FOUR What? (How ESPN is hustlin' college football fans by screamin'Playoff)

"Let the ESPN hustle begin bruh!"

Big Momma would always say, "Some folks ain't satisfied with nothin'!"  Eddie Murphy once said, "Give brother a rope he wanna be a cowboy."  My favorite is , "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Well, you can but it'll give you the runs if you're not careful.

Well playboy, these cats at ESPN are givin' me the runs right now because they're runnin' game on the college football world and nobody sees it. For years these cats have been tellin' fans that the BCS was bogus and that it didn't work. Every week all you heard was boyz sayin' that it was gonna be Armageddon at the end of the season since 1998 but that simply wasn't the case. Why? Because 99 percent of the time the BCS got it right. ESPN was just salty because it didn't have control of it.

Now all of a sudden the Four Team Playoff is the best thing since sliced bread! Why? Because ESPN is in control of it. Let's keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st! The playoff is no better than the BCS system because it's still subjective. Boyz are still votin' on who plays and who doesn't. And now you've got a committee of 13 duns that aren't all football people. Who's foolin' who up in this piece?

If you're still votin' and you got cats like Condoleeza Rice who is just a Stanford football fan on the committee how is that better? She doesn't cover the games and watches everybody play EVERY week. Just because she goes to the Cardinal (Stanford) games doesn't mean she knows what's goin' on. I know cats that go to games every week that don't know jack squat about college football. And that's just one person bruh. I haven't even dug off into the other cats that are Athletic Directors at current FBS schools. Are you kiddin' me?

What's gonna stop a boy from just droppin' off $250K to a cat to vote for their school? Cuz you know it's gonna happen. But you're tellin' the world that this system is gonna be better because you're drivin' the train, ESPN that is. The BCS was just fine bruh. Name me one time that the right team didn't win the title? Exactly!

All we ever wanted to see in college football was #1 play #2 and up until 1998 we didn’t have that luxury. Remember just the year before in 1997 when #1 Nebraska played in the Orange Bowl and a #2 Michigan played in the Rose Bowl on New Years Day?

 They both won their respective games and they were both named National Champions? Then we spent the next year arguin' about who was better. That happened so many times before we got the BCS that I care not to remember. All we ever wanted to see was #1 play #2. Then we finally got what we were askin' for with the BCS.

I've always said that the top 4 teams should play it off  anyway because the problem was always with #3. However, I'm not in favor of them usin' two of the existin' Major Bowls as a national semifinal. Here's why, the bowl games are held durin' the Holiday season and fans typically use them as the family vacation etc. If you play the game as a national semifinal then you're askin' those same fans to travel the followin' week to another city to do the same thing all over again.

Your average fan doesn't have the bread to do all of that bruh. By structurin' the National Title game in this manor you've just turned it into the Super Bowl because you've made it an all CORPORATE event. But ESPN is cool with that because they're makin' more bread as a result of it. Accordin' to the set up the title game will always go to the city that makes the highest  bid so now it becomes the "Corporate Takeover" and tickets would cost $5,000 or $6,000 on the open market and guess who will no longer be at the game? The REAL college football fan! Thanks ESPN! 

And on some real talk, if the title game is goin' to always go to the city that places the highest bid, Jerry Jones and Co. is always gonna host the game. The Cowboys are worth a cool $3 billion now bruh. If he's got all of the bread then he suddenly owns the national title game every year. So the line that boyz ran on us sayin' that the city that bids the most gets the game was essentially a lie.   

In order to keep the game of college football available to the real fans I 've always proposed startin' the season a week earlier and then makin' it mandatory that every conference play a title game the last weekend of November. Right now not every conference plays one (Big 12) and that isn’t fair to those that do. The Big 12 needs to add more teams to the conference to make that happen. Once the dust settles. On the first weekend of December there should be a Final Four taken from the Top 25 voted on by legitimate cats that have watched all of the teams play. Not some duns that have a vested interest in a particular school or conference. That's crazy!! 

Have #1 play #4 and #2 play #3. The higher ranked teams would play at the crib so that the higher ranked team's fans don't have to travel. The two winners would then play for all of the marbles in January in the Title Game! The argument has always between #2 and #3 anyway. Then everybody else would play in the bowls as normal. I don't wanna hear about #5 being left out because they're too far down the turn pike to be relevant, anyway.

Havin' a committee of 13 makes it way too easy for rich boosters to pay boyz off to get into the playoff. This system doesn't make it better because we got FOUR teams. It just means that some duns sat in a room and conspired to get certain teams in. That's REAL talk bruh!

I keep hearin' folks say, "Take the bowls away and have a straight up playoff like they do in D-2 or D-3." Bruh, you can't touch the bowls because there's too much bread on the table that boyz aren't givin' up. That's like askin' the Mob to give up Vegas! Don't think for one minute that they did either. Secondly, it would be unfair to the other 107 schools in the FBS because there are only about 13 schools or so that have the players consistently enough to complete for a national title.

 I’ll name them: USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio St, Michigan, Alabama, Florida, LSU, Georgia, Florida St, Miami and maybe just maybe Notre Dame. There may be 1 or 2 more duns that I missed but cats like Wisconsin, South Carolina, Louisville, Virginia Tech etc. are good but don't have the depth to complete year in and year out for a title.

 If you try to eliminate the bowls what do you tell the other schools? It was nice doin' business with you and I'll holla. See schools like Purdue, Miss St., Arizona  etc. will never play for a national title because they can't recruit the players those schools previously mentioned can recruit. If there isn’t a bowl for the Purdue's of the world to play in after they’ve won 6 to 8 games in a great year what are those kids even playin' for and what do those coaches use as a recruitin' tool? Sure, every 30 years or so they’ll get a player that everyone slept on like Drew Brees or Bob Grease and win the Big Ten Championship but they won’t ever play for a national title. So schools like that will never vote to take bread out of their pockets. In my Puffy voice, "It's all about the Benjimans! What?"

So by takin' the bowl games away we would cheat college football of the pageantry that is college football. It’s a playoff startin' week one anyway. I still hear you sayin' that those bowls are meaningless. Well… not to the kid playin' at Missouri, Ole Miss or Western Michigan. The bowl game IS their National Championship not to mention the guaranteed revenue that the schools receive as a result of playin' in those bowls. That bread is guaranteed just for showin' up. 

If you were fortunate enough to get to a former BCS bowl it was $17 million payday whether you’re playin' in the title game or not. The mid level bowls like the Chick-Fil-A, Cotton and Outback pay $3 million each. The Sun Bowl which Purdue has participated in previous years pays out $1.9 million. Even if you play in a bottom tier bowl like the Emerald it’s worth $850,000 to your school. Boyz ain't walkin' away from that type of scratch.

So ESPN you can run game all you want by tellin' boyz that the playoff is better with a committee of hand picked cats for college football. Just keep it real and say that it's better for you and I'm cool with that. Because I know that the real college football fan isn't goin' to be able to go to two bowl games, two weeks in a row but the corporate suits will. Stop me when I start lyin'!

Holla At Ya Boy!
JayGravesReport
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The Frat GPA (Why the BCS got it right & the bottom feeders in the SEC are bragging)

"We got business to take care of bruh and you in the way!"

