Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Same Old College Football Stuff

Some crap from Dennis Dodd's blog at sportsline.com. It's mostly some overwashed garbage about Tate Forcier and all that, but there are a few tidbits that merit mention here:

What we have found during this down time is that college football needs that brand, no matter what form it comes in. The game is better when the major powers are good. Notre Dame is down after Saturday but not out. Penn State keeps winning under Joe Paterno. Oklahoma and Texas keep pumping out 10-win seasons.

This is a similar thesis to what the HatGuy suggested a few weeks ago. I don't know why some writers seem resistant to new blood in the college game. If I were a Boise St., Cincinnati, or BYU fan, I would be pissed. Writers probably love big-name teams doing well since it's easy to research their pasts and throw up an article. It's a lot harder to come by an interesting historical angle on a Boise St. BCS run than it is a Notre Dame BCS run.

4. BYU: Please stop the questions about the Cougars' national championship worthiness if they run the table. Yes, they would deserve to play for it all.


The questions will persist because of BYU's schedule. Props to the BYU AD for scheduling Oklahoma and Florida State - but you can't just say that BYU deserves it right now. I imagine it would take a strange storm of circumstances involving the BCS conference leaders having 1 or 2 losses for BYU to get consideration.

7 comments:

Elliot said...

What they need to do is take the good teams from the WAC and Mountain West and make them join either the Pac 10 or the Big 12. That way they would have to play solid teams, and they wouldn't have to deal with the criticism that is (rightly) deserved that their strength of schedule is weak.

Stop playing Air Force and CSU every year, and people will start giving you a lot more respect.

Passive Voice said...

Please explain the logistics of a 13/14 team Pac10, Elliot. Also, USAFA and CSU aren't half-bad teams.

Anyway, dan-bob, a dearth of undefeated Big-Conf winners wouldn't really be that strange an occurrence. It's been four years since USC-UT, and three years since any major team finished the regular season undefeated. There's at least one loss lurking on the schedules of USC, PSU, Miami/VTech, and probably UT and UF too.

Anonymous said...

Can someone explain how someone can argue that "The game is better when the major powers are good" and then say BYU should be playing in the NC game in the same article?

If the game is better when the major powers are good, then we should all be rooting for BYU to lose out.

As for the conferences, every one of them has some pretty creampuff teams. Why punish a team for playing in a slightly worse conference when they make up for it by playing harder games out of conference?

Bengoodfella said...

Elliott, that's a great point. It is opposite for teams like BYU than it is for teams in the "major" conferences. Florida may schedule easier teams out of conference but in-conference they make up for that by playing difficult teams.

I do have to say I disagree with you and agree with Passive, CSU and Air Force aren't that bad of teams really.

I am not looking to punish any teams for playing in a difficult conference, I just think it all evens out in the end.

Elliot said...

Maybe I was off the mark on expanding the Pac-10 or Big 12, but the point remains that there are one or two good teams out of the Mountain West and WAC every year, and they always complain about how they don't get to play in the BCS title game.

The reason why it's so disingenuous is because they always go "Well we went undefeated! We should get a shot at (insert really good SEC/Big 12/Big 10/Pac-10 team here)" but guess what, those teams have to play in real, top-level conferences, while BYU or Boise St. get to play teams that may not be bad, but are hardly at the same level as teams in elite conferences.

Just like it's utter BS to say that "When Notre Dame is good, it's good for NCAA football" it's total crap to say that teams that go undefeated, without a decent strength of schedule, "deserve" to play for the national title.

At any rate, all this is arguing for is a playoff system. If there was a tournament at the end of the year, and a WAC or MW team went undefeated, they would most likely be a #1 or #2 seed in one of the brackets. Even in a 16-team playoff, you would start to see whether or not easy in-conference schedule is as big of a factor as some (like me) think.

Anonymous said...

the Big 10 is a top conference?

Elliot said...

Historically, yes. This is not the first year that this argument has come up.