From analyst Bill Curry to USA Today columnist Rudy Martzke, they're looking for "solutions" to college football's overtime system.
Games that reach four-plus overtimes take too long, they say. It takes an excessive toll on both teams. It's unfair to the losing team. Yada, yada.
Besides Arkansas, which has raised long OT games to an art form (the Hogs have played in the three longest), what are these people talking about? A fraction of games go to OT, a minuscule amount make it to the third OT. The college system is much more fair and exciting than the NFL's and the doomsayers are overreacting to fluke occurrences.
The college OT format was introduced in 1996. In its first seven full seasons there were 186 overtime games. Since there are 117 Division I-A teams, the average team has participated in OT about three times, less than once every two seasons. Does that sound excessive? And only a fraction of those went beyond two overtimes. And each OT session consists of two short possessions, hardly a debilitating format.
Arkansas aside, four-plus OT games are virtually nonexistent. And how much of a "toll" did the Hogs' seven-OT win over Kentucky Nov. 1 take? With four days rest they came back Thursday to beat South Carolina 28-6.
Barring misfortune or catastrophe that would be of epic proportion even in auto racing, Matt Kenseth will win his first Winston Cup points title today at Rockingham.
He deserves it.
Forget the morose end to his season and the provisionals he needed in four of his past six races. The champion of a 36-race season, one of the most grinding in professional sports, should be decided on consistency, not flash, and Kenseth's ability to hold on to the lead for 31 weeks despite a pedestrian fall simply underscores how strong he was early in the year.
Kenseth has led the points standings since the fourth week, a week after winning for the only time this season (in Las Vegas). It's not easy to maintain poise and performance for an entire season of looking in the rearview mirror, but Kenseth has watched the likes of four-time Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. make failed runs at the top of the standings.
Five years from now, some guy in a bar will lose a bet and buy his buddy a beer because of his insistence that Ryan Newman won the 2003 Winston Cup title. Such an oversight is to be expected, as eight wins and 11 poles (and not six unfinished races) are certain to imprint heavier on the consciousness of a fan than 10 top fives, 24 top 10s and just one race unfinished. But that's what Kenseth has done, and that's plenty to imprint a champion's name on the big trophy.
