Weekly links — Spanos a national laughingstock; will Cowboys fold?; is Florida a pretender?; wait, a 31-year-old coach?

Weekly links is back and what a weird week for San Diego football fans.

Dean Spanos is finally taking the Chargers to Los Angeles and he has become a national laughingstock. It felt like only San Diegans were aware of what a dork the guy is but the announcement of the move displayed that all football fans are fully aware.

Even other pro sports team were mocking the Chargers … ouch. And you could almost hear that spineless public relations director yelling “Take a chill pill” if you recall that silly incident from the 2012 season.

My favorite thing I ran across was some Los Angeles writer giving a rundown of the organization and wondering if the move to Los Angeles could affect the Chargers’ on-field play in 2017.

Ummmmmm, they are 9-23 over the past two seasons, dude. And they were the only team in the NFL to lose to the dreadful Cleveland Browns.

If moving to Los Angeles is going to affect the record, the Chargers will BE the Cleveland Browns.

Happiest team about the Chargers’ move to Los Angeles is the soccer team that will share the StubHub Center with the Chargers.

That’s because the LA Galaxy are guaranteed to still be the highest-scoring team playing in that venue.

 

OK, on to the links.

It will be interesting to see how the Dallas Cowboys fare against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday.

Quarterback Dak Prescott and fellow rookie Ezekiel Elliott (NFL-best 1,631 rushing yards) haven’t looked like novices during a 13-3 season. But how will they handle the playoff pressure?

Prescott has handled everything well while going from projected third-stringer to making Tony Romo forever irrelevant. But the playoffs are a completely different animal and things can go wrong quickly.

You might recall Dan Fouts’ first career playoff game as the leader of the Don Coryell Chargers. He threw five interceptions and the heavily favored Chargers lost to the Houston Oilers.

If a Hall of Famer like Fouts could fall flat on his face, so can a fourth-round pick out of Mississippi State.

Not to forget that Aaron Rodgers is hotter than lava (you bet lava made it into my lead) and is an experienced veteran of the playoff wars. Rodgers has thrown 18 touchdown passes without being intercepted over the past seven games.

Here is the stellar Packers-Cowboys preview — http://www.upi.com/Sports_News/NFL/2017/01/12/Green-Bay-Packers-vs-Dallas-Cowboys-Aaron-Rodgers-Dak-Prescott-under-the-microscope/9991484249346/

 

Now that it is mid-January, it is time to start figuring out which college basketball conferences are good and which ones are pretenders.

I haven’t yet figured out where the SEC stands but I know what direction I’m leaning.

Kentucky is pretty talented but we saw South Carolina collapse late last season to be relegated to the NIT so it is hard to take the Gamecocks seriously.

Which brings me to Florida.

I’ve had to watch the Gators play a few times lately and write about them because I’m paid to do so and their record (13-3, 4-0 SEC) appears to be better than the sum of its parts.

In Tuesday’s 80-67 victory over Alabama (now that school is a pretender), it was Florida’s ninth-leading scorer playing the hero. Some guy named Keith Stone and his 14-point effort improved his scoring average to 4.6.

You can say it is a good quality when a team can have its ninth-best player lead them in scoring. But the other fact is that teams like this typically start displaying their true colors in mid-February.

They don’t tend to get better — and often will decline.

Florida has one good scorer in sophomore KeVaughn Allen. Senior Canyon Barry (son of Rick) provides scoring punch off the bench but it isn’t a team that scares anyone.

The Gators play Georgia (I’m leaning toward pretender for the Bulldogs) on Saturday and I will be watching closely.

Here is the stellar Georgia-Florida preview — http://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/no-23-florida-goes-for-7th-straight-vs-georgia/

 

The Los Angeles Rams hired a coach who turns 31 years old on Jan. 24.

That’s correct — 31 years old. Not 41. Not 51. Not 61. Heck, not 71.

