The Scott-Delany Pact

An agreement between two powers that are separated by flat plains?  I'm in!

My main reaction is that college football needs more agreements like this.  At present, there is a race to the bottom in terms of non-conference schedules.  With: (a) poll voters somewhat unwilling to reward teams for play tough non-conference schedules; (b) a plentiful supply of outmatched opponents as a result of the NCAA allowing wins over FCS teams to count towards bowl eligibility; and (c) major conference athletic programs funded mostly by their football programs, there are a host of incentives for teams to maximize home games and minimize contests against quality opponents.  The way to beat programs out of this mindset is to create formal structures.*  Some teams are constrained by tradition.  I'm sure that Jeremy Foley would play four non-conference games at the Swamp against tomato cans if he could, but the tradition of the game against Florida State prevents him from scratching his worst itch.  Teams that are not constrained by tradition need other rules in place to force them to play watchable games.  Wisconsin won't leave Camp Randall to play a competent opponent?  Jim Delany will just have to force them to behave.

* - The other factor that would force major programs to play quality non-conference opponents would be a softening of ticket demand.  Programs get away with scheduling directional schools right now because they know that they can sell season tickets regardless of the presence of multiple weaklings on the slate.  If athletic departments sense that they are having a hard time selling season tickets because of soft opponents, then they will schedule better.  The Pac Ten is already in this boat because the intensity of their fan support is not equal to that of other conferences.  I can see a future where Stubhub has the same effect on season ticket packages as it is currently having on bowl tickets.  Right now, schools struggle to sell their bowl ticket allotments because fans know that they can get the tickets at much lower prices on Internet ticket sites.  What happens when fans also realize en masse that they don't have to pay to see New Mexico State and they can instead by tickets to the best games on the Internet, thus spending less and still seeing the games that really generate interest?  New Mexico State comes off the schedule. 

Aside from the obvious benefit of giving fans better games to watch, the ancillary benefit of the Big Ten-Pac Ten alliance is that it will make it easier to judge teams at the end of the season.  Part of the problem with college football's current structure is that the BCS has an already difficult task of picking the two best teams from a field of 120 and then its task is made harder by the relatively small sample size of games between BCS conference teams.  It's hard to compare Alabama and Oklahoma State because there are so few connections between teams in the Big XII and SEC.  While an alliance between the Big Ten and Pac Ten doesn't solve that specific problem, it does increase the number of meaningful games and therefore gives us a better sense as to teams' relative strengths.  If the pact is successful, then other conferences will copy it.  The natural dance partner for the SEC would be the ACC, although an alliance with the Big XII (plus four) would also be doable.  Who knows, in ten years, we might be able to use real evidence to back up our claims of SEC superiority before the bowl games.

Question Time

The right honorable gentleman from North-Decatur-upon-Lullwater wants to know two things:

1. If Chipper Jones would have been drafted by the Cardinals instead of the Braves, how would his career have been different?  In other words, how would things be different after the inevitable blow-up between Chipper and Tony LaRussa as to Chipper’s reliance on his father for hitting advice?  That advice surely violates one of LaRussa’s myriad unwritten rules for baseball, like “I get a virgin in heaven for every pitching change I make” and “a pitcher can hit a batter only in one of the following 17 situations…”

2. In light of the fact that Bret Bielema is apparently the best coach in the Big Ten now that Jim Tressel is no more, how many head coaches in the SEC are better than the best coach in the Big Ten?  Put another way, would Georgia fans trade on-a-seat-of-indeterminable-warmth Mark Richt for any coach in the Big Ten?  Would LSU fans take any coach in the Big Ten over Les Miles?  Am I being too partisan here or does Jim Tressel’s demise at Ohio State really bring into full view the sorry state of coaching in a conference that has the money to do so much better?

Signing Day Thoughts

To live outside the law, you must be honest

Of Rivals’ top 15 classes, #4 USC is on probation (pending appeal), #7 Auburn spent the month of November under a cloud because of a wealth of circumstantial evidence that they bought Cam Newton, and #16 North Carolina spent the month of September under a cloud because their defensive line coach was essentially a runner for a agent.  In the end, 18-year olds don’t seem to worry about the prospect of playing for a team on probation.  Maybe the lesson is that it’s worth the risk to cheat?  I’m not even sure why I ended the last sentence with a question mark. 

This is teh awesome

College football is valuable to the NFL because its popularity means that players come to the NFL with reputations.  We’re interested in Vince Young and Reggie Bush because they come to the League with a backstory.  College basketball is valuable to the NBA for the same reason.  MLB suffers in comparison because it has to start from scratch in terms of creating personalities.  With more and more attention paid to recruiting, college football now has a similar bounce to the NFL and NBA (although not as high) because fans know some of their players before they ever put on the uniform.  In fact, the bounce is a little stronger in two senses.  First, we follow the recruitment of our players and our initial feeling about them is affection because they picked us over a rival.  Second, we follow the big ones who got away, which means that we have some interest in other teams.  I’m still waiting to watch Demar Dorsey play for … someone.  

Fighting over the scraps

Recruiting in the state of Michigan should be interesting next year.  The in-state class is supposed to be fairly good, which I guess means that the state will push past South Carolina and be a bit more like Alabama in terms of the number of top-tier prospects.  On the one hand, Michigan has a new coach who is trying to improve relations with the high school coaches of the state.  Michigan fans are expecting the normal first-year recruiting bounce, especially with the Luddite local media now behind the coach because he’s a “Michigan Man” by virtue of having been a defensive line coach under Lloyd Carr for a few years.  On the other hand, Michigan State fans will be expecting a recruiting bounce from their once-a-decade very good season.  It would be nice for the Big Ten if one of its programs other than top dog Ohio State and newcomer Nebraska could put together a top 20 recruiting class, something the other ten teams in the league collectively failed to do in this recruiting class.  One wonders if the top brass in the Big Ten are noticing that their collection of underwhelming coaching staffs aren’t exactly doing much to convince players outside of the region to come play in their full stadia.

Stingless

This recruiting cycle came on the heels of Georgia Tech winning the ACC for the first time in almost two decades.  The crop of in-state players was especially good, as there were 22 four- or five-star players in the Peach State.  In the end, Paul Johnson signed one of the 22.  In response to the inevitable counter by Tech fans that recruiting rankings don’t matter, think about the players who led the Jackets to that ACC title.  Derrick Morgan, Morgan Burnett, Jonathan Dwyer, and Josh Nesbitt, all four-star recruits from Chan Gailey’s excellent 2007 class.  Right now, I’m thinking of Paul Johnson as being another version of Ralph Friedgen: a very smart offensive coach who was able to win with his predecessor’s players, but will struggle to do so with his own guys.  The one potential saving grace: Tech has very specific needs for its option offense and 3-4 defense, so if they found good players to fill those needs, then that might allow them to compensate when they play opponents with great players.

So who is Christian Laettner in this class?

I hate the Dream Team nickname because of overuse, but full marks to Mark Richt for pulling in a classic Georgia class, headlined by a bevy of excellent in-state players and augmented by the occasional blue chip from elsewhere in the Southeast.  Richt has been on the hot seat since the Dawgs started 1-4 on the heels of a disappointing 2009, but he circled the wagons beautifully.  If nothing else, Richt’s replacement will be in a great position.  In an ideal world, the Dawgs’ new 3-4 will get traction and Richt will have a second wind, a la Vince Dooley after two weak season out of three in the late 70s.  As one of Rich Rodriguez’s excuse-makers, I tried to rationalize Michigan’s weak classes over the last two years as a result of all of the negativity around the program from the various factions fighting with one another, but after seeing Richt put together a great class despite questions about his job security, maybe the conclusion is simply that Rodriguez wasn’t a very good recruiter (or at least wasn’t good at selling Michigan’s strengths).

