Happy Kalen DeBoer (and friends) Day to those who recognize
Happy Kalen DeBoer (and friends) Day to those who recognize
Former EMU coaches (and Shaq Vann) featured in tonight's national championship.
Today’s the day.
The National Championship — the biggest game of the year™ — will feature two teams that deserve to fight in a final stage like this. Both Michigan and Washington are undefeated to this point. Depending who you ask, this season never featured a bona fide #1 team in the country. No team was so far and away the best team in the country week in and week out.
This is a season that had room for arguments about who deserved to be recognized as the nation’s top team to spread from coast to coast. Michigan kicked a lot of ass with or without Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines. Washington might have the greatest operational triangle offense in college football between its offensive coaches, lefty quarterback Michael Penix Jr., and its dynamic receiving corps led by Rome Odunze.
But Florida State, too, went undefeated in its so-called power conference. The Seminoles, 13-0, finished the year with a #5 College Football Playoff ranking — a nasty stain this sport will now have to wear forever. They lost to Georgia a lot to a little. And depending who you ask, maybe Georgia still should’ve been debated-into the playoff even after it lost to Alabama in the SEC title game to try and win a third-straight national title.
Last week, Michigan proved that it could still beat Alabama without having to play its best football. Washington, late heart attack be damned, simply knows how to win.
As an Eastern Michigan guy, the rooting interests are pretty easy. Today’s a great day to root for the Huskies that are led by Eastern Michigan’s former offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Kalen DeBoer, and former offensive line coach Ryan Grubb is dialing up plays for the UW offense tonight after turning down Nick Saban’s offer to come to Alabama in the offseason.
Shaq Vann, too, is on Washington’s staff as a graduate assistant. As a former EMU running back, not only is he 6th all-time in rushing touchdowns (23) and 7th in rushing yards (2,577), but he was also one of the first, if not the first, to commit to Chris Creighton’s EMU Eagles. This also means he was one of DeBoer/Grubb’s first commits as FBS coaches.
DeBoer was a standout receiver and national title winner for Sioux Falls before he started coaching at his alma mater (and two years at Washington HS in S.D.). From 2006-2009, he led his school to a 67-3 record and four-straight NAIA title games (3-1). That led DeBoer to call plays Southern Illinois, Eastern Michigan (2014-2016), Fresno State, and Indiana before he took the head coaching job back at Fresno in 2020. He was an awesome hire everywhere he’s been — a 12-6 record at Fresno State, and now 25-2 with a chance to win a natty in two years at Washington. Grubb worked for DeBoer as an offensive line coach since he came to Sioux Falls in 2007 and followed him every step of the way.
As an Eastern Michigan guy, I simply don’t root for Michigan on principle. Michigan has plenty of fans, I’m sure they’ll be just fine without me. I initially went to college as a Michigan fan, but ended up quitting the UM narcotic some time before graduation. That was about 10 years ago and I don’t really miss rooting for Michigan or anything like that — the tradeoff with that, though, is that I spend way more of my Saturdays with a much smaller crowd size by the thousands.
Man, I’m so glad we finally get to watch these two play.
Seriously!
I know there are plenty of ways this conversation could go. The way college football has been commodified over the last handful of years will change the way this entire sport is seen as soon as tonight’s game is over.
The playoff field featured OG Big Ten vs. OG SEC on one side, then new Big Ten vs. new SEC on the other side — Fox vs. ESPN if you may. As an Eastern Michigan guy, it’s been incredibly clear that there was never going to be any room for a MAC team in the 4-team playoff even if anybody would’ve gone on a vintage Boise State kind of run.
If I’m being honest, I’m looking forward to seeing how the 12-team format doesn’t actually help or fix what everybody has proclaimed it to do. Sure it looks like there’s another door or two for mid-majors alike and power conference auditioners to try to compete with the best™ in the playoff, but it’s hard to get excited about those potential future chances when the last time I was told to get excited about the 12-team bracket we still had a Pac-12 conference in name and structure. Now the Pac-12 (2?) is appealing only by its name while Palo Alto and Berkley, California both become Atlantic Coast Conference countries.
That, and the SEC gets Texas and Oklahoma. The Big Ten will have USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington.
The Big XII, because of all that, already looks different with BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF all added this season. Also, Delaware’s going to be an FBS program at some point, but not before Kennesaw State gets added to the Sun Belt in 2024.
Those have been ginormous and egregious changes in the sport, and the theoretical race to have Super Leagues has been going on in front of us. How much is everybody paying attention to these worlds-shifting adjustments? How much time do we want to yell in circles about how good or bad this will end up being for everybody? How much of all this do we even want to deal with today? Aren’t we all just a little bit tired of living in this Rich-get-Richer timeline of college football? Did we ever figure out what the actual lesson Florida State was supposed to learn from this was?
Is this sport broken? Sure, but tonight’s national championship is Michigan vs. Washington, and it’s the last game of college football as we know it, so to speak.
I have no idea what tomorrow might look like, and that alone is reason to worry about what’s to come.
But I also have no idea what’s going to happen tonight when Washington’s offense goes toe-to-toe against Michigan’s defense. And I’m so excited to find out what that will look actually like in just a few hours.
