Day 453

• Jim Fassel, former coach of the Giants, has passed away at 71.
• Rickie Fowler will not qualify for this year's US Open.  Phil Mickelson would've been granted a special waiver, but then gave it back when he won the PGA Championship.  
• ESPN notes in an offseason-so-far ranking that the Packers, Raiders, and Steelers have had the three worst offseasons.  Sounds about right.  
• The two best:  Buccaneers #1, Patriots #2.  Brady vs. Belichick.  If it is safe for me to go to Vegas in early-August, something I'm looking at with some interest is the Patriots' number for winning the AFC Championship.   
• The CFP will get a report soon to determine how and if they are going to change the format.  Until there are more than about six relevant schools in college football, just scrap it.   
• SI reports that the new model appears to be a 12-team model.  If that's the case, how many spots would they dare give to the non-AQs?
• It appears the answer is "one".  Under the proposed format, half the field would be the Power 5 conference champions, but WOULD include a guaranteed spot for the Group of 5 "National Champion" as named by the Committee as the highest-ranked team in the Go5, who would normally get the slough-off bowl in the New Years' Six.  The other half would be at-large.  The top four of the six champion slots would get byes.
• If this were in place last year:  Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Oregon were the Power 5 champions.  The highest-rated Group of 5 conference champion was Cincinnati.  So those are your six automatic bids.
• Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and Oklahoma would get the byes.
• The six at-larges:  Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Florida, Georgia, Iowa State, and Indiana.
• They would probably give the conference champions priority, at least in the Power 5.  I'll use the last ranking as the determinant.  The first round, had we used last year's standings:  Oregon is actually the lowest-rated team, but they were a conference champion, and hence AQ, so they get top billing vs. Indiana.  Notre Dame would face Iowa State.Texas A&M would face Georgia.    Florida would get Cincinnati.  
• And yes, regular-season-undefeated Coastal Carolina would STILL GET SCREWED.  Cincinnati is a Group of 5 team ahead of them, and Indiana finished one spot above Coastal Carolina in the final CFP standings to ace out the final spot at #11.
• At least five attendees of the CONCACAF Nations League Final USA vs. Mexico left in handcuffs Sunday night.  And it sounds like the number should've been far higher.  The only way to get rid of the chants is to expel Mexico from all international competition otherwise.  Period-end-finito.  It will never change otherwise.   
• Got a spam comment earlier today on an old Asian match-fixer article I did here which said "Thanks for the support, I hope to see you in the future."  The only reason I don't think it was from an Asian match-fixer (name appeared all to be in Sanskrit) is because I get enough spam e-mail, etc., to see when phishing or farming for stuff on the Net is being done.