Auburn and Oregon in Context: Strength of Schedule

Following up on my post on Stewart Mandel's point regarding Auburn's and Oregon's schedules, I decided to look at their schedules in context with every other team that has played in a BCS title game.  Rather than using opponents’ records as the barometer, I used the three computer rankings that go back to 1998: Sagarin, SRS, and Sorenson.  (I must have a thing for rankings that start with S.  I blame my kids’ consumption of Sesame Street.  Or maybe the fact that they were fighting over Steamer & Samuel this morning.  Whatever, it’s the little ones’ fault.  Definitely.)  Using opponents’ records is a simple, but weak way to evaluate strength of schedule because it rewards teams that play in conferences with smaller numbers of conference games and/or whose members tend to play tomato cans outside of the league.  Here are the ranks of each of the 26 teams that made the title game, sorted by the average of the three rankings:

	Sagarin	Sorenson	SRS	Average
Florida 08	4	4	5	4.33
Florida State 98	5	3	5	4.33
Bama 09	2	10	2	4.67
USC 04	7	5	5	5.67
Oklahoma 08	7	9	2	6.00
Florida 06	8	10	4	7.33
Florida State 00	11	2	11	8.00
USC 05	8	16	9	11.00
Florida State 99	11	9	14	11.33
Oklahoma 04	15	10	11	12.00
LSU 07	11	12	14	12.33
Oklahoma 00	14	13	14	13.67
Texas 05	13	15	23	17.00
Auburn 10	15	24	14	17.67
Tennessee 98	24	22	26	24.00
Miami 01	27	27	22	25.33
Nebraska 01	29	26	29	28.00
Ohio State 02	30	42	21	31.00
Oregon 10	19	38	38	31.67
Texas 09	38	31	26	31.67
Oklahoma 03	39	29	32	33.33
Ohio State 06	38	35	34	35.67
LSU 03	28	38	41	35.67
Miami 02	37	34	37	36.00
Virginia Tech 99	43	35	58	45.33
Ohio State 07	53	51	57	53.67

The first point to make about this chart is that it underrates Auburn and Oregon because it compares their pre-championship game schedules against 24 other teams’ post-championship game slates.  After the title game, both Auburn and Oregon are going to find themselves about five spots higher in the rankings, so Oregon will be in the middle of the chart and Auburn will be right around tenth.  The conclusion to be drawn is that the e-mail that led Mandel to create his table – a message claiming that Auburn had an extremely hard schedule en route to Glendale and Oregon had an extremely easy one – is totally wrong according to the computers that aren’t castrated by the BCS.  Auburn played a tougher schedule, but not by a wide margin and neither team is an outlier in the 26-team sample.

It is worth noting, however, that the general point stands that strength of schedule has predictive power in title games.  The top six on the list all won the title game, with the exceptions of Oklahoma ‘08 (they were playing a team above them on the list) and Florida State ‘98 (they were starting the Rooster instead of Chris Weinke).  The bottom seven on the list all lost with the exception of ‘03 LSU, who played a fellow member of the bottom quartile. 

Also, the list gives us more reason to heap scorn on the Big Ten.  Leaving aside the fact that only one Big Ten team has made the title game over a 13-year period (joining the ACC as the only conference about which that statement can be made), Ohio State has two schedules in the bottom five of the list.  The best of the three Buckeye teams to make the title game had the 18th best schedule of the 26 title game participants and will likely be 19th after Oregon meets Auburn.  This isn’t a jibe at Ohio State, as the Bucks can’t be faulted for the state of their conference rivals.  This is a jibe at the rest of Jim Delany’s conference, which produced neither title contenders outside of Ohio State nor a depth of good opponents to challenge the Bucks in the three season in which they made the title game.

Kudos to Kirk Herbstreit

Kirk Herbstreit's interview on Eleven Warriors started off with some juicy bait for LD:

What do you feel is Ohio State's biggest weakness heading into the season?

I think physically, this potentially could be one of the more talented teams Coach Tressel has had if you're just looking at the team on paper. You start with Terrelle and you work your way around with the offensive line and the backs, led by Brandon and Boom, and then you look at the receivers, and I know there are some concerns from the people who aren't familiar with the potential candidates, but if you look at what Posey and Sanzenbacher can do. I think Taurian Washington, Corey Brown, Chris Fields -- they're loaded at wide receiver in my opinion. I think they're going to be better top to bottom at receiver than they've been in the last few years, once people have a chance to see what some of these younger receivers can do. Even with the loss of Duron Carter, I think they're going to be okay out there.

I think offensively everything looks in order, and I think defensively, you could say maybe there are some potential concerns at safety, but I just don't see them. But getting back to your question, the big thing I have there is how do they gel? How do they grow as a team? And are the intangibles going to be able to surface and are they going to become a real team instead of a bunch of talented individuals? I think if this team gets great chemistry, then I think they're going to be a really, really dangerous team and I think they will be favored in every game they play this year.

Now, will they run the table? Will they win every game? That's where I go back to the x-factor in championship seasons is whether or not teams can grow and become a unit. I think last year was a great example. I think they were searching for it and maybe it took a loss to Purdue for them to find out who they were. If you think about their last three games and the way they won -- at Penn State, Iowa at home, and at Michigan -- it wasn't the prettiest but I think it really created a lot of confidence, so by the time they went out to Pasadena they were kind of a machine at that point. My hope for them is that they find that early in the year and maybe playing a powerhouse like Miami can be just the thing to help them grow together as a team.

And ended with a smart observation that the reputation of the Big Ten is low outside of the Midwest and that one good bowl season isn't going to change that perception:

There seems to be a little bit of an improvement in the overall national perception of the Buckeyes and the Big Ten based off of last season's bowl successes. Have you noticed that within the network and traveling around the country?

It's baby steps. When you have three or four lousy years in non-conference play as a conference and in the bowl games, you can't just have one great bowl season where you knock off four teams in the top fifteen including two BCS bowl games and say "Okay, now, people better respect the Big Ten". That's a great start, but now you have to back it up with Penn State playing well against Alabama down in Tuscaloosa. Ohio State has to play well against Miami. Arizona and Iowa: the Hawkeyes have to go out to Tucson and play well. You have these kind of games, you can't lose to the MAC consistently.

Sometimes I just feel like Big Ten fans are so myopic, that they just look at their team and when they are sitting in the stadium and hear that Michigan State is losing to Central Michigan or Michigan is losing to Appalachian State, they cheer and it's a great thing. And I want to ask them if they've ever been outside of the Great Lakes region because every time one of those Big Ten teams loses, Ohio State loses, the Big Ten loses. Even when Michigan loses one of those games, fans from Florida, USC, Texas and Oklahoma -- it might as well be Ohio State losing those games, and to me, you better be rooting as hard as you can if you want Ohio State to start getting more national respect and you want the Big Ten to get more national respect, you better start rooting for the Big Ten in every single non-conference they play and every single bowl game they play, because the way you turn around perception is you win games. That's it. That's all there is to it. And if you don't do that, then you're going to be looked at as "So, you won the Big Ten. Yay! Big deal! Our 7th place team from the SEC could win the Big Ten" and that's going to take time and a lot of wins to be able to change that, but it can happen.

Let's see if Herbstreit accounts for the performance of the Big Ten at the end of the year if Ohio State is in the running for a spot in Glendale against teams from conferences with better reputations.

