Sports fodder for a Friday morning ... Deciding between Tyler Lantrip or Cody Fajardo is a little like choosing between paper or plastic. It really doesn't matter all that much, no matter how much Chris Ault frets over his latest Nevada Wolf Pack quarterback quandary. The Pack would have lost to Oregon and beat San Jose State whether their quarterback was Tyler Lantrip, Steven Tyler, Mary Tyler Moore, Cody Fajardo or Buffalo Bill Cody. The bottom line, with Lantrip or Fajardo, is that this Wolf Pack team will still get its groceries home and that elusive jar of peanut butter will still somehow mysteriously roll under the back seat on the drive home. But give Ault credit. By creating a quarterback controversy this week he diverted everyone's attention away from the other, more pressing issues surrounding this team, like the lack of a pass rush, a continuously confused secondary, an offensive line that melts near the goal line, depth at wide receiver and a legitimate starting tight end.
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Starting Lantrip at quarterback this year was always a surprising choice. Oh, we don't doubt that he was the best quarterback on the roster this spring and summer. He's been studying Ault's pistol offense since 2006. In addition to getting his masters in economic and finance this winter he'll get one in the pistol offense. But why give all of this valuable experience to a guy who will be leaving the program at the end of the season? Why not give it to the young, promising kid with the unbelievable upside so he'll be ready to lead you into the Mountain West Conference next year? Lantrip, the senior, was the safe choice to start the year. Fajardo was always the future. And it looks like Ault wants that future to start sometime in the next few weeks.
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Are you worried about the future of college football because of the likely formation of the 16-team super conferences? Don't be. College football is not about the conference. Most conference games are boring blowouts and conference championships are just something for coaches to talk about come contract time. Fans don't care about the conference. Fans just want their schools to play big-time games against big-time opponents and then go to a bowl game at the end of the year. That will still happen with or without 16-team super conferences. College football will survive. College football always survives.
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Billy Beane deserves a movie made about his time as the Oakland A's general manager about as much as Chris Tormey deserves one made about his time as Wolf Pack head football coach. Beane's A's have won as many championships as Tormey's Wolf Pack. And don't tell me how Beane's so-called moneyball system of finding undervalued talent transformed the game. Yeah, right. The only time Beane's A's were relevant, they did it with big-time talent like Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, Eric Chavez, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito and Jermaine Dye. It wasn't because flash-in-the-pans Scott Hatteberg, John Mabry and Jack Cust hit a few home runs. Other teams with low payrolls, like the Tampa Bay Rays and Florida Marlins, have actually gotten to the World Series since Beane became the A's GM. But nobody wrote a book of fiction with a cute title about them.
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How long will Colin Kaepernick be content to watch Alex Smith quarterback the San Francisco 49ers? Remember, this was a guy who walked into Chris Ault's office just four games into his red-shirt freshman year to ask when he was going to play. Starter Nick Graziano got hurt that very same week and the rest is, well, Pack football history. Kaepernick, though, isn't about to walk into Jim Harbaugh's office in a few weeks and complain about not playing. And he doesn't have to. Smith will eventually play himself out of the job. Kaepernick's only concern right now is to learn the playbook. He'll get his chance to play sooner than he thinks.
