How Will the SEC Survive Inviting a New Member With Little Football Tradition?

Stewart Mandel lets the mask drop for a moment:

In its mad quest for television sets, the SEC, presumably intent on starting its own network, has irreparably diluted what had become the nation's premier conference. At its core, the charm of the SEC was that it really was one of the last conferences in which all 12 schools were geographically and culturally similar. The same scene we saw Saturday night in Tuscaloosa takes place in similar variations every week in Auburn, Baton Rouge, Oxford and Athens. Visiting fans make road trips in droves, because they can. Missouri, on the other hand, is an average 600-plus miles from the rest of the conference. Walk around an SEC tailgate lot or tune in to the Paul Finebaum Show and you'll quickly learn just how poorly this move is playing with the constituents.

New members Missouri and Texas A&M won't threaten the continued dominance of Alabama and LSU. They are likely the league's next South Carolina and Arkansas, the former of which took 20 years to reach its first conference title game, the latter of which made its first BCS bowl last year. But paired with the NCAA's recently approved stricter admissions standards and the SEC's own move last spring to cut down on oversigning, the league's golden era is likely drawing to a close.

Yes, Stewart, the SEC has irreparably diluted its brand because one of its fourteen members doesn’t have the same football culture as the others.  Apparently, the conference could survive with two football-light members (Vandy and Kentucky) out of twelve, but three out of fourteen is just a bridge too far.  If you pair Missouri with the SEC’s other new member, Texas A&M, a school that indisputably has a football culture that will mesh with the conference, then the case for dilution is really weak.  It’s almost like adding bourbon and water to … bourbon and water.

Mandel’s other arguments aren’t any better.  He cites the fact that SEC fans can drive to most of the other schools in the conference, but Missouri shares a border with three SEC states.  If you believe that this sort of thing matters, it was a border state in the Civil War (just like Kentucky) and its flag flies at Stone Mountain.  (That’s the best test of whether a state is in the South, right?)  Yes, Columbia will be a hike for the teams in the East, but is it that much farther than Fayetteville, which is buried in the northwest corner of Arkansas?

And speaking of the last two additions to the SEC, we all agree that the additions of South Carolina and Arkansas were a positive for the conference, right?  Neither of the new entrants have won a conference title in football.  They have combined for four trips to the SEC Championship Game and have lost by double digits all four times, with three of the games being total blowouts.  Moreover, while Arkansas brought a football tradition, South Carolina did not.  As of 1992, South Carolina had never won a bowl game.  They were 79th in all-time winning percentage, a tick over .500 and one spot behind Kansas.  Missouri comes with better (although not overly impressive) credentials and they are four years removed from playing in the Big XII Championship Game for a spot in the national title game.  Exposed to the competitive pressures of and revenues generated by the SEC, South Carolina has responded by hiring two brand name coaches – Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier – and enjoying the best extended period in the program’s history.  The goal for Missouri doesn’t have to be competing with LSU and Alabama for national titles.  Rather, there’s no reason why they can’t join Arkansas and South Carolina in the league’s middle class, with regular bowl trips and the occasional foray to the Georgia Dome when the stars align.  Adding a program that slots into the middle of the SEC doesn’t dliute the brand.

As for Mandel’s last point, there’s no reason why adding Missouri would damage the SEC’s “Golden Age.”  If Mandel is right that the Tigers won’t pose a major competitive threat to the elite of the conference, then how will they threaten the conference’s ability to produce national champions?  How will they stop Alabama and LSU from taking advantage of the rich recruiting regions in the South?  Mandel also cites the new NCAA admissions standards and the SEC’s oversigning regulations, both of which might have some impact, but they won’t change three basic realities: (1) SEC programs are rivaled only by the Big Ten in terms of generation of revenue, only the SEC programs plough the money back into their football programs whereas Big Ten programs use the money to ensure that their women’s field hockey teams have top-notch facilities; (2) SEC programs face more intense competitive pressures and therefore have a greater incentive to make moves that lead to on-field success; and (3) SEC programs sit in the most talent-rich region in the country.  Thus, the SEC won’t win every national championship like it has for the past half-decade, but it will still remain above the other BCS leagues, on average. 

Mandel has often opined that conference strength is cyclical.  On this claim, he is totally wrong.  There are structural factors at play that make some conferences more likely than other to succeed.  Over the past five years or so, a definite hierarchy has emerged.  The SEC is on top for the reasons described about.  The Big XII and Pac Ten are in the next tier, most likely because they draw talent from the two major recruiting bases outside of the SEC states: California and Texas.  This year will likely be the fourth straight year in which those two leagues supply the opposition for the SEC in the national title game.  The third tier is comprised of the ACC and Big Ten, which are the underachievers of the BCS.  The ACC has fertile recruiting areas and the Big Ten has revenue fan/media interest, but neither league can convert those blessings into on-field success.  The Big East is the last tier, representing the leftovers of the other leagues.  None of this is indicative of a cyclical situation, which requires that conferences are roughly equal.  The SEC’s recent dominance refutes Mandel’s concept of a cyclical world, so he has to predict doom around every corner.  That’s why he’s taking the implausible position that adding Missouri will cause Nick Saban to forget how to coach and Louisiana recruits to lose interest in going to Baton Rouge.

Ennis Del Mar Wouldn’t Have Georgia in his Top 25

Oh, Stewart, you had been doing so well.  You were writing Mailbags full of logical and interesting thoughts.  You weren’t contradicting yourself.  I was looking for grist for the mill and finding none.  And now this.  So here we are again, pasting your prose to show a massive inconsistency.  Here is Mandel explaining why he picked Alabama #1:

My preseason favorite is Alabama, and the reason is pretty simple: The Crimson Tide have the most talent in the country, period. As much as some like to dismiss them, there's actually a pretty strong correlation between recruiting rankings and on-field performance. To that end, Rivals.com has ranked Nick Saban's last four classes as follows: No. 1 (2008), No. 1 ('09), No. 5 ('10) and No. 1 ('11). That's the type of dominance we last saw from Pete Carroll at USC (five straight classes ranked No. 1 by at least one major service) and Urban Meyer at Florida (four top-three classes in five years), and both men parlayed those hauls into multiple national titles. Saban (whose classes look even better after some of his patented oversigning and roster purging) is in prime position to do the same.

The problem with this reasoning is that Meyer and Carroll both won their first national titles and then hauled in their #1 classes.  However, I agree with Mandel that there is a definite correlation between recruiting success and wins on the field.  That’s not the problem with Mandel’s Mailbag. 

Here is Mandel describing why he thinks that LSU is overrated:

This is a team that caught every imaginable break en route to 11 wins last season -- the last-second mulligan against Tennessee, the fake field goal that bounced just right against Florida, the remarkable Les Miles fourth-down reverse against Alabama. I know many feel Miles is immune from typical football karma, but generally speaking, teams that eke out so many close wins one year tend to go the other way the next.

For example, Iowa, which went 11-2 in 2009 with a slew of comebacks and last-second miracles, then, with mostly the same core of players, reverted to 8-5 last year with several last-minute losses.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with this reasoning.  I wrote last November that LSU might not be lucky based on the number of close games that they had won over Miles’s tenure.  Bill Connelly noted the same phenomenon this summer and put together numbers showing that most major programs have a winning record in close games, which shows that they aren’t entirely random.  LSU is particularly good in close games, whereas Iowa is not, so Mandel’s comparison doesn’t work.  Les Miles is either a much smarter tactician than Kirk Ferentz or his teams are far more talented and when their coaches finally call the go-to plays when the Tigers’ backs are against the wall, they succeed whereas the less talented Hawkeyes fail.  But that’s not the big problem with Mandel’s post. 

This is the big problem:

Beyond the absurdity of Georgia being ranked coming off a 6-7 season and Florida being ranked coming off a mediocre season followed by a drastic coaching change, the most remarkable aspect of the SEC having eight teams ranked in a poll is that Tennessee is not one of them.

Let’s see.  Mandel has already extolled the importance of recruiting rankings in predicting success.  Here are Georgia’s recent recruiting ranks according to Rivals:

2011 – 5th
2010 – 15th
2009 – 6th
2008 – 7th
2007 - 9th

That ought to be enough talent to finish in the Top 25, don’t you think?  Mandel has also advanced the theory that close games tend to even out from year to year.  Georgia finished 6-7 in 2010, but they were 1-4 in close games and that does not include the South Carolina and Mississippi State games that were close and finished as two-score results.  Using Mandel’s Alabama and LSU rationales, Georgia is positioned for a significant bounce-back in 2011.

Moreover, Mandel complains about Georgia being ranked in the preseason coaches poll, but says nary a word about Texas being ranked.  Texas finished 5-7 last year and didn’t have any of the bad luck that Georgia experienced.  Rather, Texas was simply a bad team, as evidenced by the home thrashing they took from UCLA followed by a home loss to Iowa State.  What’s the reasoning for Texas being in the poll, but not Georgia?  Recent success?  Both teams have it, although Georgia’s is a smidge more dated.  Recruiting rankings?  Both teams evidently have talent.  Star freshmen running back to fill a major hole?  Both teams have that.  Renown with Montana ranch hands?  Now we’re on to something.  OK, this is a little unfair because Mandel is also skeptical of Florida and Penn State – two programs that made his cut for being national – being ranked, but how else do we explain the remarks about Georgia in light of the arguments that came before them?

Our Lady of the Lake and her Big, Angry Men

Stories about Notre Dame’s imminent return to glory under a new regime seem like Police Academy sequels, each new one more preposterous than the last.  Rather than dismissing the latest batch, Stewart Mandel argues that New and Improved Notre Dame, Brian Kelly Edition is not Mission to Moscow ridiculous, but rather that we have a legitkmate reason to believe that this time, it's not a joke.  Mandel’s argument is that Brian Kelly’s first recruiting class is especially heavy on defensive line talent, unlike the classes of Charlie Weis. 

