STARTING FIVE

1. Red Grange Award

The Home Depot College Football Awards show airs tonight on ESPN at 7 p.m. This is where they’ll bequeath (there shall be lots of bequeathing) every major award shy of the Heisman:

Chuck Bednarik Award (Defensive Player), Fred Biletnikoff (Wide Receiver), Lou Groza (Kicker), Ray Guy (Punter and Least Syllables in a Full Name), Davey O’Brien (Quarterback), Danny O’Brien (Quarterback who transfers from Maryland to Wisconsin and is Unspectacular at Both Schools), Maxwell Award (Outstanding Player), Cornbread Maxwell Award (Best Nickname), Outland Trophy (Outstanding Interior Lineman), Inland Trophy (Outstanding Interior Lineman in a Land-Locked State) Jim Thorpe (Defensive Back), Doak Walker (Running Back…Although Doak is the Second-Best College RB Ever Named Walker, So Maybe It Should Go to the 2nd-Best RB?), Doak Campbell (Best Stadium), John Mackey,  (Tight End), John McKay (Funniest Coach) and Rimington (Best Center).

That’s a slew of awards. Or, if you’re hungry, a slaw of awards. Or, if you love the ponies, a Seattle Slew….

What. Ever.

Anyway, WHO votes on all of these awards? Wouldn’t you like to know? The 14-man committee who votes on the Mackey, for example, includes some men whose lives revolve around the sport (e.g., my friend Bruce Feldman) but also Adam Schefter, who presumably watches college football while recharging his 17 cell phones.

The Groza Award is presented courtesy of the Palm Beach County Sports Commission. Certainly, they want to get it right, but it’s not as if they have any more or less authority to hand out an award than say, the Harper Valley PTA.

So, as you know, I created my own award, the Red Grange Award, named in honor of the college football player “who most electrified his sport in that given year.” And thus, I don’t have to pander to statistics, or a player’s career record as a starting quarterback or whether or not his team is playing for the national championship. My overriding criterion is this: The Wow! factor.

Last year Johnny Manziel was the deserving winner of our inaugural Grange Award and he then set a precedent for celebrating that I’m not sure anyone will ever top. This year’s winner? UCLA true freshman Myles Jack, who was a stud on defense for the resurgent Bruins and, when moonlighting at running back, quickly established himself as one of the nation’s premier rushers. The kid can do it all, and he does it with a charismatic smile. Over the last month of the season, there was no single player more worth tuning into a game to see than Mr. Jack. Congratulations!

2. Jolly Saint Nick

Those of us debating whether or not Alabama coach Nick Saban A) should and/or B) will depart Tuscaloosa for Austin to succeed Mack Brown as the head football coach at Texas (even though Brown has yet to resign) should know that the decision will not come down to money, or what Miss Terry says, or facilities, or the chance to host his own competitive singing show on The Longhorn Network, or whether or not Saban is more likely to win another glass ball with the Burnt Orange or the Crimson Tide.

It all comes down to the Alpha Male Gene (and I have no idea if David Epstein discusses this in his book since I haven’t read it yet). Saban is an Alpha Male. Once he conquers one area, establishes his dominance in one region, he becomes restless. Happy? That’s not a relevant adjective. Nor is “satisfied.” It’s why Douglas MacArthur wanted to keep taking islands in the Pacific, why American settlers never said, “You know, St. Louis is fine. Let’s just stop here.”

Saban, who has coached at Michigan State, LSU, the Miami Dolphins and Alabama all in the past 15 years, will perpetually have that itch. Whether or not he scratches it, well, that may be a result of external forcers such as Miss Terry, etc. But inside, he’s thrilled that Texas covets him. And he has a hankering to see if he could win a national championship at yet another school.

You know, it’s just like Carrie Underwood always says: “Climb every mountain/Ford every stream/Follow every rainbow/Til you find your dream.”

The irony here? There is no more Alpha Male creature than a bull. And yet a steer, Texas’ mascot, is just a bull that’s been neutered.

3. “August: O-SAHHHHJJJ County”

Simply by mispronouncing, intentionally, the title of a nominated film (“August: Osage County”, or as I like to call it, “The Family Stone in Summer Time”), Aziz Ansari provided the most memorable moment of this morning’s Golden Globes nominee announcements.

Other takeaways: “Breaking Bad” is gonna win A LOT of awards next month, and if your movie was released before Labor Day, it was crap. Or at least the Hollywood Foreign Press thinks so. All 10 nominated “Best Films”, five in Comedy/Musical and five in Drama, were released after September 1st.

