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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2014
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE DAILY DEBATE
Should fans have rushed the field after Saturday's win?
By Miranda Davis
@MirandaDavisUDK
"YES"
The Kansas football team and its fan base had a lot to celebrate
Saturday after the team's first Big 12 win of the season against Iowa State. The Jayhawks played a great game of football and won, two things fans of the program haven't seen consistently since the Mark Mangino era ended in 2009.
It felt as if there was life inside Memorial Stadium on Saturday for one of the first times in many students' memories. Once the Jayhawks secured the win, students rushed the field, taking with them one of the goal posts before throwing it into Potter Lake.
Yes, the Jayhawks defeated a team with the same record, essentially putting themselves at a ninth place finish in the Big 12 instead of 10th. Incredible plays will never be shown on SportsCenter and life will go
on. But for those watching Saturday's game, this win felt like something to remember.
A Big 12 win, by an interim coach, after four years of Kansas football that can be best described as disappointing, was close to a miracle. Within the confines of Lawrence and this fan base, we have to judge Kansas football by its own standard, not by the rest of college football.
So while many people may think tearing down the goal post was embarrassing, and those people aren't completely wrong, the point is: it doesn't matter.
Kansas football fans have seen few glimpses of hope during the past two regimes. Interim coach Clint Bowen now has as many Big 12 wins as Turner Gill and Charlie Weis. These fans aren't judging their team by how it compares to the national landscape of college football — we lost that battle long ago. They are taking it game by game, and Saturday, this football team had a good game.
More important than the fact that fans had something to celebrate is the simple notion that there are still fans who want to celebrate. Students rushed the field and pulled down a goal post. People may make fun of that, but considering the past five years of football those fans have been watching, didn't they deserve a celebration? There's something to be said that after all of the disappointment, people still cared enough to attend the game and run onto Kivisto Field.
On Monday's Big 12 conference call, Bowen said hed like to see the program be at a place where students don't feel the need to do that, and that would certainly be nice, but it wasn't where the program was Saturday. So the students rushed the field, and the rest of the world may have mocked them, but the fans carrying that goal post weren't listening. They were too busy enjoying the ride.
Edited by Rob Pyatt
By Derek Skillett
@derek skillett
"NO"
This argument is not intended to be Jayhawk fans who were enjoying themselves at Memorial Stadium on Saturday. Students who have suffered through years of unsuccessful Kansas football teams had every right to celebrate a 34-14 Big 12 conference victory against Iowa State.
That being said, the students should not have stormed the field and torn down the goal posts after Saturday's win. The Jayhawks defeated a 2-6 Iowa State team that has yet to win a conference game and has only achieved slightly more success than Kansas through the past couple of years, amassing a grand total of nine wins through the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
Rick Reilly, a sportswriter for ESPN, sent out a tweet Sunday
morning that is an ideal summary of the media's perception of Kansas students celebrating the win: "Hey Kansas fans: Tearing down the goal posts after beating Iowa State is like popping champagne after fixing the toaster. Stop it." While a fairly harsh tweet, the message is accurate. Defeating a 2-6 Iowa State team hardly warrants tearing down the goal posts.
So, when is it acceptable to storm the field/court? Some of the arguments say if an unranked team defeats a highly-ranked opponent, or if a team defeats a bitter rival.
There are a couple examples of when it is acceptable, like in the 2013 Iron Bowl, when Auburn University shocked the University of Alabama in a thrilling 34-28 home win. With that win, Auburn clinched a spot in the SEC Championship Game for the first time since 2010. Auburn also got a big win against a bitter rival.
Another example of an
acceptable field/court storming comes from a 2011 college basketball game. The unranked Indiana Hoosiers defeated the top-ranked Kentucky Wildcats on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer, sparking a massive court-storming. This court-storming was acceptable because an unranked team (Indiana) defeated a top-ranked team (Kentucky).
It also isn't like the Jayhawks hadn't been in that situation before. On Nov 16, 2013, the Jayhawks defeated the West Virgina Mountaineers, who had previously held a record of 3-7, with two Big 12 wins. Kansas' 31-19 victory prompted a similar field-storming and goalpost removal. But that win snapped a 27-game Big 12 conference-losing streak.
Considering the recent state of Kansas football, the students had every right to celebrate. They just shouldn't have celebrated on the field or tossed the goal post into Potter Lake.
TCU, Baylor clear Big 12 front-runners for playoffs
Edited by Rob Pyatt
ASSOCIATED PRESS
West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen started preparing for Baylor when the Bears were coming off a wild comeback win over TCU.
Two weeks after that, he flipped the script and examined that game while prepping his Mountaineers to play the Horned Frogs.
Which one is better?
"I'd hate to have to choose between them, so good luck to the (playoff) committee," Holgorsen said Monday. "We've played a lot of good football teams, and those two are as good as I've seen. If they continue to win in the Big 12 and finish 11-1, then they should be in the top four. That's for certain."
No. 5 TCU and No. 6 Baylor (both 8-1 overall, 5-1 Big 12) are the clear front-runners if the Big 12 is going to grab one of the spots in the new fourteam playoff.
likely out of playoff contention with two losses overall after a 41-20 loss at TCU on Saturday.
Oklahoma is the only team that has played the Frogs, Bears and No. 13 Kansas State (7-2, 5-1), losing to all of the Big 12 co-leaders. The Wildcats are
Asked on the weekly Big 12 coaches teleconference which of those three teams was the best, Sooners coach Bob Stoops said he wouldn't offer an opinion on that. But he made reference to that Oct. 11 game in which TCU led by 21 points in the fourth quarter only to see Baylor rally for a 61-58 win on the final play.
"As you look at it right now, Baylor and TCU obviously are sitting at the top and they had a heck of a game that went down to the last seconds." Stoops said. "Again, that's for everyone else to decide."
two-touchdown loss there in its lowest-scoring game of the season.
Conference champions will be weighed heavily by the 12-member playoff selection committee for its final rankings Dec. 7. The Big 12 is the only power-five league without a championship game, but is the only one that plays a round-robin schedule.
When the playoff committee put out its first rankings two weeks ago, defending Big 12 champion Baylor was coming off an open date following the loss at West Virginia. TCU had won a pair of lopsided games since the setback in Waco, Texas, with an eye-catching 82 points against Texas Tech.
If Baylor and TCU both finish 11-1, the Bears would have the head-to-head victory. But the Frogs won 31-10 at West Virginia two weeks after Baylor's
ART BRILES Baylor coach
TCU has been the highest-ranked Big 12 team in the playoff rankings, starting at No.7, six spots ahead of Baylor. That margin was unchanged last week when both were up one slot, after the Frogs' game-ending field goal at WVU and the Bears with an
expected lopsided win at home against Kansas.
In the new AP and coaches polls released Sunday, TCU was fifth and Baylor was up four spots to sixth after an impressive 48-14 victory at Oklahoma. Kansas State dropped to 13th in both, and will also surely slip in the new playoff rankings Tuesday night after seventh last week.
Baylor is off this week before playing Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Kansas State, the finale at home.
"The only thing we can control is to try to win out, be
11-1 and have an opportunity to be (Big 12) co-champions," TCU coach Gary Patterson said. "Just how we play, and what the general public and the committee think about us when we get done ... we've just got to control our own destiny." TCU, after playing five ranked teams in a six-week span, has road games against Kansas and Texas before ending the regular season at home against Iowa State.
"Our mission when we started this season was to try to repeat as Big 12 champions, and that's still our goal," Baylor coach Art Briles said. "We're not going to get our vision and our hopes and aspirations caught into the vapor right now. The reality is we have to go win."
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