Mandel is correct, although he overstates the case a little.  It’s true that Kelly landed Notre Dame’s first five-star defensive linemen since the Bob Davie years.  However, it’s not as if Weis didn’t pull in any talent at the position.  Of the 37 (!) ESPN 150 players that Weis recruited in four full classes, five were defensive linemen.  (For some reason, Notre Dame’s recruiting classes are not available on Rivals right now.)  If you assume a three-man front as the base defense, then Weis brought in blue chip defensive linemen in a proportion consistent with the number of defensive linemen in a starting lineup.  His downfall was on the defensive side of the ball, but it wasn’t a failure of recruiting.

Speaking of the three man front, I’m interested to see how it plays out on the college level.  Bobby Diaco runs a 3-4 defense, which traditionally sees the outside linebackers making the plays and the defensive ends occupying blockers.  At 225 pounds, Ishaq Williams seems destined four outside linebacker.  With weights in the 250s, Aaron Lynch and Stephon Tuitt could also be outside linebackers or they could bulk up into 3-4 ends.  They are already at the weight at which Justin Houston tore up the SEC this fall.  If they put on 25 pounds, where will they be on the field?  The Irish’s use of Lynch and Tuitt presents an interesting issue because college teams that run a 3-4 are coming into a recruiting advantage.  Three of the four teams in the NFL final four run 3-4 schemes.  The defense is getting very popular in the NFL, as smart 3-4 coaches have the upper hand right now with their ability to confuse quarterbacks and offensive lines.  Georgia’s switch to the 3-4 is likely to pay recruiting dividends because of what recruits are seeing on TV in January.  The same is true for Notre Dame.  The question is whether the best recruits pulled in by Georgia, Notre Dame, and other 3-4 schools are going to end up as defensive ends or outside linebackers. 

Mandel’s description of Brian Kelly’s recruiting success also raises two issues for Michigan fans, aside from the obvious “a team on the schedule is improving the talent on its roster.”  The first is that Brian Kelly is doing exactly what Rich Rodriguez should have done. Like Rodriguez, Kelly knows offense and is confident that his teams will be great on that side of the ball, regardless of the talent level. Kelly moved to ND to have access to better athletes on the defensive side so that his teams aren't lopsided. Rodriguez had to have thought the same thing when leaving his alma mater, where he had just gone 32-5, but for whatever reason, he was unable to take advantage of Michigan’s recruiting platform.  Kelly, on the other hand, is taking advantage of being at Notre Dame.

That said, the second issue is that Kelly's recruiting success is also an implicit repudiation of the story that the media in Michigan will tell about Rodriguez's failure in Ann Arbor. The local media will want to make Rodriguez's demise a repudiation of the Spread, but based on the quarterback that he recruited, Kelly seems to be moving towards a more run-based Spread as opposed to a passing spread (or at least a more balanced version). The local media are also on a kick about how Brady Hoke is going to recruit the Midwest heavily, but Kelly is getting players from the Deep South, which is exactly the right strategy for a school like ND or Michigan and it’s the same strategy that Rodriguez tried and failed to execute.  In short, the media in Michigan are in denial about the state’s current condition, so they responded vehemently to a coach who looked elsewhere for talent and they are excited by a coach who believes (or is at least mouthing the belief for public consumption) that a national contender can be created from recruiting the local high schools.

One final thought on Mandel’s piece.  I’ve had a good time ripping Mandel’s overreaction to Notre Dame’s recent struggles.  To his credit, in his most recent article, Mandel links to his own pieces that have been refuted by recent events.  With my new-found appreciation for Mandel using his brain when writing, I’m inclined to point out that one of the things that I like about him is his willingness to reference instances in which he has been wrong.  I like this trait in Mark Bradley, as well.  I’ll put up with a lot from a writer if he will acknowledge when he is wrong. 

Our Lady of the Lake and her Big, Angry Men

Stories about Notre Dame’s imminent return to glory under a new regime seem like Police Academy sequels, each new one more preposterous than the last. Rather than dismissing the latest batch, Stewart Mandel argues that New and Improved Notre Dame, Brian Kelly Edition is not Mission to Moscow ridiculous, but rather that we have a legitimate reason to believe that this time, it's not a joke. Mandel’s argument is that Brian Kelly’s first recruiting class is especially heavy on defensive line talent, unlike the classes of Charlie Weis.

Mandel is correct, although he overstates the case a little. It’s true that Kelly landed Notre Dame’s first five-star defensive linemen since the Bob Davie years. However, it’s not as if Weis didn’t pull in any talent at the position. Of the 37 (!) ESPN 150 players that Weis recruited in four full classes, five were defensive linemen. (For some reason, Notre Dame’s recruiting classes are not available on Rivals right now.) If you assume a three-man front as the base defense, then Weis brought in blue chip defensive linemen in a proportion consistent with the number of defensive linemen in a starting lineup. His downfall was on the defensive side of the ball, but it wasn’t a failure of recruiting.

Speaking of the three man front, I’m interested to see how it plays out on the college level. Bobby Diaco runs a 3-4 defense, which traditionally sees the outside linebackers making the plays and the defensive ends occupying blockers. At 225 pounds, Ishaq Williams seems destined four outside linebacker. With weights in the 250s, Aaron Lynch and Stephon Tuitt could also be outside linebackers or they could bulk up into 3-4 ends. They are already at the weight at which Justin Houston tore up the SEC this fall. If they put on 25 pounds, where will they be on the field? The Irish’s use of Lynch and Tuitt presents an interesting issue because college teams that run a 3-4 are coming into a recruiting advantage. Three of the four teams in the NFL final four run 3-4 schemes. The defense is getting very popular in the NFL, as smart 3-4 coaches have the upper hand right now with their ability to confuse quarterbacks and offensive lines. Georgia’s switch to the 3-4 is likely to pay recruiting dividends because of what recruits are seeing on TV in January. The same is true for Notre Dame. The question is whether the best recruits pulled in by Georgia, Notre Dame, and other 3-4 schools are going to end up as defensive ends or outside linebackers.

Mandel’s description of Brian Kelly’s recruiting success also raises two issues for Michigan fans, aside from the obvious “a team on the schedule is improving the talent on its roster.” The first is that Brian Kelly is doing exactly what Rich Rodriguez should have done. Like Rodriguez, Kelly knows offense and is confident that his teams will be great on that side of the ball, regardless of the talent level. Kelly moved to ND to have access to better athletes on the defensive side so that his teams aren't lopsided. Rodriguez had to have thought the same thing when leaving his alma mater, where he had just gone 32-5, but for whatever reason, he was unable to take advantage of Michigan’s recruiting platform. Kelly, on the other hand, is taking advantage of being at Notre Dame.

That said, the second issue is that Kelly's recruiting success is also an implicit repudiation of the story that the media in Michigan will tell about Rodriguez's failure in Ann Arbor. The local media will want to make Rodriguez's demise a repudiation of the Spread, but based on the quarterback that he recruited, Kelly seems to be moving towards a more run-based Spread as opposed to a passing spread (or at least a more balanced version). The local media are also on a kick about how Brady Hoke is going to recruit the Midwest heavily, but Kelly is getting players from the Deep South, which is exactly the right strategy for a school like ND or Michigan and it’s the same strategy that Rodriguez tried and failed to execute. In short, the media in Michigan are in denial about the state’s current condition, so they responded vehemently to a coach who looked elsewhere for talent and they are excited by a coach who believes (or is at least mouthing the belief for public consumption) that a national contender can be created from recruiting the local high schools.

One final thought on Mandel’s piece. I’ve had a good time ripping Mandel’s overreaction to Notre Dame’s recent struggles. To his credit, in his most recent article, Mandel links to his own pieces that have been refuted by recent events. With my new-found appreciation for Mandel using his brain when writing, I’m inclined to point out that one of the things that I like about him is his willingness to reference instances in which he has been wrong. I like this trait in Mark Bradley, as well. I’ll put up with a lot from a writer if he will acknowledge when he is wrong.

You're Not Getting to a Jury with this Claim, Counselor Mandel

Stewart Mandel alleges that Ralph Friedgen and Bill Stewart suffered adverse employment actions (fancy law-talking term, +1), at least in part, because of their age. In how many ways is he wrong? Let's count:

1. If Mayland and West Virginia have legitimate, non-discriminatory business reasons to support their employment decisions, then Friedgen and Stewart don't have employment claims. What could that legitimate business reason be? Scroll down to the bottom of Mandel's article:

West Virginia is just three years removed from a BCS bowl appearance and shared this year's Big East title, but Luck believed the program had lost its sizzle.

"Our season ticket base has declined from Stewart's first year to the present time," said Luck. "We've had only two crowds since 2004 under 50,000, and both of those took place in the last couple of years. That to me is an indication that our fans aren't satisfied with the product."

Maryland had a similar but more drastic problem. With the enthusiasm of Friedgen's early tenure (three straight 10-win seasons from 2001-03) a distant memory, the Terps averaged just 39,168 per game this year at 54,000-seat Byrd Stadium. On the field Maryland showed considerable promise, led by freshman quarterback Danny O'Brien, the ACC's Rookie of the Year. But with several assistants expected to follow Franklin to Vanderbilt, Anderson, who called his move a "strategic business decision," made it clear Monday he had no desire to let Friedgen rebuild his staff and continue coaching the current group.

The football programs at Maryland and West Virginia, like the football programs at most schools, pay for their athletic departments. They pay the debt on stadium renovations, they pay for non-revenue sports, and they pay for bloated administrative staffs. If attendance is down (and one can assume a corresponding decline in donations), then the Maryland and West Virginia football programs will struggle to pull their weight. Is Mandel really going to argue that athletic directors should twiddle their thumbs while their fan bases show less and less interest in their football programs? Can there be a more legitimate reason to push a coach out than this?

(Side note: do we give Mandel credit for including in his article a rationale for Maryland's and West Virginia's actions or do we criticize him for burying at the end evidence that refutes his lede?)

