Sorry I haven’t been back in a few days. The holidays are a time to recharge the batteries and to hang with family and I have taken full advantage.

Hope you all are having a safe and happy holiday season. I’ll be back in a couple days to start hitting up the latest on the bowls, coaching changes and recruiting.

HP

I am not referring to Les Miles, but the lack of miles traveled by certain conferences out there.

It was a couple years ago when I first noted that Georgia hadn’t played a game outside of the South since 1965. The gist of it all was that SEC schools won’t travel and so retained an advantage when it came to boosting their regular season records. In short, the more games you play at home, the better your record will be. The less strenuous your road trips, the better your team is likely to play.

And now, by way of The Wiz, we have this great site called MapGameday.com that logs the travel of college football teams.

Among the findings:

The Los Angeles Times talked to a bunch of Heisman winners about the Reggie Bush investigations.

“Everybody has to play by the same rules,” said Tim Brown, who won the 1987 Heisman as a Notre Dame receiver. “Did what happened with him off the field encourage him or entice him to play better football on the field? Did it free him up? You just don’t know. You can’t ever evaluate that kind of stuff. If I’m getting paid, I can go out and be free playing the game if I don’t have those kind of pressures on me.”

Other Heisman winners defend Bush, most likely because they themselves came from an era when big houses and big cars were the norm for players of their caliber.

Naturally, the focus of the story is on Bush getting stripped of the Heisman and USC losing the national title.

According to Simon & Schuster’s website: “With the explosive information revealed in ‘Tarnished Heisman,’ Bush stands to be ruled ineligible — a decision that could cost his alma mater the 2004 national championship title, force the forfeit of every game Bush played in after losing his eligibility, and potentially strip Reggie Bush of the shining prize of his college career: the Heisman Trophy.”

The problem with this line of thinking is that the people advancing it seem to have no idea how college football works. The NCAA can’t ‘strip’ USC of its 2004 title because the NCAA does not administer that title. Yes, that’s right CFN, the BCS Championship is not an official title, but a mythical one, no more tangible than the AP crown.

And the idea of Bush being stripped of the Heisman is almost as preposterous. I guess it’s possible, just like it’s possible that the Supreme Court could revoke Brown vs. Board of Education. Let us not forget that the Heisman winner of 10 years ago, Charles Woodson, was later found to have taken money from agents as a Wolverine senior.

I assume his Heisman is still sitting on his mantle.

One reason why I think LSU is set to lose to Ohio State in the BCS Title Game is the fact that Tigers coach Les Miles doesn’t seem too concerned about finding ways to get his best players on the field.

Let’s look at the running back spot. Senior Jacob Hester has 204 carries for 1,017 yards and 11 touchdowns. He is averaging 5.0 yards per carry.

His 204 carries are more than backup running backsKeiland Williams (68), Trindon Holliday (50) and Charles Scott (43) combined. Yet all three average at least 6.7 yards per carry and, clearly, are more skilled than Hester.

Let’s set aside the fact that Holliday is the fastest player in college football or that Scott is a bruiser with good speed. This is really about the lack of playing time for Williams, who has the tools to be a first round pick for the Tigers. I find it amazing that Hester is getting three times the amount of carries as this very talented back, who has 458 yards and six touchdowns on the season.

Don’t get me wrong, Hester is a solid player, but he should be used primarily as a fullback or, at best, a goal-line back. If Williams had carried 204 times, I think he’d probably be considered one of the nation’s top five backs by now.

Then you have the quarterback situation. Matt Flynn is the ‘steady’ senior providing all kinds of ‘leadership’. This is what is generally said about guys who aren’t really that good to begin with. On the year, Flynn has 2,233 yards, 17 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He is hitting 55 per cent of his passes and his rating is 122.5. He has rushed for 207 yards for a 2.4 yards-per-carry clip.

His considerably more talented backup is Ryan Perrilloux, who played while Flynn sat out the SEC title game due to injury. On the year, Perrilloux started two games and played sparingly in eight others. He has 694 passing yards, is completing 68 per cent, has thrown eight touchdowns and two interceptions and has a rating of 175.6. Interestingly, Perrilloux has 203 rushing yards as well. He was 20 of 30 for 243 yards with one touchdown and one pick against Tennessee in the SEC title game win.

There’s no doubt that Perrilloux is more talented than Flynn. After all, he was the No. 1 quarterback in the nation coming out of high school. He is also a perfect fit for LSU’s new spread offense run by Gary Crowton. Furthermore, he’s the quarterback of the future at LSU.

With Perrilloux taking the snaps and handing off much of the time to Williams, LSU probably would’ve been a dominant 13-0 this year. Instead, Miles took the ‘safe’ route, playing Flynn and Hester on his way to an 11-2 mark that included several other close calls.

Now, it could be that Miles will take full advantage of the speed and talent that is available to him when the Tigers play Ohio State in New Orleans. But it’s probable that he will just go with what brung him to the dance in the first place–a not-so-dynamic duo that, frankly, is a better fit for the Big Ten than the SEC.

If Miles once again decides to rely on these less-talented (though safer) options, I think the Buckeyes will win this one.

Here’s a great read on the spread from the SD Tribune.

Some theorize that better “cover” cornerbacks will help slow the spread. That’s because such cornerbacks can neutralize two of the offense’s five possible receivers, enabling more defenders (five or more) to rush the passer.

Another theory is that if the spread becomes too prevalent, all the bigger-name programs with better recruits will use it too, rising to the top again and forcing the have-nots to come up with a different equalizer.

Asked if defenses will catch up with it, Texas’ Brown said, “I’m sure it will. In my 33 years, it always has. But we’re not sure how yet.”

McMackin disagrees. Erickson has been using the spread since the 1970s. He and former San Jose State coach Jack Elway learned it from coach Jack Neumeier of Granada Hills High, where Jack Elway’s son, John, played.

Though it hasn’t been as common as it is now, “They’ve been doing it 30 years,” McMackin said. “I think it’s here to stay.”

Michigan has hired spread guru Rich Rodriguez away from West Virginia. Bo Schembechler must be turning over in his grave about now.

Honestly, I never thought that the first traditional power to commit fully to this type of offense would be…Michigan. This move will have repercussions in the Big Ten and beyond.

For the most part, the spread has been used by programs that have been unable to compete with the big boys because of talent disparities. The spread helped equalize that disparity. Now, one of the big boys is going to run it with all the talent at its disposal. The last time a program with a lot of talent ran a contrarian offensive scheme, back-to-back national titles were the result.

Of course, I wrote two years ago that this day was coming, that most of the offenses in college football were becoming dinosaurs. But who wanted to listen?