Tags on Conference Expansion

This quote (HT: Blutarsky) from Paul Tagliabue caught my eye:

At some point [the Big Ten is] going to overreach and get a big negative reaction out of Congress or someone else. You have to eventually tie your television to people actually watching and not just to television subscribers added up and totaled.

That's interesting on a number of levels. First, it's amusing to hear the NFL commissioner who presided over a bevy of NFL teams enriching themselves at the government teat through stadium subsidies, backed up by threats of relocation, complaining about another sports entity taking an unpopular action that might draw Congress's attention. Second, Tagliabue's statement is an indictment of his own conference. He's making the point that the Big Ten won't profit as much as it thinks by adding some combination of Rutgers, Syracuse, UConn, and Pitt because those teams might be proximate to large media markets, but they don't have a hold over meaningful numbers of households in those markets. Shorter version: don't recruit the members of my conference; they just aren't very valuable!

Third, Tagliabue's comment hits on a thought that I've been having about how expansion is going to expand the gap between the Big Ten and SEC. (Brian Cook is retching right now.) Let's say that the Big Ten strikes out on its two primary targets - Texas and Notre Dame - and then expands to 16 with Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Rutgers, and Syracuse. What's the SEC's response? Mike Slive's comments last week indicated that the SEC is going to make a matching move in the event that there is a progression towards superconferences. The home run move for the Big Ten - and one that I think is quite plausible - would be to add Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State. Think about the advantages here:

1. The added teams come from states that are already contiguous with the SEC.

2. The added teams come from states that are culturally similar to the SEC states.

3. Texas and Texas A&M would be reunited with Arkansas.

4. The added teams are football schools and they would be joining the top football conference.

5. The new SEC would be easy to organize, as Alabama and Auburn would join the East, leaving the West with the added schools, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, LSU, and Arkansas.

Now, think about where the SEC and Big Ten would be after expansion. They would both have 16 teams, only the Big Ten would have added a bunch of decent, but nothing special football programs (assuming that Nebraska isn't headed back to their Osborne-Devaney levels) and the SEC would have added Oklahoma and Texas. Moreover, the Big Ten would have added TV markets that are large, but pro-oriented (this is Tagliabue's point as he is throwing his own conference under the SEPTA bus), whereas the SEC would have added TV markets that are large and college-obsessed. Finally, the Big Ten, which already struggles with a recruiting base that doesn't cut it, would have added states with mediocre talent levels, whereas the SEC would have added Texas.

Four on the Trot

Thoughts on Bama's Big Night in Pasadena:

• It's fitting in a season that was marked by the holy trinity of quarterbacks - Bradford, McCoy, and Tebow - all having underwhelming seasons that the national title would be won by a team whose signal caller threw for 58 yards on 11 attempts. One of the legacies for 2009 will be that this is the year that defenses started to make a comeback. Scoring and yardage were down a little and by the end of the year, we had a defensive tackle making a serious run for the Heisman.

• I'm not much on the "send a message to your team" school of thought, but the silver lining to Nick Saban's bizarre decision to call for a fake punt from his own 20 on 4th and 23 was that he was telling his defense "I don't care where Texas gets the ball; I have faith that you will not permit them to put it in the end zone."

• At one point in the second quarter when the game was 7-6, I posed the question to Der Wife "do you think that Alabama could win this game if they took a knee on every offensive snap going forward, Coach Red Beaulieu style?" As it turned out, the answer was no. When we were discussing it, I put forward the thought that Texas would respond by throwing Hail Marys on every snap and inevitably, they would catch one and kick a field goal. As it turned out, their offensive success in the second half came from throwing deep. The lesson for coaches that have to deploy an understudy under center: deep passes down the sidelines. Over and over again, my love.

• Note to the Wall Street Journal, which seems to think that the recruiting rankings are a crock: the true freshmen who were thrust into the limelight last night when McCoy and Ingram were hurt - Garrett Gilbert and Trent Richardson - were both five-star mega-recruits.

• Alabama's totals when they beat Miami to win the 1992 national title: 267 yards rushing, 18 yards passing. Alabama's totals when they beat Texas to win the 2009 national title: 205 yards rushing, 58 yards passing.

• Watching Nick Saban lift another crystal ball while thinking "OK, now how is it that human beings are supposed to smile?", I was reminded of a column that Ivan Maisel wrote at the outset of the SEC coaching arms race (probably after South Carolina hired Steve Spurrier) in which he noted that SEC teams should be looking for hungry, young, up-and-coming coaches instead of legends because no coach has ever won a national title at two different schools.

• SEC national titles in the last four years: four. Big Ten national titles in the last forty years: two. This is part of why Brian Cook's attempt to limit the Big Ten's post-season perception problem to USC and the BCS is misplaced. (In Brian's defense, he does limit his statement to recent perception problems.) The Big Ten has a history of not winning national titles and any casual observer of the sport knows this. Since Bo Schembechler became the coach at Michigan in 1969 and started the Ten-Year War (or, as Michigan fans like to refer to it, the "modern era"), the Big Ten is 12-26 in the Rose Bowl. One of the basic precepts on which I grew up in the 80s was that the Big Ten champion always lost in Pasadena. When an SEC wins a national title in the Rose Bowl, it highlights the Big Ten's two big, related failings: not winning the national title and having a poor record in the Rose Bowl. Since the SEC is the Big Ten's only rival in terms of fan interest and revenue generation, it's natural that the two conference would be compared against one another (or maybe I'm just weird because I went to a Big Ten school, but grew up and live in the South).

• My first thought when Marcell Dareus took an interception in for a touchdown at the end of the first half: Jack Squirek! Touchdown Raiders! I know that Mack Brown claimed that he was making a safe call, but what the hell are you going to accomplish with a middle screen with ten second to go in the half?

• I'll bet that there were a bunch of crusty old Alabama fans in the crowd last night who took particular relish in finally getting to sing "Hey Longhorns, we just beat the hell out of you!"

• To continue with the SEC/Big Ten theme, I wrote after the Orange Bowl about how Big Ten teams were dominating games, but not getting results on the scoreboard commensurate with the way that they were winning. Alabama showed how to exploit the initiative in the second quarter last night.

• Kudos to Kirk Herbstreit for an astute point last night that Garrett Gilbert's biggest problem as an inexperienced quarterback was setting protections. Sure enough, Bama salted the game away with a fumble that resulted from a blitzer coming in totally unblocked (despite the fact that Bama was only rushing four, if I recall correctly). If only Kirk wouldn't have made the "Alabama doesn't yet have a sack" comment right before the big sack. And I wish that Kirk would quit it with the "it's pass interference if a defender doesn't turn around" canard.

• Does anyone doubt that Musberger had points on the Horns last night?

• I would love to know Pete Carroll's private thoughts while watching that game. Something along the lines of "I'd like my team to play defense like that again." It's interesting to me that Big Ten and Big XII teams are the constant foils for both USC and the SEC Champions, but USC hasn't met the SEC Champs (at least as long as I can remember).

• If I were a Texas fan, I would have few complaints about the game. In a turn of terrible luck, Texas lost its star quarterback on its first series, after which they had little rational expectation of winning the game. The Horns put up a fight and gave the Tide a scare in the fourth quarter before giving in. The only aspect that would bother me would be the performance of the Texas receivers. When McCoy went out, the rest of the team needed to rally around the backup. Instead, the Texas wideouts (with the exception of Jordan Shipley) were the worst unit on the field.

