Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Thoughts on the college football scene

People have underestimated Ohio State. While Michigan was losing to I-AA schools and Texas was just barely beating Central Florida and Arkansas State, Ohio State was dominating their opponents under the radar. There is too much of a time lag in rankings in the polls. I would have kicked Texas out of the top 10 after the first 1 or 2 weeks.

Les Miles is a better coach than I thought he was.

Because of the way we crown our national champion, people get involved in imaginary contests about which conference is better. We can only surmise that such and such conference is better than the other one just because of a single game between two schools earlier in the season, or maybe there were no games at all. We don't really know if the Big 12 champ is truly better than the PAC-10 champ, so we make a guess based on strength of schedule, which is primarily within one's conference. It doesn't make any sense.

The best way is to have a tournament of 8 teams. Why 8? Because we want to avoid two things:

1) the have's having two or three more games than the have-nots. Let's say a regular season schedule is reduced to 11 games. Bowl-worthy teams would have 12 games. The top 8 would only have 12, 13, or 14 games. If we have a tournament of 16 or 32, we have the top teams getting 4 or 5 more games experience than a team at the bottom.
2) Injuries.

Big 12 notes:

Analysts said that the Big 12 was rich in great quarterbacks, but things have turned out slightly different than expected. No one would expect Oklahoma's Sam Bradford would lead the pack, not only in the Big 12, but in the nation in efficiency. Texas's McCoy is in a bit of a sophomore slump, although the Red River Game looked promising for him. And OSU's Bobby Reid isn't starting for his team anymore.

The Big 12 champ may very well come out of the North this year. Kansas, Colorado, and Missouri are looking good.

Nebraska should have stuck with Frank Solich. He was a 10-3 coach when they fired him, and if I'm not mistaken, he took them to a national championship game. He was fired because Nebraska wasn't THE team in the Big 12 anymore. However, things change in college football. It wasn't just Osborne leaving Nebraska, it was two coaches by the name of Bob Stoops and Mack Brown that changed things in the Big 12. Now, looking from Nebraska's point of view, they believe someone else could take them to the top rung. Callahan came in, and it was known things would be messy, as their would be growing pains with a new type of offense. But Callahan has had time to recruit. They have not been much of a factor in the Big 12, and the idea of them going to a national championship game anytime soon is laughable. As the San Diego Chargers have learned, you don't fire a winning coach.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but it will be a hard year for us FSU alumni and fans. My latest economic post may surprise you.