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2022 College Football Playoff Rankings: TCU, Your Spotlight Has Arrived
But as the Horned Frogs enter the decisive stretch of the regular season, they're No. 1 in the spotlight.
We fully expected top-ranked Georgia would be here, along with fellow front-runners Ohio State and Michigan.
TCU even close to the Top Four, though? Not at all.
Last offseason, the program fired longtime coach Gary Patterson. Sonny Dykes arrived from nearby SMU and brought a high-powered offensive system, but TCU looked more like a bowl candidate than a Big 12 contender. Max Duggan, who didn't even win the quarterback competition initially, has become a fringe Heisman Trophy candidate.
Through 10 weeks, the surging program—one that posted a 23-24 mark over the last four seasons—holds a 9-0 record with a straightforward path to the CFP. Win out, and TCU will be a part of the Playoff.
As much as you or I might be eager to see a real CFP controversy, there's no chance that a 13-0 power-conference champion would be excluded from the national semifinals. However, the Horned Frogs' potential road to 13-0 is stacked with major obstacles.
On Saturday night, they travel to face No. 18 Texas (6-3). Next weekend, they head to rival Baylor (6-3). To close the regular season, TCU hosts Iowa State (4-5), a pesky program with three straight victories in the series.
Then there's the Big 12 Championship Game for a likely showdown with a nine-win opponent.
This is an ideal, much-needed stretch for TCU to eliminate any doubters lingering within the CFP Selection Committee. Because, folks, the Horned Frogs have at least a few of those.
In the initial CFP poll, TCU landed at No. 7 behind Alabama. Committee chair Boo Corrigan cited TCU's lack of a dominant defense as a weakness and evidence for why it trailed the one-loss Crimson Tide. Suspect reasoning, for sure, but nonetheless what we heard.
You know what muffles those criticisms? More wins.
Corrigan also pointed to the Horned Frogs' need for comebacks—against Oklahoma State and Kansas State—as a negative in the comparisons. That happened again in Week 10 with another late surge to beat Texas Tech.
You know what silences that flimsy justification? More wins, no matter what the scoreboard reads in the third quarter.
"As you know," Corrigan said Tuesday on ESPN, "we value wins."
Funny how quickly the tone changes.
Now, sure, the elusive "game control" is a plausible reason to keep TCU behind a more impressive undefeated team with a weaker schedule such as Michigan. We can talk about TCU's resume as it stands, too.
Spun positively, TCU has toppled four opponents that were ranked at the time of the game. In the moment, Oklahoma (3-1), Kansas (5-0), Oklahoma State (5-0) and Kansas State (5-1) each owned excellent records. It isn't TCU's fault that all four programs have since lost another game, or that key injuries have plagued each of those rosters.
On the other hand, a team's year-end record is a more accurate measure of any program. While the Big 12 is deep, it lacks a second upper-tier contender given that everyone beyond TCU has three-plus losses.
You don't have to agree—or disagree—with either rationale. Both are logical explanations of TCU's situation.
But that's simply a sidebar of more impactful results to come.
As we remind you in early and mid-November every single year, the arguments of note on this particular Tuesday might not even be important in a week. Or in two weeks, three weeks, or on Selection Day.
TCU might use any perceived slight as motivational fuel, but the only storyline that matters is Saturday's result at Texas. And then the showdown at Baylor, the clash with Iowa State and a possible spot in the Big 12 title game.
Want more respect, TCU? The spotlight—your opportunity—is here.
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Seth Rollins and Bryan Danielson Offer Important Lesson to WWE and AEW's Booking
Nov 8, 2022
Seth Rollins is a perfect example of what happens when a performer is taken for granted.
It is entirely possible to take anything for granted.
Such is the case for WWE and All Elite Wrestling, which currently benefit from having two of the best wrestlers on the planet as part of their rosters but whose booking has not necessarily positioned them as such.
Seth Rollins and Bryan Danielson are cautionary tales, proof that being too good at what one does allows can actually be detrimental. They regularly appear on television, are routinely part of the best match on any show and are uber-over with audiences.
Yet, one can argue that not nearly enough is done with either on their respective shows, with others being pushed ahead of them and in more prominent positions.