• For as long as I can remember, Alabama teams have never been centered around one player. This is one of the reasons why no Tide player had won the Heisman until Mark Ingram did so. The advantage to that approach was on display last night. Both teams lost their offensive star, but Alabama kept chugging along, whereas Texas losing McCoy was debilitating for a long stretch. No one player on the Crimson Tide was irreplaceable, which is a fitting homage to the '92 champs and all of those great Bryant teams.

You Know We Are / Bring It Down / We're F***in' Crazy!

I heartily co-sign on Andy Staples' paean to SEC fans. Any writer who writes two paragraphs like the following for a major sports web site is truly a man after my heart:

College football is just more important to people in the South than it is to people in the rest of the country. There is a good reason for this. Pro sports ignored the South for a long time. For southerners in my parents' generation, college football dominated the news because it usually was the only game in town. Those people passed their sports consumption habits down to the next generation, and my generation will pass it along to the one that follows ours. For that reason, many SEC fans pay no mind to the NFL, unless it's a Tennessee fan checking on Peyton Manning or an LSU fan following LaRon Landry...

Unlike much of the national media -- which regularly underestimates the passion and buying power of rabid college football fans -- CBS and ESPN know that in a nine-state footprint lives a dedicated base of fans who will follow their teams to the ends of the earth. Baseball can't match that dedication. The next time you meet someone who claims to be a die-hard Red Sox fan, ask him how many magnets he can fit on his RV. That's why the two networks will pay a combined $3 billion over the next 15 years to televise SEC sports.

Staples makes a good point that ESPN has figured out that there are a lot of eyeballs in the SEC states and those eyeballs are glued tight to SEC football. That said, his point regarding intensity of fan support can be taken one step farther. I doubt that ESPN and CBS forked over hundreds of millions of dollars to the SEC just to get ratings in this region. They realize that genuine fan support creates unparalleled atmospheres at SEC games and that makes for great TV. I'm reminded of what Bill Simmons wrote when he decided that he was going to become an EPL fan:

You know how Red makes the comment that, after a life spent in Shawshank, he can't even squeeze a drop of pee without asking for permission first? I feel like that's happening to us. American sports have been ravaged by TV timeouts, ticket price hikes and Jumbotrons that pretty much order fans how to act. Just look at what happened in the NBA playoffs. Miami fans were urged to wear all white like a bunch of outpatients from a psych ward; the Detroit announcer screamed, "Let's give it up!" and "Lemme HEAR YOU!" as the crowd responded like a bunch of trained seals; Clippers fans weren't able to stand and cheer after an outrageous Shaun Livingston dunk in the Denver series because disco music was blaring at deafening levels. And it's not just basketball. During Angels games in baseball, the crowd waits to make noise until a monkey appears on the scoreboard. You can't attend an NHL game without hearing the opening to "Welcome to the Jungle" 90 times. Even our NFL games have slipped -- you cheer when the players run out, cheer on third downs, cheer on scores and sit the rest of the time. It's a crying shame.

Not to pull a Madonna on you, but European soccer stands out because of the superhuman energy of its fans -- the chants and songs, the nonstop cheering, the utter jubilation whenever anything good happens, how the games seem to double as life-or-death experiences -- and I can't help but wonder if that same trait has been sucked out of our own sports for reasons beyond our control. And no, that same energy hasn't completely disappeared; you can see a similar energy on display at Fenway, Yankee Stadium, Lambeau, MSG (if the Knicks and/or Rangers are good, a big "if" these days) and any other city with enough history and passion to override the evils of the Jumbotron Era. Still, these are aberrations. By pricing out most of the common fans and overwhelming the ones who remained, professional sports leagues in this country made a conscious decision: We'd rather hear artificially created noise than genuine noise. That's the biggest problem with sports in America right now. And there's no real way to solve it.

Simmons's current opinion (and it's a perceptive one) is that European soccer is the next big thing in American sports because we've become a TV-oriented sports culture and European footie translates better on TV. The games are played in front of singing, crazed fans without any of the manipulative prompting so common with American pro sports. If he's right, then SEC football is an attractive TV property outside of the South because it brings something to the table that most American sports do not: genuine, unadulterated passion. A fan in Seattle or Philadelphia who is disillusioned by what the pro sports experience has become could be sucked in by an SEC game because it reminds him of the way games used to be before t-shirt bazookas and "Cheer! Now! Do It!" reminders on the scoreboard.

The one limiting factor to neutrals being swayed by a better TV experience is their feelings about the locales of the game. European footie will have a hard time becoming mainstream because it's foreign. It's not necessarily that the most popular foreign league is English. Most Americans like England and remember that they were our allies in WWII. (We forget that the Russians were as well, but that's a different rant.) However, because English footballers are generally rubbish, the league is mostly dominated by foreign stars: Drogba, Essien, Fabregas, Torres, etc. Unless NBC is wrong about the sentiment of the average American when it ignores the rest of the world in its Olympic coverage, the EPL may always remain a fringe sport because of all the funny names.

To a lesser extent, this could be an issue with SEC football. The South is still viewed by many in the North as being defined by the Confederacy and Jim Crow. Florida seems nonthreatening because it is heavily populated by retirees from the Northeast and Midwest, but can we imagine people in the Northeast getting very excited about Alabama and Ole Miss, given where they get their ideas about the Deep South? (Better they think about Bull Connor than the Boston busing riots, right?) I'd be fascinated to know what ESPN and CBS think about the potential for the SEC as a TV property outside of the Sunbelt.

National Champs Per Play

So I was having a debate with a friend about the 1994 Michigan Wolverines and whether the Colorado and Penn State losses kept that team from winning the national title. My friend said that '94 Michigan had plenty of athletes on defense and they were very close to being an elite team. I said that '94 Michigan's defense was just plain bad by Michigan standards, from the opening play of the season - a 70-yard touchdown pass by Boston College - to the end. Even if Chuck Winters would have knocked down Kordell Stewart's heave in the end zone and even if Amani Toomer would have hauled in Todd Collins perfect heave on the final drive against Penn State, this defense was not good enough to win a national title.

So, to prove my point, I spend a few minutes playing around with the NCAA's statistical database to see how Michigan's '94 defense, which allowed over five yards per play, would have compared to the teams that have won the title this decade. That little assignment turned into a survey of each of the ten teams that have won a national title in the aughts. I wanted to set the parameters for what a team needs to show in terms of yards per play gained and allowed to be consistent with a decade's worth of national champions. Behold:

Yards Gained Per Play:

2008 Florida - 7.13
2007 LSU - 5.84
2006 Florida - 6.34
2005 Texas - 7.07
2004 USC - 6.33
2003 USC - 6.49
2003 LSU - 5.89
2002 Ohio State - 5.61
2001 Miami - 6.57
2000 Oklahoma - 5.99

Yards Allowed Per Play:

2008 Florida - 4.46
2007 LSU - 4.42
2006 Florida - 4.32
2005 Texas - 4.39
2004 USC - 4.27
2003 USC - 4.41
2003 LSU - 4.02
2002 Ohio State - 4.66
2001 Miami - 3.93
2000 Oklahoma - 4.14

Yards Gained/Yards Allowed Margin

2008 Florida - 2.67
2007 LSU - 1.42
2006 Florida - 2.02
2005 Texas - 2.68
2004 USC - 2.06
2003 USC - 2.08
2003 LSU - 1.87
2002 Ohio State - 0.95
2001 Miami - 2.64
2000 Oklahoma - 1.85

Sagarin Strength of Schedule:

2008 Florida - 4
2007 LSU - 11
2006 Florida - 8
2005 Texas - 13
2004 USC - 7
2003 USC - 19
2003 LSU - 28
2002 Ohio State - 30
2001 Miami - 27
2000 Oklahoma - 14

Thoughts on the data:

• Generally speaking, the BCS has done a reasonably good job of spitting out national champions like McDonald's spits out Big Macs. Over a wide space of time and geography, the end product has been fairly consistent: national champions who: (1) played schedules that can be described as "strong to quite strong;" (2) gained something in the neighborhood of six-to-seven yards per play; and (3) allowed something in the neighborhood of four yards per play. The BCS may not be perfect, but it has prevented a recurrence of 1984 BYU winning a national title without playing a quality opponent. (Sagarin's database at USA Today's site does not go back to 1984, but Soren Sorenson's site does and his ranking system put BYU's strength of schedule at 85.) Advocates of going back to the old bowl system might want to consider the fact that we haven't had a massively unqualified national champion since the inception of the BCS.

