{"id":378491,"date":"2025-12-30T20:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T20:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/378491\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T20:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T20:34:07","slug":"steve-spurrier-claims-james-madison-tulane-looked-like-a-bunch-of-junior-high-players-in-college-football-playoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/378491\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Spurrier claims James Madison, Tulane ‘looked like a bunch of junior high players’ in College Football Playoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

The First Round of the College Football Playoff came and went without a winner from the Group of 5. No. 11 seed Tulane<\/a> was run off the field by No. 6 seed Ole Miss<\/a> 41-10, and No. 5 Oregon<\/a> did not struggle with No. 12 James Madison<\/a> in a 51-34 victory.<\/p>\n

Through two seasons of the 12-team Playoff now, G5 teams are 0-3 against P4 competition, with an average margin of defeat of 21.6 points per game. During the latest edition of \u2018Another Dooley Noted Podcast<\/a>,\u2019 legendary head coach Steve Spurrier<\/a> claimed that James Madison and Tulane \u2018looked like a bunch of junior high players\u2019 in their respective Playoff games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll tell you another interesting thing I read an article about,\u201d Spurrier said. \u201cObviously, you have Tulane and Coach (Jon) Sumrall<\/a>\u2018s team and James Madison. They virtually had no chance. And the guy made a point\u2026 he said the science of the players nowadays, especially at the power-five conferences, the other guys looked like a bunch of junior high players out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I went up to watch South Carolina<\/a> play Alabama<\/a>. Pregame warmups were on the sidelines and we were shaking hands and whatever. The size of the players, when you\u2019re down there, they\u2019re almost 6-foot-6, 320 (pounds) with every lineman it seems on both teams. Size at power-four schools\u2026 they\u2019re just so much bigger than the other schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tulane and James Madison looked better than expected in Playoff matchups<\/p>\n

Although the scores didn\u2019t quite reflect close games, it\u2019s hard to say that Tulane and James Madison looked like high school players against their P4 opponents. In its 41-10 loss, the Green Wave were only outgained by 76 yards. They also won the time of possession battle. It, however, was their three turnovers that ultimately sunk them, along with falling into a near-immediate 14-0 deficit.<\/p>\n

James Madison looked even better in its game against Oregon in Eugene, actually outscoring the Ducks 28-17 in the second half. The Dukes\u2019 34-6 halftime deficit however was too much to overcome, although they were outgained by just five yards and won the turnover battle (2-0).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair to say that change to the Playoff format may continue to be needed, just like how automatic byes for the top-four ranked conference champions were removed from this season\u2019s College Football Playoff. The committee also could have never expected that the ACC Champion would be left out of the Playoff, just as Duke<\/a> was. <\/p>\n

James Madison and Tulane probably didn\u2019t deserve to be in the Playoff surrounded by the caliber of the other programs included, but that\u2019s the way the sport has set up the Playoff, so it\u2019s hard to criticize them (by calling them junior high players) for showing up and playing the games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The First Round of the College Football Playoff came and went without a winner from the Group of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99,34393],"class_list":{"0":"post-378491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-steve-spurrier"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}