Nothing to whine about out here

I’m not exactly a world traveler.

But having spent a little bit of time in the South, I have been exposed to the passion folks down there have for college football.

Passion is one word for it.

Obsession might be a better one.

Tune in to an SEC-based call-in talk show, and at times it can be quite entertaining — fans railing for their beloved coach to be run out of town for only winning 8 or 9 games.

Here, a coach doing that gets a contract extension and several more millions of dollars.

At other times, well, be thankful for other radio stations to choose from.

Spring football games in the SEC sometimes draw more than regular-season games in the Pac-12 — or Pac-10, or Pac-8 back in the day. Their pep rallies might be more spirited than actual games out here.

Those of us lifers in the Northwest can only smile and shake our heads in amazement.

Down there, spring football is almost as important as fall football, with the recruiting season somewhere in the middle.

Out here in these parts, it wasn’t that long ago that college football recruiting barely generated fan interest, outside of the local high school star pledging his allegiance to nearby State U. The rest were just names, until they made a name for themselves on the field.

Fans could name the head coach of their favorite team here, but the coordinators were barely known outside of campus.

Things have changed in recent years, but the passion/obsession out here is nowhere near how it is in the South.

Which is probably a good thing.

WHICH ALSO brings us to Monday’s national championship game between Alabama and the Fighting Tom Greenes (a nod to our former Press co-worker, now a P.R. dude at NIC), also known as Georgia.

’Bama and Georgia, not coincidentally, are SEC teams, leaving much of the rest of the country to whine about a perceived bias, since two of the four teams selected for the College Football Playoff came from that league.

Sorry, but this year’s edition of Clemson couldn’t move the ball against Alabama last week in the semifinal, after previous versions of Clemson knifed through the Crimson Tide defense in the last two national title games.

And Oklahoma, despite possessing the Heisman Award winner, got way too conservative with a big lead against Georgia in last week’s other semifinal. And, as often happens in that case, the Sooners lost.

You say Ohio State should have been in the playoff? The Buckeyes lost twice — at home vs. Oklahoma, then they got trucked at Iowa.

Sorry, Urban.

Unbeaten UCF, you say?

Please.

ESPECIALLY THIS year, fans of the Pac-12 can’t complain about who did or didn’t get into the College Football Playoff.

The conference’s horrendous 1-8 showing in bowl games capped what was already a down year in the league.

The only Pac-12 team to win a bowl game was that longstanding conference member, Utah, which has been in the league since all the way back in 2011.

As for the others ...

Oregon started it off by getting slapped around by Boise State in the Las Vegas Bowl. UCLA couldn’t handle Kansas State in the Cactus Bowl. Arizona lost by a field goal to Purdue in the Foster Farms Bowl. Stanford couldn’t hold off TCU in the Alamo Bowl.

Washington State turned in its second straight desultory performance in the Holiday Bowl, getting pummeled by Michigan State. Arizona State lost by three touchdowns to NC State in the Sun Bowl. USC was handled by the aforementioned Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. The Huskies lost by a touchdown to Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl — which doesn’t look bad on paper, but in reality Penn State pushed the Huskies around most of the game, and U-Dub had to rally late to make it interesting. It should have been a more competitive game.

Those days when Oregon — and, a few years earlier, USC — were good enough to play for the national title now seem like so many years ago.

So complain about the SEC all you want — yes, there are some bad teams in that league, like there are in every other league. But their good teams are very good. In an era where many college football games finish with arena football-like scores (the AFL, not the IFL), it was refreshing — and slightly startling — to see Alabama win a game last week with its defense.

Meanwhile in college football, the Pac-12 needs to step up its game — on the field, anyway.

All the crazy callers can keep their passion/obsession in the South.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.