Sure, Rollins has had entire episodes of Raw dedicated to him, most recently Monday night when his open challenge for the United States Championship was the overarching angle of the broadcast.
Still, it's impossible to ignore the idea that he should be doing more based on his popularity and lengthy run of show-stealing matches.
Ditto Danielson, whose legacy as a worker speaks for itself but whose selflessness has put him in a position in AEW where he is almost exclusively counted on for in-ring content rather than character development or main event productivity.
The 41-year-old arrived on the scene, turned heel and challenged "Hangman" Adam Page in two of the best championship clashes of the last year and appeared to be undergoing a career rejuvenation.
Danielson was hard-hitting, violent, ultra-competitive and compelling for the first time since his run as The Planet's Champion with WWE in 2018-19.
Instead of capitalizing on it, though, he was shoved into the Blackpool Combat Club, where he took a backseat to Jon Moxley and suffered an injury that stunted his momentum.
The latter is certainly no fault of AEW management, but not finding something more interesting for one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time to do is.
Both WWE and AEW have missed opportunities to solidify main event scenes devoid of depth by pushing Rollins and Danielson, respectively. Yes, their greatness and perpetual popularity allows the companies to utilize them at different positions on the card and to help get others over.
The elevation of new talent is ever-important and using established stars to help with that is a tried and trusted formula. Doing so at the expense of missing out on enhancing the top of the card at a time when it is in dire straits or lacking legitimate stars is detrimental to a promotion's own success.
Talents such as Rollins and Danielson do not come along every day.
They are respected by purists for their workrate, beloved by die-hard fans for their bodies of work and over among the audience at large for their ability to take something as trivial as a "Yes" chant or crowd singing along to their theme song and make it apart of their shtick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q79RX37EcI
Just because someone is all of those things and has shown the ability to remain so despite questionable booking and creative missteps does not mean they should be underutilized in an era when it is becoming ever more difficult to develop stars of their quality.
WWE and AEW can learn from their misuse of those performers, with the most obvious lesson being not to take stars who are continuously over with fans for granted. They are not a dime a dozen, nor can they be replicated. Hard work, resiliency and the ability to overcome subpar creative earned them the admiration and respect of the audience.
Rewarding that with a push that is reflective of their talents rather than becoming creatively complacent and assuming there will be three or four more who can be pushed to the top of the card in their place is key.
This is not to suggest Rollins and Danielson are doomed to midcard mediocrity. Either man can be heated up and pushed to the main event scene, where they can challenge for top titles in pay-per-view headliners because they are that good.
Not everyone is. Some lesser-talented, less-over names will falter, and the goodwill they have built up will be wasted because of a company's inability to recognize when someone is good enough to be at the top of the card consistently.
It will cost both promotions genuine main event competitors and continue the frustrating trend of 50-50 booking, sameness and unrealized potential that has encapsulated professional wrestling since the mid-2000s.
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Brock Lesnar vs. Bobby Lashley Feud is Best Example Yet That This is Triple H's WWE
Nov 8, 2022
Bobby Lashley greets the crowd ahead of his match during the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Crown Jewel pay-per-view in the Saudi capital Riyadh on October 21, 2021. (Photo by Fayez Nureldine / AFP) (Photo by FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP via Getty Images)
Perhaps nothing would tell WWE fans about the status and long-term viability of the Triple H era than the usage of Brock Lesnar.
The Beast Incarnate getting demolished by Bobby Lashley in an otherwise fluke win at Crown Jewel on Saturday night tells onlookers one thing: The stories and characters fans adore so much are in great hands.
It would appear the days of Lesnar getting thrown into the main event at any time are gone, no matter how many rematches he's had with Roman Reigns. And the happenings from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia were both stunningly entertaining in the moment and have great long-term ramifications, too.
First, the match itself. The Beast and Lashley opened the show, which feels like a Lesnar special at this point if he's not the show-ending main event. It was understandable to expect a predictable match in which both guys spammed finishers, hit big moves, went through a barricade or two and just generally kept it under 10 minutes while Lesnar picked up a win.
It was anything but, though.
