I Tell Ya' Herbie

  The conference title games have been completed and the bowls are on their way, so it's time for an interim edition of I Tell Ya' Herbie.

I Tell Ya' Herbie:

                             I believe that Alabama is a better team than Florida State is currently and I also think that Florida State is the more deserving team and should have been the fourth seed no matter their status at the quarterback position.

The games should stand for something and this year they didn't.

I Tell Ya' Herbie:

Many have theorized about how Alabama was selected but one possible reason has yet to be mentioned.

Could this be the quiet backlash against Jim Harbaugh's various shenanigans at the University of Michigan? 

Washington could have arguably been placed first, yet Michigan was slated there, and had Florida State made it into the field, the battered Seminoles would have been a strong underdog against the Wolverines.

Instead, Michigan faces Alabama with the legendary Nick Saban and close to a month to prepare for the supposed favorite.

Could it be allowing Alabama in over Florida State be as simple as wanting the best shot at avoiding the humiliation of the scandal-plagued Wolverines and the man that flipped the bird to the NCAA and the Big Ten holding the trophy on the game's highest stage?

I Tell Ya' Herbie:

                             The hire that I've liked the most in the coaching silly season?

Bronco Mendenhall at New Mexico, a school that usually struggles at football, looks to be a perfect fit.

Mendenhall was very successful at BYU with a record of 99-43 and while his tenure at Virginia could have been more successful (36-38 in six years), he still made three bowl games and turned down a fourth bid.

Mendenhall coached at New Mexico as an assistant for four years, is from the West Coast, and will be coaching at a school where bowl bids are celebrated, so I think the Lobos have done well with the addition of Mendenhall.

I Tell Ya' Herbie:

                             The committee got it right with the selection of unbeaten Liberty over two-loss SMU as the G-5 representative in the New Year's Bowls but both schools got the shaft to certain degrees.

Liberty got an awful draw in the Fiesta Bowl against an athletic team in Oregon, and while the Mustangs and their two losses didn't deserve the G-5 slot as many had stated, they weren't treated fairly as the AAC champions to be relegated to the Fenway Bowl against a mediocre Boston College team that is basically playing a home game.

I Tell Ya' Herbie:

                             I wonder about how many bowls will still be around five or ten years after the twelve-team playoff begins.

I think the smaller bowls that many don't pay attention to will be okay as ESPN owns many of those and they are cheap programming at a time of year when they are searching for them,

However, the middle-range bowls like many of those held in Florida on or around New Year's Day may eventually have problems.

Those bowls won't be prized as much as they are currently and fans aren't as likely to travel to those games. preferring to save for the future when they can go to tournament games.

Should they become money-losing propositions, the bowls could cannibalize themselves, leaving middle-class teams either accepting lower payouts to be in the postseason or bowl games going out of business leaving fewer slots available.