Mailbag: Why Oregon may always struggle to win a national title & more

Published May. 6, 2015 1:00 p.m. ET

Stewart Mandel

Editor's note: Send questions for future Mailbags to stewart.mandel@fox.com.

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This week's lead question is somewhat timely, given that it's about Oregon, which (finally) played its spring game last weekend, and because I'm going to reference a bunch of nuggets from last week's NFL Draft in answering it.

Stewart: Oregon has played in two national title games and three other BCS games in the last six years. They now have a Heisman Trophy. They seem like they are now in the upper echelon of college football programs, but they just can't seem to bring home that national championship. I expect Oregon to be great again this year, but what needs to happen for them to finally win the big game?

-- Thayne, Phoenix

The Ducks are seemingly right there on the cusp. Just win one more game. And yet I think it will be harder for them to take that last step in the College Football Playoff era than were this still the BCS. That's despite the fact Oregon is significantly more talented now than it was when it lost that last-second game to Auburn five years ago. Allow me to explain.

College football as a whole has flattened quite a bit over the past 20 years, with everyone from Boise State to Baylor proving it's possible to field a top-10 team. But the so-called non-traditional programs still face a ceiling. Look at a list of every national champion since the mid-'90s, and they're all bluebloods. The reason is simple: Those programs still land most of the best recruits. Obviously, pure talent alone is not a guarantee of success. If it were, Will Muschamp, whose 2014 Florida team inexplicably produced six offensive draft picks last week, would be presiding over a reigning juggernaut. But the more games you play, the better chance the most talented teams rise to the top.

Anyone who still thinks the Ducks are a gimmicky system team that can't compete with "physical" opponents is living under a rock and missed seeing them beat a Florida State team that produced a national-best 11 draftees by 39 points in last January's Rose Bowl. The Ducks are much more talented today than they were five years ago, but they still don't recruit at the same level as Alabama, FSU, LSU, Ohio State, et al., and they probably never will. There are any number of programs capable of beating one of those teams in a semifinal playoff game. Had TCU made it last year, I fully believe the Horned Frogs, with their band of former three-stars, would have beaten the Crimson Tide's semipro team. But beating two superior talented opponents in a row is extremely difficult, as Oregon found when it ran into Ohio State last year.

The Ducks could well be back in the CFP as soon as this year. I watched their spring game and saw playmakers galore out there. If they do, though, they might need a fortuitous draw like they had against Auburn in 2010. History has shown that title game to be an extreme anomaly. You could count the number of future pros on the field on two hands (and still have fingers to spare). By contrast, 16 of the 22 defensive starters in the next year's LSU-Alabama game got drafted. But Oregon, with its then-radical new offense, and Auburn, with its transcendent quarterback (Cam Newton), both went undefeated and got voted into the game, which came down to a last-second field goal.

In hindsight, that may have been more of a missed opportunity for Oregon than last year, despite the presence of its own Heisman-winning quarterback. Auburn wasn't a clearly superior team in 2010; Ohio State was in '14. And my guess is the playoff will breed more 2014 Ohio States than 2010 Auburns.

The question of whether the Big 12 will add a championship game has blown up since last week, with the Big 12 absorbing a lot of criticism -- from you, and others -- about adding what some people perceive as a game far more likely to hurt the league than help it. But if the Big 12 didn't add a championship game, wouldn't it essentially be daring the committee to leave them out of the playoff again someday?

-- Dan, Ankeny, Iowa

(Editor's note: Later Wednesday, after Mandel wrote his response below, the Big 12 announced that it will not have a championship game but will institute a tiebreaking procedure to ensure a single champion.)

I assume you're referring to some tweets I sent out following Bob Bowlsby's comments at last week's College Football Playoff meetings, where he told us he now believed after hearing a presentation from committee chairman Jeff Long that his conference will be at a disadvantage if it does not play a 13th game. To be clear, I'm not saying the Big 12 would be ill-advised to add a championship game; I'm saying, slow down. It seems incredibly short-sighted to be making radical decisions based off the results of one year in a brand new system.

Every college football season plays out differently, and the Big 12 suffered in 2014 due to a particularly unique set of circumstances. Specifically, the top five teams in the committee's final rankings happened to be the five power-conference champions. Care to guess how many times in the 16-year BCS era the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC champions all finished in the top five? Never. Not once. Granted, the CFP committee, unlike the BCS, specifically emphasizes conference champions, so theoretically it could happen more often going forward.