On Saturday night after all of the games had been played I stopped by the hood and fell off into the brown bag joint to get something to eat on the way home. Two O.G.’s and an older woman were at a table in the corner arguing about doing the right thing. John F. Kennedy said, “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future. Martin Luther King Jr. put his cigarette out and said, “The time is always right to do what is right.” Then Eleanor Roosevelt pushed the table over and said, “Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”

That’s the BCS this morning playboy, it’s always right and the freakin’talking heads spent the entire season trying to convince you that it would explode and chaos would ensue and it never does. It got it right once again pimpin’. The two best teams in the country will play for all of the marbles in Pasadena on January 6^th! Florida State and Auburn pulled into the station as the best two teams when all of the smoke cleared.

Here’s my roof top screamer always hollering and never making sense. “Hold up dawg! You said that Florida State and Ohio State were gonna play for the title. Ohio State just lost to Michigan State!” You’re exactly right playboy and because they lost they no longer deserve to be in the title game. See how that works?

When they were 24-0 they were the 2^nd ranked team in the country behind Florida State and rightfully so. Then they got caught drinking up in Ann Arbor last week and boyz let them get away with a warning. They didn't learn their lesson and showed up in Indy on Saturday night stumbling around downtown and a Spartan driving a green Maserati ran over them when they were crossing the street. They died shortly after 11pm eastern in front of Lucas Oil Stadium with green paint on their face.

Tell Big Momma that we did everything we could to save their life but it just wasn’t mean to be. By dying in the Big Ten championship, the entire picture changed and it put Auburn into the BCS Tile Game. You can’t hate on that bruh. They are the hottest team in the country behind the Seminoles right now and they deserve to be in the game because the Buckeyes couldn’t control their liquor. Auburn’s got one loss but their resume is better than any other one loss team in the country. So they’re in! It’s just that simple.

Let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1^st! Losing in the Big Ten title game was probably the best thing that could’ve ever happen to Ohio State. Why? Because you don’t wanna show up to the biggest game of the year with EVERYBODY watching and get the doors blown off of you again. Trust me, I know, because my Sooners ran the table in 2004 and went to title game to play Reggie Bush and Co. in the Orange Bowl and got embarrassed 55-19.

I was jacked up for at least 7 days bruh not because my team loss. But because I had to deal with all of the duns that saw my team lose playboy that had something to say about it! So consider this a blessing because EVERYBODY wasn’t watching the Big Ten championship. So you can go away peacefully under the radar without boyz throwing bottles at you.

Now what blows my mind is that duns from Kentucky started tweeting me last night screaming SEC, trying to prop up their affiliation to some cats that don’t even want them around. Kentucky is the dun in the car that boyz have to give a ride home because they live in the neighborhood but nobody talks to. They’re like the sick dog that boyz don’t wanna pay good money to put down so they take them for that infamous last ride but it keeps finding its way back home. They’re like the dun in the frat that keeps bringing the GPA down but is always at the party with a T-shirt on stepping like crazy. He’s in it for the props and the women but isn’t puttin’ in the any work. They call that a crab where I’m from playa.

Stop hollering SEC when you’ve never contributed to the success of the conference bruh! Like I’ve been saying for years, the top of the SEC is loaded and are carrying the rest of those duns. The same cats keep winning, LSU, Alabama, Florida and Auburn. Those 7 straight BCS championships were won by these 4 cats only not by 7 different schools or the entire conference. On some real talk, 5 or those 7 were won by 2 cats! Alabama won 3 and Florida won 2! So stop with the SEC chanting if you aren’t one of those schools.

By saying that the SEC has won 7 straight titles is a fallacy playboy! For those of you that don't know what that is, it's something that is truth but not necessarily truth. For example, it's like saying that people in the projects steal. Johnny lives in the projects therefore he steals. Teams from the SEC have won 7 straight championships. However, not all of them have won a championship. I do have a degree playboy from Indiana University while you're sittin' there hatin' on my writing style!

Side note: If 50% of the people in the room aren't hatin' on you! You need to step you're game up pimpin'! Let's move on!

Clowns that attach themselves to someone else's success are like the fool that lets his boy pay for the buffet at Shoney’s and then eats off of his plate. I saw an Ole Miss fan high fiving a Vandy fan as a cat from Miss State pulls up with some duns from Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina and Mizzou in the ride talking trash. They were all going to a boy from Texas A&M’s crib that's married to a girl from Georgia to celebrate the success of the SEC. When they got there somebody said put the championship rings on the table that have been won over the past 50 years and you heard two coins fall and some lent hit the table. Georgia had one (1980) and Tennessee had one (1998). Everybody else just stood there looking crazy.

Big props to both Florida State and Auburn for representin’ and making the college football season worth watching once again! In my Bart Scott voice, “Can’t Wait” until January 6^th. And if you run into some dun hollerin’ SEC and he’s not an LSU, Bama, Florida or Auburn fan, tell him to stop bringing the frat GPA down, take off that dull shirt. and start puttin' in some work. Stop me when I start lyin’!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
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The quote under the caption isn’t real but its REAL talk!

Four What? (Final 4 still a mess)

"Starting in 2014 we'll have  4 teams playing for all of the marbles!"

Big Momma would always say, "Some folks ain't satisfied with nothing!"  Eddie Murphy once said, "Give brother a rope he wanna be a cowboy."  My favorite is , "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Well, you can but it'll give you the runs if you're not careful. All we ever wanted to see in college football was #1 play #2 and up until 1998 we didn’t have that luxury. Remember just the year before in 1997 when #1 Nebraska played in the Orange Bowl and a #2 Michigan played in the Rose Bowl on New Years Day?

 They both won their respective games and they were both named National Champions? Then we spent the next year arguing about who was better. That happened so many times before we got the BCS that I care not to remember. All we ever wanted to see was #1 play #2. Then we finally got what we were asking for and that still didn't satisfy folks. Now we've got a College Football Final Four coming in 2014 and that still won't be enough for most folks, playboy.

I've always said that the top 4 teams should play it off  anyway because the problem was always with #3. However, I'm not in favor of them using two of the existing BCS Bowls as a national semifinal. Here's why, the bowl games are held during the Holiday season and fans typically use them as the family vacation etc. If you play the game as a national semifinal then you're asking those same fans to travel the following week to another city to do the same thing all over again.

Your average fan doesn't have the bread to do all of that bruh. By structuring the National Title game in this manor you've just turned it into the Super Bowl because you've made it an all CORPORATE event. The title game will go to the city that makes the highest  bid so now it becomes the "Corporate Takeover" and tickets would cost $5,000 or $6,000 and guess who will no longer be at the game? The REAL college football fan! Be careful what you ask FOUR bruh.

In order to keep the game of college football available to the real fans I 've always proposed starting the season a week earlier and then making it mandatory that every conference play a title game the last weekend of November. Right now not every conference plays one and that isn’t fair to those that do. Once the dust settles, then on the first weekend of December there should be a Final Four and not during the bowl season!
Have #1 play #4 and #2 play #3. The higher ranked teams would play at the crib so that the higher ranked team's fans don't have to travel. The two winners would then play for all of the marbles in January in the BCS Title Game! The argument has always between #2 and #3 anyway. Then everybody else would play in the bowls as normal. I don't want to hear about #5 being left out because they're too far down the turn pike to be relevant, anyway.

We don't need some committee determining who plays either because bribes come in to play with that bruh. Just leave it the way it is. You know these rich boosters will do anything to get into the Ship and that means getting to the 14 to 20 cats picking and choosing. So who's to say that it's a legit champion anyway because it's still gonna be subjective! That doesn't make it better because we got FOUR teams. It just means that some duns sat in a room and conspired to get certain teams in. That's REAL talk bruh!

