2010 NCAA Football Thread

[crashcarson15]

I could see ASU beating UCLA and USC. No way in Hell they beat Stanford or UofA though...

[Kevin W.]

USC will beat ASU. We will and Stanford will as well.

[footballfiji]

Jigga should enjoy this. It was radio gold today:

[OUSooners]

ASU could beat USC and UCLA, but there's a good chance they'll lose to both.

[Still MIGHTY]

USC will beat ASU. We will and Stanford will as well.

Washington beat USC in LA. ASU beat Washington in Seattle in the rain. What's to say that ASU can't beat USC? It can happen. ASU's defense held the Trojans to 14 points last year, and they can most definitely do it again. And USC's defense isn't near to what it usually is. The Devils just have to be efficient. They can do it.

ASU should beat UCLA, especially at home. I'm still dumbfounded how they beat Texas. ASU should win.

Stanford is a damn good team, but who knows, ASU hung with Oregon for about 3 quarters. And it's in Tempe, you never know. I'm not banking on it, by any means. I'm more depending on Stanford winning this actually.

And as I've pointed out to you before, despite you attempts to say the contrary, the ASU/UofA game is generally always tight no matter the location or the circumstances. ASU most definitely has a chance to win that game.

[Cola]

This is an old post, but I thought of a good analogy and I'd like to use it. Saying that a team is a good team because they play a tough conference schedule makes no sense and doesn't mean anything other than the fact that they play a tough schedule. Let's say you take the dumbest kid in school and you put him in the toughest classes, you give him all AP courses, and he has to take them period after period with only a short break for lunch (his bye week). In essence, he has a difficult schedule. Nobody in their right mind will tell you that kid is one of the 12 smartest kids in school because he has a tough schedule.

playing a tough schedule and losing 75% of those games only means that you're a bad to mediocre team with a tough schedule. Logic is fun will. Try it.

I don't think this is a very good analogy at all- yeah, it helps your argument...but is it really valid?

First off, I don't want to be the pompous prick that throws SEC flavor in your face at every chance that arises. It isn't worth my time to continually bicker with hard core opponents of SEC dominance when they refuse to open their eyes and realize what almost every analyst in America does. I do believe the SEC is and has been the best conference in college football from top to bottom and will continue to believe this until I see reason not to.

Moving on, back to your analogy. Has a lot of faults in it. Let me give a more accurate analogy:

Let's say you have a student at MIT studying Mathematics. Let's take the "dumbest" kid in the graduating class of 2010. Among MIT circles, he isn't the best and probably won't get tons of academic grants or be a shoe-in for a Rhodes Scholar. But he was accepted, studied, and graduated from MIT. Then compare him to one of the best graduates from the 2010 class of some community college in rural West Virginia.

Which kid is likely to beat the other in a debate on Quantum Mathematics? Answer should be clear.

I know willmorris was spewing a lot without any backup- and I guess, as a Southern college football fan, we just get tired of having to explain or defend our position to people. We see Ohio State at #1 in the polls...fine, okay with me...but we know how that story ends. Seen that movie and have the t-shirt. Same with a lot of Big 10 teams, honestly. They have the least credit among SEC fans for the most part because of how inflated their value becomes during the course of a season by beat opponents in a 2 team conference.

We can't help to see Denard Robinson and, while we see the impressive numbers, we kind of skip over him to the next headline because he did it against very poor opposition and, barring the scheduling of a solid OOC opponent, usually don't even have to look it up. When we DO and see it was against UConn, UMass, and Indiana...eh, it just doesn't help to say the least.

I realize this board is majority Northern US/Canada...so it's a bit difficult on Southern football fans on this board, especially when we usually make perfect since elsewhere!

As for my Gamecocks, fantastic showing on Saturday...but Kentucky is an unpredictable team and we still have to prove that we can handle success and don't fall flat on our faces in the 2nd half of the season. I thought Columbia was literally going to implode Saturday night- very exciting place to be that night.

