It certainly bothers Northwestern Coach Pat Fitzgerald that Stanford, a team NU beat 16-6 in the season opener, is ranked so much higher than his team is in the latest College Football Playoff ranking. To his point, NU did dominate that game, in a fashion that is not truly conveyed but the 16-6 final score. Both Stanford and NU are two loss teams so I would say that Fitzgerald is on fleek with this argument.
“I don’t know who’s watching, (but there’s) a team ranked X spots ahead of us who we beat, I don’t get it,” Pat Fitzgerald said about the College Football Playoff Committee rankings.
“Maybe they’ll get it right,” he said obviously referring to Stanford, but not using the name Stanford, who at #9, are ranked 7 spots ahead of Northwestern, who are #16 in the latest set of rankings.
“I invite the committee to watch the tape, especially with that Pac-12 team that we beat early in the year. I’m tired of hearing about how it was early in the year, and early in the morning, just pop on the tape, and watch the film, our kids dominated that game,” Fitzgerald continued.
“We dominated them at the line of scrimmage.”
“I’m tired of hearing about five wins two years in a row and I’m tired of hearing about nine in the morning.”
As you can see, this Stanford ranking bit bothers Fitzgerald, and it bothers him a lot.
His case is strong though as the rankings literally are made for television crap. College football is no different than any other sport in that’s dominated by utter crapola created to foster fake controversy and drive debate for mind-numbing sports network talk shows.
That’s exactly why Stanford is rated so much higher than NU. So I would agree with Pat Fitzgerald, even though I still find his team’s brand of ball to be very boring. However, aesthetics shouldn’t matter when it comes to rankings.
Fitzgerald did comment extensively on being labeled “boring” today too.
The nine a.m. refers to the fact that their game kicked off at 11 am local time, 9 pacific. That’s supposed to be an excuse for why Stanford lost that game so decisively. The 5 wins refers to Fitzgerald’s 5-7 record in 2014 and 2013, which ended a streak of five bowl appearances and six regular seasons of .500 or better.
Now Fitzgerald has tied the 1995 team for the school record in wins, exactly like he did in 2012.
In his bowl game, very likely a New Year’s Six, Pat Fitzgerald will go for win number 11, something that has not happened in Evanston yet. If he gets there, maybe he’ll pass up Stanford…depending on how the Cardinal finish out the season.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and sometimes writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. The website is also featured on News Now.
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