Part of what made the Terps and Mountaineers unappealing this year were their pedestrian offenses. The two teams tied for 69th in yards per play. Their new coaches - Dana Holgorsen and Mike Leach (we presume) - are offensive experts. Mandel mentions the examples of Gene Chizik and Chip Kelly as guiding the decisions at issue here, but he ignores the fundamental lessons that the success of Auburn and Oregon teach: we are in a Spread-led offensive age in college football. There can be no denying that Auburn and Oregon are headed to Glendale because of their cutting-edge offenses. West Virginia fans don't need to have long memories to recall when their program was last nationally prominent and what the driving force was for that halcyon era.

2. On the question of whether older coaches are discriminated against, Title VII recognizes the existence of a bona fide occupational qualification as a defense against a claim of age discrimination. For instance, a construction company doesn't have to hire a 70-year old man for a position that entails strenuous lifting. Likewise, because the position of a college football head coach is an extremely demanding position in terms of the time commitment required, it seems possible that a school could fire a coach for not being able to put in the hours anymore. (I'm thinking of two particular examples right now in Tallahassee and State College.) I'm not saying that Ralph Friedgen and Bill Stewart were unable to meet the time demands of being a college football head coach. Rather, I'm making a general statement that there would be instances where a school could say "look, if you don't have the ability to watch film until 2 a.m. every day or go on recruiting visits for a solid month, then you can't be a head coach."

3. What bothers me the most about Mandel's argument is the fallacy that a head coach is solely responsible for the record of his football team. To come back to the Queen of England, this bothers me the most when writers wax lyrical about Joe Paterno, still winning games. Joe Paterno has only slightly more to do with coaching his football team as you or I do. This was perfectly obvious when health problems relegated him to the press box in 2008 and he "coached" up there without a headset. Penn State's resurgence over the past six season has been the direct result of Paterno being phased out so Tom Bradley and Galen Hall can run the team.

Let's ask this question: why did Maryland and West Virginia win this year? Maryland had to have won in no small part because of James Franklin. Maryland obviously thinks highly of Franklin because they anointed him as Friedgen's successor. With Franklin and other assistants leaving, Maryland was losing a large secret of their success. The case is even more compelling with Stewart. West Virginia won because of their defense, which is coached by holdover Jeff Casteel, and talent that was largely recruited by Doc Holliday, who is now the head coach at Marshall. Can someone explain what role Stewart played in WVU winning nine games this year? Anyone? Bueller? And we haven't even gotten around to mentioning the obvious fact that the Terps and Mountaineers benefited from playing in weak conferences. According to Sagarin, Maryland ranked 60th in strength of schedule and West Virginia ranked 73rd, so it's not as if either team had to survive the Bataan Death March to achieve a good record.

4. I'd be interested to hook Mandel up to a lie detector and then ask him the following two questions:

If you were a Maryland fan, would you rather have Ralph Friedgen or Mike Leach as your coach?

If you were a West Virginia fan, would you rather have a Bill Stewart-Jeff Casteel combo or a Dana Holgorson-Jeff Casteel combo leading your program?

The answers to both questions are fairly obvious, which invalidates the complaint about age.

Point to Auburn

Stewart Mandel’s latest Mailbag contains a chart that I find very interesting.  The chart lists three measures of strength of schedule for every team that has played in a BCS Championship Game.  The results are fairly telling.  Auburn has played the third-toughest schedule, while Oregon’s is dead last.  Now, it’s important to mention that simply looking at the records of a team’s opponents isn’t a great way to measure strength of schedule.  Specifically, it penalizes a team from the Pac Ten because the Pac Ten has a nine-game conference schedule, which will tend to push the records of Oregon’s opponents towards .500.  SEC teams play eight conference games and tend to replace that ninth conference game with a revenue-friendly tomato can, which inflated the overall record of Auburn’s opponents.  Massey and Sagarin show Auburn and Oregon as having played equivalent schedules; SRS shows Auburn has having played a tougher schedule, but the margin isn’t huge.  I’d bet that Jerry Palm himself, the person that Mandel refers to has “our hero,” would be unimpressed by the methodology that Mandel uses.   

That said, look at what has happened in title games where one opponent was more than ten spots removed from the other on the chart:

1998 Tennessee (20) over Florida State (1)
2006 Florida (4) over Ohio State (24)
1999 Florida State (5) over Virginia Tech (25)
2009 Alabama (7) over Texas (19)

Three of the four teams that played significantly tougher schedules won the title game and the fourth is a bit of a misnomer because Florida State was playing without its starting quarterback.  The Noles wouldn’t have been in the title game in the first place if Marcus Outzen would have been their quarterback for the whole season.  (Counterpoint: if we drop the ‘98 game, then we should also drop the ‘09 game because of Colt McCoy’s injury and then we’re left with a sample size of two.)

The more I think about it, the more I’m deciding that Mandel has a good point about strength of schedule, but he’s using the wrong stats to achieve it.

Stewart Comes to his Senses

So Stewart Mandel, what does the current sad state of the Big East say about your oft-repeated opinion that conference strength is cyclical?

It's not a mystery how we got here. Over the past three years, five of the eight teams have undergone coaching changes. That turnover included the departures of the only three coaches (West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez, Louisville's Bobby Petrino and Cincinnati's Brian Kelly) who had led teams to BCS berths since the league's post-2004 reconfiguration. A league can't experience that much coaching turnover without suffering a down period. But that's also the one factor that gives me pause in assuming the league will follow the same cyclical pattern as its counterparts. The Big East is the lone AQ conference coaches treat as a stepping stone to greener pastures. In that regard, it's no different than a mid-major league. If Charlie Strong manages to turn around Louisville, some SEC school will hire him. If Butch Jones brings Cincinnati back to the BCS, he'll probably be in the Big Ten a year later.

It's hard to maintain success with such instability, which means the Big East will inevitably have to make some changes. Some of the schools may need to start investing more heavily in their programs (no small feat in the current economy) to make it enticing for good coaches to stay. But most likely, the league will need to expand. We know the Big East has been discussing just that, with TCU in particular. Even a 10-team league provides greater assurance of having at least a couple of bell cows in any given year to help avoid debacles like this season.

Or maybe you were just wrong to describe conference strength as cyclical?  The teams in the Big East have smaller followings, less tradition, smaller stadia, inferior facilities, and weaker recruiting bases than the teams in the SEC and (to a lesser degree) the teams in the other AQCs.  It makes sense that the Big East would collectively achieve inferior results on the field.  There is absolutely nothing cyclical about that state of affairs.

The ACC: Why Does it Suck?

Mandel tackles the subject:

I surrender. I've been defending the ACC for years now, mainly by pointing out respectable regular season records against the other BCS conferences despite persistent BCS bowl failures, but now I don't even have that. This conference stinks. Period. The only thing I can't figure out is why. The ACC annually produces among the most NFL talent, and the coaches are largely respected in some form. Maybe the answer has something to do with only two quarterbacks being drafted out of the ACC over the last six years (Matt Ryan and Charlie Whitehurst)?
-- J.D. Bolick, Denver, N.C.

You know I believe strongly in the cyclical nature of conference strength, but admittedly the ACC has yet to hit its "up" cycle. And the interesting thing is, you can actually divide the league's seven seasons since expansion into two cycles.

The quarterback void was definitely a prominent factor for several years, starting after Phillip Rivers (NC State) and Matt Schaub (Virginia) played their final seasons in 2003. Around 2005-06, the ACC had arguably as much defensive talent as any league this side of the SEC. Florida State and Miami were still churning out elite defenses but bumbling around on offense with QBs like Kyle Wright and Drew Weatherford. NC State had three first-round picks (Mario Williams, Manny Lawson and John McCargo) on its 2005 defense, but couldn't break seven wins. (Our old pal Chesty Chuck might have had something to do with that.) Georgia Tech endured the four-year Reggie Ball era. It was ugly.

Now, the league finally has a whole bunch of good quarterbacks -- Russell Wilson, Christian Ponder, Jacory Harris, Josh Nesbitt, Tyrod Taylor, Kyle Parker and the much-improved T.J. Yates -- but the defenses have gone in the toilet, most notably Florida State's. Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech are struggling on that side of the ball, too. North Carolina was expected to be an exception before suspension city kicked in. Bottom line: I think most schools in the league have the right coaches in place and a good number of NFL-caliber players, but just can't seem to put it all together. Things are better than they were in the latter half of the 'aughts, but not there yet.

It’s good that Mandel acknowledges that his belief that conference strength is cyclical is refuted by the example of the ACC.  (The official Braves & Birds position is that conference strength is best thought of visually as a series of sine waves.  The SEC’s wave is set higher than the waves of the other conferences.  On occasion, the SEC will be at a low-point on its wave and one or more of the other conferences will be at a high-point [such as 2005, the last year in which Mark Richt won an SEC title], but on the whole, the SEC will be higher most of the time.)  His explanation lacks punch, although there’s nothing wrong with a cursory opinion in the mailbag format.  It’s not as if Mandel threw up his hands after writing a long feature piece.

I’m usually not a fan of obvious explanation, but there’s a basic one for the ACC’s lack of football prowess: the schools of the ACC don’t care that much about football.  Yes, the schools have generally shown a commitment to football through stadium and facilities improvements, but are they on the level of the SEC and Big Ten in terms of spending?  No.  Are they on that level in terms of attendance?  No.  Are they on the level of the SEC in terms of paying for top coaching talent?  Absolutely not.  The ACC programs sit in talent-rich states, but they aren’t turning that talent into winning teams.

This is a free market economy and more often than not, you get what you pay for.  The SEC (and to a slightly lesser extent, the Big Ten) cares more about football because the conference is full of historical powers supported by fans who were weaned on college football fanaticism.  That fanaticism pays for Bobby Petrino and Steve Spurrier.  (There is no SEC equivalent to Miami, a potential superpower program that doesn’t spend money on football and thus has to skimp on coaching hires.)  That fanaticism cannot be created overnight.  That’s why the ACC is languishing in football.