[Panhead1]

I just love the fact that Alabama just got shot down to #5. Ohio State and/or Oregon will slip up eventually, I just know it. Hopefully it'll be Ohio State.

[dfwabel]

UH Case Keenum will appeal the NCAA for a sixth season.

[infrared41]

This is an old post, but I thought of a good analogy and I'd like to use it. Saying that a team is a good team because they play a tough conference schedule makes no sense and doesn't mean anything other than the fact that they play a tough schedule. Let's say you take the dumbest kid in school and you put him in the toughest classes, you give him all AP courses, and he has to take them period after period with only a short break for lunch (his bye week). In essence, he has a difficult schedule. Nobody in their right mind will tell you that kid is one of the 12 smartest kids in school because he has a tough schedule.

playing a tough schedule and losing 75% of those games only means that you're a bad to mediocre team with a tough schedule. Logic is fun will. Try it.

I don't think this is a very good analogy at all- yeah, it helps your argument...but is it really valid?

First off, I don't want to be the pompous prick that throws SEC flavor in your face at every chance that arises. It isn't worth my time to continually bicker with hard core opponents of SEC dominance when they refuse to open their eyes and realize what almost every analyst in America does. I do believe the SEC is and has been the best conference in college football from top to bottom and will continue to believe this until I see reason not to.

Moving on, back to your analogy. Has a lot of faults in it. Let me give a more accurate analogy:

Let's say you have a student at MIT studying Mathematics. Let's take the "dumbest" kid in the graduating class of 2010. Among MIT circles, he isn't the best and probably won't get tons of academic grants or be a shoe-in for a Rhodes Scholar. But he was accepted, studied, and graduated from MIT. Then compare him to one of the best graduates from the 2010 class of some community college in rural West Virginia.

Which kid is likely to beat the other in a debate on Quantum Mathematics? Answer should be clear.

I know willmorris was spewing a lot without any backup- and I guess, as a Southern college football fan, we just get tired of having to explain or defend our position to people. We see Ohio State at #1 in the polls...fine, okay with me...but we know how that story ends. Seen that movie and have the t-shirt. Same with a lot of Big 10 teams, honestly. They have the least credit among SEC fans for the most part because of how inflated their value becomes during the course of a season by beat opponents in a 2 team conference.

We can't help to see Denard Robinson and, while we see the impressive numbers, we kind of skip over him to the next headline because he did it against very poor opposition and, barring the scheduling of a solid OOC opponent, usually don't even have to look it up. When we DO and see it was against UConn, UMass, and Indiana...eh, it just doesn't help to say the least.

I realize this board is majority Northern US/Canada...so it's a bit difficult on Southern football fans on this board, especially when we usually make perfect since elsewhere!

As for my Gamecocks, fantastic showing on Saturday...but Kentucky is an unpredictable team and we still have to prove that we can handle success and don't fall flat on our faces in the 2nd half of the season. I thought Columbia was literally going to implode Saturday night- very exciting place to be that night.

Wow. You know I was with you on the SEC for a while but now, despite your best effort not to, you're just coming across as a pompous ass. If the SEC is so -ing superior then maybe you can explain to this dumb northerner how any of this happened? Penn State beat LSU last season. Your mighty Gamecocks got knocked off by the juggernaut that is UConn. (Seriously, you lost to a Big East team?) Alabama got their asses kicked by Utah. West Virginia beat Georgia. Michigan beat Florida the last time they played them. Speaking of which, let's take a look at the last ten seasons in the annual SEC - Big Ten matchup in the Capital One Bowl...

In the ten Capital One Bowls played since 2000 the Big Ten has won six. The SEC has won four. How the hell did that happen? Oh, that's right, the SEC teams didn't want to be there or something right? I realize I'm just a dumb northerner but it sure seems to me that, the top team in the conference aside, your SEC isn't quite as dominant as you'd like to think.

Just saying...

