Andrew Luck staying at Stanford

From ESPN.com: “Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, the odds-on favorite to be the No. 1 pick in this spring’s NFL draft, announced Thursday that he will stay in school and play his redshirt junior season. ‘I am committed to earning my degree in architectural design from Stanford University and am on track to accomplish this at the completion of the spring quarter of 2012,’ Luck said in a statement.”

Wow. Just wow. I have three quick thoughts on this:

1. I hate that our society has placed such a high value on education. Shouldn’t we be teaching our kids that the most important thing is finding something that he or she loves to do? For the vast majority of our children, the path to that something will be through education. In that case, I’m all for education. I finished seven years of post-secondary school because I want to be an attorney and that education was necessary. But I didn’t go to law school for the education. Education is a means to an end.

I have to assume that Luck’s biggest goal in life is to become an NFL (and hopefully Super Bowl-winning) quarterback. A degree in architectural design is not necessary to achieve that dream. On the off-chance that he actually wants to be an architect more than an NFL quarterback, I’d seriously question his commitment if I was the team drafting him. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s more likely that he’s heard that education is the most important thing his entire life and actually buys into that nonsense. He has a chance to fulfill a dream that he has worked to achieve for his entire life but is jeopardizing it because our society can’t tell the difference between means and ends.

2. I’ve seen several people applaud his decision because he didn’t fall into the “show me the money” trap that’s so pervasive in American culture. This is beyond ridiculous to me. That’s the type of stuff that you say when financial advisors get busted running Ponzi schemes. Luck’s decision isn’t like the people who forsake their personal lives and become workaholics for an extra $25,000 a year. Last year’s #1 draft pick Sam Bradford signed a six-year deal worth $78 million, $50 million of which is guaranteed. That’s over $8 million a year (by the way, the average architect makes about $75,000 a year). This isn’t a let’s-applaud-Luck-for-not-saying-show-me-the-money situation. It’s just a dumb financial decision. He’s going to be drafted to be an NFL quarterback regardless of whether it’s this year or next. For why this was dumb, look no further than fellow Pac-10 quarterback Jake Locker. Locker was the probable number 1 pick after his junior season. He decided to come back to school, hurt his draft stock by playing poorly, and is expected to fall to the second round of the draft. Jimmy Clausen, the only quarterback who was drafted in the second round last year, signed a four-year, $6.3 million contract, with $2.5 million in guarantees – about $620,000 a year.

Look, I get that sports are sports. I agree even if I’m more obsessed than most. There are many, many, many things more important than sports. But at the end of the day an athlete is still a profession. Is there another profession anywhere that people would actually applaud a person just entering the workforce for taking a $7.4 million dollar pay cut to do the same job? Rich CEOs and the Bill Gateses of the world don’t count – I’m talking about a first job in a field. Imagine if McDonald’s offered me $8 million to flip burgers but Burger King offered me $620,000 and I decided to go work for Burger King. You’d say that’s irrational: the flame-grilled burgers are delicious, but no where near that delicious. Why should sports be different just because they’re sports? Staying in school isn’t about not saying “show me the money,” it’s about making a irrational economic decision.

3. The Carolina Panthers are a mess. Not wanting to play in North Carolina absolutely had to go into Luck’s decision. Expanding to Charlotte and Jacksonville was viewed as questionable at the time and still looks questionable. Exhibit a for this is Jacksonville playing home games in front of 20,000 people last year. This would be exhibit b. If the Los Angeles Panthers had the first pick of the draft, Luck wouldn’t have had to give it a second thought: he’d be the LA quarterback of the future. Poor Panthers fans. They already have to live in North Carolina and then a franchise quarterback slips through their hands simply because they live in North Carolina. Now they get to choose between giving this another year:

Or drafting this:

Tough break.

Orange Bowl Recap; Sugar Bowl Preview

Orange Bowl: Stanford 40, Virginia Tech 12

At least this game was close for a half. I expected that Stanford would stop Tyrod Taylor’s Hokies more times than Virginia Tech would stop Andrew Luck’s Cardinal. I just didn’t expect just how many stops Stanford was capable of.