(Note: an ACC fan might point out that the conference generally has higher academic standards than the SEC and there is some merit to that argument, but the academic standards of certain ACC programs ought to make it easier for the conference to produce elite teams, not harder.  If Virginia, North Carolina, Duke, Wake, and Georgia Tech are all limited in football by their entry requirements, then it should be easier for Florida State, Miami, Clemson, and Virginia Tech – schools with SEC-level entry requirements and therefore bigger recruiting pools – to whip up on their conference brethren and produce gaudy records.  [See: 1992-2000.]  That’s not happening.)

You Need People Like me, so you Can Point your F***ing Finger and Say “That’s the Bad Guy.”

I expect hyperbole from the Bleacher Report.  I expect articles titled “Ten Reasons why Nick Saban is a Commi-Nazi.”  I don’t expect transparent attempts to drive hits from Sports Illustrated.  That publications seems more respectable.  So when I was scanning SI.com’s front page on Monday and saw an article by Stewart Mandel entitled "Masoli move latest proof Nutt is certifiably dirty coach", I assumed that this had to be an instance of a lowly headline writer at the web site taking liberties with the article.  Nope.  Mandel is really calling Nutt dirty.  In doing so, Mandel’s reasoning is horrendous on any one of a number of levels.  It’s the sort of petty moralizing that one expects on sports radio. 

First, Mandel’s definition of “dirty” is both misplaced and too broad.  Read these words and ask yourself if there is a coach to whom these words would not apply:

The definition of "dirty" seems to vary based on one's affiliation, but surely we can all agree on at least one designation: A dirty coach is willing to eschew his integrity if doing so might pay off in a couple more W's. He's not so much a winner as a survivalist. He's not even necessarily a rule-breaker because he creates his own loopholes.

Any coach who makes compromises to win games is dirty.  Really, Stewart?  If that is your definition, then every major college football coach is dirty.  Nick Saban consistently oversigns and then puts pressure on his existing players so he can fit his plus-sized recruiting classes under the 85-scholarship limit.  Urban Meyer famously told Jevan Snead that he was recruiting Tim Tebow as a linebacker.  Is Mandel writing columns about how Saban and Meyer are dirty?  No, because they are respected coaches at major programs.  Mandel doesn’t want to piss off titans, but he feels free to invade Granada by picking on Houston Nutt.

And then think about Mandel’s definition of “dirty.”  Wouldn’t a better definition of dirty be “a coach who breaks the rules that govern his profession?”  What’s dirtier: violating NCAA rules or accepting a transfer of a player who has been booted off of his team?  That’s what’s ludicrous about Mandel’s piece.  Within the first three paragraphs, Mandel has taken the position that Nutt is dirtier than Pete Carroll, who presided over a program that just got tagged with the harshest sanctions dealt out by the NCAA to a major football program in almost a decade, and Lane Kiffin, who made secondary violations his modus operandi in one season at Tennessee.  Call me crazy, but in the hierarchy of ethics, violating the rules that govern one’s profession is worse than welcoming a player whom Mandel’s own publication just published a mostly positive piece. 

Second, Mandel’s retelling of the Mitch Mustain/Gus Malzahn saga is just wrong.  Mandel points to this as the point at which Nutt lost his ethical bearings, but I fail to see what Nutt did wrong.  He hired Malzahn, possibly in part to secure Mustain’s letter of intent, but it’s not as if hiring Malzahn was unqualified (as subsequent events have demonstrated).  Then, during Mustain’s freshman season, Nutt figured out that the strength of his team was its two star running backs – Darren McFadden and Felix Jones – and tasked David Lee with figuring out the best way to get them the ball.  Thus, the Wildcat offense was born.  Arkansas won the SEC West and was Reggie Fish’s boner away from winning the conference.  Nutt did marginalize Malzahn, but the result speak for themselves.  Is getting McFadden and Jones on the field at the same time evidence of Nutt turning into Dr. Evil?  I’m going with no.

Third, Mandel cites the Jamar Hornsby episode to establish a pattern, as if a sample size of two is sufficient to conclude that Nutt will take any player.  Moreover, the Hornsby episode illustrates two additional points that bear mentioning.  First, Hornsby’s crime at Florida – using the credit card of a teammate’s dead girlfriend – was incredibly foul, but it was non-violent.  Masoli has been accused of several crimes and pled guilty to participating in the theft of a laptop, but his crimes are also non-violent.  There’s a distinction between Nutt bringing any old “questionable character” to Oxford and Nutt bringing someone who threatens the safety of the populace.  Nutt has done the former, but not the latter.  At least the players he brought to campus aren’t dragging their girlfriends by the hair down the stairs of apartment complexes like some legends.  (I’m eagerly looking forward to Mandel addressing the last four years of Tom Osborne’s coaching career under the standard that he has laid down for Nutt.  And I say this as someone who likes Osborne.)

Fourth, Mandel plays the “what about the children!?!” trope by asking how Nathan Stanley, Ole Miss’s current starter, feels about Nutt bringing in Masoli.  Leaving aside the fact that Nutt is bringing in a player with one year of eligibility (by Mandel’s standard, any coach who recruits a star freshman quarterback when he has an existing starter is dirty; I guess Lloyd Carr is a dirty jerk for recruiting Chad Henne when he already had Matt Gutierrez), isn’t football supposed to be about competition?  If Stanley is a competitor, then he’ll respond to Masoli coming to Oxford by saying to himself “I know this offense better than Masoli and I’m going to make him my back-up.”  If he’s a realist, he’ll say “gee, we only had two quarterbacks; what would happen if I got hurt?”  In Stewart’s world, Stanley should say “my coach wants to win games?  Burn him!” 

One final question to end this rant: should Masoli have been banished from football for his offenses at Oregon? 

Mandel Weighs in on Parity

So after Dr. Saturday and I riffed on the idea that parity may or may not have left the SEC, we had an offering by Stewart Mandel that this season promises to be a return to parity. I'd be interested to see if Mandel can square a return to parity with the fact that most members of the media are predicting Alabama and Florida to win their divisions again, as well as Ohio State winning the Big Ten, Oregon winning the Pac Ten, Texas and Oklahoma duking it out in the Big XII, and TCU and Boise State positioning themselves as the gate-crashers. I'd also be interested to see Mandel address this issue: if 2007 was the year of parity and it started with USC as a massive favorite, then doesn't that indicate that the it's hard to tell before the season whether we are going to see a season of parity (or at least that the herd that forms conventional wisdom has a hard time seeing an unstable season).

Personally, I agree with Mandel that this year shapes up to be unpredictable because I don't see a single team that has the makings of a dominant team. But then again, all that means is that every team has question marks. It's possible that two or three teams will see all of those question marks answered with positive answers and we'll end up with another year like last year. Maybe Florida's young defenders mesh from the outset. Maybe Landry Jones turns into Sam Bradford 2.0. Maybe Virginia Tech's offensive stirrings last year are paired with a typically excellent Hokie defense. Maybe Ricky Stanzi will learn to throw to the guys on his team. There are more maybes this year about the major contenders this year than what we would normally expect and that indicates an unpredictable season, but we're only talking about probability here.

Another interesting question about parity is this: will we see a relatively new champion this year? After all, if an NFL season of crazy upsets ended with the Patriots or Steelers winning the Super Bowl, that wouldn't feel like a crazy, unpredictable result, would it? 2007 is the gold standard for a year of parity, but in the end, the national championship game was contested between the teams that had won the national title four and five years previously. Likewise, if we have a crazy year and then Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, or Ohio State end up with the crystal ball, then that won't exactly be a glowing endorsement for the topsy turvy nature of the sport because every one of those teams won a title last decade. I'm thinking out loud here, but maybe we should be rooting for someone truly out of left field? Wouldn't that be a nice antidote to the relatively staid 2009 season?

Duel of the Jews, Basketball Edition

Before you read Stewart Mandel's claim that the term "mid-major" should be retired, here are four statistics for you:

1. No team from outside of a BCS conference has won the national championship in college basketball since UNLV twenty years ago. (The Tarkanian-coached UNLV teams had, uh, certain attributes that make them distinct from any current program. It appears that the mid-major who came closest to ending the drought - 2008 Memphis - also shared some of those attributes.)

2. Here are the seeds of the last 20 NCAA champions:

2009 North Carolina - 1
2008 Kansas - 1
2007 Florida - 1
2006 Florida - 3
2005 North Carolina - 1
2004 UConn - 2
2003 Syracuse - 3
2002 Maryland - 1
2001 Duke - 1
2000 Michigan State - 1
1999 UConn - 1
1998 Kentucky - 2
1997 Arizona - 4
1996 Kentucky - 1
1995 UCLA - 1
1994 Arkansas - 1
1993 North Carolina - 1
1992 Duke - 1
1991 Duke - 2
1990 UNLV - 1

14 #1 seeds, three #2 seeds, two #3 seeds, and one #4 seed. '88 Kansas, '85 Villanova, and '83 N.C. State are in the distant past and even those three noted Cinderellas come from the Big Eight, the Big East, and the ACC. If you want a good piece of evidence for my notion that the NCAA Tournament should be 16 teams instead of 64, this is it.

3. We are one year removed from an NCAA Tournament in which all of the 1, 2, and 3 seeds made the Sweet Sixteen.

4. We are two years removed from a Final Four that featured four 1 seeds.

So yes, Stewart, in light of that evidence, the distinction between schools that belong to the six BCS conferences and those that don't is "mystical." Mandel shows this bizarre ability to acknowledge reality:

As we move into Stage 2 of this championship, the favorites will remain those schools with the number 1 in front of them -- Syracuse, Kentucky and Duke. None were remotely threatened in their first two contests, and surely, we must assume, the clock will run out at some point for our friends at Saint Mary's, Cornell and Northern Iowa. It always does.

and then forget it a few paragraphs later:

But when the "best teams" aren't all that different than "the next-best teams," upsets happen. Here's guessing we've hardly seen the last of them in this, the nation's most egalitarian sporting event.