Lashley was the aggressor, much to Lesnar's surprise. He attacked before the bell and downright beat the brakes off his rival the entire match. It was almost entirely one-sided in nature and refreshing, almost in the same way those early Lesnar-Goldberg clashes that emulated the UFC style were.
The finish was still dusty in nature, with Lesnar looking like he was about to tap but instead flipping the submission into a flukey pin that frankly didn't look all that great. It got the point across, but the finish was a weak one.
Still, mission accomplished from a storytelling angle. Lashley looks every bit the part of a guy who can beat Lesnar at any point. And the guy favored going into the match by most now looks somewhat goofy for underselling his opponent, and he's likely to come back with a vicious demeanor more in line with what fans wanted from this dream match.
Two, this is the perfect feud for both wrestlers. Lashley just had a downright amazing run with a mid-tier title and he needs something to do while other guys get a shot with it. Raw, after all, doesn't have top men's title otherwise.
Feuding with Lesnar and looking great while doing it only cements The All Mighty's status as a big-time player who remains a credible threat for any title in the promotion.
It's not like Lesnar has a ton to do, either. Fans can understand he's probably not going to show up on a weekly basis for quite a bit. But this sort of feud where he has major segments with Lashley every now and then is the perfect way to keep him busy until they can get the finale going at WrestleMania 39.
As an aside, this keeps Lesnar far, far away from Reigns. The orbit surrounding the unified champion and his family and challengers is far too interesting to ruin with The Beast now. It sounds dramatic, but the tail end of the Vince McMahon era really overdid the Lesnar-Reigns feud, anyway.
Lesnar free of that means somebody new like a Cody Rhodes can be the one to dethrone Reigns after his seemingly inevitable clash with The Rock at The Show of Shows.
And while WWE might have the urge to push the third bout between Lesnar and Lashley to an event much sooner than 'Mania, it's such a splendid co-main event now that we know the company's biggest show of the year is likely to continue being a two-night event.
At this point, there's little reason for WWE to fret over Lesnar needing to be the big guy who brings in viewers who don't typically watch WWE, anyway. Over the last few years they have received huge boosts in numbers and performances from the likes of Bad Bunny and Logan Paul—Lesnar can draw, but he isn't the draw anymore on this front.
Credit to Lashley, too. He's not some unrecognizable name given his history in other areas and promotions. Promoting a sort of shoot-UFC fight between the two at WrestleMania is just plain fun.
As has been the case already, this doesn't have to be a fast burn. WWE can take it slow and ultimately on this trajectory, it's the perfect example of how the promotion can smartly handle those "what if?"dream matches.
Because that's what Lesnar-Lashley is. It's a dream match that came to reality and continues to get the treatment it deserves. That's encouraging for the Triple H era as a whole, but it's also a good sign for other dream matches fans might end up getting in the future.
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Bruins' Decision to Sign Mitchell Miller Leaves Nothing but Questions
Nov 8, 2022
The Boston Bruins front office (CEO Charlie Jacobs, general manager Don Sweeney and president Cam Neely) completely mishandled the Mitchell Miller signing.
It's hard to choose which disaster to start with when it comes to the Boston Bruins' signing of Mitchell Miller on Friday and their taking it back by Sunday.
There have been so many head-scratching discrepancies that you question the competency of the front office at best, and its morality at worst.
It doesn't even feel like justice that the Bruins announced they would cut ties with Miller in light of "new information." They already knew when they signed him that Miller had been convicted in juvenile court in 2016 of racially abusing and bullying Black classmate Isaiah Meyer-Crothers.
And Meyer-Crothers is all I can think about. Don't let the rest distract you from how severely the Bruins' "vetting process" failed a victim.
The "old boys' club" tells us repeatedly that playing in the NHL is a privilege, not a right. We're sold this vague concept, and we're told hockey is the best sport in the world because of the character of the men in the room. Through this intentional vagueness, you and I might fill in the blanks with our own definitions of character and what it means to earn a privilege.
Character doesn't begin and end when you enter the locker room. It should extend to how you conduct yourself off the ice, and Miller egregiously failed.
The Boston Globe's Matt Porter asked Bruins GM Don Sweeney after the signing what Miller had done to earn the privilege to potentially play for the Bruins.
