Eagles’ dysfunction confirmed through coaching search

It’s hard to say this was surprising. But it was certainly disappointing. Last night, Les Bowen of the Philadelphia Daily News reported that the Philadelphia Eagles were going to name Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Doug Pederson as their new head coach.  On the same day former Eagles head coach Chip Kelly was hired by the San Francisco 49ers, the Eagles’ coaching search concluded.

Where do we start? Well it’s obvious owner Jeffrey Lurie was just so fed up with Kelly that he wasn’t going to allow him to coach the final game against the New York Giants and wanted him gone as soon as possible. Lurie’s reason for firing Kelly before the last game of the season was to get a jumpstart on finding the next coach.  There were seven head coaching job openings this year and the Cleveland Browns, New York Giants and Miami Dolphins all hired coaches before the Eagles.

Not only is it clear Lurie didn’t really want to get a jumpstart on finding the next coach, but Lurie and Howie Roseman didn’t seem to have much of a plan following Kelly’s firing. They opted not to interview hot names like Hue Jackson, Sean McDermott and Josh McDaniels. Right before the Browns announced Jackson as their next head coach, the Eagles reportedly called him in a last-ditch effort to speak about their opening but it was too late. While it’s easy to argue the best players on the Eagles roster are on defense, not one defensive-minded candidate was interviewed. Adam Gase and Ben McAdoo decided to take other jobs and Tom Coughlin withdrew his name from the search. Just like that, a poorly organized search came down to Pat Shurmur and Pederson, and Pederson was the pick.

                           Orlin Wagner/Associated Press
Kansas City's offenses certainly haven't lit
the world on fire in Pederson's three years
as offensive coordinator. 

The Tennessee Titans are the only team with a vacancy remaining. Pederson’s name was not linked to any of the other five teams that have already hired coaches. When you look at his resume, there isn’t much of a reason to be confident in his ability as a head coach. Before joining the Eagles in 2009 as an offensive quality control coordinator, Pederson was a high school football coach. In 2011, Pederson was elevated to quarterbacks coach, a title he held for two seasons. In the first of those two seasons, Eagles’ quarterbacks threw the most interceptions in the NFL. In the second season, the team was 25^th in the league in passing touchdowns. Then in 2013, Pederson followed Andy Reid to Kansas City as Reid’s offensive coordinator, where Reid did most of the play calling.  It certainly doesn’t help Pederson that in his tenure in Kansas City, the Chiefs went 18 consecutive games without having a wide receiver catch a touchdown pass. While the Chiefs threw just seven interceptions in 2015, an NFL season low, there aren’t many reasons to think Pederson is ready to be an NFL head coach.

What made him so attractive to the Eagles is certainly a question I’m sure Lurie will address at the introductory press conference after Kansas City is eliminated from the playoffs. But after Kelly, it’s certainly easy to make a conjecture or two about why the Eagles settled on Pederson. Lurie stressed the importance of a coach being able to relate with players. Many current and former players have spoken highly of Pederson as a person once the news broke. There is also a history between Pederson and the Eagles. As previously mentioned, Pederson was a part of the coaching staff at the end of the Andy Reid era. He also started nine games at quarterback for the Eagles in 1999 before handing the reins to Donovan McNabb. So when you consider his history with the Eagles and relative inexperience when it comes to holding positions of power on NFL coaching staffs, Pederson is just what Lurie and Roseman were looking for. He is an NFL coaching neophyte that will not challenge their decisions.

With this being the end result of the coaching search, some have even gone as far as suggesting Kelly was fired too early. It was clear Kelly had gone downhill since winning the NFC East in his first season. Defenses seemed to catch up to his unconventional offensive philosophy.  His personnel decisions blew up in his face. His dismissal was certainly warranted. But, Kelly was only part of the problem.

                                                  Robert Deutsch/USA Today
Lurie is not the kind of owner whose
decisions deserve to go unquestioned.