Stanford looked like the better team in the first half. They entered halftime up only 13-12, but 9 of the Hokies’ points came on Tyrod Taylor’s touchdown pass after an insane scramble and a Stanford offensive lineman taking the single most boneheaded safety I’ve ever seen. You just got the feeling that Stanford would eventually take the game over.

And they did. The second half turned into one of the more dominating performances I’ve seen in a BCS game – offhand, I can’t remember a team dominating a half like this in a BCS game since USC destroyed Oklahoma in the first half of the 2004 Championship Game. Some stats from the second half (discounting each team’s last drive meant to kill the clock and get the waterboys some playing time) to help put this in perspective:

Virginia Tech: 5 drives, 56 yards, 5 sacks, 4 punts, 1 interception, 0 points

Stanford: 4 drives, 4 touchdowns, 22 plays, 315 yards, 5 plays of 50 yards or more, gained positive yardage on 17 of 22 plays

Complete and total domination. Yesterday I argued that Stanford is playing better than any team in the country, would probably be in the title game if Oregon had to come to Palo Alto this year, and everyone would agree with the previous two statements if the team had “USC” written on the front of their jerseys. The Cardinal hammered this lesson home last night at the expense of Virginia Tech, putting up a season-high 40 points on the Hokies and holding them to a season-low 12 points.

This leads to a larger point about the BCS. Playoff proponents will undoubtedly spend the offseason pointing to Mountain West champion TCU finishing the season undefeated but not getting the chance to play for the National Championship. And rightly so: TCU’s win over Wisconsin was undoubtedly the best win ever by a non-BCS team in a BCS game. While undefeated Utah’s victory over 1-loss in the Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl was impressive, it was easier for pundits to discount because Alabama came in unmotivated after a loss to Florida in the SEC Championship Game cost them a chance at the National Championship. There was no such excuse for Wisconsin here – they peaked at the end of the season, came out motivated, and presented a tougher matchup for TCU than any other 1-loss team because of their size. TCU is simply a better team than Wisconsin and proved it in the Rose Bowl.

But with all that said, Stanford might even present a better argument for a playoff than TCU. Stanford is a perennial basement dweller in the Pac-10. Jim Harbaugh deservedly gets a ton of credit for leading the Cardinal to an 8-5 record last season and a 12-1 record this season after eight consecutive losing seasons between 2001 and 2008.* But Harbaugh should probably get even more credit – Stanford is a school everyone is familiar with, so we sometimes forget just how terrible they have been throughout history. Since 1971, the Cardinal have qualified for a grand total of one Rose Bowl – the bizarre 1999 season when they finished the regular season unranked with an 8-3 record that was somehow good enough to win the Pac-10 Championship.** Their bowl appearance this year was only their 11th of the past forty years. They have finished with double-digit wins only three times in school history – 12 this year and 10 in both 1940 and 1926.

* Seriously, is there anyone in the world in any profession with a higher stock than Jim Harbaugh right now? I remember coach’s with high stock before, but nothing like this – ESPN is reporting that he will have his pick of head coaching job between the Denver Broncos, San Francisco 49ers, or his alma mater University of Michigan Wolverines. This is insane – the guy was coaching at FCS mid-major University of San Diego four years ago and now can PICK which job he wants between any of the three most desirable coaching jobs on the market right now. Well done, Mr. Harbaugh, well done.

** Most surprising fact I found in this research? In John Elway’s four years there, Stanford had one winning season (6-5 in 1980), a 20-23 overall record, and zero bowl appearances. Lest you think that Elway’s college career was overrated, the Cardinal went 1-10 the year after Elway graduated. Now THAT is a bad program.

