ND in any title match-up in the last 15 years and chances are the results are even worse than that Alabama game.
Secondly, I always bristle at comments about that game. Yes, Alabama destroyed Notre Dame. You had one elite team playing a team that on its best day could play with anyone, but (1) survived a brutal schedule unscathed with a little luck; and (2) its emotional leader was going through more than an off week with the outing of the cat fishing (which is kind of an all time story in the ridiculous category). Alabama was always going to be the better team, but it caught ND at a bad moment for a team that lived off of a fair amount of emotion. Also, beat downs happen, even to good teams (see Georgia this season against Auburn, or Ohio State against Florida in 2007, or...there are lots of examples). So Notre Dame in that championship game was never that bad, they just had a bad day against a great team that had a good day. Just like Ohio State wasn't that bad in its loss to Florida: it deserved to be there and was a very good team, it just picked a bad time to have an off game against a good team.
Yes, I'm a Notre Dame fan, but going back and looking at what ND did to get to that game, any team that you didn't have a grudge against you would think deserved to be there based on the record (not the final result).
Notre Dame's win over LSU was a nice finish to an otherwise ok season for Notre Dame. It had high moments, it had low moments, the team was pretty good, but not great, and it beat a very similar team in LSU on a series of plays that easily could have gone the other way. Good for ND.
So what in the wild wild world of sports did a good, exciting win in an upper-tier, but not elite, bowl game have to do with a poor performance several years ago in an elite bowl game? Absolutely nothing.
So that was my Craig James nominee for the year. What's yours?
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Yes, I'm a Notre Dame fan, but going back and looking at what ND did to get to that game, any team that you didn't have a grudge against you would think deserved to be there based on the record (not the final result).
I hate Notre Dame. I have a grudge against them. I think they're perennially overrated and thought that they got to 12-0 that year through luck more than anything else. I believed going into that game that they didn't have the team to even step on the field with Alabama, that they were going to get smoked, and was extremely happy that they did.
And I'll say to this day that they deserved to be there based on their record. I'm not sure they were one of the two "best" teams in college football. But they deserved to be there based on the record.
As for this particular dumb comment, I haven't really looked at this year's Notre Dame team all that closely. I know that when you look at some teams, usually Alabama, you almost can't tell whether you're looking at a college or an NFL team when you look at physique. I never quite got that sense with some of the earlier ND teams. But I didn't really look at their team this year.
After that title game, I think Kelly actually had a point in his statement that his team simply didn't look like Alabama's and that he had work to do to reach that level. Did they "look the part" this year? I don't know. But it might not have been as dumb of a comment as you make it out to be. Coming out of that game, Kelly identified an apparent problem with his roster. If the team looked like he's corrected that problem via recruiting and via strength and conditioning at a higher level, I think you absolutely CAN draw a parallel from that team and that statement to today.
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I feel like you always need a Joel Klatt caveat, because everything he says is dumb, but calling Kenny Willekes the "lone bright spot on MSUs defense this year," was quite odd.
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I think it was the Big Ten Championship Game when the sports casters were talking about what a great game Barrett was having, carrying the Buckeyes on his back, then they showed his stat line with (at that moment) a hundred-odd passing yards and two picks, including a pick-6, and a bunch of overthrown/missed wide open receivers.
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It could be any one of the several times I heard announcers mention Wisconsin's lack of speed and how it would hurt them against faster teams. That's a start, but there is so much to choose from.
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I feel like you always need a Joel Klatt caveat, because everything he says is dumb, but calling Kenny Willekes the "lone bright spot on MSUs defense this year," was quite odd.
about halftime of the rose bowl klatt went on a twitter rant about sec teams and not deserving 2 teams in, bama will get blown out just like uga, etc. that's all fine and whatever. but best part was yesterday he was on local sports radio and he asked why he gets labeled an sec hater. the guys just laughed as him and asked if he had a few more minutes to read his twitter.
him and kanell rant about sec during the selection show were classics. throw in dumbass dinich too.
edit: i don't mean them hating on sec. that's fine, whatever. i mean why they don't own it instead of talking out of both sides of their mouths and acting surprised when they're called on it.
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I head that same statement at the end of the ND-LSU game and just chalked it up to the announcer treating the game he's covering as being way more important that it is.
And while anytime ND is 12-0 they're going to be playing for a NC, they didn't just have a bad game vs. Bama. The Irish get curb-stomped in that game 9 out of 10 times, imo.
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I feel like you always need a Joel Klatt caveat, because everything he says is dumb, but calling Kenny Willekes the "lone bright spot on MSUs defense this year," was quite odd.
Isn't this a microcosm of our society at large now? Klatt routinely says outrageous things that are almost always wrong...and he probably has amazing job security because of that. You don't have to be prudent or accurate, you just have to get attention....which he does.
A society in which he and the Skip Baylesses of the world have job security is not a healthy society.
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about halftime of the rose bowl klatt went on a twitter rant about sec teams and not deserving 2 teams in, bama will get blown out just like uga, etc. that's all fine and whatever. but best part was yesterday he was on local sports radio and he asked why he gets labeled an sec hater. the guys just laughed as him and asked if he had a few more minutes to read his twitter.
him and kanell rant about sec during the selection show were classics. throw in dumbass dinich too.
edit: i don't mean them hating on sec. that's fine, whatever. i mean why they don't own it instead of talking out of both sides of their mouths and acting surprised when they're called on it.
The pissing match between ESPN talking heads and FOX talking heads, where neither one can talk rationalyl about the SEC, and neither side is willing to acknowledge the reason why, is getting pretty irritating.
It truly is just cable news, except at least Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity sort of acknowledge their biases.
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I was out for lunch yesterday and they had one of these yelling shows on espn and you see the close captioning. they filled a whole segment on "what does it mean for the Astros to go to visit the White House" this year. All of the remarks made in that segment fit nicely in this thread. I'll spare everyone the particulars.
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i'd like to nominate alabama's sr cb tony brown and his post sugar bowl comments. just a train wreck.
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More insufferable and nauseating than plain dumb, but all the sports media trumpeting TJ Barrett for Heisman after his Penn St game. Was glad it only to a week for it all to get capsized by Iowa a week later. Anytime the national sports media latches and finds "their guy" they usually sound stupid.
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Probably when I called Georgia a dumpster fire before the season started
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Yeah, as far as personal predictions go, I also thought Georgia should be happy to get to 8-4, and thought everyone was selling too soon on Colorado, that it wasn't a one year thing, they'd be just as good in 2017.
As far as not dumb predictions? I didn't have many. I did say I thought people were buying on Texas a year too early, and didn't get why they were ranked in the preseason polls. Thought just getting bowl eligible would be a solid goal for them, with 2018 being the year they started to make moves.
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seems to me that every year, ESPN has the "greatest" ever moments.. greatest DL.. greatest QB.. Greatest team..
It's about the show, not the games. Which is why I hardly watch espn.
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whatever defensive player for Georgia was yelling at Baker Mayfield after the Rose Bowl to Humble himself after he just dropped 45 on their defense.
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Re: Dumbest Comment of the Season (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?topic=2277.msg31007#msg31007)
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2018, 03:10:15 PM »
A society in which he and the Skip Baylesses of the world have job security is not a healthy society.
Joe klatt may be different but he's nowhere near the steroid stupid as Skip Clueless