More frequently, though, there are going to be years where the ACC champ has three losses, or an 11-1 Pac-12 team gets upset in its championship game, or three of the five have two losses. Having 11-1 co-champions worked against the Big 12 last year, but in other seasons, Baylor and TCU might have both made it. Hold a redundant conference title game rematch, though, and one would knock the other out of contention. Big 12 ADs seem readily cognizant that it's too soon to know whether a title game would help more or hurt more, and thus, during a break in meetings here in Phoenix this week, Bowlsby walked it back quite a bit on the entire possibility.

Stewart, everyone has pointed out the effect that the (expected) deregulation of conference championship games would have on the games themselves (i.e. the Mountain West can eliminate divisions and select its two best teams). However, I think this deregulation could have a much larger impact on conference schedules to allow teams to play more often (i.e. more often than once every six years for most SEC crossover opponents). Your thoughts?

-- Josh White, Morgantown West Virginia

No question, that's the main reason the ACC wants to explore it. Unlike the Big 12, there's no driving reason why that conference would want to change the way its champion is determined. But its members are starting to figure out just how clunky it is to play an eight-game schedule with 14 members plus five teams a year playing Notre Dame. In-state foes North Carolina and Wake Forest recently took matters into their own hands, scheduling a "non-conference" home-and-home for 2019 and 2021. Without that, the two schools -- which once met annually for six decades -- would have gone seven years between meetings.

I have to say, I find it equal parts amusing and annoying watching conferences wrestle with "issues" entirely of their own creation. Hold a championship game or don't. Employ divisions or don't. Many, many smart people are going to spend countless hours in meeting rooms this spring and in the near future wrestling with such mind-bending conundrums, and I just want to say: You know, nobody forced you guys to realign a few years ago. While certain schools (TCU, Texas A&M) have certainly benefited immensely from joining new conferences, you'll have a hard time convincing me college football in general has benefited in any way from "bigger is better."

Hey Stewart, I was wondering why the huge disparity in post-spring game preseason rankings between Florida State and Alabama. Both teams lost similar numbers of starters (11) in pretty much in the same key areas, yet 'Bama is considered a top 5 team according to most analysts and FSU is in the mid-teens. If anything, FSU would likely have an easier time obtaining a higher ranking since they play in the ACC. Your thoughts?

-- MSgt Bradley Smith, Whiteman AFB, Missouri

I haven't put together a list of my own. I would likely have Alabama higher, but not by much. While Nick Saban's program has a longer track record of both winning and reloading at this point, Jimbo Fisher doesn't get enough credit for just how well he's recruited and developed his own roster. FSU's monster draft class this year gave it 29 picks over the past three years, a modern-day record even Saban's NFL assembly line hasn't yet achieved. The flip side of that is it's awfully hard to replace that many standouts at once, but unless there's some evidence Fisher's recruiting prowess has tailed off -- and I haven't seen it -- then it's reasonable to expect there's another wave of stars moving up the ranks.

Obviously, the one big difference between the two is that FSU has to replace a Heisman winner and No. 1 draft pick at quarterback. We can all agree the 'Noles would not have won 27 games over the past two seasons without Jameis Winston. While Blake Sims did not get enough credit for his own role in Alabama's SEC championship run last season, he's not Winston. Then again, we've actually seen less of Sims' likely replacement, former 'Nole Jake Coker, than FSU's Sean Maguire, who won his one career start last year against Clemson. For many reasons, this is the least confident I've been about Alabama going into a season since Saban's first year, but a "bad" year for the Tide may still be no worse than 10-2, which is about what I'd predict for FSU, too.

What is your take regarding Miami and Washington having high draft picks but not having very good results? Yes, it takes more than 22 players for a team, but both teams seemed to underperform given the talent they had.

