Game Ten Billboard Slogan of the Week: Sixty Minutes

BY TIM SCANDURRO

It was a nice flight home from Memphis, and a peek ahead showed we could expect ideal weather and a capacity crowd for Homecoming, always the best tailgate date of the year.  But no sooner had we landed than I started hearing wailing about our conference’s tie-breaking rules.  And for good reason.

South Florida is South Florida.  They certainly look like the strongest team in our league and they are ranked in the CFP Top 25, so if they keep winning they are in and they are hosting.

The other one-loss teams in the league right now are Tulane, Navy, East Carolina and North Texas.  It’s fairly common knowledge in Green Wave Nation now that one of “the computers” in the conference-mandated porridge of tiebreakers loves North Texas and dislikes Tulane so much that if the Mean Green win out, it will be next to impossible for us to pass them no matter what we do.  It goes without saying that if we win our next three games and finish 10-2 (7-1) and don’t make the conference title game, we can’t qualify for the College Football Playoff.

Speaking of that Playoff and its Committee, they control one tiebreaking rule that trumps the computers.  The highest ranked CFP team, among more than one team with one conference loss, goes to the title game no matter how much a computer likes somebody else.  The rub is that the Committee only ranks 25 teams.  We are just outside it with a handful of other teams, and it appears that the Committee is more focused on strength of schedule and quality of win metrics that strongly favor us over North Texas.

None of that does us any good though, unless we get ranked and stay there.  To do that we need some teams ahead of us to fall, and we of course need to win.

But at this stage of the season, a win is not a win and the coaches know it.  Oh, they’ll pay lip service to Al Davis’s famous “Just Win, Baby” line, but you’d best believe that they know we are now at a point of the season where we kind of need to beat the brakes off some people.  It’s obviously dangerous ground for us given our play style most of the season and you wonder how we will react, knowing that squeaking by this weekend for Homecoming just won’t cut it.

I’m all for sportsmanship and respect of the opponent, but we didn’t make the rules here.  North Texas and James Madison didn’t either.  We’re all in a beauty pageant now, and you don’t want to be the team that ends up as Mr. Congeniality.  We need to play a complete, dominant game this Saturday if we want to end up where we all hope to be.  We need the first half Memphis offense, and the first half Duke and Northwestern defense, and we need them all game long.

That fervent wish gives us the Billboard Slogan of the Week:  60 Minutes.  Sixty minutes of physical, high-level, focused performance.  No excuses offered, no mercy shown. 

A lot of people will be watching, judging, and comparing.  We’re a 17-plus point favorite in this ball game.  We need to play like it.