• Using yards per play margins, national champions this decade can be put into three groups: three dominant champions ('08 Florida, '05 Texas, and '01 Miami), one team that had absolutely no business winning a national title ('02 Ohio State), and then everyone else. The numbers for the '02 Bucks are pretty amazing. Ohio State had the lowest yards per play and the highest yards allowed per play, all while playing the weakest schedule of any national champion this decade. There is absolutely no way to view that team as something other than insanely lucky. In other words, 2002 Ohio State should never be held out as a credible model for a team seeking to win a national title. Note to self: set Google Alert for "2002 Ohio State" in September for fisking possibilities.

• One other issue: 2002 Ohio State is the only non-Sun Belt team to win the national title. If the Bucks were such an anomaly, then what does that say for the teams of the Northeast and Midwest as credible contenders for the national title? (One counter: Ohio State and Penn State have produced teams that looked more like national champions than the '02 Bucks. For instance, 2005 Penn State outgained its opponents by 1.89 yards per play. 2006 Ohio State outgained their opponents by 1.54 yards per play, even with the decimation by Florida in Glendale.)

• Although few will make the case that 2008 Florida is one of the great teams of recent history because they lost a home game to Ole Miss, the yardage numbers put the Gators in elite company. Florida had the best offense of any national champion this decade, a defense that would stack up with most, and they played a very difficult schedule

• For fun, here are Georgia's yard-per-play differentials for their three best years under Richt: 2007 - .75; 2005 - 1.45; and 2002 - .94. 2005 is the year that the Dawgs had a national title-caliber team (barely) and can consider themselves unlucky.

• The main point of this exercise is to give us a yardstick for November when the various national title contenders have been identified. Yards per play gives us a good way to say that a team does or doesn't look like what we've come to know a national champion should resemble.

Drafty Stuff

1. I completely agree with this statement from Andrew Perloff regarding the NFL's current character obsession:

In Moneyball terms, it seems that “character issues” are another opportunity for the wise teams to get more value out of a pick. The Patriots are better at choosing personnel than anyone, and they seem to add a character risk every year now (Corey Dillon, Randy Moss, Brandon Meriweather, etc.). This year they chose North Carolina WR Brandon Tate, who reportedly failed a marijuana test at the combine, in the third round. If a team has strong enough leadership, adding character issue players is clearly not a problem.

This thought occurred to me as I was doing a grocery run on Saturday afternoon and was subjected to John Kincaid ranting about the Bengals making a terrible decision taking Andre Smith. Kincaid is an extreme example of the sports radio tendency towards moral judgments in place of actual sports analysis. It's not easy to evaluate Andre Smith as a left tackle. It's easy to get up on the soap box and attack him for showing up to the Combine fat.

There are two possibilities here. One is that certain NFL teams (but not the Patriots, who are one of the three best-run franchises in football) have become obsessed with the moral judgments that are normally the province of media personalities who are seeking to push emotional buttons for ratings or clicks. The other is that NFL teams have not gone in that direction, but any time they say something remotely related to the character issue, the media picks it up and runs with it. I'm going with the latter explanation.

The whole "he's got bad character!" thing drove me especially crazy with two players this year: Andre Smith and Percy Harvin. Both were huge recruits when they came to college. Both started from day one, the latter at a program full of talent. Both performed at an extremely high level in the best conference in the country for three years. Both were subject to criticism on grounds that had nothing to do with their resumes as three-year starters at major programs. In the end, both went higher than most mock drafts had them going, which is evidence that the "he smoked weed! He's not in great shape!" hyperventilation is more media creation than actual factor in decision-making. It's almost like NFL teams remember that Warren Sapp and Randy Moss both plummeted out of the top ten for character issues and are both going to end up in the Hall of Fame.

2. I'm not enamored with this statement from Perloff:

Atlanta's Matt Ryan and Baltimore's Joe Flacco were able to transcend expectations as rookie quarterbacks because they had strong running games and defenses around them. The three first-round QBs in this year's draft (Stafford, Sanchez and Josh Freeman) don't have that luxury. Sanchez is the only one with even a slim chance of playing for a playoff team.

At this time last year, no one thought that Matt Ryan was going to be in a good situation in Atlanta. The offensive line was a disaster and the receivers were underwhelming. Is there any reason why the Jets or Bucs won't be similarly surprising on offense? And Perloff is overstating the case a little bit when he says that the Falcons put a strong defense around Ryan last year.

3. NFL teams are catching onto the fact that Big Ten running backs are not a great investment. You would have thought from the in-season hype last year that Beanie Wells and Javon Ringer were the best running backs in college. In the end, Wells barely made the first round and Ringer went with the last pick of the fifth round. If I were to pick a diamond in the rough among the running back picks, I'd go with James Davis, a good athlete and big recruit who suffered at Clemson because of a bad offensive design, a suspect offensive line, and a carry-splitting situation.

4. I like the Falcons' Peria Jerry pick. I was not wild about William Moore over Rashad Johnson, mainly because the rap on Moore seems to be that he's a safety who makes bad decisions and that's a little like a surgeon with the shakes.

5. Based on my current theory that NFL teams should be very careful spending high picks on quarterbacks from elite college programs because those quarterbacks never have to learn how to throw to covered receivers under intense pressure, I'm not overly enthusiastic about the Stafford or Sanchez picks. I don't think that either guy will be terrible, but they won't be top shelf in the NFL. Then again, I thought that the Falcons were making a colossal mistake taking Matt Ryan last year, so what do I know?

6. The NFL Network's coverage of the Draft was WAY better than that of ESPN.

First you Get the Money, then you Get the Power, then you Get Erin Andrews 14 Saturdays per Year

Say hello to a new TV deal for the SEC. Say hello to $15M per school annually. Say hello to ESPNU on Comcast. Say goodbye to the Daves and watching college football on MyATL 36. Say goodbye to SEC fans ever being able to portray our teams as victims of the media ever again. (I reserve the right to revoke that statement the first time that Herbstreit says something dumb about Georgia's intangibles.)

Some thoughts:

1. The SEC and the Big Ten are leaving the rest of college football (minus Notre Dame) behind in terms of revenue generation from TV contracts. $15M per school is a huge chunk of change. Pair that revenue with the fact that the Big Ten and the SEC are always #1 and #2 in average attendance and are making a killing in gameday revenue in an era of luxury boxes and PSLs and you have those two conferences developing a significant financial advantage. Whether that advantage translates on the field is another matter entirely. Texas and USC will still get to dominate recruiting in two of the three best states for talent. Florida, on the other hand...

