Two Words for Those Against Tulane and James Madison Being in the CFP
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This year, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Committee placed not one, but two Group of 6 teams into their 12-team bracket. Tulane fans know about their Green Wave cracking the Top 12, making the 11th slot. The Wave will be battling 6th ranked Ole Miss in the first round in Oxford next weekend. The second of the two Group of 6 teams is James Madison, who slipped in at #12. The Dukes will be in Eugene to take on 5th seeded Oregon.
Teams that didn't make the final dozen positions include squads like Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Texas, and more who were ranked higher than either Tulane or JMU in various polls by the Associated Press and USA Today.
And the wailing and gnashing of teeth began by those who say that they belong in that Top-12, not those also-rans.
It's Simple. It's the Rules
The rules set up by the NCAA, approved by conference commissioners and independent schools (aka, Notre Dame), and set into motion by the CFP committee had the top conference champions make the playoffs, and that includes at least one from the peons in the Group of 6, the Americans, Sun Belts, Conference USAs of the world.
And the Power 4 conferences (and the aforementioned Notre Dame) are ticked.
"Tulane and James Madison don't belong in the playoffs," they say.
"Only the best twelve teams in the country should be in these brackets," they moan.
Shut up.
You voted for these rules, or at least a majority of you did, so now you have to live by them.
So, shut up.
Those Pretend-like Know-It-Alls Don't Know It All
The so-called gurus at media powerhouses are doing the same thing, saying Tulane and James Madison shouldn't even be within sniffing distance of these playoffs.
"These are going to be blowouts," these so-called experts say, as if there have not been blowouts before this year with Power 4 teams getting the snot beat out of them.
"This is a joke," those media types bloviate. Nope, your elitism and obvious prejudice against anyone not in the SEC or Big 10 is the joke.
Shut up.
If you had the ability to look outside your sphere of influence, you'd realize the games most of the nation are wanting to see are those with those "overmatched" teams from the Group of 6 and your chosen ones who will "run away with easy victories." So you say.
So, shut up.
Who Does America REALLY Want to Watch?
There are 120-plus schools rooting for Tulane and James Madison. Every Group of 6 university will be wearing either Olive Green and Blue of the Wave or Purple and Gold of the Dukes, at least in their minds. And any of the Power 4 teams who don't make it regularly to the playoffs are rooting for the little guys. We would not be surprised if the most watched football games next weekend are those in Eugene and Oxford.
Now, the pressure is on for these two Davids to slay their Goliaths. To shut up these nay-sayers, the little guys from Tulane and JMU have to do something big in these games. They just can't get close. They've got to win.
Of course, if you know the old Biblical tale, you know who wins between the teenager and the gigantic Philistine, right?
Whether it's cold, wet Eugene, or sunny, cool Oxford, the Wave and Dukes get to prove all those folks predicting their downfall erroneous.
Tulane and James Madison get to tell the rest of those Power 4 "my poop doesn't stink" people and pundits alike what we've been telling them already.
Shut up.
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.