Sean McVay was hired by the Rams to turn around their fortunes and perhaps he’s too young to know that’s nearly impossible. And since Kroenke the Donkey owns the team, is there anybody anywhere that wants to see the Rams win?

McVay is the youngest coach in NFL history as I’m sure you figured out. He was most recently the offensive coordinator of the Washington Redskins.

The fun part about stories like this is you see a report and you start writing and reporting like a madman. It took just 15 minutes to write this breaking news and that includes doing all the research on McVay’s background and searching for statements from McVay and the Rams.

This story was out on the national wire 20 minutes before the Rams even released the news themselves.

That is part of the fun as you never know what you might have to write on a moment’s notice.

So now I’m well-versed on Sean McVay.

Oh, there is a player on the Rams who is older than McVay. Now that’s funny.

Here is the stellar breaking news story — http://www.sportsxchange.com/tsxfiles/?page_id=211&max_colums=60&story_id=156335

Chargers have a bye so SEC is your best bet for pro football

While the San Diego Chargers lick their wounds over being manhandled in Pittsburgh and worry about their 2-2 record at the quarter pole of the NFL season, it’s natural to wonder where to get your pro football fix while the Chargers enjoy their bye.

I’ll tell you where to find it: The SEC.

The Southeastern Conference basically is pro football in the South. If you travel down through the Confederacy (get rid of that flag, South Carolina) and ask someone about their favorite team (except in Nashville), you won’t have comments about Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints or Matt Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons or Ronnie Brown and the Miami Dolphins.

And I’m pretty sure you can surmise the answer will have nothing to with Jake Delhomme and the Carolina Panthers or Maurice Jones-Drew and the Jacksonville Jaguars or Cadillac Williams and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

No, the SEC is where Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators reside. And where terrific coaches like Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, Les Miles, Steve Spurrier, Mark Richt and Houston Nutt earn a living. It’s the conference where you can find SIX teams (count them if you must) in the Top 25 with one of the unranked teams being the Georgia Bulldogs, a squad that would win the Atlantic Coast Conference or the Big East if it were a member of those two BCS conferences.

Think about it, the teams that are considered eighth, ninth or tenth best (pick your own order among the Tennessee Volunteers, Arkansas Razorbacks and Kentucky Wildcats) would win conferences such as the Mountain West Conference, Western Athletic Conference or Conference USA.

The SEC is where the big boys play and the big men coach and that’s why the conference will help you get through the bye week. Check out the CBS doubleheader — the No. 3 Alabama Crimson Tide meet the No. 20 Ole Miss Rebels early in the afternoon and No. 1 Florida meets the No. 4 LSU Tigers in the evening.

That’s a better tandem of games than what CBS or Fox can provide you during Sunday’s NFL slate.

Basically, the SEC is kind of like a miniature NFL with tougher matchups and a fervent following that can’t be matched. While the Chargers struggle to sell out home games in a stadium that seats just under 70,000, Lane Kiffin’s Tennessee squad attracts more than 100,000 fans for every home game. While the Jacksonville Jaguars can’t fill two-thirds of its stadium, fans of programs like Alabama, LSU, Florida and Georgia need to consider selling their first-born children just to get on a waiting list.

Ask an ardent football fan in the South which day they most look forward to watching football and the answer is simple — it’s Saturday, the day where SEC games dot the calendar.

While the top four teams in the SEC play each other Saturday, how can one overlook the undefeated No. 17 Auburn Tigers (playing the Arkansas Razorbacks) or the No. 25 South Carolina Gamecocks (hosting the Kentucky Wildcats)? Mississippi State is the SEC’s 11th-best team and the Bulldogs would be c0-favorites (along with Boise State) to win the WAC, while the Vanderbilt Commodores (the program that produced Jay Cutler) would likely be a 9-win team if it played in Conference USA.

It’s too bad we can’t test the strength of the SEC by requiring Boise State or Mountain West teams like Utah, Brigham Young and TCU to play an eight-game conference slate against SEC foes. If any of those teams were to win eight games with a 5-3 conference mark, it would be a major accomplishment. More likely, they would struggle to win five or six games and be left reeling with a 2-6 conference record.