The first seven years of the Reid era were some of the most successful years the organization has ever had as the Eagles went to four straight NFC championship games and appeared in one super bowl. In bringing Pederson back to the organization and having Roseman running the personnel department, it looks like Lurie is trying to re-create an old era of Eagles football, rather than start a new one. Now in his 22^nd year as owner of the Eagles, Lurie has repeatedly failed to surround himself with the appropriate football minds necessary to win a championship. Many people have been in and out of the Eagles’ front office, but Roseman remains Lurie’s confidant having been employed by the Eagles

since 2000.

Some have pointed to the fact that no one really knew what to expect from Reid when the former Green Bay Packers quarterbacks coach was hired in 1999. Can Pederson be the next Reid? That’s what Lurie and Roseman are hoping for. But Reid had two very important constants as Eagles coach that we aren’t sure if Pederson will have or not. Reid had a very sound and reliable coaching staff with defensive coordinator Jim Johnson’s units always keeping the Eagles in games and current Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh in charge of special teams. Reid also had a franchise quarterback in Donovan McNabb. Will Pederson have the right coordinators that a head coach with his limited experience needs?  What will the Eagles do at the quarterback position this offseason? These are two very important questions to which the answers may determine the future of the Eagles.

Some rumors swirled last night that Brad Childress might come from Kansas City to be Pederson’s offensive coordinator. Childress spent seven seasons on Reid’s staff in Philadelphia. As much as the Eagles may want to go back to the Andy Reid era, it’s going to be hard to find another Jim Johnson and potentially even harder to find the next franchise quarterback. Sam Bradford is slated to become a free agent, which gives the Eagles a huge decision to make at the most important position.

After the Eagles fired Kelly, I argued that Lurie shouldhave cleaned house entirely. Instead it looks like the organization is trying to rekindle the magic of the early 2000s.  It’s a questionable plan at best and one that didn’t appear to be well thought out following the firing of Kelly.

Photos: http://bigstory.ap.org/photo/doug-pederson

http://www.phillymag.com/birds247/2015/03/24/lurie-mortgaging-the-future-can-make-sense/

Problems for Eagles go beyond Chip Kelly

I was in the car on Tuesday night with my family pulling into a local restaurant for my 21^st birthday dinner. My phone started blowing up.  I walked into the restaurant with my phone battery at 75 percent and walked out with just 25 percent left. The Eagles had fired Chip Kelly. I was shocked. I didn’t think owner Jeffrey Lurie was actually going to do it even though the 2015 season was an utter disaster.

There was so much irony in all of this for me.  If you know me well, or have just paid attention to this blog since I started it in August 2013, you should know I’ve been a Chip Kelly supporter. I wrote this in August 2013 with the first season of Kelly’s tenure right around the corner.  Then I wrote this in August 2015, as the Eagles were getting ready for the season after Kelly flipped the roster over in the offseason and took heat for not being able to associate with certain black players. There were plenty of other blog posts about Kelly, but I think you get the idea. I liked his unconventional approach and thought he could win the Eagles their first Super Bowl title. On my birthday in 2013, the Eagles clinched the NFC East and finished 10-6 in Kelly’s first season after winning just four games in 2012. Two years later on my birthday, Kelly was fired. That quickly it was over.

But I’m not blogging now to say this was the wrong move. There is no one else to blame for the fiasco that was the 2015 Eagles than Chip Kelly. He jettisoned a lot of talented football players in his three years in Philadelphia, most leaving in his roster overhaul last spring after he gained full control of player personnel over former general manager Howie Roseman in January.  It didn’t work. The offseason now looks a lot like the 2011 splurge in free agency by the Eagles when Vince Young deemed the Eagles as the “Dream Team” and the Eagles looked like anything but.  That season the Eagles started 4-8, won four meaningless games to finish 8-8, and Lurie delayed the inevitable coaching change, only for the Eagles to go 4-12 in Andy Reid’s final season. As the season went on, it became clear that regardless of how weak the NFC East was, the Eagles were just a bad football team and Kelly was the one who put the team together and was also coaching the team.  He did nothing that inspired confidence moving forward so it felt like the roster flip was a failure that couldn’t be salvaged and had Lurie held on to Kelly things would have only gotten worse the way things did in Reid’s final year in 2012.

