Cop out

Once again, college football lets us all down. Why on earth is Boise St. matched with TCU in the Fiesta Bowl, while the teams from the "power" conferences do battle in the other BCS bowl games?

It's bad enough that we can't ever get a true national champion, but even when it has an opportunity to create an intriguing game in one of the non-title BCS games, college football is too dumb to do it.

Wouldn't you have loved to see TCU play Florida? An upstart with big talent against the best team in the country over the last five years - that would interest me.

Instead we get yawners like Florida-Cincinnati, Ohio State-Oregon and the ultimate sleep-aid, Iowa-Georgia Tech. Boise and TCU played in the Poinsettia Bowl LAST YEAR! Can't we get something different?

Of course we can't, because college football is a joke.

Read his lips and worry

Sometimes you see something really small that leads you to a much bigger conclusion.

It happened with me today watching Rich Rodriguez on the sideline during the Michigan-Ohio State game.

Rodriguez might prove to be a great recruiter and his style of offense may be well-conceived once he gets the right talent. I'm not passing judgment on those aspects. To get a fair assessment of whether he can be a winning coach at Michigan will take more than two years.

But he will never, I repeat never, be a smart sideline coach. And if he ever does get Michigan back into the national picture, he's going to make a huge blunder. I say that confidently based on one thing he did in today's game. It was that telling.

Rodriguez said something on the sideline that shows such an unbelievable lack of comprehension of football that he's too far lost to ever be saved. It's not possible. I mean that wholeheartedly.

Michigan trailed 21-10 with 10:17 left in the game. Ohio State had the ball fourth-and-1 on its own 15-yard line.

The camera panned to Roridguez. Anyone could clearly read his lips. "WATCH THE FAKE!" The camera panned away. And then it went back on Rodriguez. And he yelled it again. "WATCH THE FAKE!"

The possibility of Ohio State faking a punt in that situation was about as great as Sarah Palin becoming a spokeswoman for the Green Party.

Instead of yelling "watch the fake" Rodriguez should have been reminding his players of the exact opposite. Something like, "Don't worry about a fake. Whatever you do, don't jump offside."

I'm not getting on a coach here for failing to do something somewhat sophisticated. It was more than that. It showed an absolutely alarming lack of understanding of something really simple.

Oh joy, another Big 10 title for Ohio State

Ohio State just survived an overtime tilt with Iowa, 27-24. Yawn.

The Buckeyes have now won five straight Big 10 titles, and in January I fully expect they'll lose their fourth straight BCS bowl game. I don't like Jim Tressel, I don't think the Big 10 is particularly good (is any conference other than the SEC?) and I find Ohio State to be incredibly boring to watch.

Terrelle Pryor was billed as the Lebron James of football coming out of high school, and honestly I'm not at all impressed. Pretty sure if Lebron James had played basketball in the Big 10 he would have made a slightly bigger impact than Pryor.

I'm just really sick of Ohio State. I'm only interested in watching them play Michigan because it's an historic rivalry, but Michigan has to get back to respectability for that rivalry to be fully ignited again.