Broadcast Football Rankings 11.28.17

This week's BFR – Broadcast Football Rankings – November 28, 2017

1. Wisconsin Badgers

2. UCF Knights

3. Clemson Tigers

4. Oklahoma Sooners

5. Auburn Tigers

6. Georgia Bulldogs

7. Alabama Crimson Tide

8. Miami Hurricanes

9. Ohio State Buckeyes

10. TCU Horned Frogs

11. Memphis Tigers

12. Penn State Nittany Lions

13. Stanford Cardinal

14. Southern California Trojans

15. Washington Huskies

16. Notre Dame Fighting Irish

17. Oklahoma State Cowboys

18. Michigan State Spartans

19. Virginia Tech Hokies

20. LSU Tigers

21. Northwestern Wildcats

22. South Florida Bulls

23. Michigan Wolverines

24. Washington State Cougars

25. Boise State Broncos

Only a handful of games left this weekend before the BFR determines the BFR National Champion and Top 25, but it's still totally up in the air, so that's kind of exciting! The Collage Football Playoffs has become a fiasco and has to change. It is our opinion that were better off with smaller conferences and no conference championship games, and the traditional bowl games (broadcast on TV) at the end of the season, after which different entities crowned their national champion. Of course, there is always a lot of disagreement. I hate to break the news here, but there's always going to be a lot of disagreement anyway. But for some reason it's important for sports-fan morons to have an “undisputed” champion, so how about this system? Go back to the traditional bowl games (I mean, bowl games that don't double as playoff games) after which a/“The” committee can pick the top 32 teams to enter in a football tournament starting in January. Each of these match-ups will be best of seven, in order to have a more fair determination of the “better team.” We should, if spaced properly, be able to determine the national champion by the end of the school year. Players can then enter the NFL draft or take a much needed summer off to recuperate. --H. Houndstooth.

The Sugar Bowl

It seems pointless to sit here and describe how I sat there and scanned the TV channels once again for coverage of the Sugar Bowl, finding only more depressing reality shows about losing weight, mutant youth obsessed with dance, and overwrought dramas with guys who look like badly aging Ray Liottas waving around guns. There’s a several hour long infomercial for plastic surgery. ABC is showing science fiction porn, or maybe it’s not porn. It’s people from another planet having sex. I’m not going to sit here and act like I’m surprised, at this point—though I am—I thought Ohio State had some kind of deal with ABC or something. I can just hear Brent Musburger: “The Ohio! State! Buckeyes!” And then introducing a player... “And he’s a good one.” And then the action, “It’s a foot race!” I love Brent Musburger! But “Hold on folks!” No Brent Musburger. Though I suppose he might be on ESPN. I’ll never know.

I guess I’m beyond the “Anger” stage—which would have been when I threw the TV across the room, and the “Bargaining” stage, too—firmly planted in “Depression.” Though I am still confident that the national championship game—which is next Monday—will be on TV. So I guess you could say I’ve reverted to the “Denial” stage, after all. I could do a recap of the Sugar Bowl, but by this time, if you even care at all, you know all about the “gold pants incident,” the streaker, the banana peel incident, the back flip into the stands, the world record delay for “further review,” Kid Rock’s penis slipping out during the halftime entertainment, and Tressel punching an Arkansas player after an interception.

There’s always tonight’s game, though I’m not even going to TRY to find it on TV. It’s the GODADDY.Com Bowl. I don’t know what “Go Daddy” is, but they have a bowl game, and it’s Miami of Ohio, from Oxford, Ohio (a town I was politely asked not to return to after multiple incidents in 1978) against Middle Tennessee, which is—I don’t know—one imagines Jack Daniels drinking Hobbits. The Redhawks Vs. The Blue Raiders, and folks, don’t go away, because we have a good one here (tied at halftime).

Oh, well, if you can’t watch football on TV, there’s always youtube:

The Sunny D-Lite Orange Bowl

I don’t feel real optimistic, but this is the ORANGE BOWL! It’ll be on TV, right? I try ABC first, but there is some guy who looks like the porn version of Brett Favre wearing a suit, at what looks like an extremely ritzy funeral, but he is smiling, not sad, and women come into greet him one by one, all wearing really formal dresses that accentuate their breasts (one is wearing her breasts on the OUTSIDE of her dress). They look like porn actresses, actually, or maybe someone who would host the Orlando Citrus Parade. It’s just an endless stream of them, coming out of one of those really big limos, and each one is saying something to Brett (I turn up the sound; they’re saying things that sound like a parody of what people would say on a date). I go close up to the TV. Uhhh... they’re really shiny and weird. Each of the woman have kind of similar jaws, like they have something wrong genetically. Maybe this is a rich guy and he’s into that?