For most of Tuesday night and early on Wednesday, I was just trying to let the dust settle from the shock that Lurie actually did it before thinking about what was next. I listen to a ton of sports talk radio as it is, so with this news only gave me more of a reason to keep listening. Lurie had a press conference on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the news broke. The more I tried to read between the lines of what Lurie said, and the reaction I heard from fans that called into the radio stations, the more frustrated I was getting.  One Eagles fan texted me that this was “one of the best weeks in Philly sports history” and plenty of fans echoed similar sentiments on the airwaves that the future was already pointing up now that Kelly was gone.

What many fans were missing, and what I believe to be true after listening to Lurie speak is that Roseman is returning to a role of equal or perhaps even more power compared to when he was the general manager for five seasons from 2010 to 2014.  Lurie said on Wednesday that Roseman is “responsible for making sure our player personnel department is as good as it gets in the NFL.” That seems like a guy that’s going to be making a lot of decisions regarding player transactions and deciding who comes and goes on the personnel staff. While Roseman may keep the same title of Executive Vice President of Football Operations, it’s very clear that he’s the big winner from Kelly’s firing after being exiled one year ago to allow for Kelly to run the show. I kept thinking to myself, why Roseman was even kept around to begin with last year when Kelly won the power struggle? Maybe Lurie just told Roseman to hang tight and if it didn’t work he’d be back.  But why not just fire Roseman the minute you decide to entrust Kelly with all the power and then fire Kelly and start completely fresh?

                                                                              Getty Images
Howie Roseman appears to have lost the battle, but won the
war against former Eagles head coach Chip Kelly.

Roseman has been employed by the Eagles since 2000 and slowly ascended to positions with more power throughout the years. Do people know that since Roseman was named general manager in January of 2010, the Eagles are 48-49 and 0-2 in the playoffs as Mark Eckel points out here? Roseman’s draft history isn’t exactly anything to write home about. In 2010, the Eagles traded up in the first round to select Brandon Graham. At the time it looked like a decent pick until you realize that the Eagles passed on a better defensive end in Jason Pierre-Paul and safety was another position of need and the Eagles opted not to take Earl Thomas who is now one of the best safeties in the NFL. Graham and Riley Cooper are the only players still with the team from the Eagles’ 2010 draft. Jason Kelce is the only player from the 2011 draft class still on the roster. The first three selections in that draft were Danny Watkins, Jaquan Jarrett and Curtis Marsh. No additional comment necessary. In the first round in 2014, the Eagles traded back and reached on Marcus Smith who many pegged as a third round talent. Smith could not get on the field in either of his first two seasons and may not even be on the team in 2016. Now there have been some good picks like Fletcher Cox and Mychal Kendricks in 2012 and Lane Johnson and Bennie Logan in 2013, but I don’t think anyone would tell you the Eagles have drafted well recently. To whiff like Roseman did, and be given another chance, with potentially more power this time doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. The one time Roseman tried to make a big splash in free agency was in 2011, and as I mentioned earlier, we all know how that turned out. 

One of the reasons Lurie cited for Kelly’s release was “downward trajectory” he felt the team was on. As Geoff Mosher points out in this column, when you haven’t won a playoff game since 2008, and haven’t won a home playoff game since 2006, for a franchise that almost always has super bowl or bust expectations, isn’t that almost a decade of a downward trajectory? Don’t forget that in 2008 the Eagles went 9-6-1 and got into the playoffs on a miracle on the final day of the regular season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers losing at home to the lowly Oakland Raiders and the Chicago Bears falling to the inferior Houston Texans which set up a playoff play-in game against Dallas which the Eagles won 44-6.

So it’s very easy to argue that the downward trajectory of the organization started long before Kelly was even hired.  Now, one of the people primarily responsible for the franchise’s mediocrity is back with a major role in constructing the roster. Lurie, Roseman and team president Don Smolenski are going to head the team’s coaching search. Those are the same three people that decided on Kelly three years ago. Lurie’s firing of Kelly was essentially admitting what he thought was a mistake, so as the owner why not choose to be surrounded with some different football people this time around?

