Category: 
Saturday was such an event-filled day of football, I had to spend all of Sunday just ruminating. I haven’t read a single paper, or visited any other web site, so here are my thoughts on what transpired:
—The Texas-OU game was a masterpiece. A true slugfest between two excellent teams.
—It’s no surprise that Colt McCoy is now the Heisman front runner after his brilliance against OU. For now. If he gets past Missouri, then his chances of winning go up considerably.
–Sam Bradford did about as much as he could do. He’s still in the race, but is it just me or is he just a little robotic? He hardly ever makes a mistake, but it’s hard to connect with him as a viewer. He’s almost too good, but too clinical.
–Chase Daniel’s Heisman hopes took a big hit, but they aren’t done yet. He needs for McCoy to lose, which he might take care of next week. Then, the Tigers would need to win out and go on to vanquish Oklahoma. A tall task, but doable.
–If USC plays a team with an offensive pulse, it loses that game. The Trojan offense, with its five-stars galore, has scored just 21 points in 2 of its first 3 Pac-10 games.
–Huge credit to Oklahoma State, yet another Big 12 offensive juggernaut. They have to make sure not to overlook a much improved Baylor team this week.
–Memo to so-called recruiting gurus: When a guy (Jeff Demps) runs a 10.01 in the 100m and is the fastest player in college football history, he should be no worse than a top 10 recruit nationally. Is 13 yards per carry good enough for ya?
–Saturday showed what many were starting to suspect: The Big 12 is the best conference this year. Stop the presses. All you pundits out there need to be intellectually honest. The conference has 4 of the top 8 teams and 5 of the top 11. And 9 of the top 15 quarterbacks in passing. The SEC just is not as good as the Big 12 this year, period.
–I’m thinking Penn State and Alabama for the title right now. A rematch of 30 years ago.
Top 10 teams and Heisman Watch to come.
Comments
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Watch out HP, a couple of your Readers that are SEC fanatics might have their heads explode reading this.
As Lee Corso would say, listen to this:
11 of the 12 teams in the SEC have 1 loss or more, with only ‘Bama remaining undefeated. If two one-loss teams meet in the SEC championship game, they practically guarantee themselves a berth in the BCS title game.
By contrast, 8 out of 12 Big 12 teams are still undefeated. Thus, there is a better chance that a zero or maybe even one loss conference champ goes on to a berth.
Penn State-Ohio State will decide the winner of the Big Ten.
“–Saturday showed what many were starting to suspect: The Big 12 is the best conference this year. Stop the presses. All you pundits out there need to be intellectually honest. The conference has 4 of the top 8 teams and 5 of the top 11. And 9 of the top 15 quarterbacks in passing. The SEC just is not as good as the Big 12 this year, period.”
O.K., my head’s not exploding but, I will do what you suggest and try to be intellectually honest.
I will list the top programs in the Big 12 and their OOC schedules to date below.
Oklahoma:
Chattanooga
Cincy
Washington
TCU
OSU:
Wash. State
Houston
Missouri State
Troy
Texas:
Fla. Atlantic
UTEP
Rice
Arkansas
Tx Tech:
Eastern Wash.
Nevada
SMU
UMASS
Kansas:
Fla. International
La. Tech
So. Fla. - Loss
Sam Houston State
Missouri:
Illinois - gave up 42 pts.
SE Missouri State
Nevada
Buffalo
Now I’m not arguing that the Big 12 is not the best conference. I’m just saying that there’s no OOC competition to make that statement. It’s pretty easy to look like world beaters with some of these line-ups. The BCS teams they’ve played Arkansas, Washington and, Wash. State are in the bottom tiers of their conferences. The only decent team was Illinois and they laid 42 pts. on Missouri.
I believe that Texas and Oklahoma could play with anyone but, then again I also recall Oklahoma’s recent bowl games.
Is this an objective analysis or not?
Missouri was beating Illinois by 17 with 5 seconds to play..Illinois got a last second TD against 2nd team defense.
They gave up 42 points and still won. I’m not sure any SEC team could win giving up 42.
usc has averaged 21 points offensively in 2 of 3 pac10 games, not total. But your point about playing a decent offensive team is still appreciated. That said, they did lay 42 on Oregon. So that averages out to 28. Still not that awesome.
Basically if Sanchez has a rough day, its gonna be tough for USC to win. But I think that goes without saying for most teams.
They gave up 42 points and still won. I’m not sure any SEC team could win giving up 42.
Then again, that doesn’t happen too often does it?
Back to my post. Was it an objective analysis?
HP, these are good thoughts. My responses and thoughts:
• Texas’ win was a stunner. I’ve never thought Mack Brown could win the big game without Vince Young, but he did a great job here. However, the Horns’ schedule is brutal coming up: Mizzou, Okie State and Texas Tech coming up. Those DBs better be on the treadmill right now.
• I disagree that USC loses to ‘any offense with a pulse.’ Going into the game at the Coliseum, Oregon had to be considered a top shelf offense (averaging 47 points per game and 500+ yards). The got held to 10 points and 220 yards. Oregon is a better offense than most non-Big 12 contenders have faced. Oh, and the Trojans held ASU to 10 less points than did Georgia.
• That said, as a USC fan, this is not the #4 team in the country. The Trojans are at best #10 right now. The offense is far too inconsistent. No doubt USC is overrated right now (though I do think they could beat just about anyone in the country in a bowl game).
• Anyone feel sorry for Tommy Tuberville? The guy is probably receiving death threats from deranged fans right about now.