This year, Stanford caught lightning in a bottle. Thanks to a unique combination of an excellent coach, one of the best quarterbacks in the country who happened to have the academic qualifications required to attend Stanford, and a team of hard-nosed role players led by two-way player Owen Marecic, Stanford had their best season in the last seventy years (and probably best in school history). Next season, their coach will move on to much greener pastures, their quarterback will leave school early to be the #1 pick in the NFL draft, the 15 fans that made the trek to the Orange Bowl* will move on and Stanford will again descend into mediocrity. There’s no program-building here: this was Stanford’s one great season and they won’t make a BCS bowl until the next time the planets align in their favor.

* Was that stadium even half full last night? You’d think an academic destination school like Stanford would have a diaspora throughout the country – shouldn’t there be at least a handful of Stanford alums in South Florida?

So yeah – it’s unfair to TCU that they didn’t get a chance to play in the National Championship Game, but Gary Patterson has built a program down in Fort Worth that will be good for some time – so good in fact that the Big East invited TCU to join in 2012 to save their own BCS bid. The Horned Frogs will be a fringe National Title contender for some time; Stanford, meanwhile, won’t even be in the discussion. At the end of this season, the Cardinal are arguably playing better football than any other team in the country. They reached the Top 5 for the first time since before World War II. But they were denied a chance for a Championship because they had the audacity to have their one magical season in an even year: if only they waited until 2011, they would have played Oregon at home and probably gone undefeated. Instead, they’ll have to wait another seventy or so years until another unique confluence of events makes Stanford a title contender again. Now THAT is unfair.

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Sugar Bowl: Ohio State vs. Arkansas

On to the Sugar Bowl, or the Noika Who-Cares-About-This-Game-We-Already-Know-The-SEC-Is-Better-Than-The-Big-Ten Bowl. My initial inclination was to go with Ohio State in this game because I just don’t think Arkansas is all that good. But then the Big Ten takes that collective dump on New Year’s Day and now my head’s spinning. On the other hand, didn’t we already know that the Big Ten was bad? I picked against the conference in four of their five losses on New Year’s Day. I only missed my Michigan State upset pick over Alabama, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise – I even argued in my preview that Michigan State was either going to win straight up or Alabama was going to destroy the Spartans by multiple touchdowns, I just happened to pick the wrong result.

This seems like a perfect game to tackle from a different angle – instead of trying to decide which team to pick, I’ll try to decide which team not to pick. In bullet-point form:

Why Not to Pick Ohio State:

– 0-9 all-time against SEC teams in bowls and 0-4 since 2000.

– The Big Ten sucks. They are not very good in BCS games (this was going to be an asterisk, but I decided instead to make it a whole post later)

– The Buckeyes played only one game against a team that finished the regular season in the Top 25 – a 31-18 loss at Wisconsin.

– The Big Ten sucks.

– The SEC is 7-3 in the Sugar Bowl – the only BCS bowl game in SEC country – since the inception of the BCS.

– Depending on who you talk to, Arkansas might be the second-best team in the country. They lost only to Auburn and Alabama and blew fourth quarter leads in both games.

– The Big Ten sucks.

Why not to pick Arkansas:

– They have the worst defense of any BCS team. Cam Newton put up 65 points on the Razorback defense. Even though Terrelle Pryor is only half as good as Newton, half of 65 is still a lot of points.

– They needed overtime to beat East Carolina in their bowl game last year.

– Might only be the fourth best team in the SEC. They finished the season in a near dead-heat with Alabama and LSU (each of the three teams went 1-1 against the others) and were fortunate to get both teams at home this season (they beat LSU and lost to Alabama).

– After he threw two interceptions in the last five minutes to blow the Alabama game, can we really trust Ryan Mallett?

– Although they played a much tougher schedule, they didn’t really do much better than Ohio State. They beat LSU, South Carolina, and Mississippi State (in double overtime), but lost to Auburn and Alabama for a 3-2 overall record against the top 25.

That’s 7 to 5 for Arkansas…and yes I stand by my triple-count of how bad the Big Ten is. For the first time this season I’m going to change my bowl pick from my initial selection. The Razorbacks win 35-24.