Also just stop it with the silly argument that you have to win your conference to play for the national title because what about those playing in the SEC? Their 3rd or 4th best team is better than the Big East or ACC champ! Last year the SEC had 3 out of the top 5 teams in the country for most of the year with South Carolina rolling. Let's keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st!  Alabama and LSU were clearly the two best teams in the country in 2011. Either one of them would have won the other conferences easily. Remember my class "Sports 101" when I taught you to take your heart out of it? Those that didn't want to see a rematch of LSU/Bama a couple of years ago were simply thinking with their hearts.

I keep hearing folks say, "Take the bowls away and have a straight up playoff like they do in D-2 or D-3." Bruh, you can't touch the bowls because there's too much bread on the table that boyz aren't giving up. That's like asking the Mob to give up Vegas! Don't think for one minute that they did either. Secondly, it would be unfair to the other 107 schools in the FBS because there are only about 13 schools or so that have the players consistently enough to complete for a national title. I’ll name them: USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio St, Michigan, Alabama, Florida, LSU, Georgia, Florida St, Miami and Notre Dame. There may be 1 or 2 more duns that I missed but cats like Wisconsin, South Carolina, Louisville, Virginia Tech etc. are good but don't have the depth to complete year in and year out for a title.

 If you try to eliminate the bowls what do you tell the other schools? It was nice doing business with you and I'll holla. See schools like Purdue, Miss St., Arizona  etc. will never play for a national title because they can't recruit the players those schools previously mentioned can recruit. If there isn’t a bowl for the Purdue's of the world to play in after they’ve won 6 to 8 games in a good year what are those kids even playing for and what do those coaches use as a recruiting tool? Sure, every 30 years or so they’ll get a player that everyone slept on like Drew Brees or Bob Grease and win the Big Ten Championship but they won’t ever play for a national title. So schools like that will never vote to take bread out of their pockets. In my Puffy voice, "It's all about the Benjimans! What?"

So by taking the bowl games away we would cheat college football of the pageantry that is college football. It’s a playoff starting week one anyway. I still hear you saying that those bowls are meaningless. We’ll… not to the kid playing at Missouri, Ole Miss or Western Michigan. The bowl game IS their National Championship not to mention the guaranteed revenue that the schools receive as a result of playing in those bowls. That bread is guaranteed just for showing up. If you’re fortunate enough to get to a BCS bowl it’s a $17 million payday whether you’re playing in the title game or not. The mid level bowls like the Chick-Fil-A, Cotton and Outback pay $3 million each. The Sun Bowl which Purdue has participated in previous years pays out $1.9 million. Even if you play in a bottom tier bowl like the Emerald it’s worth $850,000 to your school. Boyz ain't walking away from that type of scratch bruh.

So if you were the presidents of Fresno State and Wyoming would you have voted for a playoff or accepted the invite to the 2009 New Mexico Bowl which paid them $750,000 each just for showing up? See the greatness of college football is the pageantry and the excitement of the regular season and the culmination of events with the bowls. If I’m an LSU fan I’m not only concerned with the Tigers, I’m concerned with all the chess pieces moving around them. Now really… would you want to take all of that away just to have seen LSU and Alabama anyway? Remember what I said about that cake earlier! You know boyz aren't gonna be satisfied with 4! Soon it's gonna be 8 then 16 teams then the joint's going to go up in flames. Be careful what you ask FOUR bruh cuz it just might give you the runs!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
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Power Ball

"Doesn't matter what you call them bruh! They all spell money!"

I’m always blown away by the amount of folks that have sports talk radio and television shows that don’t know the first thing about sports! I’m not talking about the games themselves, I’m talking about the business that drives the game. Then they make ignorant comments to an audience that will believe everything that they say because they’re viewed as the expert. So as a result you have a nation of sports fans that don’t understand what’s going on either.

 Major college football is a beast all to itself and in order to talk about it you’ve got to understand how, why and what drives it. If you don’t understand how it’s set up and the history of it you’ll never understand the business of it from the school’s perspective. That’s why I’m here bruh!

This isn’t the NFL where all of the teams are owned by billionaires where there is a profit sharing situation going on and the league mandates a draft that allows the worse teams to draft first to keep things honest. It’s all done to try to provide a since of parity so that the same teams don’t always have a financial or competitive advantage over the others. Now on some real talk, some organizations are just better run than others so they win anyway. In college football the rich get richer because they get better players every year and therefore they keep winning.

The division 1 or FBS level that it’s now called has 120 schools that probably represent 5 different levels of play because of their ability or inability to recruit. It’s not like the NFL where everybody has professional level talent. So therefore, when I hear clowns suggest that they should eliminate the bowl system all together so that there can be a playoff they aren’t looking at the entire landscape of college football. They’re only thinking about those teams that would be competing for a national title. What do you do with the other 110 schools or so?

There are 34 bowls that will kick off later this week that will run through the holidays and will culminate with the BCS National Title Game on January 7th. That means that 68 of those 120 schools get to participate in the bowl season. Not just the 4, 8 or 16 teams that these media clowns keep pushing you to buy going forward. The first thing these cats will say is that the smaller bowls are meaningless and that they are a waste of time. When they make comments like that it shows just how ignorant they are to what’s really going on or how bad they're trying to run game on you!

Let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st! The bowls are guaranteed revenue for both the schools and conferences alike and no president is going to vote to eliminate guaranteed money to have a full fledged playoff that may or may not include them. Schools are constantly looking for revenue streams and college football is the biggest money maker on just about every campus in America. Football revenue not only supports the athletic departments but it also pays for all new construction on campus and all of the research done in the science, math and physics departments. So it’s bigger than just playing football homeboy, its big business for the school.

Do you really think that Cincinnati and Duke would vote for a playoff and leave the $1.7 million that the Belk Bowl in Charlotte is going to pay them just for showing up this year? That payout is for each school bruh not the total bowl payout that has to be split.  The Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl in Tempe is paying Michigan State and TCU $3.3 million each. The Pinstrip Bowl in the Bronx is handing Syracuse and West Virginia $1.8 million. The dull Heart of Dallas Bowl is throwing Oklahoma State and Purdue $1.1 million just for showing up. None of those teams will ever play for a national title or even be in the hunt for one because they don't have the players or the coaches to win one. Why? Because it costs money to compete at that level!

 So why would they agree to take money off of the table so that the rich could get even more rich! Do you really think they'll just concede to let schools like Notre Dame, Alabama, Oregon and LSU play it off and make even more bread?  That’s like believing that the mafia just gave Vegas up to big corporations for nothing without any residual payout. In my Ochocinco voice, “Child Please!” If you believe that I’ve got some palms trees to sell you imported from Gary, In.

Also those cities that are hosting the bowls are generating money for their local economies. The train left the station 70 or 80 years ago and they can’t pull it back in at this point. Too many cats are getting paid to think boyz will just give it up. So to say that the smaller bowls mean nothing is crazy. Those schools don’t get to keep that bread outright because they have to split it with the conference. However, if 5 or 6 teams go bowling that’s more bread for the conference to split.

Now the BCS Bowls all pay $17 million each to the participating schools win or lose and the national title game pays $18 million. Now all of that money is brought back to the respective conferences and divided up equally. So the key is for the conference to get as many schools in a bowl as possible so they can get more bread. Not only is the money important but these schools get national exposure that not only helps in recruiting student-athletes but also in recruiting students too!