Another winner from Kelly’s firing was Tom Donahoe. In 2012, the Eagles brought in Donahoe as a senior advisor and Lurie announced Wednesday that Donahoe would be elevated to Senior Director of Player Personnel after Kelly’s hand-picked personnel guy Ed Marynowitz was also fired.  Lurie described Donahoe’s role as running the “day-to-day player personnel department” and called his promotion a “crucial hire”. So what kind of track record does Donahoe have? He was the general manager in Pittsburgh with the Steelers from 1991 to 1999. The Steelers made the playoffs in five of those nine seasons and appeared in the Super Bowl in 1995. But in 1998 and 1999, the Steelers were a combined 13-19 and eventually Donahoe was fired after losing a power struggle to Bill Cowher. Cowher went on to win a Super Bowl in 2005. Donahoe was then hired to be the Bills general manager in 2001. In five seasons in Buffalo, Donahoe’s teams went 31-49 and missed the playoffs in all five years before he was fired in 2005. Donahoe was out of the game until 2012 when the Eagles hired him.

It looks like Jeffrey Lurie has surrounded himself with a personnel department ran by two men that have each lost power struggles and more importantly just aren’t particularly good at assembling a football team that can win a championship. But it’s the particular loyalty towards Roseman from Lurie that is mind boggling given Roseman’s resume doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence.  Keep in mind that Lurie’s loyalty to Roseman probably won’t be all that attractive to head coaching candidates the Eagles interview. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport believes Roseman is back in the driver’s seat.

There’s really no reason to think otherwise at this point.  Lurie’s firing of Kelly was a bold move. There is no doubt about it. But he should have cleaned house entirely rather than going back to Roseman and promoting Donahoe. He should have learned from a team just 90 miles north. The New York Jets went 4-12 last season. Owner Woody Johnson opted to start over and fired head coach Rex Ryan and general manager John Idzik. But he did so with the assistance of Charlie Casserly in finding replacements. Casserly was once the GM of the Redskins and later on the GM of the Texans and Johnson implored his help as Casserly has been in broadcasting for the better part of the last 10 years. New GM Mike Maccagnan fired the two most experienced members of the Jets’ college scouting department who worked under Idzik.  The Jets then hired Arizona Cardinals defensive coordinator Todd Bowles as their head coach. Maccagnan filled lots of holes in the offseason by trading for quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, making another trade for wide receiver Brandon Marshall, signing safety Marcus Gilchrist, and bringing back cornerbacks Darrelle Revis and Antonio Cromartie to the Jets after both played elsewhere in 2014. One year later the Jets are 10-5 with a win-and-in game on the horizon on Sunday in Buffalo against…Rex Ryan. Revis said this week Maccagnan should be the NFL Executive of the Year.  One of the candidates for Coach of the Year, Arizona’s Bruce Arians, endorsed Bowles for the award this week as the Jets have rediscovered their defensive identity.

                                                           Robert Deutsch/USA Today
Jeffrey Lurie needed to bring in some new football minds
into the Eagles organization.

The chain of command for a football team needs to flow effervescently from the owner to the general manager to the head coach and all the way down to the players. Everyone needs to be on the same page in order to achieve success and when it’s time for change, the owner must know who to remove and who to hire and must be surrounded by good football minds in the process. It sounds simple, but it’s been an ongoing problem for the Eagles’ brass that started long before Chip Kelly was hired.  The biggest reason I believed in Chip Kelly was because of all the change I thought he could bring to the organization. He certainly made a lot of changes and I was proven wrong as not many of his changes were for the better and so Kelly’s firing was certainly warranted. Jeffrey Lurie deserves credit for having the guts to pull the plug. But shame on him for not pulling more plugs. So was this really one of the best weeks in Philly sports history? Not even close.

