Three Up, Three Down: Playoff Expansion, OU Softball and College Baseball
Every single week there are plenty of different sports discussions going on in the world of social media. Whether it is Facebook or Twitter, you can guarantee that as you are reading this, some people at this very moment are arguing over sports.
Whether it be comments, tweets, radio or television, there is always something buzzing in the sports world. Sometimes for better or worse but I thought it would be fun to capture the week with a three up and three down series to show you what I saw that caught my eye this past week.
Three Up
Oklahoma Softball
Personally, I don’t keep up with softball much, but I want to give shout out to the Oklahoma Women’s softball team who won the national title on Thursday afternoon. The Sooners beat Florida State in a best of three series that ended with a Sooners win in game three in Oklahoma City.
College Baseball
Even though softball may be over, we are still in the thick of things in college baseball. Texas Tech and Texas are in the Super Regionals this weekend. Both teams are hosting as Texas is taking on South Florida starting Saturday while Texas Tech will face Stanford starting Friday afternoon. Both are best of three series and the winner will move on to the College World Series in Omaha. I will have the latest from the Super Regionals right here on Heartland College Sports after each game.
CFB Playoff Expansion
It appears that the College Football Playoff expansion is happening. I have mixed feelings about this whole thing, but the good thing is that there will be more college football (which I love) and hopefully it gives a chance to the group of five teams to get the invite. For years, the group of five teams were shunned from the big dance and with the expansion, I am hoping that we can see some group of five teams get rewarded for being highly ranked and get a shot at the big boy table.
Three Down
CFB Playoff Expansion
There’s a flipside of everything and as I mentioned above, while I do think expanding the playoff is good, I also have some questions. If they move to a 12-team format, how many SEC teams will be in? Think of a school like Texas A&M or Auburn in the SC West. They constantly finish second or third or even fourth in their own division yet are ranked in the top 12. I believe this benefits the SEC greatly due to the way the committee values the conference. With that said, the issue I had with the playoff wasn’t all directed towards the number of teams making it in. The issue has been the committee and their criteria that seems to change week to week. They are trying to fix a flaw in the selection process by adding more teams. We could change the playoff to as many teams as we want but at the end of the day, the committee will continue to be the issue here. Also, I still worry about the group of five schools. Will we end up seeing more games between conference teams who have already played or are we going to be stuck having one or two superior teams blowing an extra team out in the playoffs? There’s a lot of questions that need to be addressed before we move on.
TCU Loses Jim Schlossnagle
When you spend 18 years as a head coach for TCU baseball, there is a level of commitment to the program. Schloss was an excellent coach and has done a tremendous job with TCU as they have been to many College World Series. It sucks to lose him to Texas A&M, but TCU fans should be glad to have a coach like him for so long.
Bad Take of The Week
Win or lose i love the way the Noles handle themselves on the field. There’s no obnoxious celebrating routine fly outs or staring at the opponents. It’s all about team and playing with class.
— Danny Kanell (@dannykanell) June 10, 2021
Danny here was referring to the Women’s College World Series. His alma matter, FSU was taking on Oklahoma. There is absolutely nothing wrong to show a little passion playing sports but not according to Mr. Kanell here. Danny appears to be a total fun sucker who wants players to act like robots instead of humans. Get over yourself Danny boy.