 So when you’re listening to the cats on television pushing an agenda for a playoff, understand that they’re trying to get paid too. This has nothing to do with the student-athlete or the schools. It has everything to do with ESPN/ABC or Fox etc. getting paid at the player’s expense. Ask that same dun if he or she would give up guaranteed money out of their pay check for the sake of a full fledged playoff because it would be better for the game. To a man or woman they’ll all say no! So stop listening to cats that you think are the so-called experts because they’re in on the hustle too. Stop me when I start lyin'!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Get @ me on Twitter: @jaygravesreport
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The Dull Fix

"SEC only! All other conferences need not apply regardless of record!"

The greatest advantage of growing up in the hood is that you learn how to spot a hustle even before it gets out of the ride. When it turns the corner and comes down the street you can see it putting its pistol in his waist. So when it jumps out of the car and starts jackin' boyz you aren’t surprised. As a matter of fact you’ve already taken cover.

All I’m saying is that boyz shouldn’t be surprised when the BCS rankings come out in the next week and the SEC is bottle necked at the top of the rankings. When the preseason rankings came out there where 5 SEC teams in the top 10; #2 Alabama, #3 LSU, #6 Georgia, #9 South Carolina and #10 Arkansas! From my vantage point on the stoop I told boyz that the fix was in. The only team that was a legit top 5 team at the time was Alabama!

I’ve been saying for years that Georgia is Mark Richt’s Georgia but the media keeps drinking the Kool Aid and keeps giving them the benefit of the doubt. Florida was ranked 24^th in the preseason poll and after beating a dull LSU team that has been riding on a donut for the past few weeks, struggling with a terrible Auburn team and then Towson, has jumped all the way to 4^th in the latest poll. Arkansas started the season with dull John L Smith and they were still ranked 10th. He was horrible at Louisville and Michigan State but because was coaching in the SEC he was all of a sudden a top 10 cat. SMH

South Carolina beats Mark Richt’s Georgia at home and now I’m listening to sports radio yesterday and they’re saying that if the Gamecocks beat dull LSU in Death Valley this weekend that they could be #2 behind Alabama in the first BCS rankings. The fix is in bruh!

How in the world can you just bypass Oregon (Parliament Funkadelic), West Virginia and Notre Dame? All three of these teams have been playing lights out. Now West Virginia’s defense is suspect but you can’t match them on offense and until they lose you can’t discount them.

Let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1^st!  The best indicator of future behavior is to look at past behavior! When you peel back all of the hype surrounding the Gamecocks they’re still dull South Carolina! They’ve won 1 conference title in the history of the program, 1 Heisman (George Rogers) and had 3 measly All-Americans in 120 years! Stop trying to sell South Carolina to me bruh! It's like trying to sell Noni Juice! Stop it! Just stop it! You're trying to sell me a vacuum cleaner and I've got hardwood floors! You're trying to talk me into using Soul Glo and I've been rockin' a bald head for more than 20 years!

 There is a reason that boyz are in Columbia and not in Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge or Gainesville etc. Granted  they have a couple of exceptions to that rule in Jadeveon Clowney and Marcus Latimore but two cats can’t take you to the promise land because this ain't round ball. That’s real talk.

It kills me that these duns in the media keep selling you teams outside of Alabama as the best in America. LSU can’t throw the football across the street but if South Carolina beats them this week they deserve to be #2? Real talk, LSU is going to drop 2 or 3 ball games before it’s all over so how does beating them justify a #2 ranking?

That’s why I’ve been saying for years that they shouldn’t have preseason rankings because personal bias gets in the way and it screws teams like Notre Dame because nobody expected them to be undefeated at this point in the season. They've played a legit schedule so far but boyz are completely ignoring them because the SEC fix is in. When it's all said and done the Irish will have played Michigan (dull but a rivalry game so it's intense), Michigan State, Stanford, Miami and both Oklahoma and USC on the road. That's a better schedule than Bama is going to play.

Even if Alabama drops a game this year they’ll get in even with a garbage schedule. Look at this joint bruh: Michigan(dull), Western Kentucky(so dull), Arkansas(John L. Smith dull), Florida Atlantic(extra dull with mild sauce on the side), Ole Miss( dull as usual), Mizzou(couldn’t win in the Big 12 dull), Tennessee( will pull the dull upset on Bama because of their passing game), Miss State( southern drawl dull), LSU(riding on a donut dull),  Texas A&M(1^st year coach & new in the conference dull), Western Carolina(well done dull), Auburn( Gene Chizik will be fired by then dull). So you mean to tell me that a 1 loss Bama should get in playing that schedule over lets say Notre Dame? C'mon bruh!

Remember when the BCS first came out and strength of schedule and margin of victory were two thirds of the formula? Then in 2003 #1 Oklahoma got beat by Kansas State in the Big 12 title game and only dropped to #2 because of their strength of schedule and margins of victory all year. The writers were upset that there wasn’t enough human element involved so they changed it. Now there is too much human element and way too much SEC bias! I'm cool with the top SEC teams being in the hunt but just because you're in the family doesn't get you into the VIP section!

It's like when No Limit was hot and boyz were buying Silk The Shocker's music! He was the worst rapper of all-time but because he was affiliated with No Limit folks bought into the hype! It was the same way with ODB of Wu-Tang! He was straight garbage and selling on the strength of the group. Well that's what's happening with the SEC right now. South Carolina, Arkansas, Georgia, LSU all got a pass at the beginning of the season because of affiliation. You would think that these boyz are GD Folks or something the way they get to "bo-guard" the joint.

So the only way Notre Dame, Oregon or West Virginia gets into the VIP section in Miami is to run the table because the fix is in to get the SEC to play it all over again this year and that is so Dull! Now if the two best teams in the country are from the SEC when the smoke clears. I'm cool with that but don't try to hustle me in week 7!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Get @ me on Twitter: @jaygravesreport

"Magic Tricks"

This doesn't look like it's a free education to me bruh!"

Yesterday I went off in the crazy Hot Joint entitled "FOUR What?" about how we're on the verge of ruining college football from the fans perspective. By using the bowls as the national semifinals you'll put a strain on the fans by asking them to travel during the holiday season two weeks in a row. Not to mention turning the title game into the "Super Bowl" where only Corporate executives can afford to go to entertain clients etc. Let's pump the brakes for a minute! What about the student-athlete bruh?

Everybody is excited about the possibility of the four team playoff and what that would mean to the sport in terms of revenue. Believe me player, it's going to generate some ridiculous bread. Can you imagine what the major networks are going to be willing to pay to get that game or games? They've already announced that the city that comes in with the highest bid will get the title game but guess how much the guys playing in the game are going to get? A big fat goose egg! A bag full of give aways and a "that a boy!"

This game will essentially be the Super Bowl a month earlier with all of the window dressings and the guy playing in the game can get kicked off of the team for taking a $100 handshake. Think of all of the cats that are making money off of this; the networks, the cities(restaurants & hotels etc.) hosting either the semifinal or the title game, retail(jerseys & merchandise) and the universities.

Let's keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st! Don't give me the spill that the players get a free education bruh! That's the smoke and mirrors answer that doesn't fly. I grew up in the hood and I can see past that game. It's like doing a magic trick and telling me to pay attention to your right hand so that you can rob me with your left. The free education that your talking about ain't free. Those kids have to put in hard work everyday and still be productive enough to get that scholarship renewed every year.