Mandel's line of thinking annoys me in two separate ways. First, it is a really good illustration of the recency fallacy. He takes one weekend of results and makes broad conclusions, completely ignoring a bevy of relevant facts that demolish his hypothesis. The clear trend in recent years has been for chalk to prevail in the NCAA Tournament. Northern Iowa beating Kansas and St. Mary's beating Villanova doesn't change that. Second, Mandel is feeding the media narrative that the NCAA Tournament is exciting and unpredictable. It may be exciting for people who want to reduce a season to three weeks, but the unpredictability factor is seriously overrated. Yes, there are upsets every year in the first two rounds (some years more than others), but at the end of the road, there is a team from a major school standing in the falling confetti in a dome somewhere. We like to imagine that the NCAA Tournament embodies the American Dream and that the little guy can go from nothing to glory, but just about all of the time, the little guy ends up face down in a pool with "The World Is Mine" rotating above his head.

Launch the V2s! (Or why Big Ten Expansion Won't Cure What Ails the Conference)

Because I am who I am and this blog is what it is, I'm going to compare Jim Delany to Hitler. The Big Ten is making a very public show of its interest in expansion. I have no doubt that this move is motivated by a major case of SEC envy. Barry Alvarez was probably sitting on his couch for the first weekends of the past two Decembers, watching the #1 and #2 teams in the country play each other in the Georgia Dome and thinking to himself "man, we need something like that." However, what the Big Ten needs is not the game in early December; what it needs is teams of the quality of Florida and Alabama.

Let's imagine that the Big Ten had a conference championship game this year pitting Ohio State and Iowa and the game was played in Chicago on the same day as the SEC Championship Game. Florida and Alabama were #1 and #2, playing for a spot in the National Championship Game. The game featured the 2008 Heisman winner against the eventual 2009 winner. It featured two of the top four defenses in the country. It featured Urban Meyer against Nick Saban, the two coaches who would probably command the highest salaries if every college coach became a free agent tomorrow morning. In contrast, Ohio State/Iowa would have pitted two teams outside of the top five. The quarterback match-up would have been wasted talent/big disappointment Terrelle Pryor against the immortal James Vendenberg. The coaching match-up would have pitted Jim Tressel and Kirk Ferentz, who were last seen competing with one another in Columbus to see who could create a denser diamond out of the lumps of coals in their nether regions.

There are reasons why the Big Ten is sixth in the 2009 Sagarin conference rankings while the SEC is first. There are reasons why the same was true in 2008 and 2007. In 2006, when the Big Ten was allegedly up and had a famous #1 vs. #2 game in November, the SEC was first and the Big Ten fifth. This is the fourth straight season in which the Big Ten has finished way behind the SEC, its one rival in terms of media profile, fan interest, and revenue generation. Those reasons have nothing to do with the conference ending its season before Thanksgiving. Big Ten teams would suck just as much in September as they do the other three months of the season.

There are two reasons for this gap, one of which the Big Ten can control and one of which it can't. The obvious reason is that there is a vast disparity between the talent available in the Southeast and the Midwest. One can look at the Rivals database for any year and realize the gulf in proximate talent. For instance, this year, there are 44 players in the eight Big Ten states rated as four-star or higher by Rivals. There are 49 such players in Florida alone. Big Ten teams are behind the eight ball because population drain from the Midwest, as well as a variety of other factors, means that they are farming barren fields.

The second factor, which the teams in the league can control, is a collection of mediocre coaches. The Big Ten and SEC outpace every other conference in terms of revenue. What the Big Ten states lack in fast, mean dudes who can tackle, they make up in eyeballs that interest advertisers. What the Big Ten should be doing with that revenue is ploughing it into brand name coaches. After all, if you have to go outside your region to acquire talent, shouldn't you hire a top coach who has: (1) name recognition in Florida and Texas; and (2) the ability to make average talent look better?

SEC programs are certainly willing to spend top dollar for the coaches with the best resumes; Big Ten programs are not. There is no analog in the Big Ten to Arkansas hiring Bobby Petrino or South Carolina hiring Steve Spurrier. South Carolina and Arkansas can best be described as lower middle class in the SEC. They are behind Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida in terms of natural advantages. Thus, they hired two coaches with great resumes and paid those coaches market value for their services. Even when SEC programs hire cheaper, underwhelming coaches (see: Kiffin, Lane and Chizik, Gene), they then spend their savings on top notch assistants. If they end up with Braxton Bragg instead of Robert E. Lee, then they at least get Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet to be the subordinates. Leaving aside the fact that there are no Petrinos or Spurriers in the Big Ten's middle class, there are no Malzahns or Monte Kiffins, either.

Every head coach in the SEC falls into one of three acceptable categories for a major program head coach: (1) significant success as a head coach at a lower level (Johnson, Meyer); (2) success as a head coach on a comparable level (Petrino, Miles, Nutt, Brooks, Spurrier, Saban); or (3) coordinator for a national championship program (Richt, Mullen, Kiffin, Chizik). Where does Pat Fitzgerald fit into those categories? Or Ron Zook? Or Danny Hope? Or Bill Lynch? Or Tim Brewster?

And so, to come full circle, the Big Ten right now reminds me of the Third Reich in the summer of 1944. Germany was about to get hammered in the East by Operation Bagration and in the West by Operation Cobra. Faced with major issue, Hitler decided that the way to win the war was by firing a bevy of V-2 rockets at London. His decision was a classic case of praying for some sort of saving throw the the dice when faced with basic shortcomings. This analogy isn't perfect because there was nothing that Germany could do to win the War after Stalingrad, whereas there is an obvious way for the Big Ten to get out of its current crisis. (The analogy also has a timeline issue in the sense that Hitler was always too obsessed with technological solutions, so pinning his hopes on the V-2 was not just a summer 1944 mistake.) Hitler didn't have the option of bringing in better generals to reverse setbacks in the field. Still, the basic idea is that the Big Ten is proposing a solution that does not address the problem. Expanding to 12 teams and adding a championship game will add revenue to the league, but the conference is already awash in revenue. The problem is what the programs are doing with that revenue.

(And speaking of revenue, coming back to the Mandel article that I linked above, I don't understand how a championship game that should generate something in the neighborhood of $12M annually [assuming that it is close to as economically successful as the SEC Championship Game] could possibly be offset by the occasional loss of a second BCS bid that is worth $4.5M. Mandel also ignores the fact that, using this year as an example, if Ohio State beat Iowa in the title game and knocked them out of at-large contention, Penn State would have stepped right in to fill their shoes. Those criticisms aside, Mandel's piece about Big Ten expansion is excellent and I agree with his conclusion. There is no obvious candidate for expansion other than Notre Dame. Missouri seems unlikely to join and Pitt does not bring much in terms of additional fans/TV markets.)

The Post That Ends With Stewart Mandel and George Clooney in the Same Sentence

Good lord, Mandel, stop writing about Notre Dame! It's embarrassing when Sports Illustrated's top college football writer has such a poor grasp of what ails college football's most famous program. Here is his explanation for why the Irish are down:

Twenty years ago, the Irish were not alone among major independents, but by 1993, Florida State, Miami and Penn State had all joined conferences. Is it a coincidence that 1993 was also the last time Notre Dame came close to a national title? As I wrote Monday, today's blue-chip football prospects grow up watching certain conferences. Kids in Georgia and Louisiana dream of playing in the SEC. Kids in Texas dream of playing in the Big 12. Besides the South Side of Chicago and certain Midwestern Catholic conclaves, not a lot of kids today grow up specifically watching Notre Dame. So not only does the school have to recruit nationally, it has to sell prospects on why playing for Notre Dame is better than playing in a certain conference. Weis was able to sell Jimmy Clausen, Michael Floyd, et. al., on his pedigree as an NFL offensive Yoda, but I'm not sure what incentive he could offer to comparable defenders.

Here are Notre Dame's recruiting ranks for Charlie Weis's four full classes:

2009 - 24 (12th in average star ranking)
2008 - 2 (1st in average star ranking)
2007 - 8 (6th in average star ranking)
2006 - 8 (13th in average star ranking)

And lest we think that Weis was compiling great classes that contained nothing other than offensive players, here is Notre Dame's starting lineup on defense this year and their recruiting ranks by Rivals:

DE - Kapron Lewis-Moore - four-star, 5.8
DE - Kerry Neal - four-star, 5.8
DT - Ian Williams - three-star, 5.7
DT - Ethan Johnson - four-star, 6.0
LB - Darius Fleming - four-star, 5.9
LB - Manti Te'o - five-star, 6.1
LB - Brian Smith - four-star, 5.8
CB - Robert Blanton - four-star, 5.8
CB - Gary Gray - four-star, 5.9
S - Sergio Brown - three-star, 5.6
S - Kyle McCarthy - three-star, 5.5

Wow, only eight blue chip players! It really is impossible for an independent program like Notre Dame to convince top players to come to South Bend! Why are Irish fans so foolish to think that such a result is possible when recruits are clearly going to discriminate against them for not being in a conference?!? (Seriously, have you ever heard a recruiting analyst claim that players make decisions based on conference affiliations?)

How the f*** is 8-4 the ceiling for a roster that is probably only rivaled by Texas, USC, Ohio State, Georgia, and Florida in terms of the percentage of blue chip players occupying the starting spots? Notre Dame does not have any disadvantages that are killing its recruiting, as evidenced by every recruiting class of the Weis era. They do have the self-imposed disadvantage of having hired three bad head coaches.

And then this argument is so bad, I, I, just read it:

In his article, Walters cites Alabama's long spat of mediocrity before hiring its home-run coach, Nick Saban, as a comparison to Notre Dame. But unlike Saban, Notre Dame's next coach can't sign 30-plus players knowing some won't qualify. He won't be able to land 95 percent of his roster from within the Southeast. That's why Alabama (and Florida, and Texas) will never stay down for long, and that's why coaches like Saban, Urban Meyer and Bob Stoops don't view the Notre Dame job with as much allure as its history would seem to warrant.

So let's see. Alabama has a regional recruiting profile. Because they are recruiting the Deep South where the public high schools can be, shall we say, hit or miss, Bama oversigns because they know they are going to lose some of their recruits to qualification issues. Notre Dame, on the other hand, has a national recruiting profile. Unlike Alabama, they can go to Hawai'i and pick off a five-star linebacker like Manti Te'o. Because of its huge geographic base, Notre Dame does not need to take chances on potential academic casualties. And this is a disadvantage for...Notre Dame? That makes perfect sense! I look forward to Mandel next making the case that he is in a better situation with the opposite sex than George Clooney because he has fewer options and therefore has an easier time making decisions.