2. Think about the position that Miami and FSU are in. They are already up against one of the top coaches in college football, coaching at the most popular school in the state. Now, add in the fact that Florida will be widening its financial advantage significantly because the SEC's TV deal is so much better than that of the ACC. On the other hand, Da U's recruiting appeal has never been based on nice facilities.

3. In a certain respect, college football is going the same direction as other sports. TV has caused a general explosion in sports revenue, only that revenue is never distributed evenly (except in the NFL). Just as the gap between the top revenue MLB or EPL teams has widened, so has the gap between the top college football conferences and the rest. As noted above, there is less of a correlation between revenue and talent accumulation in college football than there is in baseball or English footie, but there should be some effect. The SEC and Big Ten teams (especially the ones with massive ticket revenue) will be able to build all sorts of palatial facilities for their programs and that can have an impact on recruiting.

4. I know that correlation does not equal causation, but does anyone else think that there's a link between two off-seasons in which SEC schools launched themselves into a full-blown arms race for coaching talent and this massive TV deals. A league containing schools that are willing to break the bank for the Petrinos and Sabans of the market has to be attractive to networks. ESPN had to tell itself "if Arkansas is willing to spend crazy money for Bobby Petrino and Arkansas is in the lower half of the SEC in terms of potential, then this league is crazier about football than we previously thought. Where's the checkbook?"

5. The SEC's deal is also a result of the Sunbelt getting bigger and richer. We're going to have to stop thinking about ourselves as a marginalized region at this rate. Let the Sports Reporters keep acting as if college football doesn't exist; the network that airs that dreadful show just forked over a ten-figure commitment to show regular season college football games. Speaking of which...

6. These are massive TV deals for regular season telecasts. You think the revenue would be the same with a 16-team playoff? By resisting the urge to turn the sport into just another sport, college football (or at least the conference that represents college football in its highest [or most drunken] form) has cashed in.

My First Top 25 Whistles Dixie

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Southern Cal	25
2	Georgia	24
3	Oklahoma	23
4	Florida	22
5	Ohio State	21
6	LSU	20
7	Missouri	19
8	South Florida	18
9	Texas Tech	17
10	Auburn	16
11	Texas	15
12	Kansas	14
13	Arizona State	13
14	Clemson	12
15	West Virginia	11
16	California	10
17	Wisconsin	9
18	Virginia Tech	8
19	South Carolina	7
20	Brigham Young	6
21	Tennessee	5
22	Utah	4
23	Oregon	3
24	Mississippi	2
25	Penn State	1

Dropped Out:

As an initial note, these are the teams that I believe to be the 25 best in the country. I have not taken schedule into account at all. Leaving matchup issues aside (such as the presumption that Ohio State would lose to Vandy or Mississippi State because of their hoo doo against the OMG!SEC), I imagined that the hierarchy of these rankings is based on how the teams would do against one another on a neutral field.

My Rationale for USC at Number One - Because one can never go wrong picking a team with a two-deep composed almost exclusively of top recruits. Because Pete Carroll paired with just about the entire defense returning is a frightening thought for the rest of the Pac Ten. Because USC has three five-star bullets in the chamber to find a quality quarterback. Because this team will be better without John David Booty. Because the offensive line is the only major question on the team and all of the four new starters have started games before. Because they're due.

My Biggest Disappointment with my Poll (There's a line that looks much better in print than it would sound if transmitted orally.) - I went with the same top five that everyone and their mother has used. I wanted to go with someone, anyone else in the top five spots, but I couldn't. I came close with South Florida, which has a ton of starters returning and now the best coach in the conference with Petrino and Rodriguez elsewhere. (I guess Schiano and Kelly would have something to say about that.) In the end, their offense reminds me a little too much of Florida's in the sense that it is a tailback away from being very good. I also came close with LSU, but the quarterback situation, paired with a hangover from winning the national title and a step down at defensive coordinator, keeps them out of the top five. Missouri was the third team that I considered, but I can't get past lingering concerns about Gary Pinkel. Plus, I'm inherently suspicious of offense-heavy upstart teams.

What do we make of Kansas? They were a consensus top five team at the end of last year, they return 15 starters, and now they are on the fringes of the top 15? I'm as guilty as anyone since I have them #12, but isn't this an admission that we were all too impressed with their record last year and didn't account for a gaudy schedule? Or are they being punished by pollsters for playing a tougher schedule this year, which seems a wee bit unfair.

If you can't tell, I don't think much of the ACC or the Big Ten. The lesson? If a conference confers a degree on yours truly, then it must not be able to produce quality football teams. I wavered a lot on Illinois. Along with Alabama, North Carolina, and Wake Forest, they were the team that I struggled with excluding. At the end of the day, I think that Juice Williams' passing deficiencies will be more pronounced without Rashard Mendenhall in the backfield. Also, Ron Zook. Res ipse loquitur. I'd rather go with Penn State, a team that I know can run the ball and play defense, over a team with a good spread running game and little else. I didn't really consider putting Michigan in the poll. If you were hearing the things that Michigan fans are hearing about the quarterback situation, you'd understand. I don't expect a total nightmare, but 7-5 or 8-4 seems plausible.

About West Virginia, I smell the scent of Bobby Williams. Think Louisville without Petrino, only Bill Stewart doesn't have Steve Kragthorpe's resume. I'm not expecting a collapse to 6-6, but don't underestimate the impact of a powerful coach leaving and the aw-shucks assistant taking over.

Ole Miss? Really? What fun is a poll without a little risk-taking? Hear me out on this one. They have 16 starters coming back. Ole Miss was better than 3-9 last year, as they came close against a number of quality opponents. The Orgeron recruited well, but couldn't coach, especially in close games. Conversely, Houston Nutt is a coach who could always get a little more out of his talent than expected. He's innovative and adaptable. His first Arkansas team was a horrific Clint Stoerner fumble in Knoxville from being 9-0. Finally, Ole Miss's weakness even since Eli left has been the quarterback position and now they have a VHT to man the helm. This season sets up very well for them.

My Obligatory Dig at Unranked Notre Dame - Behold, the Irish play exactly one team in my preseason top 25. Very challenging.

Tommy Bowden, Football Historian

What does a coach do when his program hasn't won a thing in 17 years and his conference hasn't won a BCS bowl in eight seasons? Naturally, you talk s*** about the achievements of other programs in the league:

"Not long ago, it was Florida State and Miami dominating college football. Where was the SEC then?" said Clemson coach Tommy Bowden. "These things go in cycles. The SEC has had a nice run. I'm sure that the ACC or another conference will take its place."

Yes, where was the SEC back when Miami and Florida State were so good in the 90s?







Honestly, will writers reprint absolutely anything a coach says without comment?

The Florida-Georgia Debate

One of the most interesting topics in the college football world this summer has been the question of where to put Florida and Georgia in preseason rankings. Both teams return a ton of starters. Florida has the most pronounced strength - a virtually unstoppable offense - and the most obvious weakness - a defensive backfield that can't cover and a defensive line that struggled to get a pass rush, even with the now-departed Derrick Harvey. Georgia is more balanced than Florida, but isn't a threat to average 45 points per game, either. Georgia also has, as you may have heard, a very challenging schedule, as they play the entire top half of the SEC West and most of their big games are away from Athens. Finally, Georgia had a total transformation in 2007, going from a decent, but unspectacular team to a dynamo with the dividing line between the two being the celebration in Jacksonville. (Cue Kirk Herbstreit for a reasoned discussion of mojo here.)