• Which leads me to my final point: I agree that the Big 12 is the best conference in the country this year. This is significant for 2 reasons: first, things can change much more quickly than I thought when evaluating conference strength. And by ‘quickly’ I mean one year. Remember when the Big 12 was a laughing stock last year? But I do think that is the minimum time for conference shifts. The notion that a conference can go from good to bad (or vice versa) within a weekend or 3 games is just ridiculous. It’s at least a one season shift. Second reason: SEC nation is going to go ballistic. How dare anyone not consider them head and shoulders above everyone else?
• What happened to LSU? In reality, we should have seen this coming. The Tigers allowed 21 points to a lifeless Auburn offense. So I guess it’s no surprise that an offense with a pulse would actually hammer them.
I have no problem entertaining arguments after losses by Auburn and Vandy. I’d say its really a toss up between the top 4 from each conference, with the Big 12 having the stronger 5 and 6 teams and the SEC possibly having better overall depth.
I think the debate will eventually be settled once the SEC finishes playing all of its OOC games. The SEC still has 5 games against BCS conference opponents (UF @ FSU, Vandy v. Duke and @ Wake, UGA v. GT, SC @ Clemson) to go along with 10 games against lesser opponents. If the SEC wins at least 4 of those 5 along with the 10 easier games, you’re looking at a conference that ends up with a 42-6 record in OOC games. That would be 4 games better than the Big 12 and would certainly seem to be a big point in the SEC’s favor.
“Oh, and the Trojans held ASU to 10 less points than did Georgia.”
Can’t guess why you decided to throw this statement into your post?
Didn’t I read somewhere that Rudy Carpenter went into that game with a severely sprained ankle and had very limited mobility?
Did you know that?
Dawgy…
That is a pretty objective analysis. However, I would say that the SEC’s OOC schedule isn’t really much better. So you can’t really use that as a measuring stick.
I don’t see a defining OOC conference win for the SEC, outside of Alabama’s beatdown of highly overrated Clemson team. Florida didn’t look all that great against a rebuilding Miami team (althought the Gators have found a running game since then). Georgia beat a mediocre ASU team.
This what we’ve been complaining about on the West coast for years. Other BCS conferences (I’m not just pointing at the SEC) have played nobody out of conference, then enter league play with a bunch of ranked teams. How does that happen? Politics, reputation, etc. Look, even the Pac isn’t blameless. They scheduled a couple of IAA teams (thought not nearly as many as others).
I wish teams in general would schedule harder OOC games, but frankly there’s no incentive to do so. The system rewards playing a bunch of cupcakes and then winning your conference. Why risk a loss by playing an elite team OOC?
There should be something in place in the computer component which assigns extra points to teams that play elite teams out of conference, and vice versa, penalizes teams for playing IAA teams. Then you’d really find out who the best teams are. Your national champ game teams would each have a couple of losses, but they would be inarguably the best teams.
Vince,
I have no idea where you pulled that 8 Big 12 teams are undefeated. There are 3: Oklahoma State, Texas, and Texas Tech.
Max, I’m not arguing that the SEC’s OOC schedule is more demanding but, I think that I could. I’m saying that all we can compare to the Big 12 teams are Big 12 teams. If one or two had wins over a ranked team outside the conference we would have a better idea of their strength.
HP ask for intellectual honesty and, I think he forgot to apply that to his opinion.
Dawgy
pretty objective analysis…and you are right it is really hard to differentiate due to weak OOC scheduling.
Just saying that Missouri beat Illinois by 2 scores, and that was a good OOC win.
Is that win over Illinois really that impressive? Illinois is 3-3 with a 26 point win over a 2-4 1AA team, a 3 point win over Louisiana Lafeyette (who Southern Miss beat by 30), and a win over a 2-4 Michigan team coming off a loss to Toledo.
that could be debated how impressive it was in hindsight based on what has happened since, but it is still a good win regardless (a neutral site win against a ranked team from a BCS conference to start the season). Illinois is by no means a “cupcake”.
So then Bama’s win over Clemson is a big win too. That was a 24 point win at a neutral site over a preseason top 10 team from a BCS conference that is currently 3-3.
No doubt it is a good win for Alabama. Not as impressive in hindsight but still a good win. Teams get hammered for scheduling all the cupcakes so you have to give credit to the teams that schedule neutral site games against ranked opponents. Illinois might be a tad better than Clemson…Of their 3 losses respectively, Illinois only real slip-up was the bad loss to Minnesota, with the other 2 losses to Penn State and Missouri. Clemson combined for only 34 points in their 3 losses, although Alabama and Wake Forest have both been solid this year.
However, this (conference debate) is all very subjective which I believe circles back to Dawgy’s original post regarding the difficulty of comparing conferences that do not play each other often and have OOC schedules filled with 2-3 “cupcakes”.
Dawgy, I threw in that comment about the Georgia defense vs. ASU because I know that SEC defenses get a huge amount of hype, and I just wanted to point out that USC pitched the shutout, which is hard to do against any team. It was actually a compliment…Georgia had a fine defensive performance that game.
Carpenter had a bad ankle, but the guy is a drop back passer. He had no mobility to begin with. The ankle was only really an issue when Rey Maualuga hammered him on a sack and aggravated the injury.
I think a win over Illinois is more impressive than a win over Clemson, but I also think that Alabama is better than Mizzou. The win over Georgia is probably the most impressive win by any contender this year.