Notre Dame Lost! Let's All Overreact!

Illustrating the reality that the media are often afraid of performing their function as fact-checkers and that they will repeat any old claim from someone "in the arena," here is Mandel repeating the Pat Fitzgerald quote that has been breathlessly cited since Saturday:

"Even though we're similar academically, we're in a little different boat as Stanford and Notre Dame. We've been consistently winning since 1995. They're still saying they can do it, but we're doing it."

It took me a whopping five minutes to confirm that Fitzgerald's claim is utter bunk. Yes, Pat, Northwestern has been "consistently winning" in a time period in which the program is under .500. And the Wildcats are doing SO much better than Notre Dame over that time period, as evidenced by the fact that the Irish are a mere 37 places higher than Northwestern in the winning percentage rankings. Good lord, Mandel, you're basing an entire piece on a claim by your alma mater's head coach that is verifiably false!

Leaving history aside and just looking at this year, Fitzgerald cannot make the case that the Wildcats are on par with the Irish. Superficially, the teams have close records, but they have played wildly different schedules. Northwestern lined up the murderer's row of Syracuse, Towson State, Eastern Michigan, and Miami (OH). The Wildcats are the only team against whom Eastern Michigan stayed within single digits. Northwestern joins Maine and Akron as Syracuse's only victims this season. Northwestern doesn't play Ohio State, they played a colossally overrated Iowa team without its quarterback for most of the game, and they were dominated by Penn State. The Sagarin Predictor puts Northwestern a mere 58 spots behind Notre Dame and would make the Irish a two touchdown favorite on a neutral field. Is this what parity looks like?

And then let's tackle your central thesis, Mandel, which is that "Notre Dame is no longer different than other programs of its type." If you're reading this, I'd like to propose a little wager: Notre Dame will have a better average ranking over the next five years than Stanford or Northwestern. I'm so certain that the Irish's massive advantages in exposure, recruiting, and financial resources will matter that I'll give you 3:1 odds on the bet. If gambling makes you uncomfortable, then we can agree that the winner will donate his booty to the charity of his choosing. I'm not much of a betting man myself, but I'm so confident that you are overreacting in a massive fashion to the events of one weekend (not to mention using a chance to plug your team) that I'm willing to do something new. Good gracious, I'm so confident that I'm willing to put money on Charlie Weis.

No No No

Our auld enemy Mandel had been doing so well and then this thought on Boise State being #5 and the prospect of major conference teams passing them:

Over the rest of the season, Boise faces an indisputably weak schedule including one FCS foe (UC-Davis) and eight other teams ranked between 60th and 105th in CollegeBCS.com's simulated BCS standings. Should they keep winning late into the season and start knocking on the title-game doorstep, we'll witness something else: significant outcry from those who feel the Broncos are undeserving.

However, there's very little precedent for voters suddenly downgrading a team without cause. And contrary to what you might believe, the BCS computers aren't likely to cause the Broncos' undoing. For one thing, they only account for one-third of the overall standings, not to mention an unblemished record goes a long way in the computers' eyes. Last season, both Utah and Boise State actually finished the regular season ranked higher by the computers than the voters. The Broncos may get docked a couple of "style points" should they endure an undue scare against a San Jose State or Idaho, but realistically, the only way they could fail to make up three spots in 10 weeks is if the voters start vaulting other, more "deserving" teams above them following a big win or two.

I'm not sure if Mandel is saying that the prospect of major conference teams vaulting Boise State because of big wins is "without cause." If he is saying that, then Mandel is both insane and violating his statement in December 2006 that the pollsters were not unreasonable in vaulting Florida past idle Michigan:

Carr was 100 percent correct when he pointed out Sunday night: "[Florida] would not have moved ahead of us had USC won its game" It's true. No one would have bothered re-ordering No. 3 and No. 4.

But the pollsters don't operate in a vacuum. They knew exactly what the stakes were when they turned in their ballots, and quite frankly, I don't think they felt comfortable playing God. They didn't feel comfortable relegating a 12-1 SEC champion to the Sugar Bowl based solely on their subjective belief -- check that, their assumption -- that the Gators wouldn't give Ohio State a better game than Michigan did.

If Mandel is OK with the notion of, for example, USC vaulting Boise State if the Trojans win at Oregon, Cal, and Notre Dame, then we have nothing to argue about. However, this paragraph makes me think that Mandel really thinks the former and not the latter:

That said, realistically the Broncos would not take down a Florida or Texas in a championship setting, and there will probably be any number of other teams with better résumés. But the pollsters have set a precedent by ranking Boise this high this soon. If they suddenly turn around at the end of the season and blatantly manipulate the rankings to exclude the Broncos, the BCS is going to have yet another credibility issue on its hands.

How exactly is it "blatant manipulat[ion]" for the voters to reward teams for big wins by placing them over Boise State? Mandel's characterization concerns me because it creates a narrative for the Orrin Hatches of the world to complain when Boise gets put behind teams that defeat quality opponents. The Broncos are like a fantasy football team that has a big total because all of the team's players put up numbers in the Sunday 1 p.m. time slot. Boise has no remaining opportunities to pick up points, whereas other teams (including TCU) have a number of opportunities to impress.

And yes, there is some silliness in me playing the role of Kremlinologist about a writer whom I have previously criticized as a lazy thinker on a number of occasions.

"You're Not Impressed That We Beat Chris Zurbrugg?"

What Thomas Friedman is to a Manhattan Project for alternative energy, I am to the BCS/non-BCS conference contretemps that have erupted since Utah whipped an Alabama team missing its best player. I just can't stop writing about it. I was worried that I was becoming a bit of a stuck record, but our old friend Mandel weighed in with a piece so rife with problems that writing about it makes me feel like a naval aviator at the Marianas Turkey Shoot. And what are those problems?

I'll cut to the chase: the biggest problem running through the entire article (and much of the criticism of the BCS) is the notion that the BCS is some sort of conspiracy to deprive mid-majors from the ability to play for the national title:

The BCS, which began in 1998, was designed to avoid situations like the one in '84, when the top two teams in the polls could not meet in a bowl game. However, because the system was founded by the six major conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC) and Notre Dame, it's become significantly harder for a team from outside that group to rise to No. 1 or 2.

Stewart seems to have a hard time with logic, so I'll make this as plain as possible: under the current rules of the BCS, BYU would have played for the national title in 1984. The Cougars were #1 in the polls going into the bowls. They would have been #1 or #2 in the BCS rankings, especially the current incarnation of the polls that minimizes the role of computer ratings and emasculates those computers by denying them the right to use margin of victory.

So what has changed? The voters take strength of schedule into account far more than they used to. Think about it. Your average voter in 1984 got his news from the local paper. When he wasn't covering a game live, he had few options for watching them on TV. Thus, he would not have seen BYU or the teams that they played. Your average voter in 2009 can watch just about any team in the country because of the proliferation of televised college football. He is probably getting his news from ESPN, SI.com, and/or the blogosphere, all of which cover the entire country and expose the voters to a vast ocean of data. In short, voters are far more educated now than they used to be, which means they can look behind a shiny record. I wouldn't say that voters are smart, but they are smarter than they used to be and they are starting to get the concept that a 10-1 team can be better than an 11-0 team, or that teams don't have to move in lockstep as long as they keep winning. Mandel starts the story as follows: "Twenty-five years ago this fall, BYU hijacked college football. The sport has been fighting back ever since." Who is doing the fighting? The coaches and the voters in the Harris poll. If anyone is the villain, it's them.

And why is it some sort of nefarious conspiracy that voters are more interested in strength of schedule than they used to be? Mandel acts as if the BCS conferences and Notre Dame are some sort of mini version of the Freemasons or the Trilateral Commission for allegedly convincing the voters that they should take the "whom did you beat?" question seriously. This is a bad thing?

The story that Mandel tells about the '84 Cougars illustrates why voters are (or should be) skeptical about gaudy records. BYU beat #3 Pitt and then a Baylor team coming off of a bowl season in their first two games, which launched BYU into the top ten. As Mandel admits much later in the article, Pitt and Baylor both finished with losing records, but beating them gave BYU an early, misleading boost. BYU then struggled with two WAC opponents, leading back-up quarterback Blaine Fowler to whine "We felt like we had to win by 40 every week." Uh, when you're playing teams that a national champion should bury, then yes, you should win by 40.

Mandel then moves into a discussion of BYU ending up in the Holiday Bowl against the worst of Bo Schembechler's 21 Michigan teams:

Writers from the nation's major papers began descending on Provo to profile Edwards' improbable team. Rumors began to swirl that BYU would get out of its contract with the Holiday Bowl to play in the higher-profile Fiesta Bowl. That didn't happen, but officials from the six-year-old San Diego game (which had hosted BYU every year of its existence) tried feverishly to find a worthy opponent for the top-ranked Cougars.

Executive Director John Reid, hampered by his game's $500,000 payout, later recounted seven schools turned him down, including Doug Flutie-led Boston College. The selection committee settled on 6-5 Michigan, which had risen as high as No. 3 early in the season before QB Jim Harbaugh broke his arm in the fifth game.

Am I the only one who sees something missing here? Mandel takes a shot at the "seven schools" who were apparently afraid of playing BYU in the Holiday Bowl, but he glides right past the question of why BYU didn't try to play in the Fiesta Bowl, which ultimately pitted 8-4 Miami against 8-3 UCLA. In other words, two non-WAC teams that finished with winning records, a category of opponent that BYU didn't play in 1984. And we're supposed to believe that it's a bad thing that "college football" fought back? At the end of the article, BYU quarterback Max Hall makes the very reasonable statement that the way for a team like BYU to win the national title in the current era would be to beat "an Oklahoma, or a Florida or a Texas" and then go unbeaten. He's right about that. No mid-major has done that before, but that can't be the reason why there hasn't been a mid-major playing for a national title since 1984. No, it must be because of those bastards at the Harris poll taking strength of schedule into account.