Endless commercials now, check other channels. Fox has a dreadful looking hospital show. On 4.4 there are people skiing down a really huge mountain, that’s looks petty good. On NBC, really bad actors with guns in front of 100% CGI backgrounds. CBS there’s sitcom, kind of classic, completely nondescript living room, and laugh track. Is that Charlie Sheen? Why does that not surprise me. Back to NBC, endless commercials, could be football on here. Maybe this is a show, not a commercial. No, it’s for Yoplait lite. More commercials. More. “Coming up”... more commercials. Something called: The Biggest Loser. Oh, this is the show, it seems to be a reality show about losing weight. What an idea.

Now I’m pulling in a channel called 4.2, the show is “Nonstop Foodies”—a lot of silly people talking really fast, fast camera, movement, lots of cuts, someone said “Shiitake Mushroom” like they mastered the pronunciation about a half-hour ago. More commercials. Oh, how to make an “authentic New York Cheesecake.” Which is interesting. It’s one of those things that once you see the ingredients, you’ll never eat it again.

Back to Fox, no football, just one of those overwrought dramas with some guy waving a gun around the WHOLE show, hostages, etc, the camera jerking around. Is that Tim Roth? No, it can’t be. I refuse to believe it. Maybe it’s a movie. The guy’s waving around a gun, sweating. That IS Tim Roth—not the guy with the gun. Another guy. No it can’t be, I refuse to believe it.

I turn the channel, back to the thin Brett Favre and 30 shiny women, they’re all drinking champagne Is he going to have sex with ALL of them? It’s some kind of endurance realty show! Hey, a channel called 7.2 or “The LivWell Network”—it’s Rick Bayless! I love Rick Bayless. But it’s not football. It’s definitely not the Orange Bowl.

I keep going back to that show with the guy waving the gun around. He’s still waving it around. There’s still a woman with a laptop. There’s a guy who looks like Henry Rollins. That IS Tim Roth, he’s got the gun to his head. Maybe it’s a drama AND a documentary about the making of the drama AT THE SAME TIME. But everyone looks so dire.

TicketCity, Outback, Capital One, and Gator Bowls

Happy New Year from The Moss Problem and welcome to our complete newyearsday college football bowl coverage. Six games today, and we’re at all of them, virtually. But first, there is TV coverage of the Rose Parade, in Pasadena, which I find a little stodgy (Portland, Oregon’s Rose Parade is much better because they have actual strippers on the floats). The Rose Parade unfortunately doesn’t translate to TV, because those floats could just as easily be made of plastic. You have to be able to be close enough to touch the roses, and smell them. But football translates very well on TV—in fact you could make an argument that TV was invented FOR football. The nice thing about the Rose Parade is that it’s a prelude to the most anticipated game of the day, The Rose Bowl, which this year is the most intriguing match up: Wisconsin and TCU. These other four games that happen first (and all, oddly, feature Big Ten teams) are little but featurettes for the Big One. But I’ll cover them, because I’m being paid to do so.

By some genius of scheduling, the first four games all START AT THE SAME TIME. What idiot made that decision? Well, I guess that’s why they have four TV networks and remote controls. To be fair, one is on an hour earlier than the others, so I’ll check in there. ABC AND NBC both have coverage of the Tournament of Roses Parade, Fox has infomercials, which isn’t surprising since Fox is worthless. But CBS has some show called Busytown Mysteries! Where’s the football? I guess no coverage of the TicketCity Bowl, named, I guess, because they can’t GIVE tickets away. I saw some halftime highlights and the stands looked empty. Too bad, because it’s turning out to be a pretty good came. Texas Tech is off to an early lead, but Northwestern is making a comeback.

Finally a game on TV! The Outback Bowl (short for Outback Steakhouse Bowl [Outback STIKE-House—their logo is a football shaped like a boomerang, for God’s sake!]) is a pleasant luv-fest (it’s Urban Meyer’s last game before become SUBURBAN Meyer, and Joe Paterno’s last game THIS SEASON. If you don’t totally LOVE Joe Paterno, get to therapy RIGHT NOW). Two perennial cool uniform favorites, Florida and Penn State, both wearing their best combinations: the Gators in all white with the Orange helmets, very classic, none of those hideous Nike high fashion experiments they’ve been known to pull out of some designer’s ass. The Nittany Lions with the black shirts, white pants, white helmet, black shoes (it’s sounding like that Ian Dury song), no words, no school name, no player names, no trim, except for the simple black stripe down the middle of the helmet. How glad we are were that they decided not to put the Nittany Lion on the side of the helmet (though the Nittany Lion mascot is great—he looks like a stuffed animal that escaped from a thrift store, drunk). So plain are those uniforms, the simple black numbers look garish. Maybe they should consider ROMAN NUMERALS (though everyone would want number ten). As unadorned as those uniforms are, that hideous Outback Steakhouse logo pasted on the front makes it look like they threw up their Kookaburra Wings on the front of their jerseys. My only complaint are these huge, white v-neck collars which just detract from the black shirts, and look to me, frankly, a little bit gay. They look like big ribbons, like they should be sporting giant gold medallions or something, or soap-on-a-rope. Not surprisingly, another Nike design.