-- Mike Salvino, Collierville, Tennessee

They were both strange, to be sure, but different situations. On the surface, it is certainly hard to believe that Washington could have been so mediocre defensively (51st nationally in yards per play) with three first-rounders (defensive tackle Danny Shelton, linebacker Shaq Thompson and cornerback Marcus Peters) and a fourth in the top 44 (pass-rusher Hau'oli Kikaha). Those big-time playmakers up front helped the Huskies produce 52 sacks (No. 2 nationally), 29 turnovers (No. 17) and a bunch of defensive touchdowns. But that same defense was starting two freshmen and two sophomores in the secondary after Peters got kicked off -- not a good recipe when you're facing Marcus Mariota. Thompson also played a few games exclusively at running back. So the Huskies' apparent discrepancy was somewhat understandable.

Miami's a different story. There's no good explanation how a team with five guys in the top 77 and seven draft picks in total -- spanning both sides of the ball, linemen and skill players -- could go 6-7. Unlike Washington, Miami had a productive quarterback, freshman Brad Kaaya. Unlike Washington, Miami has five national titles and should really never go 6-7, just as Florida shouldn't go 7-5 with six offensive draftees. The difference, of course, is that Florida conceded things weren't working out with Will Muschamp and made a change. Miami decided to give Al Golden another year as something of a pity reward for enduring the Nevin Shapiro scandal. Golden goes into this season on the hottest seat in the country, as "The U" has regrettably morphed into "Underachiever U."

Hey Stewart. Given Texas's brutal schedule this year, the team could be much improved and still only go 7-5 or 6-6 (I count five "should wins" and one or two toss-ups, and the 'Horns will probably be underdogs in the rest). If that happens, does Charlie Strong enter season three on the hot seat?

-- Quincy, Los Angeles

I would hope not. Yes, Texas is a place where the fans are prone to restlessness, but I would hope they noticed Louisville's 10 draft picks last weekend, nearly all of them recruited and developed by Strong. Clearly if you give him time, he'll build you a roster. The one difference, of course, is that Strong didn't land a Teddy Bridgewater in his first full class like he did at Louisville. Texas will only go as far as its quarterback, who figures to be redshirt freshman Jerrod Heard.

Obviously it's important for Strong to show progress in Year 2, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a vastly improved record. I assume Texas fans would take 7-5 if it includes a win over Oklahoma. Or upsets of a highly ranked TCU and/or Baylor. At which point it becomes fair to expect Texas to truly become Texas again in 2016.

Stewart, I put this out on Twitter last week and got some interesting responses. Would like to hear your thoughts. Who will be the next current coordinator/position coach to win a national title as a head coach? For perspective, if this question had been posed 10 years ago in 2005, the correct answer would have turned out to be Gene Chizik (Texas DC at the time), followed by Jimbo Fisher (LSU OC).

-- Matt Smith, Nashville

Wow. It's easy enough to identify the current hot assistants, but how do you guess which will wind up in the best position to win a national championship? As I referenced in the Oregon question earlier, that coach would likely have to land at one of about 15 premier programs nationally. Alabama DC Kirby Smart has long been seen as Nick Saban's eventual successor, thus putting him on the Fisher track. Or, someone could take a springboard job, a la Chizik at Iowa State. Two guys who would have been in the mix for this answer a year ago, then-Ohio State OC Tom Herman and then-Clemson OC Chad Morris, may have done just that with their moves to Houston and SMU, respectively.

I'll go with Auburn's Rhett Lashlee. First, his boss and longtime mentor, Gus Malzahn, will get the Tigers back to a national title game, at which point Lashlee should be able to pick his spot, or, he'll go put up 600 yards a game at some mid-major and then pick his spot. And because of his Auburn experience that spot is likely to be in the SEC, which boasts more schools capable of winning a national championship than any other. Maybe he one day follows Mark Richt at Georgia or Les Miles at LSU, in which case he can mesh a prolific system with top-flight talent.

So go ahead and bookmark this column to pull out 7-10 years from now.

If college football (hypothetically) moved to an a la carte, pay-per-view model like boxing, what would people pay to watch the marquee regular season games, mid-level bowls and the playoff games?

-- James E. Kimmel, location unknown

It's always an honor to hear from a highly watched late-night talk show host.

That's a good question, one we may well have to deal with at some point (assuming we're not all watching for free on Periscope). I'll throw that out to the readers. What would you guys pay?

Stewart Mandel is a senior college sports columnist for FOXSports.com. He covered college football and basketball for 15 years at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on Twitter @slmandel. Send emails and Mailbag questions to Stewart.Mandel@fox.com.