Me, I was just relieved that none of the three announcers this morning were Ron Burgundy in character. And no, “Anchorman 2” was not nominated.

Although the two films find themselves in separate categories here, I think it’ll come down between “12 Years a Slave” and “American Hustle” for Best Picture at the Oscars. If Hollywood ever creates a film that combines the Mob and/or government corruption, slavery and/or the Holocaust, and a sympathetic lead character who is either developmentally challenged or has a speech impediment, that will be Oscar gold.

4. Chambers of Horror

Tom Chambers, erstwhile NBA All-Star living the good life as a pre-game, halftime and post-game analysts for Phoenix Suns broadcasts for Fox Sports Arizona, was arrested last night for DUI. I like Chambers and, paired with host Tom Leander (the point guard at Brophy College Prep during Mark Alarie’s Player of the Year season in 1982), the two form an amicable and knowledgeable broadcast backcourt.

Whether that will change after this arrest, we’ll see. However, there is precedent, and it hits VERY CLOSE to home: Mark Grace, who earlier this year was arrested for DUI in Scottsdale and was summarily fired as an Arizona Diamondbacks analyst. Grace actually served four months in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s notorious Tent City as his punishment.

It’s strange. I was actually out last Sunday night with a local Phoenix sportscaster, a great guy, in the Valley of the Sun. He made a point about having only one beer because, as he said, “I don’t need to see my face on the front page of the Arizona Republic tomorrow.”

That’s all it takes.

5. Snow Day

There are two types of people on this planet: Folks who see the photo above and smile and folks who see it and write cranky essays decrying the hubris of Mother Nature for inflicting her mercurial temperament on the sacred game of football.

Seriously? I doubt anyone wants 16 games of this, but who can’t appreciate that vestigial tug of youth when you watch an NFL snow football contest? Why would anyone want to vacuum-seal football, much less life? The elements are part of the deal, and why not accept them instead of deny their existence? Or are you the guy who’s never going to die, because that would simply be inconvenient.

Please turn your hymnals to this brilliant piece of prose by Steve Rushin (which Pat Forde tweeted as a reminder to us all last week).

(I also did this just to illustrate how superior a writer Rushin is to Skip Bayless, and that I’d actually watch an ESPN gabfest show that let Steve’s thoughts run wild. Granted, Steve is superior to all of us.)

 Reserves

Hair today, gone tomorrow. Connecticut hires Notre Dame defensive coordinator Bob Diaco as its head football coach, (Diaconn?), instantly relegating ESPN’s Steve Levy to the state’s second-best-looking Steve Levy look-alike. Diaco won the Frank Broyles Award last season as the nation’s best coordinator. That defense had three future first-or second-round draft picks (Manti Te’o, Louis Nix and Stephon Tuitt).

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So you wanna be a rock-and-roll star? Or better yet, a Navy SEAL? I’m reading “Lone Survivor” by former SEAL Marcus Luttrell, and the book provides a detailed account of SEAL training in Coronado, Calif. This puny entry won’t do justice to the sleep deprivation, near-hypothermia, relentless push-ups and overall pressure a SEAL candidate endures, but here’s the baseline PT required to advance beyond the initial stage. In case you’re interested in giving it a go:

1. 500-yard swim in 12:30

2. 42 push-ups in 2 minutes

3. 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes

4. Six dead-hang pull-ups

5. A 1.5-mile run in 11:30

Honestly, those are all doable. And yet, as Luttrell writes in his book, his class of 164 candidates was whittled down to 32 after about six weeks. As Luttrell writes, “It’s more difficult to get into the Navy SEALs than it is to get into Harvard Law School. Different, but more difficult.”

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Just realizing that neither “Mad Men” nor “Game of Thrones” received a single Golden Globes nod. Nor did “The Newsroom” or “Walking Dead.” You can justify the latter two –although Jeff Daniels is phenomenal as Will McAvoy, like him or not –but how do you shut out “Game of Thrones.” As that red-headed female Wilding whose name escapes me a the moment famously said, “You know nothing, Jon Snow!”

Remote Patrol

Home Depot College Football Awards

ESPN 7 p.m.

Last year Manti Te’o won two awards on this night and neither was for Best Actor. (Ba-dump!). The big surprise this evening, from an August point of view, is that neither Jadeveon Clowney nor Johnny Manziel will hear his name called.