Photos: http://www.phillymag.com/birds247/2015/03/24/lurie-mortgaging-the-future-can-make-sense/

http://www.hngn.com/articles/165076/20151230/philadelphia-eagles-howie-roseman-back-in-drivers-seat-but-not-as-gm.htm

Ranking the three big sports holidays

Some holidays move around on the calendar each year and others just don’t have specific marquee sporting events that always fall on that date. But there are three that always bring joy to sports fans everywhere.  Here is how I rank them.

3. Christmas: Five NBA games that always feature the best teams and the best players. It’s a tradition that’s certainly growing on me, especially with the marquee game this year being a rematch of the NBA Finals last season between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors. Teams like the Lakers and Knicks seem to be staples on Christmas regardless of how good they are. Other times, teams with a star player or two underachieve and the game that team is playing in isn’t as much of a draw all of a sudden. Such is the case with the New Orleans Pelicans playing the first game on the Christmas slate this year despite having star power forward Anthony Davis to feature. At the end of the day, most of the better teams and players in the NBA are going to be playing on Christmas, so it’s certainly worth watching.

2. New Year’s: The longstanding traditions are what make the holidays great. There aren’t many better traditions in sports than college football on New Year’s Day. I don’t think it was a particularly wise move to schedule the playoff semifinal games on New Year’s Eve, as opposed last year when the games were played on New Year’s Day. Nonetheless, there’s nothing like the history that comes with New Year’s college football and I’m sure more people are interested now with the playoff being a part of the schedule. The NHL’s Winter Classic isn’t nearly as longstanding as college football on New Year’s, but it’s one of the best spectacles in all of sports.  It takes hockey back to its outdoor roots and the crowd is far larger than any other hockey game. There have been more outdoor games added to the NHL schedule since the Winter Classic began in 2008 in Buffalo as a result.

1. Thanksgiving: On this day, it’s just your duty as an American citizen to have football on while eating a big dinner with the family.  Not to mention the great high school football rivalries that are renewed around the country on Thanksgiving. It’s the same thing every year, but I love it more and more. I’ve blogged about my love for Thanksgiving before so this was really a no brainer.

Recapping a wild week in Philadelphia sports

None of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams are particularly good at the moment. Despite being in a three-way tie for first place in the NFC East, the Eagles have been a huge disappointment in 2015 as they are 5-7 with four games to go in the regular season. The Sixers are going through yet another season in their seemingly never-ending rebuilding plan during which they’ve been the subject of tons of negative media attention and very little winning. They sit at 1-22 with just over a quarter of the 2015-2016 season in the books.  The Flyers are muddling through another mediocre season that could likely wind up as the third in the last four without a playoff appearance. The Phillies went 63-99 in 2015, which was baseball’s worst record.

Yet this week in Philadelphia sports came with plenty of intrigue.  The obvious story is the return of LeSean McCoy to Philadelphia as the Eagles welcome in the Buffalo Bills to Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday.  In January, head coach Chip Kelly became the general manager of the Eagles after winning a power struggle against Howie Roseman. Of course the frenzy of moves Kelly made this past spring is well known by now and with a 5-7 team to show for it, the third-year coach has been under plenty of scrutiny this season.  Arguably the most perplexing of all the moves Kelly made was the decision to trade McCoy to the Bills for linebacker Kiko Alonso. While Kelly points to McCoy’s high cap figure as a reason for the move, the Eagles have a lot of money tied up in the running back position in 2015 anyway.  DeMarco Murray signed a five-year, 40-million dollar contract weeks after McCoy was traded. Around the same time Murray signed, the Eagles agreed to terms on a three-year, 11-million dollar deal with former San Diego Chargers’ running back Ryan Mathews.

                                                     David Maialetti/Philly.com

Culture was the buzzword behind Kelly’s offseason and it’s obvious when looking at the money put towards other running backs that McCoy did not fit into Kelly’s culture. When the Eagles returned to practice this week after an upset win in New England last Sunday, the questions about McCoy’s return were at the forefront of Kelly’s press conferences.  Often times Kelly is snarky with the media and is hesitant to admit mistakes.  But this week was different.  Kelly acknowledged he handled the departure of McCoy poorly and said he would like to shake McCoy’s hand on Sunday. But, the feeling wasn’t mutual as McCoy made it known he wasn’t willing to exchange pleasantries Sunday afternoon.  We’ll see whose team comes out on top Sunday, but this certainly isn’t just another week for Kelly or for McCoy.