"With us doing a lot of background work over the course of the last six months, almost a year now, and spending time in particular recently with Mitchell ... his acknowledgment of the mistakes he made when he was in eighth grade and 14 years old, and it's more about what he's going to do now—not ever losing sight of the disrespect that he showed to the young man," Sweeney said. "... We're going to put him in community programs so that he continues to educate himself and others as to what being disrespectful does for you and how you carry that with you for the rest of your life."
Words matter. According to Sweeney, Miller was a 14-year-old eighth-grader in 2016, but the classmate he bullied for years, Meyer-Crothers, who has developmental disabilities, was a "young man."
According to Sweeney, what Miller did was merely disrespectful. It was actually a pattern of verbal and physical abuse.
This included Miller's telling Meyer-Crothers his mom and dad didn't love him, calling him the N-word on a daily basis, punching him in the head repeatedly and tricking him into eating a urine-soaked lollipop, forcing him to get tested for hepatitis and STDs.
And according to Sweeney, Miller could make amends by acting as a cautionary tale to all the other promising players: This is "what being disrespectful does for you and how you carry that with you for the rest of your life."
I'm more interested in how Meyer-Crothers is carrying it with him.
"He pretended to be my friend and made me do things I didn't want to do," Meyer-Crothers told the Arizona Republic in 2020. "In junior high, I got beat up by him. ... Everyone thinks he's so cool that he gets to go to the NHL, but I don't see how someone can be cool when you pick on someone and bully someone your entire life."
Bruins president Cam Neely said Sunday that they were letting Miller go in light of "new information." But Miller's list of transgressions was already public knowledge.
It was public knowledge that, according to Joni Meyer-Crothers, Isaiah's mother, Miller has not shown genuine remorse.
Miller reached out to Meyer-Crothers recently via Snapchat to apologize, saying it had "nothing to do with hockey," but his mother wasn't convinced.
Mind you, Meyer-Crothers has said she forgave her son's other bully after they offered a heartfelt apology.
On Monday, Neely said the Bruins had not reached out to Meyer-Crothers, and that this was part of the "new information" that led to the Bruins' rescinding the contract.
Why hadn't they reached out?
"That's a great question. Something I need to find out," Neely told reporters at Warrior Ice Arena.
How did the president of the team not know that? And how does he still not know the reason?
There were so many resources readily available, so much information about Miller already public that it seems like the "new information" Neely and Sweeney discovered was really continued backlash. The Arizona Coyotes rescinded their pick of Miller in 2020 after public outcry; how was this not a consideration?
Many Bruins fans have reached out to team and fan relations today to express their disappointment with decision to sign Mitchell Miller. There’s been so many that fans are getting an auto-reply informing them that they are experiencing higher than normal traffic.
Aside from the robust pressure Bruins fans and hockey fans applied since the signing was announced, we saw something arguably unprecedented in the NHL: public pushback by players on the team.
"It's not something anyone in this room stands for," Nick Foligno told reporters in Toronto on Saturday. "The culture that we've built is one of inclusion, and I think it goes against that. I understand he was 14 when he made this mistake, but it's hard for us to swallow because we take a lot of pride in here, the way we act, how we carry ourselves, what it means to be a Bruin."
Captain Patrice Bergeron said: "In a way, I was not necessarily agreeing with it. The culture we've built here goes against that behavior. ... If it's the same 14-year-old that would be walking into this locker room, he wouldn't be accepted and wanted and welcomed in this locker room."
Patrice Bergeron on speaking out about the Miller signing:
"To stay true to my values, really. ... It goes back to what we've built here as an organization, as a team, as a locker room.
One day after these comments and more from Bruins players, the club parted ways with Miller.
"There were a lot of factors in this decision," Neely said, "and that was one of them."
The signing of Miller is now a permanent stain on the Bruins franchise, from the utter disregard of the Meyer-Crothers family to the exposure of incompetent communication among executives.
But maybe—just maybe—that Bruins players spoke out and pressured the team to reconsider will have a lasting impact in a league begging for an updated definition of character. The universal derision of the signing forced an Original Six franchise to back down from a morally dubious decision. It's a start for those who want to change the game for the better, but we still have so much further to go.
Next up is a phone call the Bruins clearly didn't make for a reason.