Yes, I’m aware Utah slaughtered Alabama in last season’s Sugar Bowl — I predicted the Utes would win so I’m not suddenly going to forget that victory — but it’s a much different deal to play an SEC team each week for eight straight weeks than it is to get a once-in-a-lifetime bowl opportunity.

Check out the SEC closely and you’ll see there are no foes like San Diego State, Wyoming, UNLV, Utah State, and New Mexico State to beat up on (it feels really odd not to be typing in Idaho here) . Each week in the SEC is like a fierce MMA fight — a brawl until the end.

So no problem to me that the Chargers aren’t playing. I see the CBS doubleheader and not only are all four coaches involved (Meyer, Miles, Saban and Nutt) better coaches than Norv Turner, but their teams might beat Turner’s Chargers as well.

 Watch the games closely than try to figure out what place the Chargers would finish in if they played in the SEC.

Are my eyes deceiving me or did Boise State join the SEC?

I was studying a list on Monday and there was something that didn’t immediately mesh with the eyes.

It was college football’s latest poll and the first four teams rolled off the tongue with ease — Florida, Texas, Alabama, Louisiana State.

Then I hit a speed bump — or was that an earthquake? The fifth school listed just seemed out of place.

It was Boise State.

The Boise State Broncos in the same grouping of elite programs like the Florida Gators, Texas Longhorns, Alabama Crimson Tide and LSU Tigers? What kind of list could this be?

Seeing Texas in there kept me from tripping up and assuming Boise State had joined the SEC. It definitely took a while for the eyes to accept what it was viewing.

But it is indeed true — the little guys from the Western Athletic Conference are ranked fifth in the country as September turns into October. It is the highest ranking Boise State has ever received and it gives the Broncos a legitimate chance at making a run at playing in the BCS title game.

Yes, I said BCS title game. There’s no question an undefeated Boise State team will play in one of the lesser BCS bowls after this season but there’s a real possibility of the Broncos doing the unthinkable and playing in the season’s biggest game.

Remember how undefeated Utah was shortchanged last season and then routed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl? Notice how topsy-turvy this college season already has been with a slew of upsets? Notice that the teams ranked sixth through ninth (Virginia Tech, USC, Oklahoma and Ohio State) all have one loss?

Maybe you are aware that No. 1 Florida and No. 4 LSU play each other on Oct. 10. And that Florida has later games with Georgia and Florida State and a potential tough road game at South Carolina.

Perhaps you’ve noticed LSU’s tough upcoming slate. What if they get caught up in the Florida showdown and lose to a tough Georgia team this Saturday? And even if they beat Georgia and Florida back-to-back, the Tigers still have November road games at Alabama and Mississippi.

Alabama also has to travel to Ole Miss in addition to the tough game with LSU. And don’t forget, the SEC plays a conference title game so at best, only one of the three SEC teams is going to be undefeated when the Dec. 5 title game at the Georgia Dome concludes. And in the tough SEC, it’s possible every team could have at least one loss.

Texas has an easier road to the BCS title game than the SEC teams do, particularly if Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford still isn’t ready to play when those two teams meet at the Cotton Bowl on Oct. 17. Otherwise, the Longhorns’ best chance to lose is the Halloween Night visit to Oklahoma State (something about Halloween in Stillwater, Okla., sounds really scary to me).

Meanwhile, Boise State will be feasting on the powder-puff schedule (the Broncos host lower-level UC Davis this Saturday night) and racking up the victories. The Oregon team the Broncos handled easily in the season-opening game now has its act together (the Ducks lambasted Cal 42-3 last Saturday) and Boise State’s victory over the Ducks will only become more impressive if Oregon wins the Pac-10 title.

So barring a slip-up somewhere down the road, there certainly is a chance of Boise State playing in the national title against one of the aforementioned national powers.

Now how would that be on the eyes?