College Football

Dan Wetzel Nails Brandon Spikes

I often don't agree with Dan Wetzel's commentaries on the BCS and the need for a playoff, but he nailed it right on the head in regards to Brandon Spikes' slap on the wrist punishment for eye-gouging.

In case you didn't know, when the Ultimate Fighting Championship began in 1993, there were only two rules:

1. No biting
2. No eye-gouging

In 1997 Mike Tyson was suspended for life (re-instated 2 years later) for violating Rule #1 in a boxing match against Evander Holyfield.

Now Brandon Spikes has violated Rule #2 and was suspended for the first half of one game.

Urban Meyer, where is your shame?

Seriously, Meyer has my vote for worst coach of the year. He's presiding over a team that should be one of the best of all time and so far they've been sloppy and mediocre, probably not the best team of even this year. He endangered his star quarterback by leaving him in with a 31 point lead even though he was slowed by the flu. After Tebow's injury, and in the face of growing evidence that concussions following concussions cause great damage, he seemed to push for Tebow to return as soon as possible. Tebow was clearly not himself until the Georgia game, which should have raised a red flag. Both got lucky nothing else happened.

Now we have the Brandon Spikes slap on the wrist.

Big wins by Oregon, Texas demonstrate how USC, Oklahoma State were overrated

Here's the conventional wisdom after Saturday's big games: Texas "proved" themselves by whipping a tough Oklahoma State team 41-14, and Oregon shocked the world by destroying #4 USC 47-20.

Here's my take: Oklahoma State and USC were both exposed by blowout losses. Oklahoma State as a team who'd been having success despite not being of top 25 quality, and USC because they were staggeringly overrated at #4 by whatever measure you use.

USC: The Trojans were overrated

They struggled to beat marginal top 25 teams Ohio State and Notre Dame. Yet they were placed ahead of several undefeated teams.That USC was #4 in the AP poll shows ridiculous favoritism to the Trojans based on what they've done in past years, not for this year's play. They had a loss to Washington, a tough team but one with a losing record, and commentators decried the BCS system that dared to have them lower.

The pro-USC contingent went as far as to prop of Matt Barkley, a decent quarterback but certainly nothing special, for the Heisman Trophy. True, he's doing fantastic for a true freshman, and the Heisman race is wide open. But for commentators after the Oregon State game try to sell him as a true candidate—when he was 15 of 25 for 202 yards, 2 TDs and 2 interceptions—was laughable. Do these guys even look at the stats? He wasn't even in the top 50 in pass efficiency.

This phenomenon happens with USC every year. They win a few big games, are declared the best team in the country (perhaps best college football team of all time), then they lose a game. After a few weeks of "what's wrong with the Trojans?" articles, they blow out a few more opponents and again are called the best team despite having a loss on their record. The BCS system is blamed again for the fact that the Trojans aren't number one on the list.

What's different this year is that USC wasn't close to being the best team, and they ran into a better team on Saturday. By any measure, Oregon should have been ranked ahead of USC going into the game. The Ducks' only loss was to an undefeated team, not 3-5 Washington, whom they destroyed the previous week. They beat Cal just as bad as USC did, and held a win over ranked Utah. So in an AP-style poll, the Ducks deserved to be in front. What about true strength? In a basic score-margin-based power rating, the Ducks were slightly ahead, ranking 8th to USC's 11th. And as the BCS computer rankings demonstrate, Oregon had accomplished more in their season than USC so far, averaging 6th to USC's 9th. It was only the biased human observers who had USC ahead.

The USC mystique is pervasive; I even picked the Trojans to win the game despite it being at Oregon. USC has consistently done well against ranked opponents and I figured they'd win again. But seeing Oregon win didn't shock me, though the 27 -point margin was unexpected.

Oregon: Soon to be overrated themselves at Boise State's expense

Now the commentators are falling over themselves about Oregon. After all, if they beat the great Trojans, they must be incredible! Talking heads are putting the Ducks ahead of Boise State, who beat them fair and square. The excuses for not counting this game include: it was the first game of the season, it was in Boise, that was before Oregon "hit their stride." How about the real excuse: we don't think of Boise State as a real team, but USC is a real team. Tell me, if they'd lost the first game to USC under the same circumstances, who would disregard that game? No one.

One commentator (Craig James?) said he was moving the Ducks ahead of Boise, "not to take anything away from Boise State." Well, you are taking something away from Boise State. It's ridiculous and inexcusable to move a 7-1 team ahead of the 8-0 team that beat them, and it should never be done. Since we don't have a playoff, every game of the season has to be counted. Boise State 19, Oregon 8 was their playoff, and the Ducks lost. I guess losing a 1,000 yard rusher was a boon for the Ducks?

Oklahoma State: Exposed

The Oklahoma State Cowboys should have been a great team this year. And if you just look at wins and losses, they were doing pretty well. Fairly high in the Success rankings (#16) and the BCS computer rankings (average #17), they'd lost only to 7-1 Houston. But dig a little deeper and they weren't doing that well at all, ranking just 40th in Strength. They weren't winning convincingly, and it showed up in power ratings. And with Dez Bryant out for the year, the test they were able to give Texas was minimal, even though this game was supposed to tell us a lot about the Longhorns.

Now, after winning 41-17, instead of questioning whether Oklahoma State is even a top 25 quality team, everyone is talking about how Texas is finally playing good football.

