Five Thoughts:
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Week 12
It's just Notre
Dame.
By
Pete
Fiutak
1.
What,
exactly, did USC do to suddenly make everyone soooooooooo certain that
it’s number two? It blew out Notre Dame?! This just in to anyone paying
attention: Notre Dame was overrated to start the season, it’s overrated
going into the BCS, it was overrated last year. This is a team that got
by over the last two seasons on a near-miss in a classic loss to USC. In
other words, it’s Cal.
Michigan whacked the Irish 47-21 in South Bend. Fine, so the
Irish beat Georgia Tech, who’ll probably win the ACC title, but the next
best win this year was against, um, uh, Navy? UCLA? Remember that it
took a miracle meltdown to beat the Bruins as well as Michigan State.
This team has no secondary, no pass protection, and got by on bombing
away and hoping for the best.
Don’t get me wrong; if USC beats UCLA, I’m 100% for the Trojans playing
the Buckeyes for the national championship. It beat Nebraska, Arkansas,
Cal, and yeah, Notre Dame, but don’t just assume that one blowout win
this week makes it the be-all-end-all.
Let's go bowling!
By
Pete
Fiutak
2.
So, you think your team is in for a post-season game because
it made it to the magical six-win mark, right? Not quite. The rule is
that 7-5 teams get a bid over 6-6 teams, so that means you might get
your fill of Sun Belt teams like UL Lafayette and Middle Tennessee, and
MAC also-rans like Western Michigan and Northern Illinois, and other
teams like New Mexico, Rice, Tulsa and East Carolina over Arizona,
Kansas, Washington State, UCLA, Pitt and Oklahoma State. Fine, so the
teams that need to fill conference slots get in, but you won't see any
at-large teams from bigger conferences. Is this fair or right? Should
teams that got to winning records thanks to being above-average in lousy
conferences get an extra game, the bowl dough, and extra practices over
teams from top conferences with, for the most part, better schedules?
It’s debatable, but one thing’s for sure; there’s absolutely no reason
to schedule anyone of note on the non-conference schedule. It should be
simple: games against non-Division-I teams shouldn’t be able to count
towards the win total. Ever. It can count as a loss, but not as a win
towards bowl eligibility. Currently, you can count one D-I win towards
bowl eligibility every four years.
The Miami job is big. Really big.
By
Richard Cirminiello
3. The Friday firing of Larry Coker was the worst-kept secret in
college football. Even the coach’s demeanor before and during Thursday’s
upset win of Boston College suggested that he was at peace with the
inevitable decision to relieve him of his sideline duties. Now what?
You’ll hear all kinds of names, ranging from Barry Alvarez to half of
the Big East’s head coaches, and you’re also going to hear that the job
is fraught with sizable pitfalls and obstacles. Tune that hogwash out
because it’s completely overrated.
Yeah, there are issues with the facilities, but Miami is still a plum
opening, particularly since any coach that follows Coker is going to
look like the second coming of Howard Schnellenberger. Oh, and not only
can you still win a national championship in Coral Gables, but the right
coach will have a shot to do it right away. The Canes are going to
return 18 starters to a team that’ll compete in an ACC that figures to
be just as void of a dominant team as it was this fall. Prediction: The
new hire gets Miami back to a national championship game within three
years, ending all the chatter that it’s slipped from the ranks of the
premier programs.
Fine, so the Big East
isn't that great.
By
Matthew
Zemek
4.
Time to take my lumps.
Big East critics were, in the end, correct with
respect to the 2006 regular season.
Rutgers, losing to Cincinnati?
West Virginia, losing at home to South Florida?
Pittsburgh, a five-game losing streak?
This is a league of overachieving teams, but it's
not a league of elite teams. Conference superiority is still a myth--I
won't change that view. Nor will I budge in saying that Louisville or
WVU would give Ohio State an appreciably fierce battle. West Virginia,
if healthy, would pose particular matchup problems for the Buckeyes.
But it is time to give a nod to SEC fans in this
one respect: if Big East teams played in the SEC, they'd get bloodied
up. Big-time. I wasn't all that willing to concede this point earlier in
the year, but the recent losses by Rutgers and West Virginia have
altered reality.
There--swallowed hard. Now my throat's sore.
The cautionary note is this: under the BCS and the
bowl system, college football is structured around the "one big game."
This means that bowl selections should not be influenced by the "how
would a Big East team fare in a full SEC regular season" kind of
argument. With a playoff system, that line of reasoning would apply. It
doesn't when the sport is structured around the one-shot deal that is a
bowl game.
Upon further review, that Oregon game was
big.
By
John
Harris
5. Last summer, I got an email from a reader who was asking my
opinion on Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops, imparting his own opinion
that perhaps he had taken the program as far as he could take it. I was
a bit taken aback knowing what kind of coach Stoops is and had been. I
tried to assure
the emailer that he was the right guy and that just because the Sooners
didn’t get it done in two consecutive national championship games, that
wasn’t reason to think that he couldn’t get the job done.
Fast forward to the
fall of 2006. The Sooners are a dark horse national champion contender,
well, before former Sooner quarterback Rhett Bomar picked up a check
from a local car dealership without having worked a full day there.
Gosh, can the Sooners even get into the top 25 with Paul Thompson at
quarterback? Then, they get hosed at Oregon early in the season.
Stolen, might be a better word, but I digress. Top 25? Can they even
participate in the Big 12 race? Then, Texas hammered the Sooners in the
second half in Dallas. Then, Heisman candidate Adrian Peterson broke
his collarbone in the Iowa State game. What else could go…wrong?
Yet, when Sooner nation
woke up this morning, guess who was preparing for Nebraska and a trip to
Kansas City? Well, well, well, maybe the man still can coach. The
Sooners have some good talent, no question, but somehow Stoops gets that
talent to show up and play at its maximum ability every single play,
every single drive and every single game. They don’t dazzle you on
offense or have you shaking in your boots to face the defense, but they
win…because of Stoops. Other teams have talent, but rarely do you see a
team face such adversity and still win every week. This has to be
Stoops best coaching job since he’s been there, no question. A spot in
the Big 12 championship game? Unreal.
Now, take away that
Oregon “loss”…I’ll let you finish that thought.