 The freaking class that the kid is in is an absorbed cost to the university anyway! That class is going to take place whether there are 100 people in it or 101! The books are loaned to the player for the semester and have to be turned in afterwards. They aren't giving them anything. So don't try to tell me that he got a free education because it didn't cost the school a dime to throw the freaking kid into the class in the first place. Even if the kid graduates that degree will never make him the bread that he made the university in one year not to mention all FOUR years.

Let's look at all of bread the school will have made off of these guys by the time they leave in 3 or 4 years. The millions every week in ticket sales just for the regulars season games. The merchandising profits as well as the parking lot revenue and concessions, TV rights, video game licensing and merchandising just for starters.  We haven't even began to factor in the Final Four scenerio and all of that bread that has to be sliced up and served.

In my Mr Rogers voice putting my sneakers on voice, "Come on with me!" Let's look at how the semifinal during the bowl season will negatively impact the players. In the past when the kids made it to a bowl game it was a week long event for the team. The host city rolls out the red carpet for the guys and they enjoy themselves for an entire week. For example, if a team makes it to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans they'll show up a week before the game and check into a fancy hotel in the French Quarter. They would practice in the mornings and kick it the rest of the day. They'll have all kinds of activities planned for them to do etc.

Now that they potentially have another game to play the following week it's going to be business as usual. They'll probably show up the afternoon before the game and bail right after it's over. Everybody gets to enjoy the bowl but the players and everybody's getting paid but the players! If they're going to be called student-athletes then treat them as such. If this is professional sports then pay them because kids ARE going to take the money being handed out behind the dorm! Why, because they're the same kids that have been watching both hands while you're doing magic tricks bruh! They ain't stupid!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Follow me on Twitter: @jaygravesreport

"FOUR What?"

"Starting in 2014 we'll have  4 teams playing for all of the marbles!"

Big Momma would always say, "Some folks ain't satisfied with nothing!"  Eddie Murphy once said, "Give brother a rope he wanna be a cowboy."  My favorite is , "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Well, you can but it'll give you the runs if you're not careful. All we ever wanted to see in college football was #1 play #2 and up until 1998 we didn’t have that luxury. Remember just the year before in 1997 when #1 Nebraska played in the Orange Bowl and a #2 Michigan played in the Rose Bowl on New Years Day?

 They both won their respective games and they were both named National Champions? Then we spent the next year arguing about who was better. That happened so many times before we got the BCS that I care not to remember. All we ever wanted to see was #1 play #2. Then we finally got what we were asking for and that still didn't satisfy folks. Now we've got a College Football Final Four and  that still won't be enough for most folks, homeboy.

I've always said that the top 4 teams should play it off  anyway because the problem was always with #3. However, I'm not in favor of them using two of the existing BCS Bowls as a national semifinal. Here's why, the bowl games are held during the Holiday season and fans typically use them as the family vacation etc. If you play the game as a national semifinal then you're asking those same fans to travel the following week to another city to do the same thing all over again. Your average fan doesn't have the bread to do all of that bruh. By structuring the National Title game in this manor you've just turned it into the Super Bowl because you've made it an all CORPORATE event. The title game will go to the city that makes the highest  bid so now it becomes the "Corporate Takeover" and tickets would cost $5,000 or $6,000 and guess who will no longer be at the game? The REAL college football fan! Be careful what you ask FOUR bruh.

In order to keep the game of college football available to the real fans. I 've always proposed starting the season a week earlier and then make it mandatory that every conference play a title game the last weekend of November. Right now not every conference plays one and that isn’t fair to those that do. Once the dust settles, then on the first weekend of December there should be a Final Four and not during the bowl season!

 Have #1 play #4 and #2 play #3. The higher ranked teams would play at the crib. The two winners would then play for all of the marbles in January in the BCS Title Game! The argument has always between #2 and #3 anyway. Then everybody else would play in the bowls as normal. I don't want to hear about #5 being left out because they're too far down the turn pike to be relevant, anyway. We don't need some committee determining who plays either because bribes come in to play with that bruh. Just leave it the way it is. You know these rich boosters will do anything to get into the Ship and that means getting to the 14-20 cats picking and choosing. So who's to say that it's a legit champion anyway! That doesn't make it better because we got FOUR teams. That's REAL talk bruh!

Also just stop it with the silly argument that you have to win your conference to play for the national title because what about those playing in the SEC? Their 3rd or 4th best team is better than the Big East or ACC champ! Last year the SEC had 3 out of the top 5 teams in the country for most of the year with Arkansas rolling. Well, Bobby Patrino just blew that up didn't he? Let's keep it real or alway the way 100, whichever comes 1st!  Alabama and LSU were clearly the two best teams in the country. Either one of them would 've won the other conferences easily. Remember my class "Sports 101" when I taught you to take your heart out of it? Those that didn't want to see a rematch of LSU/Bama were simply thinking with their hearts.

I keep hearing folks say, "Take the bowls away and have a straight up playoff like they do in D-2 or D-3." Bruh, you can't touch the bowls because there's too much bread on the table that boyz aren't giving up. That's like asking the Mob to give up Vegas! Don't think for one minute that they did either. Secondly, it would be unfair to the other 107 schools in the FBS because there are only about 13 schools or so that have the players consistently enough to complete for a national title. I’ll name them: USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio St, Michigan, Alabama, Florida, LSU, Georgia, Florida St, Miami and Notre Dame etc.

 If you try to eliminate the bowls what do you tell the other schools? It was nice doing business with you and I'll holla. See schools like Purdue, Miss St., Arizona  etc. will never play for a national title because they can't recruit the players those schools previously mentioned can recruit. If there isn’t a bowl for the Purdue's of the world to play in after they’ve won 6 to 8 games in a good year what are those kids even playing for and what do those coaches use as a recruiting tool? Sure, every 30 years or so they’ll get a player that everyone slept on like Drew Brees or Bob Grease and win the Big Ten Championship but they won’t ever play for a national title. So schools like that will never vote to take bread out of their pockets. In my Puffy voice, "It's all about the Benjimans! What?"

So by taking the bowl games away we would cheat college football of the pageantry that is college football. It’s a playoff starting week one anyway. I still hear you saying that those bowls are meaningless. We’ll… not to the kid playing at Missouri, Ole Miss or Western Michigan. The bowl game IS their National Championship not to mention the guaranteed revenue that the schools receive as a result of playing in those bowls. That bread is guaranteed just for showing up. If you’re fortunate enough to get to a BCS bowl it’s a $17 million payday whether you’re playing in the title game or not. The mid level bowls like the Chick-Fil-A, Cotton and Outback pay $3 million each. The Sun Bowl which Purdue has participated in previous years pays out $1.9 million. Even if you play in a bottom tier bowl like the Emerald it’s worth $850,000 to your school. Boyz ain't walking away from that type of scratch bruh.

So if you were the presidents of Fresno State and Wyoming would you have voted for a playoff or accepted the invite to the 2009 New Mexico Bowl which paid them $750,000 each just for showing up? See the greatness of college football is the pageantry and the excitement of the regular season and the culmination of events with the bowls. If I’m an LSU fan I’m not only concerned with the Tigers, I’m concerned with all the chess pieces moving around them. Now really… would you want to take all of that away just to have seen LSU and Alabama anyway? Remember what I said about that cake earlier! You know boyz aren't gonna be satisfied with 4! Soon it's gonna be 8 then 16 teams then the joint's going to go up in flames. Be careful what you ask FOUR bruh cuz it just might give you the runs!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Get @ me on Twitter:@jaygravesreport

"Ya'll Ain't Listenin'!"