Oh, Jokerman, You Don't Show Any Response

Ah, sweet sweet Mandel. How I missed you on your sabbatical. Where else am I going to have someone rank all-time college football coaches not on silly measurable criteria like winning percentage, national and conference titles, and contributions to the game, but instead on a completely subjective measuring stick like "iconic status"? So when Nebraska fans write e-mails by the hundreds pointing out their case for Tom Osborne using, you know, facts and logic, you can always counter with the total cop-out that you were listing "legends" instead of the "best" or "greatest," a.k.a. categories that can actually be debated.

Here is what's stupid about your approach, Stewart: you employ a mailbag format. That format requires a back and forth with your readers. You make assertions, the readers write to you in response, and on and on we go. In this format, refusing to back up your opinions against feedback is a chickenshit thing to do. You're ending the discussion by saying "I'm just giving my unverifiable opinion about something in the ether, so I can't be wrong!" That would be fine if you weren't soliciting responses from your readers in the first place. You throw up your hands and say "I didn't say 'best' or 'greatest,'" but all you're doing is shifting the question from something that can be discussed intelligently to something that can't. While you're at it, you might as well redefine the term "hotseat" so you can make an argument based on imaginary results that haven't happened yet.

And this isn't the first time you've done this. Your subjective method of ranking coaches by "iconic" status is pretty much the same as your infamous reasoning that Penn State is a national power while Georgia and LSU aren't because a hypothetical Montanan would feel that way. Amazing, isn't it, that Penn State is a "national program" and Paterno and Woody Hayes are two of the five greatest, er, I mean iconic coaches of all-time based on your sense of what other people sense. I wonder what it is that Penn State, Paterno, and Hayes have in common...

Oh, and you're also wrong about the spread-option offense. It's not just that it's a talent equalizer; it's a better way to skin a cat. It allows the offense to outnumber the defense by using the quarterback as a runner. It makes no sense for a smaller program to go to a power I-formation style because a less talented team should not use a sub-optimal strategy. Paul Johnson's option offense isn't a rebellion against the spread; it's a twist on the run-based spread concept. But it's late and I don't have time to explain football to you. Good night.

Mandel: Oh, the Horrors of a Rich Man Actually Spending his Money!

As I read this piece by Stewart Mandel complaining about Tennessee spending lavishly on assistant coaches for Lane Kiffin, I kept thinking to myself "you can't possibly be this naive, Stewart, can you?" Tennessee's football program, like most other major programs in the SEC, generates an enormous amount of revenue. The SEC is about to be flush with TV cash as a result of its new deals with CBS and ESPN. Why in the world would Mandel criticize Tennessee for spending some of that money to assemble a staff that gives the Vols a better chance of winning? Put another way, with Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and LSU all spending piles of cash on accomplished head coaches, how could Tennessee do anything but spend heavily on its new coaching staff if it expects to compete with those programs? If the Vols' neighbors are building tanks, then isn't it imperative for Tennessee to move beyond the cavalry era, especially when they have the money to do so? If one accepts the premise that head coaches are overrated and assistant coaches are underrated in terms of their impact on wins and losses (Exhibit A: Penn State), then Tennessee's strategy is smart.

This argument by Mandel is especially naive:

For a handful of highly endowed athletic departments -- Florida, Texas, Ohio State, Georgia, et. al. -- these rapidly escalating assistant salaries will merely become another part of doing business. They can afford it. However, the vast majority of Division I-A schools cannot. Already feeling the pinch of massive increases in travel costs and tempered donations from boosters hit hard by the ongoing financial crisis, these programs will be hard-pressed to retain assistants that achieve any level of notoriety.

"This is what shocks me the most: We're on the front end of a very serious economic downturn," Dutch Baughman, executive director of the Division I-A Athletic Directors Association, recently told The State in Columbia, S.C. "For the first time, we're seeing coordinators receive multiple-year contracts and levels of compensation that have actually caused some schools in some conferences to be at a major disadvantage."

Uh, when was Vanderbilt not at a disadvantage against Tennessee? Tennessee draws 102,000 fans for every home game. The demand for tickets causes Vol fans to donate huge sums to the athletic department for the right to sit in choice spots. Tennessee fans regularly outfit themselves in creamsicle monstrosities, further filling the school's coffers. None of these statements can be made about Vandy fans (and that's fine with every Vandy fan I know), so why shouldn't Vandy be at a financial disadvantage next to Tennessee? If Stewart wants to write about a socialist sport with forced revenue equalization, the NFL is ready when he is. And that's before we get to the hypocrisy of Mandel complaining about a college football program seeking to benefit from its an intense, loyal fan base, all while Mandel's salary is paid by hits derived from a number of intense, loyal fan bases, Tennessee's included.

Here's the bottom line: college football's popularity is increasing, as are the ways for college programs to convert that interest into dollars. As a result, revenues generated by major college football programs are also increasing. The financial rewards for success are getting greater, as are the risks for major programs that do not win. In that environment, it is foolish for major programs not to spend heavily to increase their odds of success. Collectively, the SEC programs have greater fan intensity and interest than the programs of any other conference. SEC programs don't need to be castigated for making use of the fruits of that interest. If other conferences want to complain, then they can fill their stadia with 82,000 screaming lunatics for seven Saturdays in the fall. They can create fan bases that get into fights about the 1972 Iron Bowl at Braves games.

The seven regular readers of this blog might be wondering right now: am I the same guy who whined about the Yankees' spending on free agents? Yes, and here's why I'm not a hypocrite:

1. There are at least ten major programs in college football that can spend lavishly on coaches and facilities. The Yankees have no peer in baseball in terms of revenue and spending.

2. American pro sports are supposed to be relatively even playing fields. That's why the worst teams always pick first in amateur drafts. There is no such assumption with college sports.

3. The Yankees can spend like they do because they are the oldest team in the largest market in the country. You'd be hard pressed to show how Tennessee has a similar natural advantage. Put another way, Tennessee is a high revenue team because of decades of success and good management, not because there are a lot of eyeballs in the State of Tennessee. The Vols, unlike the Yanks, weren't born on third base thinking they hit a triple.

4. Spending on coaches and facilities is an indirect way to get talent. Offering 20% more than any other team in baseball for free agents is different. There's no baseball equivalent to Miami, a program with terrible facilities and average coaches that still recruits extremely well.

Duel of the Jews Strikes Back!

Duel of the Jews took a nice, long spring break, prolonged by, gasp, reasonably cogent answers from Mssr. Mandel in his Mailbag. But fear not, loyal few B&B readers, because Stewart isn't thinking clearly again. I give you last week's Mailbag. Stella, I'm feeling something approaching a groove...

It appears that a few preseason magazines have the Florida Gators at No. 1 for the upcoming season. What do you think?
-- Ryan, Orlando

As I've said in the past, different people have different interpretations of what a preseason poll should be. I'm one of those who treat them as a "starting point," based on how a team finished the year before and who it has coming back. Most people, however, treat them as a prediction of what the final poll will be next January -- and obviously preview magazines fall into that category.

To that end, predicting Florida to win this year's national championship is as reasonable a prediction as any. The Gators return 16 starters, including a Heisman-winning quarterback (Tim Tebow), an otherworldly playmaker (Percy Harvin), a solid offensive line and nearly every key defensive player. And if you're one of those that likes to "play out" the schedule, you have to like the fact Florida plays just one road game against a team likely to be ranked in the preseason (Tennessee).

But let's not forget, the Gators lost four games last season and finished last in the SEC in pass defense. Anyone who's projecting Urban Meyer's team as national champion is making three pretty bold assumptions:

1) That Florida's defense will improve considerably. The Gators were extremely young on that side of the ball last year, starting as many as 10 freshmen and sophomores, and it showed. With a year's experience under their belt, it's not unreasonable to expect former all-everything recruits like linemen Carlos Dunlap, Justin Trattou and Torrey Davis or safety Major Wright to explode, but will it be enough for the unit to leap from mediocre to dominant?

2) That Tebow will hold up physically for another entire year. Which goes hand in hand with No. 3.

3) That a legitimate tailback will finally emerge. This is not just important in terms of taking some of the rushing load off Tebow but also because Florida's offense, for all its purported weapons, was very predictable at times last season. In the Capital One Bowl loss to Michigan, Tebow and Harvin accounted for 29 of 32 rushing attempts. The Gators need Chris Rainey or Emmanuel Moody to become a threat for Meyer's spread offense to be consistently dangerous.

I'll give Mandel point one, but to me, that's where the Florida analysis starts and ends. LSU survived an injury to its starting quarterback last year. Florida has two blue chippers sitting behind Tebow, both of whom have a year in Florida's system. If Urban Meyer could turn Alex Smith into the worst first draft pick in NFL history, then I think he can survive a game or two with Cameron Newton or John Brantley. Obviously, if Tebow is out for an extended period of time, then the Gators are in big trouble, but that's true for just about every major contender, save for Ohio State and their annoying, quarterback-optional approach to winning.

As for the third point, Florida averaged 457 yards and 42.5 points per game last year and gained a healthy 5.3 yards per carry against a very difficult schedule. If the Gators managed all of that without a functioning tailback, why exactly it is a necessity for Florida to find a tailback this year? Sure, it would be nice, but a top tailback in Florida's offense means fewer carries for Tebow and Harvin. Is that really a good thing? It's surely not a requirement that Florida hand the ball off 20 times.

But wait, it gets better...

Preseason magazines are mostly for fun (and for trying to decode Steele's elaborate color scheme), so there's no point getting too worked up over these rankings. If you're a Georgia fan, however, I'd imagine you're going to be pretty steamed if the AP and coaches polls follow suit. The Dawgs finished ahead of the Gators in the SEC standings last season, beat them on the field and return more starters (17).

