Let's just wait and see what happens

Now that the College Football Playoff has begun its new phase as a twelve-team affair, I decided to go ahead and check out the four first-round games that took place this past weekend. Had the CFP still been a four-team event, my answer would've been a resounding "NO!"

I wasn't really surprised at how the first four games turned out...but quite a few people who commented online, from casual fans to NCAA experts, were ticked off at how easily Notre Dame took Indiana down (27-17) and how Penn State exposed SMU (38-10). Texas' 38-24 win over Clemson and Ohio State's 42-17 humiliation of Tennessee rounded out the weekend.

Some called the results- the first CFP games ever played on college campuses- lackluster. Others labeled the whole thing disappointing. And then came the calls denouncing the CFP committee for letting the Hoosiers (11-1 before meeting the Fighting Irish) and the Mustangs (11-2 coming into their date with the Nittany Lions) in there.

To those critics, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina (each team 9-3 on the eve of the 2024 bowl season) would've been better off in this year's CFP than SMU and Indiana.

I don't agree with those critics...and I don't care if the Crimson Tide, Rebels, and Gamecocks are all part of the same SEC that Georgia and newcomers (and ex-Big 12 foes) Texas and Oklahoma are in.

Rhett Lashlee's Mustangs (the 2023 AAC champs before joining the ACC and almost beating Clemson in this year's conference title game) deserved to get in. So did Curt Cignetti's Hoosiers...a team that went 3-9 last year under Tom Allen, now Penn State's defensive coordinator.

The two clubs did what teams are called on to do. They won...even if the naysayers are troubled with the lack of pedigree.

While Penn State gets ready to take on Boise State on 12-31-2024, Notre Dame prepares to play Georgia on 1-1-2025, Texas bones up for its 1-1-2025 date with Arizona State, and Ohio State works to iron out the kinks in a 1-1-2025 rematch with Oregon, lots of people (fans and pundits alike) are proposing solutions to tailor the next CFP to their liking. Some want to see reseeding happen after the first round...some want to eliminate giving the four biggest conference champs first-round byes...others want the CFP knocked back down to four squads (or even two!).

Know what I'd like to see?

I'd like to see the NCAA take control of the CFP...and then make it either a sixteen-team event or a twenty-four-team tilt. [With two dozen clubs in there, maybe all Division 1-A (okay, FBS) leagues can get an automatic bid for their champions.]

Now...it's your turn. What changes would you like to see to make the current format better?

In the meantime, let's just let this year's historic version unfold.

Real Pain

These last sixteen days have basically been the pits for me.

I'm still in pain...even if it's not the physical kind.

First and foremost, I'm grieving the loss of a friend from my Adult Children of Alcoholics days, Rosemary "Billi" Whelton (12-24-1944/7-21-2016), who went on to become a Great Plains Ragtime Society member. 

Here's how she looked in 1963, the year she graduated from Omaha Cathedral High School.

 

I really loved Billi's sense of humor...and her generosity.

Next, I'm hurting inside over the consequences of a corporate, job-related decision. (I'll just leave it at that.)

And I'm still unhappy about how this year's Ragtime to Riches Festival went. Billi didn't get to attend it, because she spent the bulk of 2016 in hospice after being diagnosed with the cancer that ultimately cost the former smoker and recovering alcoholic her life. 

On the run-up to R to R 12.0 (in fact, an hour before the event's workshop got started), I took heat over missing this year's World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival...the first one ever held in Mississippi after the previous 41 took place in Illinois.

My absence from this year's Memorial Day weekend get-together was labeled a "disappointment."

IT DOESN'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE THAT, FOUR MONTHS AGO, I SENT AN EMAIL ANNOUNCING MY IMPENDING ABSENCE TO THE VERY PERSON WHO WENT ON TO CALL MY NO-SHOW A "DISAPPOINTMENT!"

I emailed several other OTPP wheelers-dealers to tell them I couldn't make the trip this year.

To repeat: I'm to undergo cataract surgery in my left eye later this year (or early in 2017).

Before the surgery can begin, I need to pay the $165 I owe for the work done on that same left eye (12-14-2015) to repair its retina...and cough up an additional $1,500 before the clinic that did the retina work can touch my left eyeball again.

Yes, I've got health insurance through the place where I work...but it's useless in a case such as this.

It takes at least two weeks for people to recover from cataract surgery. I've got two weeks- ten working days- left here in 2016 to use as paid vacation time.

Because of the impending surgery, this year's personal paid vacation time is spoken and accounted for.

All of this on top of the University of Mississippi charging more than the Old-Time Music Preservation Association (the previous OTPP steward group) did not only to attend the contest, but also to enter its events.

Here's my question for those who've criticized my decision not to try to come to Oxford, MS, for OTPP 42.0:

GIVEN WHAT'S CURRENTLY ON MY PLATE, WHAT THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO??!!#@*? 

You tell me.