CFN Analysis
5 Thoughts, Oct. 3
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- Fiutak: Will LSU vs.
Bama be for the title?
- Cirminiello: Russell Wilson
is what the game needs
- Zemek: The time problem at
South Carolina
-
Sallee: Georgia is back in the SEC title hunt
- Mitchell: What's wrong with
South Carolina
- Harrison: What went wrong
with Ohio State
E-mail
Pete Fiutak
Supposedly, the national championship will be played on November 5th when LSU travels to Alabama.
At least that’s what the perception appears to be if you're not playing an SEC
schedule, forgetting the no
one-wants-to-talk-about-it fact that the league is
squishy-soft outside of the killers at the top.
It’s become the norm to cast Boise State off the
island every year because of its schedule, but now
it’s being done for everyone else who's not in the
SEC.
At the end of Wisconsin’s demolition of Nebraska, Kirk Herbstreit, sort of under his breath and in passing, muttered something – to paraphrase - about how the win was dominant and how it might change the national title chase a bit, but the Big Ten is the Big Ten
and there's no LSU or Alabama on the slate.
And he was right.
All of a sudden, Wisconsin is hitting the Boise State problem. This year, if
you're not playing Alabama, LSU, or Oklahoma, it's
going to be hard to win over the world. For
Wisconsin, through no fault of its own, it's
schedule that looked so tough this offseason -
including games against Oregon State and Nebraska -
now might not get the job done.
Ohio State’s offensive line gets blown over by a soft breeze and the attack is punchless,
so the October 29th game in Columbus won’t bring the
Badgers much in the way of national respect. Penn State is awful, Minnesota is big bowl of bad, and Purdue is an injury-plagued mess, so that means Wisconsin’s national title street cred comes down to beating Ohio State, Michigan State, and Illinois on the road after beating up Nebraska at home. Throw in the new Big Ten title game, and is this enough to give a 13-0 Wisconsin enough juice to play for the national title?
It would be impressive,
but LSU and
Alabama are playing each other and Oklahoma has to
deal with a nasty nine-game Big 12 slate.
What if it's Michigan?
You want to talk about a fun December? Imagine if
the Wolverines go 13-0 with this schedule to close:
at Northwestern, at Michigan State, Purdue, at Iowa,
at Illinois, Nebraska, and Ohio State. Leaving out
Wisconsin would be one thing, but Michigan
being thrown to the Rose Bowl instead of the
national title game would change the world.
But I digress. That's not going to happen, but
Stanford is in the position to step in if Oklahoma
loses and/or if the SEC champion has one loss.
Will anyone wake up in time to notice the
Cardinal schedule? No one did last year when Oregon
blew through an awful, awful league that will
once again overinflate the production of its
champion, but it'll go unnoticed by the people that
matter.
The people who voted in the Coaches’ Poll – most of which couldn’t name the head coach or a second Stanford player besides Andrew Luck – moved the Cardinal up to four after beating up San Jose State, Duke, Arizona and UCLA. Stanford has beaten four teams that
probably won’t go to a bowl - or at least one of any
significance - will beat a fifth in Colorado this week, and then gets Washington State (who lost to San Diego State), Washington (who lost big to Nebraska), USC (who sputtered against a Minnesota team in a battle with Indiana to be this year’s worst BCS program), Oregon State (No. 1B next to Minnesota and Indiana), Oregon (great, but can’t run the ball against a real, live, defensive front seven), California (who lost to Washington already), and Notre Dame.
Alabama and LSU fans would take that deal in a heartbeat to avoid playing each other.
So the question that lingered this offseason is still out there: if Alabama or LSU wins the SEC Championship but has one loss, will you feel comfortable with an Oklahoma/Oklahoma State/Stanford/Wisconsin/Clemson/Boise State/Georgia Tech/Michigan national championship?
If you had to bet the house, the wife and the kids, would you take any of those teams over Alabama or LSU on January 9th in New Orleans?
I hate the BCS. It would be so much more fun to see
all these great teams play instead of arguing about
schedules, but if it's an Alabama/LSU vs. Oklahoma
national title, the BCS will get away with it again.
- Fiutak: Will LSU vs.
Bama be for the title?
- Cirminiello: Russell Wilson
is what the game needs
- Zemek: The time problem at
South Carolina
-
Sallee: Georgia is back in the SEC title hunt
- Mitchell: What's wrong with
South Carolina
- Harrison: What went wrong
with Ohio State