Friday, January 06, 2006

Just so I don't sprain my elbow patting myself on the back...

I picked USC to beat Texas by ten, on the reasoning that USC would score a lot of points because no defense can stop them and that Pete Carroll, with a month to prepare, would figure out ways to slow Vince Young down just enough to win 41-31 or something like that. As it turns out, Carroll could have been given a year to prepare and his defense still would have failed to defend Texas' offense because it doesn't matter how many players who put in position to make tackles if they're just going to bounce off of the quarterback. One of the signs I should have seen was the fact that USC had not seen a run/pass threat like Young in the Pac Ten. To turn HP's reasoning around a little, an SEC defense that had defended against D.J. Shockley in 2005 and Matt Jones in 2004 might have been a better fit in the title game, although neither of those players are on Young's level. Similarly, I would have been interested to see how an (interested) Miami team that did such a good job on Marcus Vick and Marques Hagans would have fared against Young. We'll never know and even if Miami or LSU would have gotten a shot at Texas, neither of them could have come close to scoring enough points to keep up with the Horns.

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