[slightly shotgunned]

This is an old post, but I thought of a good analogy and I'd like to use it. Saying that a team is a good team because they play a tough conference schedule makes no sense and doesn't mean anything other than the fact that they play a tough schedule. Let's say you take the dumbest kid in school and you put him in the toughest classes, you give him all AP courses, and he has to take them period after period with only a short break for lunch (his bye week). In essence, he has a difficult schedule. Nobody in their right mind will tell you that kid is one of the 12 smartest kids in school because he has a tough schedule.

playing a tough schedule and losing 75% of those games only means that you're a bad to mediocre team with a tough schedule. Logic is fun will. Try it.

I don't think this is a very good analogy at all- yeah, it helps your argument...but is it really valid?

First off, I don't want to be the pompous prick that throws SEC flavor in your face at every chance that arises. It isn't worth my time to continually bicker with hard core opponents of SEC dominance when they refuse to open their eyes and realize what almost every analyst in America does. I do believe the SEC is and has been the best conference in college football from top to bottom and will continue to believe this until I see reason not to.

Moving on, back to your analogy. Has a lot of faults in it. Let me give a more accurate analogy:

Let's say you have a student at MIT studying Mathematics. Let's take the "dumbest" kid in the graduating class of 2010. Among MIT circles, he isn't the best and probably won't get tons of academic grants or be a shoe-in for a Rhodes Scholar. But he was accepted, studied, and graduated from MIT. Then compare him to one of the best graduates from the 2010 class of some community college in rural West Virginia.

Which kid is likely to beat the other in a debate on Quantum Mathematics? Answer should be clear.

I know willmorris was spewing a lot without any backup- and I guess, as a Southern college football fan, we just get tired of having to explain or defend our position to people. We see Ohio State at #1 in the polls...fine, okay with me...but we know how that story ends. Seen that movie and have the t-shirt. Same with a lot of Big 10 teams, honestly. They have the least credit among SEC fans for the most part because of how inflated their value becomes during the course of a season by beat opponents in a 2 team conference.

We can't help to see Denard Robinson and, while we see the impressive numbers, we kind of skip over him to the next headline because he did it against very poor opposition and, barring the scheduling of a solid OOC opponent, usually don't even have to look it up. When we DO and see it was against UConn, UMass, and Indiana...eh, it just doesn't help to say the least.

I realize this board is majority Northern US/Canada...so it's a bit difficult on Southern football fans on this board, especially when we usually make perfect since elsewhere!

As for my Gamecocks, fantastic showing on Saturday...but Kentucky is an unpredictable team and we still have to prove that we can handle success and don't fall flat on our faces in the 2nd half of the season. I thought Columbia was literally going to implode Saturday night- very exciting place to be that night.

What you're getting is not opposition, it's a reality check. Nobody is disputing that the SEC is a powerhouse conference, they're telling you that the Grand Canyon-esque gap that SEC honks want to put between them and the rest of the college football world is more of a 4 lane expressway at best.

McCarthy's analogy works because while there's a good chance that MIT near failure would likely beat down a community college academic all-star, it's not a guarantee. Also, should said MIT near failure come up against an average student from RIT, the RIT student would likely come out on top wouldn't you say? So you certainly aren't going to rank the MIT near failure against the RIT average student. Or the Stanford average student. Or the Cal Tech average student. Or the RPI average student. Or the CM average student. But that's what you're implying; that the MIT near failure is better than all other students from all other schools by virture of merely graduating from MIT. That's just plain homerism.

Also, this "solid OOC schedule" defense...I'll agree with you there. The likes of UConn and UMass, hell even Indiana can't even hold a candle to powerhouses like Troy, Southern Mississippi and...uh oh...South Carolina plays Furman this year. Mark that one up as a loss. No way the 'Cocks are going to get by the juggernaut that is the Furman Paladins. At least you're playing them at home, that ought to help out a little bit

Seriously, it seems that very few teams schedule more than one tough OOC opponent a year if they've got an uto-bid into a BCS bowl. The SEC is no exception to this and they never have been. Please stop.

