Ask The Pageantry

1) Should Dennis Dixon win the Heisman because of the dramatic difference between his team’s performance when he is playing compared to when he isn’t? – P. Knight, Beaverton, OR

The answer on the surface would appear to be the difference between the Heisman trophy and an MVP award (after all where would Heisman’s Penn teams have been without John Outland at tackle?), but I can’t even think of an MVP award in any sport being awarded to someone on such a premise. If Dixon was far and away the Heisman favorite all year long there may be a case but three games in college football is a quarter of the season and the Heisman has never and will never be awarded on ¾ of a season. Previous Heisman votes lead me to believe that last Saturday was a one game audition for Chase Daniel but I will cover the Heisman next week.



2) Whose face did you see more of this weekend Chrissy Johnson (nee Popadics) or Mark Mangino? – C. Myers, Los Angeles, California

Unfortunately Mangino as Chrissy’s husband Ian was held in check in the final three quarters of the game against Hawai’i. Chrissy has gotten quite a lot of camera-love this year and we all know why but we also all know Ian Johnson isn’t the only college football player with a hot girlfriend. Why isn’t ESPN exploiting every star player’s hot girlfriend to boost ratings, seems like it would work better than having celebrities give the starting lineups? Johnson is a low-level NFL prospect but a good North-South runner and Jake Plummer knows the Denver Broncos allow player-cheerleader fraternization. I can see or hope to see the Johnsons in Broncos uniforms next season as well.





3) Doesn’t Jim Harbaugh actually make more sense for the next Michigan head coach than Les Miles? – M. Oxbig, NY. NY

Harbaugh makes no sense as he bashed the program and accused it of lowering academic standards for athletes this past fall and has one year of DI-FBS experience and one big win. He won’t be getting the job, moving on to Miles. As a follower of the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry, it NEEDS Les Miles. It’s becoming boring as The Sweatervest is having his way with UM and doesn’t seem to be enjoying it as much as he should. Tressel would be the perfect foil for Miles and vice-versa. The reasons Miles won’t get the job have been covered ($1.5 million payout to LSU, timing, Miles not fitting the “Michigan Man” profile), but now that LSU seems to be out of the National Championship picture the speculation is less damaging to LSU and Michigan still doesn’t have a coach. I’m not saying he’s headed there but let’s wait and see.



4) If West Virginia beats Pittsburgh (highly likely) then they play either Missouri or Ohio State in the title game. Does any other team have a legitimate complaint with that scenario? – J. Tressel, Columbus, Ohio

Well if the college football regular season is an institution sacred above all other regular seasons in every other organized sport, than Hawaii would. They didn’t lose and didn’t have an opportunity to challenge any other teams besides the one on their schedule. And they soundly beat the one Top 25 team on their schedule. Les Miles mentioned his team not being beaten in regulation on Monday, and that notion was laughed at nationally, but it is more valid than people are giving it credit for (which is still not very). But would Missouri and West Virginia have been able to go through this year’s SEC unbeaten in regulation or with the same records they have now? Plus if Missouri loses, Ohio State will have appeared to have “backed-in” to the BCS National Championship and both national championship game teams would have not played a championship game. What’s the next question?

5) Do we really care if some teams have conference tournaments and others don’t? Some years a team can benefit from playing an extra game against a good team, other years a team can move up by not playing while other teams are losing their conference finals. – C. Daniel, Columbia, Missouri

Because the conferences with championship games have 13 games for which to be judged on and the non-championship games conferences only have 12. It’s another opportunity to be eliminated and rarely does any team leapfrog any other because of the win. Since the ACC, Big XII, and SEC aren’t going to give up the revenue created by a conference championship, the solution is to waive the “12 team rule” to hold a conference championship, since the result of that has been poaching by the larger conferences. What an enjoyable day that would make this Saturday.