Murray, one the team’s current running backs, was also in headlines this week after speaking to owner Jeffrey Lurie on the plane ride back Sunday night about his role in the offense.  The former Cowboy had just eight carries in the Eagles victory against the Patriots Sunday and rumors began to swirl about Murray’s future with the team.

The Sixers “process” as it’s commonly referred also warranted attention this week.  On Monday, the organization held a press conference announcing the hiring of Jerry Colangelo as chairman of basketball operations. Colangelo worked previously as the general manager of the Phoenix Suns and as the director of USA Basketball.  Colangelo is a highly regarded basketball executive and one who is respected in NBA circles nationwide.  So the speculation then arose about the future of general manager Sam Hinkie. Hinkie was often at the center of the aforementioned negative press regarding the Sixers in the last two years.  Is Hinkie being pushed out the door? Or maybe this was just a move to better the public perception of the Sixers as the “process” is accelerated and the Sixers begin seriously looking into free agency to add to their roster. Time will tell, but Colangelo is 76 years old and still resides in Phoenix so I tend to lean towards the latter.

                                             Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports
From left to right, Hinkie, owner Joshua Harris and Colangelo
and Monday's introductory press conference for Colangelo.

Today, the Sixers announced a two-year contract extension for head coach Brett Brown. Brown was an understudy to Gregg Popovich in San Antonio and was hired as the head coach of the Sixers in August of 2013. Brown has endured lots of losing with very few NBA caliber players on the roster. The Sixers rebuild has been slowed by Joel Embiid’s foot injury and waiting on Dario Saric to come stateside.  With all that in mind, it is really hard to pass any kind of judgment regarding Brown’s coaching ability but for most of the games during this rebuild, Brown has the Sixers playing tough and gritty basketball. They’ve been right in the thick of a lot of games, but at the end of the day, they just haven’t been a good enough team.

Then there are the Phillies. This week, new general manager Matt Klentak sent closer Ken Giles to Houston for a four-player return from the Astros. It was another of a series of trades the Phillies have made over the last 12 months to restock the farm system and get younger. The Phillies are almost certain to struggle again in 2016, but the transformation of the franchise is finally beginning to take shape after struggling through the 2012, 2013 and 2014 seasons while being unwilling to commit to a rebuild.

The Flyers season has continued without much news off the ice, but on the ice the team is playing some of its best hockey of the season. A 4-2 win last night in St. Louis was their fourth straight road win. The Flyers are now 5-1-1 in their last seven and are over .500 for the season at 12-11-6.  Perhaps it’s just a tease and the team is going to revert back to being an average hockey team. But recently, they’ve looked good. Even if this season doesn’t yield a playoff berth, the commitment to developing players in junior hockey and the AHL from general manager Ron Hextall is a refreshing change from Paul Holmgren’s ultra-aggressive approach every season.

Who knows when things will turn around in Philadelphia? But this week has certainly been filled with plenty to talk about.

Photos: http://mobile.philly.com/beta?wss=/philly/blogs/sports/eagles&id=360970451

http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/12/10/76ers-likes-and-dislikes-jerry-colangelo/

Food, family and football

I don’t know what year it happened but there’s not much of a doubt in my mind anymore. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  Once I outgrew the feeling of excitement that came with waking up and opening Christmas presents, it became apparent. You cannot outgrow Thanksgiving.

There is nothing like Thanksgiving dinner.  My personal favorites are stuffing, cranberry sauce and of course turkey. I was never wild about dessert but if someone makes a cherry pie, I’ll eat it. Taking in a great meal with many family members and watching football will never get old.  On Sundays during the NFL season, sometimes I feel spoiled sitting and just watching football and not doing much else with my day. But on Thanksgiving, I get to do this, eat a ton and enjoy the company of my family. All of it is okay on this day.

