There is no question the suits who will make the selections for the 2023 College Football Playoff quartet could have one of the toughest jobs in the sport this season.
In reality, though, they do not even have the most difficult assignment of all the suits, or even the most challenging of anyone involved in college game this weekend.
It never is easy to muster sympathy for the conference commissioner. Their jobs pay so breathtakingly well, and not even Larry Scott’s constant calamity through more than a decade in charge of the Pacific-12 could get him forced out of the job.
This might be the time, though.
Because this weekend, all of them have to pass out trophies.
Now, that might not be such a chore for Greg Sankey of the Southeastern Conference. It’s always pretty good to be Greg Sankey, but possibly this Saturday more than any other day. Because all around him in the Power 5 -- and it still is five for one more weekend – his peers are facing the prospect of some awkward moments atop the trophy stand.
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Pac-12 bids farewell
Let us begin with Scott’s successor – and it is weird to have “success” at the core of that word – George Kliavkoff.
He will preside Friday night over the last Pac-12 Conference championship game, ever. Oh, it still may be possible that Washington State and Oregon State can assemble the teams in the Mountain West under the superior brand name, but it’s quite obvious this is it for the league.
Kliavkoff had been assigned the duty of trying to preserve that historic association, what Bill Walton referred to on way too many occasions, as “the Conference of Champions.” He failed for a lot of reasons, some of them well beyond his control.
But when Friday night’s game in Vegas is done, he will be charged with presenting the winners’ trophy to one of the two teams that dealt the final blow to the Pac-12 by bolting for the greater wealth (eventually) and security (perennially) of the Big Ten. Kliavkoff will then presumably go update his LinkedIn page.
Texas can get its ultimate revenge
Chronologically, the next person into this crucible will be Brett Yormark of the Big 12. He took over his conference well after Texas and Oklahoma decided to split for the greater fortune of the SEC. So it’s not at all disconcerting, on that count, that Yormark stands a good chance of sharing the podium with the Longhorns. No, if UT is able to defeat Oklahoma State, as expected, the discomfort will be entirely of Yormark’s own creation.
Because last summer, he appeared at the Red Raider Club and allowed he would be pulling for committed Big 12 principals Texas Tech to earn a second consecutive victory over the Longhorns’ in their final scheduled conference game in late November.
That did not happen, which is why Texas finds itself in the position of playing for the Big 12 title.
When the Longhorns clinched their spot in the championship game last Saturday with a home win over the Red Raiders, officials at UT were spicy enough to put a recording of Yormark’s comments on their stadium message board. And then, when that tape finished playing, the words, “See you in Arlington” were flashed on the screen.
Do I need to tell you the Big 12 Championship game will be played at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tex.?
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Florida State might win a trophy it doesn't want
Jim Phillips of the ACC is not losing any members after the academic year concludes this summer. But it’s not for their lack of trying, or at least griping.
Officials at Florida State, and plenty of those who follow the Seminoles, spent most of the time in the past six months that wasn’t consumed with winning every single football game on their schedule moaning about the fact the schedule largely was constructed by the ACC. They have come to believe that they are above all this. And, after such a season, maybe they can make that case. But they were the ones who signed a probably unbreakable grant-of-rights contract that still has another dozen years to run.
If they really were too cool for school, they probably would have kept their pens in their vest pockets.
In the Big Ten, it got personal
Since Tony Pettiti took charge of the Big Ten, nothing has happened to undermine the stability or prosperity of the conference. So one might imagine everything in Indianapolis this Saturday being bathed in sunshine, with USC and UCLA on the way, with Oregon and Washington checking in after they play this one last Pac-12 game, with a massive television contract already delivering record-breaking audiences like the 19.1 million who watched Ohio State-Michigan on Fox last week.
This is where Jim Harbaugh works, however.
The head coach of the champion of the East division of the Big Ten served two separate 3-game suspensions this season.
The first of those was imposed by the University, as an attempt to resolve an infractions case involving allegations of overzealous recruiting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The second was assessed by Pettiti, after the NCAA received information about an alleged scouting scheme the league judged to have created a competitive advantage for the Wolverines. UM athletic director Warde Manuel called the league's actions "unethical" and "insulting." Whatever transpired in this case, however, also has led to the dismissal of one Michigan football staff member and the suspension and subsequent resignation of another.
Harbaugh sat for the final three games of the regular season, including the two most difficult on the Wolverines’ schedule: at Penn State and home against archrival Ohio State. UM won, anyway, so they will be at Lucas Oil Stadium on Saturday evening.
And they are favored by more than three touchdowns, which means it’s highly unlikely Iowa will save Petitti the trouble of having to present a trophy to the same coach he just handed a significant punishment.
Decades ago, there was this sort of conversation about whether the NCAA president in 1991 would be uneasy handing the basketball champion’s trophy to UNLV after the program had gone through the NCAA infractions process and somehow emerged with a postseason penalty delayed by a year. The Rebels entered the Final Four with a perfect record and a reputation as one of the greatest teams in college basketball history.
"I have tremendous respect for Jerry Tarkanian as a basketball coach," Schultz said at the time. "If they're good enough to win two more games, they're entitled to the championship and I'll be the first to shake their hands.”
Duke took care of the Rebels in the semifinals, in one of the great Final Four games ever played, and Schultz was spared having to follow through on that promise.
That transpired at the Hoosier Dome in downtown Indy, just four blocks away from where Lucas Oil stands today.
If you thought all the best drama happens on Broadway, now you know differently.
