It's Time For A Playoff

I have enjoyed the last couple of days the blogging from Whit Barnes the former Gryphon who is a red shirt sophomore for Wake Forest football on The Gryphon Grapevine blog of Charles Alston.  Whit has passed along the life of a player at a bowl game.Wake Forest lost last night in the Music City Bowl in Nashville 23-17.

The Music City Bowl brought together two teams that were 6-6 this season.  Whatever happened to bowl games were a reward for a good season.  After losing the game Wake Forest now has a losing season and to me they and Mississippi State should have been home watching others play.


One of the big obstacles of a playoff is a 12 game regular season.  I say go back to a ten game schedule.  Have a 16 team playoff.  All the conference champions and let a committee decide just like basketball who are the best of the rest to make 16 and no conference can have more than two.  If you start the season on Labor Day Weekend you are through by the end of October.   Each conference that has a Championship game  can play week 11 and then start the playoffs.

The first weekend of the playoffs have only four games and the second week the other four games.  The third weekend the two winners from week one and the fourth the two winners from week two.  The fifth weekend play only one game and again the sixth weekend only one then the two left play on New Years day.

No one has had to play two weeks in a row and since it takes 15 games to determine a champion let the top 15 Bowls be the host of all the playoff games.  That still leaves the other 24 bowls to have the other bowl qualifiers to say they had a bowl game. The top bowls could do just as they do now and host the championship game by rotating  the championship game.

Then of course if you cut back to only ten regular season games each conference should have an eight games conference schedule and that leaves only two non conference games. In order to qualify for a bowl game you would need to win six out of ten and if you lose the bowl you have still won more than you lost.

  If the FCS- D-II and DIV III are happy with playoffs why would the big boys not like it even more?

Telegram's Area Athletes Of Year

I don't think there is any doubt that the staff of the Rocky Mount Telegram got it right when they made their All Area Picks for Athletes of the year in the fall sports.

Football being the fall glamour sport has two picks of offensive player of the year in Tarboro's Todd Gurley.  If he is the player of the year across the state you would expect him to be offensive player of year in the area.  Nash Central's Jalen Hendricks was the top pick on defense but he is also the quarterback on the All Area offense.  Since Hendricks is the only players in the area to make it on both offense and defense then you would expect maybe Hendricks was the All Area Player of the year?  The Telegram didn't have to worry with that by having both and offensive and defensive players of the year.   Brings up a great question of what if doesn't it?

There is no doubt that there were several easy picks as players of the year in the different sports but none was easier than Girls Tennis where the Price sisters share the title.  I think the night I had them on the Stretchlon Sports Show they told me between them in singles and doubles they lost one regular season singles match between them all year. Randi and Kaley will be back as a senior and junior next year so we can argue again next year which is the best.  Too bad for all the other teams in the Big East.

The most dominating girl in Volleyball was none other than Rocky Mount's  Tia Hudgins.  If you watch during warm ups Tia at only five feet seven inches was hidden behind the net.  But, when the action started she was always the one above the net and my guess Rocky Mount scored 80% of their points any time she was along the front line on the net.  She could jump but she had that innate ability to know where you were going to try to hit it over the net and was there to get blocks.

I don't care what you do in life any one who walks three miles a day I say that is a great thing to do.  But the two cross country runners ran three plus miles under twenty minutes ( I have a hard time walking one mile in twenty minutes) for every day and for Nash Central's Michae'la Willimas she was by far the most dominating girls runner each week.  Southern Nash's  Nepolian Patel  push the seventeen minute barrier every time he ran.

Southern Nash has two players who makes the All Area team  and the second one comes in soccer. Moises Gonzalez help lead Southern Nash to one of their best years in quite a while.  Tarboro has two on the All Area best players when Katie King makes it in golf.  Especially for girls it is rare than you find a girl who can shoot under 100 and I doubt Katie  even thought about shooting 100 at any time during the year.

The Telegram sport staff of Jessie, Justin and Nick did a great job on their picks  and before you know it, it will be time for the winter sports picks.