Right, because that one extra starter that Georgia is returning really matters. There are perfectly convincing arguments to be made that Florida can be ranked ahead of Georgia. Georgia was a fumble by Vandy away from spiralling last year. The Gators' expected improvement on defense is greater than Georgia's expected improvement in any area. Florida has owned Georgia over the years, so one win shouldn't rationally convince Georgia fans that they have an advantage over Florida in Jacksonville.

We all know that preseason starting position can have a direct impact on the final results. For instance, while I thought LSU was plenty deserving of both its preseason and end-of-regular-season No. 2 rankings, there's no doubt in my mind that had the roles been reversed and Oklahoma had started the year No. 2 instead of No. 8, and LSU vice versa, the 11-2 Sooners would have played in the BCS title game instead of the 11-2 Tigers.

WTF? LSU had the same record as Oklahoma and played a demonstrably more difficult schedule. That would have been true regardless of where the two teams started the year. Mandel really might consider reading his own archives, because he's argued in the past that voters are improving and are really analyzing teams based on their merits instead of taking the conveyor belt approach when it comes to deciding who players for the national title. This, after all, was his reasoning for supporting Florida's jump over Michigan in 2006 when the Wolverines were higher ranked going into the final weekend. If voters can flip teams based in one week, how does Mandel argue with a straight face that they'll remember who they ranked in August and defer to that judgment?

Fast forward to this year. Let's say, hypothetically, the preseason AP poll replicates Steele's, which has Florida No. 1 and Georgia No. 9. And let's say, hypothetically, that it's another year like last season where a cluster of teams all finish with one or two losses. If Florida winds up one of those teams, it will have a much better chance of finishing in the top two than Georgia would if placed in the same scenario, and that's an advantage the Gators have not yet earned.

Or, the voters might just vote for the team that won the neutral site game between Florida and Georgia. Seriously, Mandel, of all the teams to use when you make this argument, you pick two teams who play each other in a split stadium every year. With the exception of Texas and Oklahoma, you picked the two worst teams to illustrate your point. If Florida and Georgia finish with the same record, 99 times out of 100, the team that wins the game will finish higher if the voters are paying attention.

I was somewhat astonished and dismayed at NBC's renewal of its TV contract with Notre Dame. This is not because I don't want to watch Notre Dame, but rather that it seems to be a slap in the face of the parity that the NCAA seems to be trying for. The reasoning being that all else being equal between two schools, isn't the fact that a recruit would be guaranteed to be on national TV for every home game an artificially introduced advantage toward Notre Dame? How is this fundamentally any different than if Notre Dame was able to pay recruits?
-- Darren Beyer, Orlando, Fla.

The difference is, the NCAA has rules against paying recruits, and can penalize its institutions accordingly. It does not have the authority, however, to tell NBC what it can or cannot put on its airwaves. In fact, it would be breaking the law if it did.

Notre Dame's right to sign a contract with NBC -- just like the Big Ten's right to sign with ABC, the SEC's right to sign with CBS, etc. -- was established by the United States Supreme Court in 1984. Prior to that, the NCAA strictly regulated how many times a school could appear on TV and how much it could be compensated for those appearances. Georgia and Oklahoma sued the NCAA on the grounds that those policies violated anti-trust law, and ultimately, the highest court in the land agreed. As a result, technically, all schools are free to negotiate their own network TV deals; it's just that all but Notre Dame, Army and Navy choose to do so within the confines of a conference.

So while the Irish's perceived recruiting advantage may in fact exist, it would be incorrect to describe it as "artificially induced." It actually came about through the most natural means possible: Capitalism.

First of all, this is an idiotic question. Mandel managed to print a question from possibly the only person who is surprised that teams like Notre Dame can turn their popularity into exposure. Second, I have to imagine that the Milton Friedman disciples among us cringed at that answer. Notre Dame has the right to strike its own TV deal because of antitrust law (and the Supreme Court's interpretation thereof). The Sherman Act is not "capitalism." To liberals/moderates like me, it is a reasonable regulation on the free market. To true libertarians, it is an unreasonable encroachment on the free market. But it's not the free market itself!

That felt good.

MANDEL!!!

Yesterday morning, I wrote about how pollsters are exhibiting a total lack of critical thought this year in blithely placing West Virginia, Missouri, and Ohio State in the top three spots in the polls simply because they have one loss and certain teams chasing them have two, even though several of the two-loss teams have played markedly tougher schedules. As if on cue, our old amigo Stewart Mandel arrived on the scene to illustrate what uncritical thinking looks like:

Not only have I been anti-playoff, but I've also been pro-BCS since it's inception (I can, in my mind, justify every title game participant). If Ohio State backdoors its way into the title game, then it's off to the playoff bandwagon I go. Please tell me you agree that putting Ohio State in the title game (and not just because of last year's performance versus Florida) is a bad, bad idea. A loss to Illinois isn't bad ... but beating absolutely no one of real significance is.
--Jared, Lawton, Okla.

First of all, that's very brave of you, Jared, to admit your fondness for the BCS in a public setting. I believe in certain states you can be fined and imprisoned for such a thing.

While I'm certainly not crazy about the idea of a team advancing to the national-title game while sitting on the couch for two weeks, I fail to see any grave injustice were the Buckeyes to make it. A month ago, when we were talking about then-undefeated Ohio State's credentials versus more accomplished one-loss teams like LSU and Oregon, I was right there with you. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't care what conference you're in; if you can't make it through your schedule with less than two losses, you're just not national championship material.

Has Georgia played a tougher slate than the Buckeyes? Absolutely. USC? Yep. But by no rational measure are either more deserving than Ohio State. The Dawgs lost at home to 6-6 South Carolina and by three touchdowns at Tennessee. That's the equivalent of OSU losing to Michigan State and getting destroyed by Illinois (rather than losing by a touchdown). USC lost to Stanford. Can you imagine if the Buckeyes lost to Minnesota? I think we can all agree that in neither scenario would OSU even remotely enter the national-title discussion, yet because of the backlash that still lingers from last year's Florida game, there are no shortage of people who would rather see 10-2 Georgia or 10-2 USC in the title game instead of the 11-1 Buckeyes. That's just silly.

I hate to break it to the masses, but guess what? Ohio State? That's not a bad football team. I don't necessarily think it's the best team in the country, but it's up there. Last we saw them, the Buckeyes went to Ann Arbor and held Michigan to 91 total yards. No, it was not a great Michigan team, but holding any team to less than 100 yards of offense is pretty darn impressive. LSU did not do that this season. Neither did Oklahoma, nor USC, nor ...

I think OSU is in the exact right spot in the pecking order as of now -- last of the remaining one-loss teams, but ahead of any two-loss teams.

I'll agree that there would be no "grave injustice" if Ohio State made the title game in place of a series of two-loss teams. However, the question is whether a good case can be made for those two-loss teams ahead of the Bucks. The pollsters seem to think that the answer is no, as they uniformly put the one-loss teams ahead of the two-loss teams without a care in the world as to the schedules played by those teams.

Mandel claims that "no rational measure" could put Georgia or USC ahead of Ohio State. None of us should be lectured about rational thought by Mandel, especially since the centerpiece of his argument is completely irrational. He claims that he was willing to consider ranking one-loss teams with better schedules ahead of an unbeaten Ohio State team that hadn't played anyone, but he's not willing to rank two-loss teams with better schedules ahead of a one-loss Ohio State team. In what universe does this make sense? The analysis is exactly the same: can a one-game disparity in record be overcome by a significant different in schedule strength and if so, how big does the schedule gap have to be? But don't take my word for it that a two-loss team can be ranked ahead of a one-loss team on the basis of having faced a more difficult schedule; Mandel himself employs this reasoning by ranking one-loss Kansas behind two-loss Georgia, LSU, USC, and Oklahoma.

Leaving aside the irrationality of a hard and fast "two-loss teams cannot play for the national title," Mandel's arguments regarding those two-loss teams are weak as hell. I'm going to leave USC aside because their strength of schedule isn't much better than that of Ohio State. Georgia's SOS is much better than that of the Bucks, but Mandel thinks that Georgia's losses were worse. That's probably true, although deriding a loss to a 6-6 South Carolina team is very misleading, as the South Carolina team that Georgia played in September had Captain Munnerlyn and Jasper Brinkley in it. This was the South Carolina team that started the year 6-1 and beat Kentucky handily, rather than the South Carolina team that collapsed after blowing the Tennessee game in ludicrously unlucky fashion. On the other hand, Ohio State doesn't have a win that comes close to a 12-point win over top ten Florida at a neutral site or a 25-point win over a top 20 Auburn. Should we focus on the quality of wins or the quality of losses? Seems like an interesting question to me, but Mandel and the voters are unwilling to consider it.

Comparing Georgia and Ohio State is instructive because it illustrates the importance of scheduling. Georgia and Ohio State both came into the season with inexperienced players all over their rosters. Georgia's young players were thrown into the fire with games against Oklahoma State, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee in the first half of the season. Ohio State didn't play a bowl team until its sixth game of the year. It didn't play a team that would finish better than 7-5 until the 9th game of the year. They played one team that finished with fewer than four losses all year and lost that game. At home. Could that breeze of a schedule in the first half of the year possibly explain a one-game gap in record?

Even if Mandel is right that Ohio State deserves to be ahead of Georgia because Georgia's losses are bad, he's omitting another two-loss team that played a markedly more difficult schedule than Ohio State and also happens to have better losses: LSU. The Tigers' two losses were both to quality teams in three overtimes. LSU's wins over Florida, Auburn, and Virginia Tech are better than anything on Ohio State's resume. If LSU beats Tennessee this weekend, then the Tigers will have an additional quality win and their strength of schedule will go even farther past that of Ohio State. Is there "no rational measure" that would put the Tigers in the title game?

Again, for the record, I have no problem with Ohio State playing for the national title. They have an excellent defense and their schedule, while weak, isn't Hawaii weak. I do have a problem with the fact that pollsters don't seem to be critically evaluating their resume against that of LSU and Georgia. College football's silly post-season structure requires hair-splitting between teams, but if Mandel is any guide, the media are either refusing to split hairs or they are doing a crappy job in that task.