"Do we really have to keep going over this? Jay already told you how to do it!"

In my opinion the game of college football is the greatest sport in the world. The history and tradition of the game is unmatched by any other sport. From its very first game played in 1869 where the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and Rutgers College (now Rutgers University) locked horns it's been amazing.

What most people don't realize is that college football is more of a regional game than anything. Teams have been playing one another for more than 100 years in most instances. These rivalries that have survived two world wars, Vietnam, the gulf wars and most recently the conflicts in the Middle East. Depending upon where you live you believe that your rivalry is the best in college football. For example, you can’t tell the good people of Alabama that Ohio State/Michigan is the best because they've been bread to believe that the Iron Bowl (Alabama vs. Auburn) is better. Ask that question in 5 different parts of the country and you'll get 5 different answers.

Also the bowl system has become the life blood of the game and its fans over the years. Not only do the fans look forward to the holiday opportunity to travel with their teams but the players themselves grow up dreaming of one day playing in one. Over the past few years there have been rumblings for having a playoff. I've heard of 16 team and 8 team scenarios that simply don't work simply because it would extent the season. These are college kids not professionals and they’re already getting pimped bruh. So in order to extend the season you’ve got to eliminate the bowls. It’s simple and in my Tupac voice, “that ain’t happenin’ patna!”

I proposed a Final Four format a years ago but boyz wouldn't listen. Now all of a sudden NCAA president Mark Emmert mentions it and now everybody listens. Who is he? E.F. Hutten or somebody?

"The notion of having a Final Four approach is probably a sound one," Emmert said when asked what he heard coming out of New Orleans this week. "Moving toward a 16-team playoff is highly problematic because I think that's too much to ask a young man's body to do. It's too many games, it intrudes into the school year and, of course, it would probably necessitate a complete end to the bowl system that so many people like now."

Bruh, just Holla At Ya Boy the next time that you want to come up with solutions for college football. Even though they are moving closer to having a four team playoff they're still moving in the wrong direction. I keep hearing folks say that we can just do the plus one system by having the bowls remain the same and then play one additional bowl game. Like having for example #1 and #4 play in the Rose Bowl in one semifinal. Then have #2 and #3 play in the Sugar Bowl and the winners play for the title a week later.

That sounds good if everybody was rich and didn't work bruh! The average college football fan isn't going to travel to two different bowl games over the Christmas Holidays. It’s ridiculous to even think that it's possible. Now would the games be sold out? Sure they would but not with those teams diehard fans in attendance. You'll turn the college football national championship into the Super Bowl. It'll become all corporate. The real fans that support the teams all year aren't at the Super Bowl bruh. It's a corporate entertainment venue.

What I've been saying all along is this. Start the season one week earlier and then on the first week of December have the Final Four. It would make sense to have the top two teams play at home and the bottom two travel. It would look like this; #1 vs. #4 and #2 vs. #3! The winners play in the BCS Title game in January and the rest of the bowls don't change. It's just that simple. Why are people making it more difficult than it has to be?

Just keep in mind that #5 is going to be pissed just like #3 has been for years. So in reality we really didn't accomplish anything because the teams will always be voted on. However, it would be exciting to have an official Final Four just a week after the conference championship games have been played.

When you've got 120 teams with essentially 5 different levels of play within the FBS division you'll always have to vote on the teams. Keep in mind folks that this isn't basketball where you can play multiple games in a week.


Lastly, be careful what you ask for. There are only 14 or so schools that have the talent to compete for a national title. All of the others are just hoping to play in a bowl and get the guaranteed pay out that helps to sustain their programs! For those hollering to eliminate the bowls just make sure your school is one of the 14.

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Hit me up on Twitter: @jaygravesreport
Like TheJayGravesReport on Facebook at http://on.fb.me/v9ttRI

Any Questions?

"I'm quite sure we've answered all of them bruh!"

Unfortunately, it's impossible to appreciate the finer things in life when you've never developed a palate for the exclusive. If all you've ever had was a steak from Applebee's you can't wrap your mind around the tenderness of a filet from Ruth's Chris. If all you've ever driven was hoopty's then you seem to be uncomfortable with the powerful ride of a Supercharged Range Rover.

That's how most people felt that I talked to or communicated with on Twitter last night after seeing Alabama beat the brakes off of LSU 21-0 in the BCS Title game. So many of them have never seen great football so out of ignorance they immediately said that was the worse football game they had ever seen. However, connoisseurs of the game saw it from a completely different vantage point.

What most people don't realize is that they had an opportunity to see one the best defensive outputs in college football history. It wasn't that LSU was that bad. The fact of the matter was that Alabama's defense was just that good.

"They are unbelievable," said Alabama offensive lineman Barrett Jones, relieved that he only has to go against them in practice. That defense is as good as any defense I've ever seen. They rush the passer, they have awesome linebackers and they're great in coverage. They really don't have any weaknesses. They have to be as good as any defense ever."

Let's keep it real! LSU averaged 38 points a game and was undefeated in the SEC after winning the conference title. The same conference that has now won the last 6 BCS National Titles. These boyz have been blowing the doors off of everything in their path in route to New Orleans except for Alabama.

On November 5th in Tuscaloosa, LSU got out of town with a 9-6 victory because the Crimson Tide kicking game failed them. To be quite honest, Bama out played LSU in that ball game from start to finish. If not for 4 missed field goals Bama would have come into the title game #1 and LSU would have been #2.

Either way it would have been a rematch because quite honestly they were the best two teams in the country bar none. I know that so many  people were screaming for Oklahoma State to play in the title game because they didn't want a rematch. I'm glad this isn't the NBA All-Star Game and the fans get to vote because the Cowboys would have been embarrassed on national television if they have been in New Orleans.

I'm loyal to the Big 12 because my Sooners play in that league but one thing they don't play in that conference is defense. How can you go 12-1 like the Cowboys did and win the conference and have the 107th ranked defense in the country out of 120 teams? Thank God they didn't play Bama or LSU!

Alabama's defense will go down as one of the best ever. LSU didn't cross midfield until there were 8 minutes left in the game bruh. The Tigers finished with just 92 yards and five first downs total. Bama was so locked and loaded that they only committed one penalty all night long and it didn't come until about 3 minutes left. Wheredeydodatat?

"This defense is built on stopping them, and that's what we did," said Upshaw, the game's defensive MVP. "We wanted to come out and show the world we beat ourselves the first game. We wanted to come out and dominate from start to finish, and that's what we did."

I'm just glad that it wasn't even close because the Associated Press started talking crazy last week after #3 Oklahoma State beat #4 Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl. There were rumblings that if Bama beat LSU they would possibly vote Oklahoma State their #1! I guess Boone T. Pickens must have gotten to some voters or something if they were even considering that foolishness.

All I can say is Roll Tide Roll and that they did bruh. I guess the good people of Tuscaloosa didn't sleep at all last night. The Bama faithful rolled into the French Quarter after the game with an attitude and took over Bourbon Street eating all of the crawfish etouffee and gumbo they could find. I just hope they can drive home today. Congratulations to the Crimson Tide! Roll Tide Roll!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Hit me up on Twitter: @jaygravesreport
Like The JayGravesReport on Facebook at http://on.fb.me/y6xp46
Information from the Associated Press was used in this article.

THE BREAD!

