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Football
The Week that Was
By Tony Gerdeman

Like most of the summer, this week in college football news was dominated by the Big Ten. Unless, of course, you only watch ESPN.

*** ***

The Big Ten media days have come and gone once again. Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor was voted the preseason Offensive Player of the Year and Michigan State linebacker Greg Jones was voted the preseason Defensive Player of the Year just like they were last year. Also just like they were last year Ohio State was voted the favorite to win the conference, followed by Iowa and Wisconsin.

The preseason voting got me wondering—what would happen if a preseason Coach of the Year was voted for. How many times do you think Jim Tressel would have won it in his ten attempts? Five? Six? And probably five in a row.

I know I harp on this topic a lot, but it's just a remarkably silly voting criteria to end the season. The vote isn't for the coach who did the best job, it's for the coach who took the worst team the furthest. Of course, that doesn't mean that they didn't do the best job of coaching that year, but it's clear that when Jim Tressel has never won the award despite his dominance of the conference, something is wrong with the voters' criteria.

Imagine if the voting for players of the year were done the same way. In 2006, Troy Smith wouldn't have won the conference Offensive Player of the Year. It would have gone to Wisconsin's P.J. Hill, who led the league in rushing and touchdowns as a freshman. Or to Purdue quarterback Curtis Painter, who threw for 3,000 more yards in 2006 than he did in 2005.

See how stupid that sounds?

As long as the Big Ten voters continue to name their coach of the year in this manner, they should just rename it after Ron Zook and John L. Smith so that the stink of the award never leaves their yellowed fingers. That way, nobody will ever again mistake the award for what it should actually be.

*** ***

Continuing the theme of media day, the best table to sit at on Tuesday seemed to be Troy Woolfolk's. The Michigan cornerback laid down some factage to those in attendance. My favorite gems...

Talking about the linebackers: "Kenny Demens and Mike Jones, they actually make me comfortable in case Jonas (Mouton) or Obi (Ezeh) go down because they are great second-team players--anywhere else would probably be first team."

The thought that these two back-up linebackers who can't beat out two of the worst linebackers Michigan has ever had—yet they could probably start “anywhere else”, makes me think that the coaches make the players drink the same kool-aid the fans do.

Now, I'm not doubting for a second that Demens and Jones could start at Michigan. In fact, they probably should. Sight unseen. Give them the job. Is it really going to be any worse?

Woolfolk then talks about Ezeh and Mouton's struggles last season:

"I'm not really sure what happened last year, but this year I think they are going to be great linebackers. And I think that could be one of the strongest parts of our defense."

Really? You're not sure what happened last year, but this year they're going to be great? That's like me smashing my head into my front door every day for a year, and then saying, “I'm not really sure what happened last year, but this year I think by bashing my head into the front door, it's finally going to open this year. And I think it could end up being the best possible way to open my door.”

While we're talking about defense, here is Woolfolk thinking out loud about the new 3-3-5 defense that Michigan will employ.

"It changes assignments and by dropping one more person back to help out against the pass it relieves some of the pressure on our DB’s and safeties. They have less things to cover.”

"I would rather do that to play toward our strength, because Mike Martin is strong as heck, he breaks a new record every day. I think if we just get a little bit of pressure on the quarterback it’s going to be an automatic pick because we have an extra guy deep."

Sounds all well and good, except for the part about dropping one more person back in order to help out against the pass. Teams may not even need to pass if there's only six people up front to run block against.

Of course, my whole thought on the move to the 3-3-5 was that more often than not, it would mean two safeties up in the box, and only one deep, which is the exact opposite of dropping somebody back to help out.

However, after seeing this next comment from Woolfolk, maybe I'm 100% accurate.

"The players aren’t even really sure of the whole concept of the defense as of now."

Wow. Good thing you don't have a game in like a month. A defense that has to think about where it needs to be and what it needs to do will be a remarkably slow defense. And seemingly the whole point to Rich Rodriguez going to a spread defense was to get as much speed on the field as possible. But speed ain't very fast when it's caught flat-footed.

Fortunately for America, Woolfolk wasn't even close to being done talking.

When asked about the quarterback competition, his responses didn't make it seem like it was much of a competition at all.

"Denard has been out there through the thick and thin and been out there all the time regardless if he's hurting. And Tate, he tries to come out, but he's not as consistent as Denard is. And that's allowed Denard to jump a little bit ahead of Tate and I think that Tate's going to have to do a lot of work to catch back up to Denard in camp this year."

Okay, that's innocent enough. Though players don't really talk about other players and their lack of work ethic, or at the very least, they generally don't name names. But not only did Woolfolk name names, he took the police to where the bodies were buried.

