1st Round of Playoff Fizzles; Niners' Meltdown; Asst. Coaches Find Gold

Four games. Four blowouts. 

The first round of the newly-expanded College Football Playoff was a lot like many of the first rounds in the previous four-team playoff. A bunch of non-competitive games.

Notre Dame humbled Indiana 27-17 in a game that was much more one-sided than the score might indicate (Notre Dame was ahead 27-3 with two minutes left). The Irish dominated the line of scrimmage, gaining 193 yards rushing, while holding the Hoosiers to 63 yards on the ground.

Penn State crushed SMU, 38-10, taking advantage of a disastrous performance by SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings, who threw two pick-sixes and another interception in the Red Zone.

Ohio State demolished Tennessee, 42-17, playing like the juggernaut many thought the Buckeyes could be.

And Texas ran roughshod over Clemson, 38-24 after leading 31-10, then withstood a late rally led by Tiger QB Cade Klubnik.

Naturally, the complaints began almost immediately. The wrong teams got in. The games were boring. The committee blew it.

With a playoff of any size, every lopsided post-season game becomes fodder for the teams that were left out. Some critics felt the committee erred by picking Indiana and SMU over SEC stalwarts Alabama and Mississippi.

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin sarcastically called the first round games "exciting" and "riveting," then called out the committee with this barb: "way to keep us on the edge of our seats, committee."

My favorite analyst, Fox's Joel Klatt, had the perfect comeback for Kiffin: "If your team played half as well as you tweet, you'd be in."

I don't doubt that Bama and Ole Miss might've provided more competitive games against Notre Dame and Penn State, but the fact is, the teams who didn't make the 12-team field didn't deserve to get in.

Kiffin's Ole Miss team lost three games, including one at home to a Kentucky team that finished 4-8 and didn't win another SEC game. The Rebels' other losses were to unranked Florida and LSU.

Alabama also lost three, including a 24-3 embarrassment against 6-6 Oklahoma. The Tide gave up 40 points in a loss to 6-6 Vanderbilt.

Indiana went 11-1 in the regular season. The Hoosiers posted a convincing win over Michigan, the team that humiliated Ohio State, and routed Washington, the team that played Michigan for last year's national title.

A Little History: Many critics are also acting like this is the first time we've had blowouts in the playoffs. Nonsense. With the four-team format, there were plenty of one-sided semi-final games, like Oregon's 59-20 win over Florida State, Alabama's 38-0 over Michigan State, and Clemson's 31-0 over Ohio State and 30-3 over Notre Dame.

Not to mention several national championship blowouts like Georgia's 65-7 win over TCU in 2023 and Michigan's 34-13 win over Washington last season.

My only complaints, as noted last week, relate to the top four seedings being based on conference championships rather than rankings, and the fact that the first round is played on home campuses while the quarter-finals are played in bowls.

The No. 1 Oregon Ducks went undefeated, including a classic win over Ohio State, and now they have to play the loaded Buckeyes again in the quarterfinals. 

Meanwhile, Penn State gets Boise State and Texas gets Arizona State. Obviously, Boise and ASU shouldn't have the No. 3 and 4 seeds, and Oregon deserves an easier opponent for being No. 1.

Hopefully, those bugs will be corrected ASAP.

Elsewhere in sports...

What's Wrong with the 49ers? After losing last year's Super Bowl in overtime, and with essentially their full team returning, the 49ers were the odds-on choice to win the NFC again this year. Yet their season has been a disaster. 

The 49ers are 6-9 and have been eliminated from the playoffs. They've failed in all areas this year--offense, defense and special teams.

What has caused the meltdown?

First, all their best players, with the exception of tight end George Kittle, have missed significant time with injuries or have seriously under-performed this year. 

Prior to the NFL season, the league's players voted on the top 100 players in the league. The 49ers had nine players on the list, including seven in the top 30. Think about that....in a league of 30 teams, one team had seven of the best 30 players.

So you ask "what's wrong with the 49ers?" the first answer is the lack of production from their top players.

• Christian McCaffrey, last year's NFL Offensive Player of the Year, was ranked No. 3 by the players. McCaffrey missed the first eight games with Achilles tendinitis, played three and a half games, and then was lost for the season with a torn posterior cruciate ligament. 

  
  

  Last year he rushed for 1459 yards, caught 67 passes and scored 20 touchdowns. This year he finished the season with 202 yards rushing, 15 receptions and no TDs.

  
  

• Offensive tackle Trent Wlliams, ranked No. 8, last played Nov 17 due to an ankle injury and the death of his infant child. He will miss the final seven games of the season.

  
  

• Linebacker Fred Warner (No. 11), has played with a fractured bone in his ankle all year.

  
  

• Tight end George Kittle (No. 14), despite battling a strained hamstring and missing one game, has for all intents and purposes lived up to his billing.

  
  

• Edge Nick Bosa (No. 27), missed three games with an oblique strain.

  
  

• Brock Purdy (No. 28), with many of his weapons injured or under-performing, has regressed from an elite quarterback to a mediocre one, failing to connect in the Red Zone and throwing crucial interceptions.

  
  

• Wide receiver Deebo Samuel (No. 30) has disappeared for much of the season. He had 101 receiving yards and 15 rushing yards in five games before a more respectable showing in yesterday's loss to Miami.

  
  

• Wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk (No. 66), after holding out until a few days before the season opener, played seven games and caught 25 passes without scoring a touchdown, before suffering season-ending torn ACL and MCL. Last year he had 75 catches for 1342 yards and seven TDs.

  
  

• Finally, linebacker Dre Greenlaw (No. 76) missed the first 13 games rehabbing from a torn achilles suffered in last season's Super Bowl.

  
  

Collectively, the team has blown fourth quarter leads, committed pre-snap and personal foul penalties at inopportune times, missed field goals and yielded long kick returns, collapsed defensively and turned the ball over at crunch time, and suffered from strange play calls.

All of which points toward another significant issue. Clearly, poor coaching has been part of the problem.

Last year we predicted the Chiefs would beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl because of their superiority in three key positions that usually decide big games--quarterback, placekicker, and head coach.

Kyle Shanahan is the 10th highest paid coach in all of American sports at $14 million. 

He's overpaid.

Nice Work If You Can Get It: We're written many times about the escalating salaries for college football head coaches. This season 15 coaches made over $8 million, 42 made over $5M, and 60 made over $3M.

But the salary inflation has also reached down to the assistant coach level.

There are 78 assistant coaches in college football making at least $1M this season, including 60 offensive and defensive coordinators and 18 position coaches. A whopping six assistants from one school, Ohio State, are over $1M.

NIL Escalation: At the same time, there has been a tremendous escalation in NIL payments. Last week, former Alabama head coach Nick Saban commented, "when NIL first started, four or five years ago we had $3 million (in payments). And everybody was happy. The next year it was $7 million. The next year it's $10. And then this year it's $13. Now we're looking at $20. Where does it end?"

Merry Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones. Back next week to preview the quarter-final playoff games.