I’m lucky enough to still have all four of my grandparents still alive. I have an aunt, uncle and two cousins that live only an hour away. I have an older sister in graduate school and a younger brother in college just like I am. Everyone congregates somewhere and recently it’s been my house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. I’m sure this is no different than many other Thanksgiving celebrations across the country, but it doesn’t have to be different to be enjoyable. I’ve grown to respect the tradition of Thanksgiving. It doesn’t have to change to get better. I don’t want it to change because as long as it stays the same I’ll always enjoy it for what it is.

I never particularly cared for the Thanksgiving Day parades. My family has had a dog for 10 years so the National Dog Show is pretty much a staple in the living room after the parades. It’s all part of our thing. Being in college, there aren’t as many moments like this anymore. Certainly the other holidays are separate moments, but in my opinion, Thanksgiving is the one that has changed the least.

The older I’ve gotten, the less I need to be crossing my fingers for that big holiday gift. I don’t need the surprise of what’s under the Christmas tree or in my Easter basket.  Now, I just enjoy the value of a long-lasting tradition like Thanksgiving. In many ways, it’s kind of like my annual trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame for induction weekend. There’s almost nothing different each year, with the exception of a few additions or subtractions to the group of people on the trip, but there’s a beauty in doing the same thing over and over again, and not changing anything. That’s what Thanksgiving has become for me, and I love every second of it.

A weekly exercise in futility

We’re hitting the stretch run of the college football regular season. Teams are vying for berths in conference championship games and eventually the College Football Playoff. Every Tuesday, we get a glimpse of what things might look like come playoff time as the new rankings are released from the committee. The first set of rankings came out last week and the latest set will be made public tonight.

Last year, I blogged about how I felt eight teams was the answer for college football. I still believe that to be true. This year, I find myself getting so annoyed by these weekly discussions of who’s in and who’s out when there are still huge games left to be played. Last week, LSU and Alabama were both in the top four with a showdown in Tuscaloosa looming later in the week.  So it was pointless to discuss if both teams were going to be in the playoff, because one was inevitably going to be knocked out. Now, Alabama is in the driver’s seat in the SEC West and it will be almost impossible for LSU to make the College Football Playoff given the Tigers likely won’t even be playing in their conference championship game.

While these rankings strike up conversations each week, it’s ultimately a bunch of nonsense. The real conversation didn’t come until the first weekend of December. It was a forgone conclusion that Alabama, Oregon and Florida State were going to be in the first ever playoff. But the fourth spot was very much up for grabs. TCU entered the final week third in the playoff rankings, ahead of Baylor and Ohio State despite losing to Baylor in the regular season.  Baylor had an unconvincing 38-27 win against Kansas State. TCU and Ohio State both had blowout victories over Iowa State and Wisconsin respectively. Iowa State went 2-10 last year and Wisconsin was 11-3. The committee gave the final spot to Ohio State for beating a better team than the team TCU beat. I disagreed with this. TCU took care of its business and left no doubt in the process but was left out. Being third in playoff ranks before the season’s final weekend was essentially pointless. You know how things ended by know. Ohio State stayed hot, beating Alabama and Oregon en route to a championship.

In last week’s first release of the playoff rankings for 2015, there was an emphasis placed on strength of schedule. Undefeated teams Baylor, Michigan State, TCU and Iowa were behind one-loss Alabama and Notre Dame. With Michigan State and TCU losing over the weekend, there’s no longer a case for those teams to be higher in the rankings. LSU will likely drop out of the top four and Notre Dame will slide in. That will leave the top four at Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State and Notre Dame. It’s not rocket science to say those are the best four teams in the nation right now. But what does that mean? Alabama will still have to beat Florida in the SEC Championship game. Ohio State still has to go through Michigan State and potentially Iowa in the Big 10 Championship game. Notre Dame has to travel to Stanford, another team on the outside looking in of the playoff picture. There is plenty of football left. This is where it really gets interesting. So who cares about the top four teams are in the playoff rankings right now? I certainly don’t.