When asked about players who don't show up to work out as much as their teammates would like, he said this: "I personally have a lack of respect for them. The outlook on them is kind of diseased. Like you don't want to be hanging around those people because they have bad work ethic. But at the same time, it's my role to try to persuade them to come out more."

And regarding Forcier's current health according to Michigan's liaison to the CDC, "The only reason he's not really labeled as diseased is because of the way he was able to carry the team last year before we started losing. People still trust him a little bit, but he's starting to lose that trust."

After seeing the firestorm he created with his comments—and possibly a heated internal memo from the Forcier family—Woolfolk backpedaled from his words the best way athletes know how, by tweeting that his words were phrased wrongly and that Forcier is a great player.

But maybe we should get a second opinion.

*** ***

The first Coaches' Poll of the year came out on Friday and the Buckeyes were planted firmly in the number two slot behind Alabama. Here's the run down:

1.Alabama (55) 1,469
2.Ohio State (4) 1,392
3.Florida 1,245
4.Texas 1,240
5.Boise State 1,215
6.Virginia Tech 1,052
7.TCU 1,051
8.Oklahoma 1,035
9.Nebraska 1,001
10.Iowa 952
11.Oregon 940
12.Wisconsin 778
13.Miami 728
14.Penn State 508
15.Pittsburgh 492
16.LSU 476
17.Georgia Tech 455
18.North Carolina 445
19.Arkansas 438
20.Florida State 374
21.Georgia 312
22.Oregon State 263
23.Auburn 260
24. (tie) Utah 169
24. (tie) West Virginia 169

Others receiving votes: Cincinnati 135; Houston 76; Brigham Young 66; Arizona 65; Mississippi 48; Clemson 44; Stanford 41; Connecticut 40; Notre Dame 38; South Carolina; Washington 26; Missouri 23; Navy 12; Oklahoma State 11; Boston College 10; Michigan State 10; Arizona State 6; California 6; Texas Tech 5; South Florida 4; Texas A&M 3; Northwestern 2; Temple 2; Central Michigan 1; Mississippi State 1; Nevada 1; Northern Illinois 1; Southern Methodist 1.

A few thoughts:

----Looking at the poll, I'm left wondering what type of radio ads are going to be played in Cincinnati this week.

“The Cincinnati Bearcats—Ohio's only team listed in the “Others receiving votes” category!”

- According to ESPN's Bruce Feldman, the SEC says that they received 22.4 percent of all points in the Coaches' poll. Now, I'm not going to sit here and do the math myself and see if they're right. Instead, I'll just assume the numbers were crunched by somebody at Vanderbilt. Regardless, I think it's funny that they wanted to make it known—and ESPN was right there to help them.

- I think Northwestern is vastly underrated, and Notre Dame is moderately underrated. They will both be in the top 25 at some point this season, and Notre Dame will probably be in the top 12. Penn State, on the other hand, is quite overrated. I'm okay with them being in the top 25, but at 14 they are way too high. Their quarterback situation is unstable at best, and a super-reliance upon running back Evan Royster may prove to be too much for the tailback to bear.

- Also, I'm still looking for Michigan in the “Others receiving votes” area. I'll let you know if I find anything.

- Pretty much everybody from 15 down is interchangeable. They all look the same to me. Like if Clemson and Georgia had a baby.

- If we flash forward one year from today, we could see one-third of the top 15 be comprised of Big Ten teams. Or maybe even more if Michigan can get in there. Or Indiana, if we're going to keep talking ridiculous like this.

- Speaking of Michigan, it should probably be noted that not even Rich Rodriguez thought enough of his team to vote them in the top 25. But I don't know if that should upset Michigan fans, or make them happy that he's waiting until his team “earns” the right. Regardless, the fact that he doesn't think his team is one of the 25 best teams in America right now should make some of those 8-4 or 10-2 predicting Wolverine fans step away from their jugs of turpentine and revise their predictions. (Yes, I know they'll just revise them to 9-3 and 11-1.)

*** ***

Lastly, Jeremiah Masoli is now part of the Ole Miss football team, but it won't come without a bit of paperwork. Head Coach Houston Nutt will make Masoli sign a contract promising to stop being bad and start being good.

And necessarily in that order.

"After weighing everything out, especially after we got him here on an official visit, got Jeremiah here, looking him in the eyes, and he understood. I'll have a contract with him. He understands it will be zero tolerance and he has to do what's right."

I'm all for sixth chances, but I'm even more for FIRST chances. The fact that Masoli comes to Ole Miss as a walk-on means that Nutt didn't have to cut anybody to free up a scholarship. I just hope that lucky 85th-best scholarship player on the Rebel team realizes how lucky he is today.

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