Observations and Ruminations

What Have We Learned This Week?
• There is no question now (and really never should have been) that TCU can play with the “Big Boys”.  It was a close win, but a win nonetheless.  And though Andy Dalton and the offense get a lot of deserved credit for what the Horned Frogs do on the field, the performance of the defense on New Year’s Day was impressive. A Wisconsin team that had been very hot at the end of the season, scoring 48.2 ppg in their final 7 games (all wins), was held to just 19 points in the Rose Bowl.

  It’s a shame that this school felt the need to ignore geography and join the Big East just to get a chance to play for a national title.

• The Big Ten started off 2011 with a complete thud!  Oh-fer five on Jan.1.   Wow.

  Hey, Nebraska, how inviting does that league look right now?  Well, I suppose with the loss to a mediocre Washington team in a rematch it makes you feel right at home.

  If you’re a Big Ten fan, you have to feel at least a little better about the fact that Ohio State finally got over its fear of the Big Bad SEC and won a bowl game against them for the first time in school history.

• In an effort to make the final week of the season mean more than just a week for playoff-bound teams to rest their starters, the NFL set up the schedule so that all of the Game 17 matchups would be between division rivals.  It was a good decision.

  Yes, there were games in which first-stringers (read here Dallas) took on second- and third-stringers (read here Philadelphia).  But it also gave us the Seattle/St. Louis matchup for a division title and the final playoff spot in the season’s final game.  And likely will bring more intrigue in future seasons if they decide to stick with this format.

Seriously?!?!

Normally, I hate to pile on and kick a team when they're down (unless maybe it's Duke or some other ridiculously overconfident, overhyped, and media-pampered collection of egocentric talents), but the disaster in Philadelphia today can't go by without some discussion. The Dallas Cowboys completely imploded and were humiliated at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles, 44-6, thereby eliminating themselves from the playoffs that just mere weeks ago this team was thought to be a lock to win.

Let this be a warning to all other teams out there: I don't care how highly touted your assemblage of talent is, unless it is a TEAM, it's just that - an assemblage of talent.

The Cowboys are a group of folks with an abundance of distractions that nobody seems to be able to get a handle on. The owner, however good-intentioned, always comes across as wanting to be the coach. He will almost always hire a coach (like the current one) whose personality will be meeker than his and therefore be run all over by him. The aforementioned current coach will also therefore be run over by many of his players. The players' individual interests are continually coming before the interests of the whole. And the local and national media delight in watching this pot boil over time and time again.

Something has to change.

Now, I don't blame all of those turnovers today on the coaches, but the coaching staff is always the first place that people will point the finger. Today, I will be in that group. Tony Romo was right: the Cowboys were exposed. Something has to change.

Not everything that T.O. does is detrimental to his team, just most of it. His very presence is a constant source of talk that distract his teammates and management away from the game at which all of them say they are trying to succeed. Something has to change.

Do I have all of the answers today? No, of course not. But I know that I am not the only one of the opinion that something has to change. And likely more things than one.

And incidentally... For as much anti-Duke sentiment as I usually have, at least Coach K always has his boys playing like a Team.