I’m trying to find the Capital One Bowl, refreshing in that they don’t try to pretend that it’s not all about money. NBC has “The Capitals,” but it’s the Washington Capitals, a hockey team. HOCKEY?! There’s an “all sports” channel, 4.4 (lot more broadcast channels in the digital age!) but they’re showing the 2005 Ironman Triathlon! Yeah, I really wanted to see a repeat of THAT! Not surprisingly, considering their worthlessness, Fox is running more infomercials. But the shocking thing, CBS, who act like they INVENTED sports, are showing... INFOMERCIALS!

So, I guess the only way I have to check in on these other games is to READ about them, on the internet—how lame is that?! Final: Alabama 49, Michigan State 7. At the beginning of the season Alabama was ranked #1 and Michigan State were playing basketball, so what is surprising here is what happened to Alabama during the regular season? That’s about all I can say about this game, since I can’t actually SEE it. They might be wearing chicken suits and tutus for all I know.

The Gator Bowl—ehhh. Mississippi State ahead of Michigan 52 to 14 with six minutes left. The only thing not ugly about that is Michigan’s uniform, maybe the best in college football. Unless maybe they all went out to the Nike Store before the game and bought something hideous. They sure didn’t seem to pick up a DEFENSE during the month of December, that’s for sure.

That’s all for now! Next up: The Rose Bowl!

Sun Bowl

I was just thinking about how I was going to make ends meet in 2011 and this sweet gig fell right in my lap. It’s kind of a dream job for me, writing about football, because those who know me know my two major passions are the gridiron and long green. In these harsh economic times the sad truth is that a man needs a second job, and sometimes a third. I know that I’m lucky, in these harsh economic times, to have even one job, but as many of you know, wages have not kept pace with the cost of living. In fact, many of you have more than likely grown tired of my repeated requests for loans, payday advances, and other forms of the long green, and will happily receive this news of what will hopefully be fruitful and illuminating reportage and supplement to my income.

In anticipation of the heart of bowl season, I went out and bought a post-Christmas on sale TV, a high definition Vizio model that seems to work quite well (and if you didn’t know, TV’s are much lighter in weight these days). I also bought a mid-priced Radio Shack powered antenna, and I’m happy to report I can receive about twenty channels, some of them in amazing digital high def quality, only dreamt about by the fathers of our country. The early bowl games have all been on ESPN, and most of them have held little interest for our community except for the Boise State game, a travesty which I might pontificate on later after this season plays out.

The first broadcast game then, today, New Year’s Eve, and why should I be surprised that it is none other than my televised nemesis, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Many of you have more than likely grown tired of hearing me complain about how they hold the airwaves hostage, or at least one of the networks. I guess the idea being that we’re ALL supposed to Notre Dame fans or something, which makes no sense to me. An interesting thing I found out today, however, is how they didn’t play in bowl games for a very long period of time, I guess finding them unseemly (though, I suppose since 1970, the money has kept pace with the unseemliness).

The Sun Bowl, in El Paso, Texas, was graced with heavy snowfall that had to be cleared from the field before the game could be played. The Irish’s opponents, the Miami Hurricanes were mortified by the 30 degree temperatures and played like it. Notre Dame’s backup quarterback played well, in spite of his young age. I think he was 13, but maybe that was his number. He did not look old enough to drink in Indiana, though in Florida, who knows. The game held little interest for me aside from the excellent uniforms. Miami always look good in orange and green, and probably the most stylish helmet logo in college football. Oh, and one thing I keep wondering about the Irish helmets, which you probably know are painted before each game with actual gold flake paint, is why, as steeped in tradition as they like to boast, do they choose to wear the hi-tech helmet style that resembles the aerodynamic bicycle helmet? I’m not saying they should go back to not having a facemask, but a simple rounded helmet would be much more appropriate.

College Football Bowl Coverage

Look no further than The Moss Problem for complete college football Bowl coverage. This bowl season Randy Russell will be reporting on all the big games, and even some of the smaller ones, though as you know, sometimes they’re going on at the same time, and some of the lesser ones might not be televised. We look forward to the day when there is a “Moss Problem Bowl” but that might be a few years off yet.

All of the Moss Problem correspondents are welcome to report on their favorite games, even those who despise football! Though due to “The Economy” we are only able to pay Mr. Russell, and believe me, he’s not going to be socking away a lot for retirement.

Anyway, this has been an exciting year with a lot of controversy, and we hope it continues—well, the excitement more than the controversy. And make sure you vote in Big Ten renaming divisions POLL, on the sidebar here. Thousands have already let their voice be heard, though we haven’t recorded the tallies yet, as their has been a bit of a snafu with the IT department.

I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy and prosperous, etc., New Year.

Best, Tony