"If you ain't talking about this you ain't talking!"

Now that everyone that's going to jump off of the bandwagon has already crashed and burned. Let me talk to those that are still standing at the edge of the cliff thinking about jumping too. Every year at the end of the college football season folk’s start screaming for a playoff. It wouldn't be so bad if it were only the occasional fan that really doesn't know what's going on but when ESPN Analysts that get paid to follow the game start talking crazy I've got to speak up.

Every year Kirk Herbstreit brings up the dumb idea of playing a plus one after the bowls have already been played. He also goes on to say that he can't believe that schools like Boise State didn't get into a BCS Bowl because it's come down to filling up hotel rooms. What planet has this guy been on for the past 20 years?

College football is about Money, Scratch, Deniro, Bread! That's all it's ever been about. So to suggest that it's about anything else would be naive. If it weren't about THE BREAD we would already have a playoff. Herbie has been going to games for free too long. That's his problem. To think that fans would travel to a BCS bowl one week and then turn around the following week and attend another is insane.

It cost more than $2600 to go to Miami for the Orange Bowl for 48 hours just after the Christmas Holidays. Trust me I know! You've got to get plane tickets, hotel on South Beach (no sense in going if you gotta stay at the Motel 6), rental car, game tickets and food. Now what makes you think that people are going to do it all over again the following week? Complete brain fart Herbie! Like I've been saying all along, start the season a week early. Have the top 4 teams play the first weekend of December and have #1 vs. #4 and #2 vs. #3. The two higher seeds play at the crib. The winners go the ship! It's just that simple but to think that regular fans have that type of bread to spend is asinine.

That's what the Super Bowl has become over the years. It's all corporate. The regular NFL fan doesn't get to go to that game anymore. That's where all the major players in business entertain clients. You don't see the regular Joe at the Super Bowl anymore. That's what makes the bowl games so great! The same fans that followed the team all season long is right there staying in the same hotel or groups of hotels with the team during bowl week.

Everybody needs to understand that these host cities and the schools make a lot of money off of these games for the entire week of the bowl. So unless you've got a plan in place to pay them off. It ain't gonna happen! That's like trying to get the dope man to move out of town without offering him an alternate stream of income that's just as viable as the one you're trying to talk him out of. Good luck with that!

Why do you think that Ohio State (6-6) is playing Florida (6-6) in the Gator Bowl on January 2? Anyone else with those records would be playing in the Boo Boo Bowl on December 17 at 3am! It's about selling tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars and TV ad space at the very least bruh! Urban Meyer just took over for the Buckeyes and he wants to recruit in Florida. The story line has been written and it's on and poppin'! It’s about the Bread and BIG SLICES of it.

You wanna know why Michigan and Va Tech is in the Sugar Bowl when Boise State, Kansas State and Arkansas finished with higher rankings? Bread! Say it with me again, "It’s About the Bread!" Michigan is the winningest program in the history of college football. You don't think that the folks in New Orleans knew that when they sent out the invite? Remember, the Big Easy is still rebuilding after a bad sister named Katrina came through there in 2005. So the question is, will Kansas State, Boise State, Arkansas or Michigan sell more tickets, hotel rooms and drink more liquor? Stop me when I start lying bruh because I'm in full throttle.

Like Eddie Murphy said in the movie life, "Let's talk turkey!" When it comes to college football it's all about the Benjamin's and they don't need Puffy and Bad Boy to help them sing it. So take your heart out of it this time of year because the bowl committees don't care about your school unless it’s bringing some bread to town and they‘re willing to spend it! The only prerequisite to understanding college athletics is knowing how to make a sandwich!

P.S. Tebow won again for all you haters out there!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Follow me on Twitter: @jaygravesreport

BCS Final 4!

The New Orleans Super Dome home of the BCS Title Game says,  "I'm waiting!"

All we ever wanted to see was #1 play #2 and until 1998 we didn’t have that luxury. Remember in back 1997 when #1 Nebraska played in the Orange Bowl and a #2 Michigan played in the Rose Bowl on New Years Day. They both won their respective games and they were both named National Champions? Then we spent the next year arguing about who was better. That happened so many times before the BCS that I care not to remember. All we ever wanted to see was #1 play #2. Now that we’ve got them playing folks are still complaining. I hear you in the background saying, “We need a playoff like the NFL.” That sounds great but it doesn’t make sense and here’s why.

There are 120 teams in the FBS division formally known as Division 1.Within the FBS ranks there are 3 or 4 levels of competition, from the very best teams #1 LSU and #2 Alabama, down to the worst, #119 Akron and#120 Florida Atlantic. The NFL has only 32 teams and 12 of them (37.5%) get to go to the playoffs. If we did the same thing in college football we’d have to put 45 teams in the playoffs if we want to be fair, right? Plus we’d have to get rid of the bowl structure as we know it. You can’t put 45 teams in a playoff because this isn’t basketball. You can only play one game a week not 2 like they do in the NCAA Tournament. All we want to see is #1 play #2 bruh!

If you just have to tweak the BCS I propose that we do this. Start the season a week earlier and make it mandatory that every conference play a title game. Right now not every conference plays one and that isn’t fair to those that do. Once the dust settles then on the first weekend of December there should be a Final 4! Have #1 play #4 and #2 play #3. The higher ranked teams would play at the crib. The two winners would then play for all of the marbles in January in the BCS Title Game! The argument is always between #2 and #3 anyway. Then everybody else would play in the bowls normal. I don't want to hear about #5 being left out because they were too far down the turn pike to be relevant. Problem solved.

Also don't try to use the silly argument that you have to win your conference to play for the national title because what about those playing in the SEC? They've got 3 out of the top 5 teams in the country. There can only be one champ but Alabama and LSU, are clearly at this point, the two best teams in America. Either one of them would win the other conferences easily. I'm just keeping it real. Remember my class "Sports 101" when I taught you to take your heart out of it. Those that don't want to see a rematch of LSU/Bama if they should happen to win out are simply thinking with your hearts.

You can't ever touch the bowls because it would be unfair to 106 schools because there are only about 14 schools or so that have the players consistently enough to complete for a national title. I’ll name them: USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio St, Michigan, Alabama, Florida, LSU, Georgia, Florida St, Miami, Auburn and Notre Dame if their administration would get their heads out of the sand. So what do you tell the other schools? It was nice doing business with you. See schools like Purdue, Miss St and Arizona will never play for the title because they don’t get the players those schools previously mentioned get. If there isn’t a bowl for Purdue to play in after they’ve won 6 to 8 games on a good year what are those kids even playing for. Sure every 30 years or so they’ll get a player that everyone slept on like Drew Brees or Bob Grease and win the Big Ten Championship. However, they won’t ever play for a national title. It is what it is.

So by taking the bowl games away we cheat college football of the pageantry that is college football. It’s a playoff starting week one anyway. I still hear you saying that those bowls are meaningless, we’ll… not to the kid playing at Missouri, Ole Miss or Western Michigan. The bowl game is their Super Bowl not to mention the revenue that the schools receive as a result of playing in those bowls. Do you realize that each bowl has a guaranteed payout just for showing up? If you’re fortunate enough to get to a BCS bowl it’s a $17 million payday whether you’re playing in the title game or not. The mid level bowls like the Chick-Fil-A, Cotton and Outback pay $3 million each. The Sun Bowl which Purdue has participated in previous years pays out $1.9 million. Even if you play in a bottom tier bowl like the Emerald it’s worth $850,000 to your school.

