Yeah, a weird ending last night but what a game! The Chambliss kid was amazing, I had no idea of his arm strength. And the Ole Miss story was already an interesting one with their coaching saga. I’m reading that Lane Kiffin earned a big bonus for last night’s win but I’m not sure which school has to pay it.
I watched Indiana curbstomp Alabama with the same unbelieving fascination that I did watching the last Super Bowl. Surely something this good couldn’t be happening to a sinner like me.
The game ended with a lateral on the kick return going out of bounds in the end zone (hitting the pylon), for a safety.
Not quite. There was still one second on the clock. Which meant that Georgia had to execute a free kick from their own 20-yard-line. Which they did, with one of the weirdest onside kicks ever; a squib kick that spun around and finally traveled the required 10 yards. Whereupon a Georgia player fell on it for a legal recovery at the 31 yard line without any time expiring.
Thus, Georgia had time for another offensive play. They threw a short forward pass which was followed by 9 lateral passes before finally being stopped for a 1-yard loss.
Definitely a strong candidate for the weirdest ending to a college football game. This didn’t have the band on the field like the Stanford/Cal game in 1982, but there was a stage on the field for a while.
I went to bed before the game was over, and checked the result early this morning: “Ole Miss wins on last-second field goal, 39-34”
Huh? How do you win by 5 points on a last-second three-point kick? Well, it appears that a few (eventful) seconds were still available.
It’s LSU which has to pay Lane Kiffin a six figure bonus for Mississippi advancing in the playoffs. It’s weird and funny and would increase to a million bucks should Ole Miss win it all.
I just read that. The bonus was $150k when Ole Miss made the CFP. Then it rose to $250k when Ole Miss beat Tulane. Last night it increased to $500k with their victory over Georgia. Should they beat Miami next week, the bonus will be $750k. And, as you stated, it will be a cool million if they win it all.
Kiffin must have a pretty good agent.
I hope Lane Kiffin enjoys his money because he is garbage as a person.
Didn’t they have to roll the stage on and off the field twice?
Meanwhile, at CFP headquarters, they are getting the response ready to more calls for having a 16-team playoff:
”Indiana won. Having a bye is not a problem. We are staying at 12. We are not going to have multiple first round games on at the same time, and not doing 4 staggered games a day unless you want either an 11 AM start or a 2 AM finish. Did I say the quiet part out loud?”
Let’s see if he lets Ole Miss “borrow” some coaches to finish out the playoffs, or snatches them away to LSU before the next game.
Arizona comeback falls five points short against SMU in the Holiday Bowl. They passed up two extra point kicks in favor or failed two point conversions and a short field goal in favor of a failed fourth down conversion. If my math is correct, that’s five points left on the table.
I had no dog in the hunt last night. I was sorta rooting for Ole Miss because of the whole Lane Kiffin fiasco, but I also wanted Miami to win because they kept Notre Dame out of the playoffs.
In the end, though, I just wanted to see a good game. And, boy, did those two teams deliver. Couldn’t ask for a more exciting fourth quarter, which ended with an incompletion in the end zone.
Hope tonight’s game is just as fun to watch.
It was indeed a fun watch. And for the third consecutive year there will be no SEC schools in the title game.
It seemed that Miami bungled a couple of chances at interceptions that might have put the game away earlier but the Canes had four drives of 13 plays or more and those spoke volumes about the teams’ relative strengths. No quit in the Chambliss kid, however, even when things weren’t going his way.
I thought the game was over when Ole Miss started their last possession. There just wasn’t enough time. But somehow they pushed it down the field in seconds. It’s amazing they gave themselves a reasonable chance to win.
I was hoping they lost to prevent that asshole from getting more bonus.
What are they going to show instead, axe throwing, curling, pickle ball, or cornholing? I’d much prefer the football. Also, they may have been minor contests in the grand football scheme, but some of them were very well contested games worth watching.
You make a great point, but I was sorta rooting for them so they could prove that they could win without him as a coach. Which they did already, two playoff games. And making LSU pay him more bonus money would serve them right for negotiating such a shitty contract, after stealing him from Ole Miss.
Yeah, I was rooting for them for the same reason. I’m just trying to imagine a situation in the NFL where a coach on a playoff team leaves right before the postseason for another team. It seems crazy to me.
Head coaches? Yeah, pretty much unheard of.
Assistant coaches? Until not too long ago, teams with coaching vacancies were prohibited from interviewing candidates who were assistant coaches on teams which were still active in the playoffs. The league, recognizing that assistant coaches on successful teams were being bypassed for HC roles due to this, changed their rules some years ago, allowing teams a limited window during the playoffs for interviewing such assistant coaches.
I’m good with that. I’m good with that in college too. Even a head coach.
But to actually leave? Right before they are needed most? It’s weird if nothing else.
ISTM that no small number of college head coaches are particularly mercenary, and particularly interested in moving up to a more prestigious / more lucrative school, even if they’re currently on a successful team which is in the playoffs, or prepping for a bowl game. Loyalty to their current program is a meaningless concept, compared to their personal ambition. Lane Kiffin is, IMO, the epitome of such an attitude.
It’s happened twice to Wisconsin in the last fifteen years: in 2012, Bret Bielema took the HC job at Arkansas immediately after the regular season, before the Badgers’ appearance in the Rose Bowl, and two years later, Gary Anderson left to go to Oregon State before the Outback Bowl. In both cases, former head coach (and, at that time, Wisconsin’s athletic director) Barry Alvarez stepped back into the head coach role for the bowl game.
Illini have turned this into a massacre before halftime.