Album Spotlight: Chris Hennessee: Greetings From Hennessee

If you like any combination of country, Southern Rock, blues,Texas country, gospel, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Allmans, Alabama, Jerry Reed, the Eagles, Marshall Tucker, the Bellamy Brothers, etc., you might just find something you like in Chris Hennessee's latest record Greetings From Hennessee.

Classify it how you want. As regular readers of my blog know, I've given up. Just say it's good music.

Here is "Long Way Gone" from the new record.

BCS Trophy Game: Farcicle

Alabama and Notre Dame will play for the BCS trophy on Monday night, farcically labeled the National Championship.  Good for whichever team prevails.  But if you watched the Cotton Bowl, you saw the best team in the country right now.

Texas A&M is the best team in college football right now.  Were they the best throughout the entire?  Probably not.  But this was a team that started the season with a new coach and and a redshirt freshman at quarterback.  It took some time to gel.

The postponement of their season opener hurt, as we discussed earlier.  And the coming four-team playoff would not remedy the situation, as we broached that subject as well.

Congratulations to the Aggies on a great season.  Johnny Manziel comes back.  But not all of the starters do.  Don't expect a BCS trophy game contender next year.  Not that it can't happen, just don't expect it.

The college football post season is broken.  Steps are being made in right direction. But we aren't there yet.

College Football 2012

Now that the 2012 College Football regular season has come to close, we are now subjected to the worst post season in all of sport.  While the regular season brought much excitement, including the emergence of Johnny "Football/Touchdown/Heisman" Manziel, the post/bowl/silly season brings many yawns including a New Year's Day game matching up Northwestern and Mississippi State.  Mark your calendars for that one.

We could go off on a lengthy rant about the entire bowl process (which somehow excludes the second most prolific offensive team in Louisiana Tech) but we will focus here on the BCS Trophy game and the upcoming four team playoff starting in two years.

While we are no fans of the current system, it seems to get it right most years just by sheer luck.  This year, not so much.  We are not convinced that either of the teams (Notre Dame and Alabama) are the best two teams in the country.  There is circumstantial evidence to back this up.  However, there is no concrete evidence to argue otherwise.  Notre Dame is undefeated playing a schedule that did not include any cupcakes.  Alabama won the SEC, which many argue is the best conference in the nation.

We think any among Oregon, Texas A&M, Stanford, Kansas State, Florida and LSU could beat either of those teams on a neutral field at any given time.  Or not.  It's that close.

So, things would be better if we had the four team playoff in effect this season, right?

In the words of Lee Corso, "Not so fast, my friend."

Sports Illustrated had a mock selection committee pick the four playoff teams here.  Very interesting read.

But are you comfortable with a final four of Notre Dame, Alabama, Oregon and Florida? We're not.  While that would provide for three very interesting games, leaving out Stanford (who beat Oregon), Texas A&M (who beat Alabama), Kansas State and LSU just seems wrong to us.

The four team playoff is a step in the right direction.  But it is not that much better than what we have right now.  We say either go all in with an eight team playoff, or keep it as is, or maybe scrap the whole thing and go back to the old way and end everything on January 1.

Oh yeah, and you kids get off of our lawn.

Did Postponement of Texas A&M's Season Opener Cost Them Shot at SEC Title?

May or may not have made a difference, but interesting to think about in light of Texas A&M's victory over Alabama today.

How may have the postponement of the Aggies' season opener against Louisiana Tech affected the entire season?

Let's explore that just a bit.

First of all, the Aggies may very well have lost that game had it been played as scheduled. But as A&M has improved throughout the season with Kevin Sumlin and Kliff Kingsbury in their first year at College Station and Johnny Manziel a first year starter at quarterback, one game under their belts before heading into that SEC opener against Florida may have made a difference in the outcome of that close loss.

Now fast forward a few weeks.  The makeup against La Tech was played in what would have been an open week before the LSU game, another close loss.

While we will never have any idea what might have happened, just something that crossed our minds today.  Had the game been played as scheduled, Manziel might have been lost for the season with an injury.  Or that one game of experience may have propelled A&M to victory over Florida.

Who knows.  Pure conjecture, but fun nonetheless.

Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana-Monroe, Auburn and Tyler Wilson

Strange things happen in college football.  We love that.  In our personal lives, we prefer more order, but as far as college football is concerned, the more chaos, the better.

Just consider this scenario.  If Arkansas somehow defeats Alabama Saturday and Louisiana-Monroe beats Auburn, where does that leave the CFB landscape?

OK, we know these are fanciful projections, but stranger things have happened.

In the minds of poll voters, is ULM suddenly a top five team?  Was Alabama vastly overrated?  Did the Razorbacks just have one bad game?

And what if all this happens without Tyler Wilson playing for Arkansas?  The Razorback brass has gone all Fight Club on the Wilson discussions.

Things will probably fall neatly into place with the Crimson Tide handling Arkansas and Auburn bringing ULM back to earth.

But one can dream.  That is what makes CFB so exciting week to week.