So if you were the presidents of Fresno State and Wyoming would you have voted for a playoff or accepted the invite to the 2009 New Mexico Bowl which paid them $750,000 each just for showing up? See the greatness of college football is the pageantry and the excitement of the regular season and the culmination of events with the bowls. If I’m an LSU fan I’m not only concerned with the Tigers, I’m concerned with all the chess pieces moving around them. Now really… did you want to take all of that away just to see LSU and Alabama anyway?


Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Follow me on Twitter:@jaygravesreport

The Big Fix!

"The Old Wizard!"

The college football pre-season polls came out last summer with the Oklahoma Sooners sitting at the top of the pile. They have been the #1 ranked team in the country more than any other team in college football history at 96 weeks. However, after winning their first three games by double digits they have fallen to third in the Associated Press' Top 25 poll. Logically it doesn't makes sense. If you haven’t lost or struggled you typically stay where you started.

Now they aren't tripping about their position in the polls because they're still in the cat bird seat with #1 LSU and #2 Alabama still having to face each other on November 5th. So somebody has to take an "L" and that puts the Sooners back in the top two if they can navigate the mine field of the Big 12 because they still have 5 ranked opponents left on the schedule.


Now let's keep it real or all the way 100, which ever comes first! The AP is running game right now by putting LSU at #1 and Alabama #2 to set up the "Game of the Century" type match up in November. We all can see that. I've been around the block a few times. It's like the Old Wizard standing behind the curtain pulling levers to make it more interesting so they'll have something to write about and sell more papers and magazines etc. I get it! It’s all business right?

However, I wish that they would abolish the pre-season polls altogether because it helps some teams and completely handicaps others. For example, Clemson is screwed if LSU/Bama or OU doesn't lose a game because there is no way to jump them even though they've been impressive up to this point. Wisconsin's in the same boat!

I wish that there wasn't a pre-season poll and that the first poll was released after the first four weeks of the season because we pretty much know who's been the most impressive. If a team starts the season at #13 and goes wild they have to hope that all of the teams sitting on top of the mountain fall off. Now it's always highly unlikely that everybody's going to run the table because many of the top teams have to play each other along the way like LSU/Bama or OU/Texas etc.


However, there are some teams that get ranked too high at the beginning of the season and there is nowhere for the voters to put them when teams start losing like Boise State. Who was the genius that put them at number #4 during the pre-season in the first place? Once these powerhouses start knocking each other off, guess who should move up? Now the writers will find a way to keep them at #4 with a plethora of excuses; their schedule is weak, the other teams have been more impressive etc. Well, that looks shady to rank them that high then pull the fix when the top 3 happen to fall apart.

They had all of the reasons as to why they shouldn't be in the top four when the season started. So why rank them that high in the first place? Oh I forgot, we're talking about the AP! They get paid off of their ability to sensationalize stories, right? So Boise State is the sacrificial lamb so to speak. We'll use them to sell products but we really don't want to put them in the mix for real. Quiet frankly they shouldn't but why dangle the carrot in their face if they shouldn't be in the top 5 from the word go!

If I had to rank the top 5 after the first four weeks it would be 1. LSU 2. Clemson 3. Oklahoma 4.Alabama 5. Wisconsin, based on how impressive they've been. Clemson isn't getting the respect it deserves, in my opinion, after beating Auburn, Florida State and Va. Tech in consecutive weeks which were all ranked teams. No one has been more impressive than the Tigers through 4 weeks. The only reason that I have LSU on the top of the pile is because of their defense.

Sit back and pay attention to how it all shakes lose because it's about to get interesting. I don't care who ends up in the top two slots as long as Boise State doesn't somehow hang glide the sympathy vote into New Orleans. I just believe that in order to live in my neighborhood you've got to put in the same type of work I've put in to get there. You can't move in with a section 8 voucher bruh! They don't work in the suburbs!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
Twitter:@jaygravesreport

Keep The BCS: No Playoff Needed

 I published this article last year before the bowl season and I think that it's relevant again this year. So take a look:

All we ever wanted to see was #1 play #2 and until 1998 we didn’t have that luxury. Previously #1 Alabama would have played in the Sugar Bowl and #2 Texas would have played in the Cotton Bowl on New Years Day. They both would’ve won their respective games and we’d have Co-Champions. The next morning we all would sit back in our recliners and say, “Man I wish that #1 could’ve played #2.” That’s all we ever wanted. Now that we’ve got it no one’s satisfied. The BCS has solved that dilemma. I here you in the background saying, “We need a playoff like the NFL.” That sounds great but it doesn’t make sense and here’s why. There are 120 teams in the FBS division formally known as Division 1 or D1.

 Within the D1 ranks there are 3 or 4 levels of competition, from the very best teams #1 Alabama and #2 Texas, using the 2009 rankings for example, down to the worst, #119 Eastern Kentucky and#120 Western Kentucky. The NFL has only 32 teams and 12 of them (37.5%) get to go to the playoffs. If we did the same thing in college football we’d have to put 45 teams in the playoffs if we want to be fair, right? That would be impossible to do because this isn’t basketball. You can only play one game a week not 2 like they do in the NCAA Tournament. I here you saying, “We only need the top 8 to play”. Well… 9, 10, 11 and 12 would be upset because we would still be voting on who gets to play and who doesn’t. So we really didn’t accomplish anything. All we want to see is #1 play #2, right? We’ll we’ve got that. You’re saying if we get rid of the bowls at the end of the season we could have a playoff.

 You’re right, but that would be unfair to 105 schools because there are only about 15 schools, give or take one or two, that will ever win the national title. I’ll name them: USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio St, Michigan, Penn St, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, LSU, Georgia(any of the top SEC schools), Florida St, Miami and Notre Dame if their administration ever wakes up. So what do you tell the other schools? It was nice doing business with you. See schools like Purdue, Indiana and Arizona will never even play for the title because they don’t get the players those schools previously mentioned get. If there isn’t a bowl for Purdue to play in after they’ve won 6 to 8 games on a good year what are those kids even playing for. Sure every 30 years or so they’ll get a player that everyone slept on like Drew Brees or Bob Grease and win the Big Ten Championship. However, they won’t ever play for a national title. It is what it is.

So by taking the bowl games away we cheat college football of the pageantry that is college football. It’s a playoff starting week one anyway. I still here you saying that those bowls are meaningless, we’ll… not to the kid playing at Missouri, Ole Miss or Western Michigan. The bowl game is their Super Bowl not to mention the revenue that the schools receive as a result of playing in those bowls. Do you realize that each bowl has a guaranteed payout for just showing up? If you’re fortunate enough to get to a BCS bowl it’s a $17 million payday whether you’re playing in the title game or not. The mid level bowls like the Chick-fila-A, Cotton and Outback pay $3 million each. The Sun Bowl which Purdue has participated in previous years pays out $1.9 million. Even if you play in a bottom tier bowl like the Emerald it’s worth $850,000 to your school.

So if you were the presidents of Fresno State and Wyoming would you have voted for a playoff or accepted the invite to this year’s New Mexico Bowl to make $750,000 just for showing up? See the greatness of college football is the pageantry and the excitement of the regular season and the culmination of events with the bowls. If I’m a Texas fan I’m not only concerned with the Longhorns, I’m concerned with all the chess pieces moving around it. Now really… did you want to take all that away just to see Alabama and Texas anyway?( In 2010 Auburn and Oregon) What's your opinion?

Jay Graves