We've tackled this question a little, mainly with an agnostic, "it's reasonable to pick Florida ahead of Georgia and here's how you would get to that conclusion" argument. Now, the SEC media has weighed in by picking Florida and Tony Barnhart weighs in with explanations. The comparison between the national media and the SEC media is interesting. The national media fell in love with Georgia when they pummeled Hawaii, whereas the SEC media remembers Georgia getting pantsed by Tennessee and then eking past Vandy. The national media probably isn't thinking about the effects that a four-game stretch of LSU in Baton Rouge, Florida in Jacksonville, Kentucky in Lexington, and Auburn on the Plains can have on a team, mainly because there wouldn't be anything like that in another conference. The SEC media understands the value of easier road games, so the fact that two of Florida's three road games are against Arkansas and Vandy is a big deal.

Normally, I would write off the media's love affair with Florida as "ooh, shiny offense!" In this case, I have an assumption that the SEC media is less likely to fall into this trap than the national media, so I tend to give the SEC media the benefit of the doubt that they aren't forgetting that defense occasionally matters, too. Then again, maybe I shouldn't. Someone else might remember the details better, but my recollection is that there was a streak running for about a decade in which the preseason SEC favorite did not win the league. That streak would have been broken by LSU last year, but I seem to recall that the streak dated back to the mid-90s.

Anyway, if you asked me right now, I'd say that Georgia has the better team, but that Florida is more likely to win the East because of their schedule. I would rank Georgia ahead of Florida in a preseason top 25 because those rankings are meant to rank the best teams and not necessarily the teams that are likely to finish the season on top. I would pick the SEC East in the following order: Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky, Vandy. (Boring, I know.) So, to answer Barnhart's question, the simplest explanation for the disparity between the national media picking their top 25s and the SEC media predicting the order of finish in the SEC East is that those two medias have different missions in late July.

Is there Something in the Water in Bristol?

Mark Schlabach has ranked the ten BCS Champions and magically puts the four SEC national champions in four of the bottom five spots. If Schlabach wasn't a former writer for the AJC, where he covered the UGA beat quite competently for several years, I'd be fulminating about his being biased against SEC teams. Instead, I simply think that he underrates the importance of strength of schedule and overrates rolling up big numbers in one or two games.

Take his treatment of 2004 USC and 2005 Texas, for example. The 2004 USC team was excellent, but they did have a number of close calls against pretty average opponents. The luster of that team comes from the beatdown they put on Oklahoma in the national title game, but in retrospect, is beating Oklahoma in a BCS game really that much of an accomplishment? In contrast, 2005 Texas was a more dominant team from start to finish. They blew out every opponent, save for an excellent Ohio State team (on the road, no less). They then beat much the same USC team (OK, USC's defense wasn't the same, but their offense was intact and even better than 2004) in Southern California. For my money, 2005 Texas is the only team in the past ten years that would give 2001 Miami a run for its money.

To test Schlabach's conclusions, I decided to take a look at Sagarin's rankings for the same time period and here's what the computer says:

1. 2001 Miami - 108.7, no losses, SOS of 27
2. 2005 Texas - 106.0, no losses, SOS of 13
3. 1999 Florida State - 102.1, no losses, SOS of 11
4. 2004 USC - 101.2, no losses, SOS of 7
5. 2000 Oklahoma - 99.35, no losses, SOS of 29
6. 1998 Tennessee - 98.5, no losses, SOS of 24
7. 2003 LSU - 96.3, one loss, SOS of 28
8. 2007 LSU - 92.4, two losses, SOS of 11
9. 2006 Florida - 91.9, one loss, SOS of 8
10. 2002 Ohio State - 87.8, no losses, SOS of 30

A few notes on the rankings: I used the Sagarin predictor, but Sagarin's site only explicitly lists out the predictor starting in 2001. I assume that the 1998-2000 rankings are the predictor because Sagarin only created his modified ranking at the behest of the BCS when he was told that he needed a ranking that did not take margin of victory into account. Also, the 2000 rankings were not updated after the bowl games, so Oklahoma is a little undervalued in the rankings.

And now, a few observations:

1. Schlabach isn't out on a limb when he puts the SEC national champions in the lower half. I thought that introducing an objective ranking set would reward SEC teams by putting a greater value on strength of schedule, but that was not the case. For instance, my initial thought was that Florida 2006 is analogous to USC 2004: two teams that played their best games in the national title game, covering for a number of close calls during the season. What I had not taken into account was how good 2004 USC's schedule was, as well as the fact that 2006 Florida had more close calls because of their weak offense. (2004 Auburn's SOS, in case you were wondering, was 60. That's why there wasn't more of an outcry at the Tigers not winning a share of the title.)

1a. Then again, the SEC has four national champs in the decade and no other conference has more than two, so screw everyone else.

2. The Big Ten is not good. It has only one national champion in the past decade and that champion is the lowest rated team on the list by a not-insignificant margin. The 2002 Bucks would be a 21-point underdog to 2001 Miami on a neutral field. Then again, the 2002 Bucks beat much of the 2001 Canes on a neutral field, so what do I know? Also, Sagarin ranks the '98 Buckeyes marginally ahead of Tennessee as the best team in the country, so Ohio State does have a saving grace.

3. If you're wondering where the best Georgia teams of the past decade would come in on the list, the 2002, 2003, and 2007 Dawgs all had Sagarin Predictor ratings of 89.

4. For comparison's sake, here are the ten teams as ranked by the power ratings on James Howell's site:

2004 USC - .963, SOS of .817
2001 Miami - .955, SOS of .688
2005 Texas - .951, SOS of .794
2000 Oklahoma - .934, SOS of .702
1998 Tennessee - .927, SOS of .716
2006 Florida - .924, SOS of .825
2002 Ohio State - .923, SOS of .730
1999 Florida State - .918, SOS of .724
2003 LSU - .896, SOS of .636
2007 LSU - .852, SOS of .775

For what it's worth, 1995 Nebraska scores a .941, which would put them 4th on this list. 1992 Alabama scores a .944, which would put them ahead of all of the SEC teams on this list. 1991 Washington, which is the one team I've seen since I started watching college football that would rank with the '95 Huskers, scores a .946. The last team to have a higher ranking than '04 USC according to Howell's rankings is '72 USC with a .964. '71 Nebraska scores a .985. '58 LSU scores a .976. I stopped looking once I got to World War II because I don't want to be an appeaser.

Our Weather is Hotter and our Teams are Meaner

So sayeth Mr. College Football, who says that the ACC and SEC teams are not going to lose this weekend (except in obvious instances where they play one another). I like Barnhart, but he does play to his audience and that can cloud his judgment. He knows he can never go wrong by picking all the local teams to win, but that devalues his opinion.

What further devalues his opinion is analysis like this:

Oklahoma State at Georgia: This one’s pretty simple. If Georgia can run the ball with that baby-faced offensive line, then things will be okay at Sanford Stadium Saturday night. But if the Dawgs can’t run the ball and Matt Stafford has to throw it 35 times, this one turns into a shootout with one of the best offenses in the country. The Dawg Nation does not want that. Georgia 24, Oklahoma State 20.

Did Lloyd Carr write this? Let's think about what Barnhart is saying here: if the running game doesn't work, the Georgia will have to throw the ball 35 times, they'll score more, and this will be a bad thing. If the Dawgs do run the ball well, they'll score 24 points and win a tight game. All Barnhart is saying is that the tempo of the game will be different if Georgia runs effectively. This has nothing to do with the actual result, unless one team is clearly better than the other, in which case the superior team wants a quicker tempo and more possessions because that reduces the chance of the anomalous result. Assuming that Georgia has better players, then they would prefer a game with more possessions. Barnhart (and Carr) drive me crazy when they babble about "shortening the game and protecting the defense," as if these should be goals for teams chocked full of four- and five-star recruits.