[pianoknight]

I don't want to start a flame war, but...

The SEC (minus Vanderbilt) has some of the lowest academic standards in the nation. Conferences like the BigTen or the Pac10 require member schools to be part of the AAU or a similar academic fraternity.

While academic standards aren't necessarily the causation of the SEC's dominance, there can be some correlation between the two. It's a known fact that the south also has a lot of natural athletes. Logically, if those superior athletes can't perform up to the academic level of another conference, they will most likely chose to attend school close to home.

In other words, the SEC gets all the sum-bitch fast and strong, yet inbred, dumb-as-brick athletes because they couldn't get accepted to superior schools. It's also why Vanderbilt (Harvard of the South) is the bottom feeder of the league.

[Breakwood]

I don't want to start a flame war, but...

The SEC (minus Vanderbilt) has some of the lowest academic standards in the nation. Conferences like the BigTen or the Pac10 require member schools to be part of the AAU or a similar academic fraternity.

While academic standards aren't necessarily the causation of the SEC's dominance, there can be some correlation between the two. It's a known fact that the south also has a lot of natural athletes. Logically, if those superior athletes can't perform up to the academic level of another conference, they will most likely chose to attend school close to home.

In other words, the SEC gets all the sum-bitch fast and strong, yet inbred, dumb-as-brick athletes because they couldn't get accepted to superior schools. It's also why Vanderbilt (Harvard of the South) is the bottom feeder of the league.

Whoa Whoa Whoa!

You actually think university is about academics? You dumb Northerner!

[HedleyLamarr]

I don't want to start a flame war, but...

The SEC (minus Vanderbilt) has some of the lowest academic standards in the nation. Conferences like the BigTen or the Pac10 require member schools to be part of the AAU or a similar academic fraternity.

While academic standards aren't necessarily the causation of the SEC's dominance, there can be some correlation between the two. It's a known fact that the south also has a lot of natural athletes. Logically, if those superior athletes can't perform up to the academic level of another conference, they will most likely chose to attend school close to home.

In other words, the SEC gets all the sum-bitch fast and strong, yet inbred, dumb-as-brick athletes because they couldn't get accepted to superior schools. It's also why Vanderbilt (Harvard of the South) is the bottom feeder of the league.

Florida's an AAU member (as is Texas)....why are they so successful in athletics?

As for the part in bold: In case you aren't aware of this, college athletes live on campus year-round. If you're given the equal option (in terms of scholarship, playing time, etc.) for any school, which locales sound more enticing to live in? South Bend or Gainesville? Lansing or Athens? Champaign or Baton Rouge? Madison or Coral Gables? Why freeze your balls off in Indiana in the winter when you can take a quick drive to the beach from Tallahassee instead? Athletes are choosing to live in warmer climates.

[pianoknight]

I understand there are more issues than academics; I'm over-exaggerating the fact that academics are a bigger part than people probably realize.

Florida's an AAU member? That's cool, but then again so is the ENTIRE BIG TEN. I'm not trying to be a conference homer, but don't tell me that Mississippi State has the same academic standards as Iowa. There's also the issue of scholarship oversigning, which in simple terms, just means that you're skirting the ethics of NCCA recruiting regulations.

When you look at teams that have consistently manipulated their rosters to avoid "going over" on scholarships, guess who turns up most? The SEC. The following numbers are calculated over a ten year span, meaning that this is documenting a pattern of behavior, not just a fluke year or two.

Ten-Year Average of Top Ten Oversigned NCCA Div-1 Teams from 2000-2009

Auburn...................(SEC) 28.11

Miss. State..............(SEC) 27.44

Iowa State...............(B12) 27.00

South Carolina...........(SEC) 26.89

Arkansas.................(SEC) 26.56

Kansas State.............(B12) 26.44

Ole Miss.................(SEC) 26.33

Oregon State.............(P10) 26.11

West Virginia........(BigEast) 26.11

Alabama..................(SEC) 26.11

Anything over 25 is considered "too many" players. Also consider that the SEC has only had 35 classes under this limit since 2000. Not just one school- the WHOLE conference.