What Barnhart should be saying is this: if Georgia's young offensive line cannot open holes for their backs, then the passing game will become less effective, Georgia will struggle in the red zone, and the Dawgs won't be able to take advantage of Oklahoma State's weakness, which is a green defensive line. An ineffective running game is bad because it affects the ability of the team to score touchdowns. Additionally, Barnhart ought to mention that the offensive line affects the passing game in the sense that they have to protect a pocket passer who presents a giant target for pass rushers. (As a Michigan fan, I have a little experience with this concept.) Regardless of the game's tempo, Georgia will have significant problems if they cannot protect Matthew Stafford.

Personally, I think that Georgia's young offensive line will present problems during the season, but Oklahoma State doesn't have the defense to exploit this weakness. Thus, Georgia is going to be able to run and pass well. Oklahoma State will also be able to move the ball, although their effectiveness is more variable because we have no idea if Good Bobby Reid or Bad Bobby Reid are going to show up. Assuming that Good Bobby shows up, then the shootout that many have predicted ought to materialize. I still like Georgia in the shootout because of their depth and homefield advantage; I don't like Barnhart's reasoning for how the Dawgs will get from point A to point B.

Tony Blair Woke up this Morning and Realized that Great Britain No Longer has an Empire

Based on my limited sample of Michigan fans and some casual persual of Signing Day articles, there seems to be a customary rending of garments going on among Midwestern college football fans. The combination of Notre Dame, Michigan, and Ohio State's pummelings in the bowl games, along with a bumper recruiting crop for the SEC, USC, and Texas and average recruiting classes in the Upper Midwest (SEC teams held seven of the top ten spots in Rivals' Rankings, while USC and Texas were in the top five) have led to the conclusion that the South and West are leaving the Midwest behind. I don't think that's right, but only because the verb is present tense instead of past tense. College football dominance shifted South once air conditioning and desegregation took effect and jobs migrated south.

There are a lot of ways to measure that conclusion, but the easiest way would probably be with national championships. In the past 20 years, Michigan, Ohio State, and Notre Dame, the three marquee programs in the Midwest, each have one national title. In that same period, no team from the Northeast has won a national title. Moreover, Michigan won its title without playing anyone from the South and Notre Dame and Ohio State both benefited from bad calls against Miami. ND beat Miami in '88 in part because of a dreadful fumble call against Miami at the one-yard line; Ohio State had the dodgy interference call in overtime, although OSU was also screwed at the end of regulation on a pass that would have ended the game, so I'm more sympathetic to them. Just about any national champion can be marginalized by pointing to luck factors, but the point is that Notre Dame and Ohio State had no margin for error in their games against Miami. The Midwest hasn't produced a truly dominant champion in recent memory. '88 Notre Dame, '97 Michigan, and '02 Ohio State aren't going to be part of the "what was the best team in the past 20 years?" conversation.

In contrast to the three national titles for the Midwest and Northeast in the past 20 years, here are the totals for the South, West, and Plains:

South: 13

Miami - four
Florida State - two
Florida - two
Alabama - one
LSU - one
Georgia Tech - one
Tennessee - one
Texas - one

West: three

USC - two
Washington - one

Great Plains: five

Nebraska - three
Colorado - one
Oklahoma - one

There is inevitably some imprecision involved in making determinations as to what region a given program falls. One argument could be that Nebraska is really in the Midwest and that doubles the region's totals. However, even if that's true, Nebraska illustrates the point that Southern teams typically have significantly more talent than teams from the Midwest and therefore, that teams with less talent can only win with an unconventional style. Nebraska was one of the few teams that truly scared SEC fans, as they had an impeccable record against the SEC during their option era. Nebraska realized long ago that they couldn't compete with other programs on a talent-for-talent basis, so they had an innovative option offense to compensate. (They forgot this when they hired Bill Callahan, which is why they'll never be anything more than a decent program from now on.) Michigan and Ohio State might take heed of that example. They'll always have more talent than the Iowas and Wisconsins of the world and if they're satisfied with winning the conference and losing their bowl games, that's cool. To beat USC or Florida (or whatever team from the SEC vanquishes Florida), they can't be conventional. I am at a loss in terms of figuring out how they should be unconventional. Ohio State's shotgun offense seems all racy (especially to Michigan fans), but it's not unconventional in the modern college football world. And Michigan and Notre Dame's pro style offenses are certainly not unconventional in any respects.

Even if you drop the eight national titles from the three Florida programs out and exclude Texas from the South, the South still beats the Midwest in national titles in the past 20 years. The overall conclusion, to me at least, is that Michigan and Notre Dame fans overrate the value of their schools' profile and tradition. (I exempt Ohio State from that discussion because Ohio State, unlike Michigan and Notre Dame, can simply recruit their state and have a very good team. It won't be as good as Florida or USC because Ohioans probably overrate their high school football talent as compared to that in Florida and California, but it will be very good.) TV appearances and cool fight songs are nice factors when trying to pull in recruits and there's no doubt that those are the reasons why Ryan Mallett and Donovan Warren are coming to Ann Arbor and Jimmy Clausen and Armando Allen are headed to South Bend. However, those guys are the exception, not the rule. The most important factor in recruiting is proximity to talent and teams in the Midwest and Northeast face a significant disadvantage in that respect.

I'd also draw a distinction between the South and the West at this stage. Michigan fans throw up their hands and say "we can't compete with Florida's and USC's talent" and then that leads to "there's more talent in the South and West," but that's not accurate. Florida did pull in an epic recruiting class, but their regional rivals also did well. Thus, it's unfair to expect Florida to replicate USC's dominance in the Pac Ten. Florida will have more talent than the teams that it plays, but the margin won't be huge, so the Auburns, Tennessees, LSUs, South Carolinas, and Georgias of the world will jump up and bite them from time to time. (And that leaves out Florida State and Miami, which could have renaissances at some point.)

In contrast to the South, I'd attribute USC's success, in no small part, to the fact that they have no significant regional rival and have been able to pick and choose the best talent out West. The talent pool in the West isn't on the same level as that of the South, but when one program gets all of the talent in any region, that team will be tough to compete with. Want evidence? How about this gem from Steve Megarjee's Signing Day wrap:

The addition of [Joe] McKnight gives USC six five-star prospects this season and an astounding 23 five-star signees over the last four years. The rest of the Pac-10 schools have combined to sign only six five-star prospects (Oregon wide receiver Cameron Colvin, Arizona defensive end Louis Holmes, California wide receiver DeSean Jackson, UCLA quarterback Ben Olson, Oregon running back Jonathan Stewart and Washington quarterback Matthew Tuiasosopo) during that same time frame.

Pac Ten programs not named USC took two of the top ten players in California this year. They took one of the top ten in 2006. They took three of the top ten in 2005. They took four of the top ten in 2004. Thus, in a four-year period, USC has signed 25 of the players on the California top ten list and the rest of the conference has signed ten. The argument that SEC fans should be making to belittle USC's success is not that USC would go 8-3 in the SEC, a totally unsupportable claim given the ridiculous amounts of talent that USC deploys. Instead, the argument should be that USC benefits from the fact that no one else on the West Coast can recruit worth a damn. Anyway, to get back to my original point, it's not correct to say that college football is currently ruled by the South and West. Rather, the statement should be that college football is ruled by the South and USC.