12 Teams X 10 Years = 120 recruiting classes.

35 "good" classes / 120 total recruiting classes = 0.291666

In other words, 70% of SEC recruiting classes are not in compliance!?

Yup, half of the SEC is in the Top Ten offenders over the last decade. So let's see. A hotbed of high school talent, lower academic standards, and coaches who are more willing to look the other way on recruiting violations? Manipulate their rosters almost 70% of the time!? It's no wonder they've won the last 4 National Titles. Hell they might as well get ArthurAnderson to do the league's accounting, too.

[Kevin W.]

Conferences like the BigTen or the Pac10 require member schools to be part of the AAU or a similar academic fraternity.

I don't believe that's true for the Pac-10. We do require high academic standards, but 3 of the Pac-10 schools are not AAU members.

[infrared41]

OK, let me see if I can clear up a few things...

First off a question, what the is "It's a known fact that the south also has a lot of natural athletes" supposed to mean?

Second, whether we like it or not, the SEC is still the best overall conference in college football. The SEC certainly isn't as dominant as in years past but it is still the premier conference in college football. The fact that people are resorting to "yeah but SEC players aren't as smart as Big Ten players" simply furthers the point. Smart don't win titles fellas. If it did then The Ivy League would be the target of our derision.

Finally, until one of the other conferences knocks off an SEC team in the title game, we'll just have to live with pompous airbags like Cola. Just be glad that for every Cola there's a Hedley or Flame. Who knows? Maybe this is the year.

[Seadragon76]

Gotta agree with infrared here. Until someone can man up and beat an SEC team in the National Championship Game, then the fans of the SEC schools can brag all they want about being the best conference in the nation.

Hell, even I know that and I guess I'm a... 'Dumb Northerner'. (Northerner? What, the Civil War never ended, hm?)

[Cola]

Finally, until one of the other conferences knocks off an SEC team in the title game, we'll just have to live with pompous airbags like Cola. Just be glad that for every Cola there's a Hedley or Flame. Who knows? Maybe this is the year.

I swear I'm not and I'm a pretty level headed guy when it comes to anything, especially college sports. It seems, and maybe rightfully so, that my long winded post came across that way, but I really didn't feel like I shared more than fact and my honest opinion. I just realized this thread existed a few days ago, so maybe you will get to see for yourself soon. I'm an equal opportunity fan for the most part, I just call it like I see it.

Just because I think the SEC is the best conference in football, which you have admitted, and that I am really supportive of my team and conference- doesn't mean I am a blind college football idiot. A lot of people realize a tendency for fans of SEC teams to have a conference pride that isn't found among other conferences, and maybe this is why many fans of SEC schools come across as pompous? Most fans just pull for their own schools and could care less how everyone else does. While I want Carolina to beat the hell out of Georgia, Florida, or any other SEC school when that time comes...I'm also pulling for those same teams when they play OOC teams.

[rams80]

Gotta agree with infrared here. Until someone can man up and beat an SEC team in the National Championship Game, then the fans of the SEC schools can brag all they want about being the best conference in the nation beat like a drum by the National Champs.

Hell, even I know that and I guess I'm a... 'Dumb Northerner'. (Northerner? What, the Civil War never ended, hm?)

Fixed.

I refer again to my post of a couple of pages ago. The success of Alabama, Florida, and LSU has a lot more to do with the individual qualities of those programs rather than them being better "battle tested" in the SEC.

[pianoknight]

To be fair, Cola is levelheaded. Sorry if I came off like a blowhard, but I work with some "good ol' boys" who live and die by the Razorbacks and 'Tide. They act like the SEC is not just God's gift to football, it's just plain God's gift. I swear they think Moses quarterbacked the Volunteers and Jesus was the head coach at UGA.