Texas: They were already playing fantastic football

I'm not sure why Texas was getting so little respect all year. Most of it probably had to do with Colt McCoy's occasional interception, and not having as spectacular a year as last season. Some of it had to do with Texas' easy schedule. But the complaints peaked after they beat Oklahoma 16-13.

Think of how ludicrous that is: Texas wasn't a good team because they only beat Oklahoma by 3 points. Of course, the Sooners could easily have come into that game undefeated. While Oklahoma had two losses, they were still one of the best teams in the country, at least the equal of USC. And 16 points was the most they'd allowed except for Miami's 21. The game was played on a neutral field. If anything, Texas was a bit sloppy in that game, and they'd played sloppy football before. But the end result was always impressive.

Texas has consistently been in the top three in the Strength power rating and even before the Oklahoma State game they were #1 in both versions (I-A only, and the 726-team all-division version). It's strange that with Florida and Alabama struggling it was Texas who caught the most flak. The last few weeks (road wins over Missouri and Oklahoma State) should help nudge perception of Texas back into reality: they are—at least—the equal of Florida and Alabama at this point.

Wetzel's latest anti-BCS screed filled with bias

We all know that Dan Wetzel hates the BCS. He has a column every week or so where he comes up with another reason that we need a playoff. This week's broken-record is about scheduling. As usual, though, his bias shows through with the use of selective information.

On Sept. 5, while Florida feasted on Charleston Southern and Texas opened with Louisiana-Monroe, the Oklahoma Sooners played a strong BYU team on a neutral field.

First, the Oklahoma-BYU game in Arlington, Texas, was neutral field in name only. It's neutral-field when they play Texas, but not BYU. Ask the Cougars if that was a friendly atmosphere.

Second, you could use a given date as a condemnation of any team. On September 12, when Oklahoma was crushing I-AA Idaho State, Michigan faced Notre Dame and UCLA travelled to Tennessee. Does that make Oklahoma a patsy-scheduler?

A week later, while Florida annihilated Troy and Texas blew out Wyoming, Southern California played at Ohio State.

These are bad games? Troy is the perennial winner of the Sun Belt conference. This is the exact type of game that would happen all the time if Wetzel's playoff system were introduced. And Texas played at Wyoming—we can only hope more BCS conference schools follow that example. Later he castigates teams for "staying home," yet ignores Texas' road trip because it would soften his criticism.

despite the BCS’ claim that it, unlike a playoff, protects the “sanctity of the regular season,” it has actually cut down on the exciting games the sport was built on.

I disagree—I think it's the 12-game season that has diluted the excitement of the pre-season. And how would a playoff system solve this? Teams would still want to be seeded higher, by being ranked higher, by winning games. This has always been the modus operandi in college football: win games.

The Horns’ future opponents are only modestly more challenging than this season. UT will play three weaker teams and add a single major conference opponent per season, none of them true heavyweights – UCLA, Mississippi and Cal.

Amazingly, after touting Oklahoma's game vs. BYU and USC's game at Ohio State, he dismisses Texas' future scheduling of UCLA, Mississippi, and Cal. The latter two were pre-season top 10 teams this year. BYU is not a "true heavyweight" and Ohio State is the butt of many jokes because they don't win the big game...should we dismiss them, too?

UF hasn’t played a non-conference game outside the state of Florida since the BCS was created

Of course by stating it that way he can ignore games vs. Miami and Florida State (while mentioning that the latter is faltering, of course), as well as South Florida.

In the 1980s, pre-BCS, there were annually between 15-20 non-conference games featuring two preseason ranked teams. This year there were just four.

I'd like to see the math on that, but assuming it's correct, it's still misleading. Remember that in the '80s, FSU, Miami, and Penn State were all independents. Along with Notre Dame, they'd schedule three or four top teams each. I wouldn't be surprised if that accounts for all of the difference between 80s matchups and this year's.

There was a time when scheduling a Football Championship Subdivision team (formerly I-AA) was unheard of; now teams regularly play two of them.

That's clearly not the fault of the BCS system, but the bowl system and the 12-game schedule. With 12 games to fill and the ability to count an FCS win toward the 6-game goal, almost every team added an FCS opponent. A simple change—not allowing these games to count for bowl eligibility—would improve schedules dramatically.

Also, it's completely untrue that playing two FCS teams in a season is a "regular" occurrence. Seven teams play two FCS teams: Duke, Kansas State, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Rutgers and South Florida. All are from BCS conferences and should be ashamed of themselves. That should be the real push of Wetzel's article: getting rid of counting an FCS win toward the six game bowl-eligibility mark.

Now we get to his favorite team, Pete Carroll's USC Trojans, and how they deserve to be national champions every year despite losing to unranked teams:

Carroll, whose team took two long trips to the Midwest this season, has future series with Notre Dame, Virginia, Boston College, Texas A&M, Syracuse and Hawaii and is looking for more.

How can he seriously even list A&M, Syracuse, and Hawaii after scoffing at UCLA, Mississippi, and Cal? That's because that was about Texas, a team he doesn't want in the national title game. USC is lauded for traveling to those places, but Texas got no props for traveling to Wyoming. This is bias, pure and simple. Wetzel wants to see USC in the national title game every year, and when they don't make it? It's playoff time so they get a second, or third, chance.

Apparently Pete Carroll and Bob Stoops still believe in the sanctity of the regular season. It’s the BCS that doesn’t.

Oh give me a break. The playoff system wouldn't solve a thing regarding scheduling. Getting rid of the 12-game season would help, and not counting FCS wins would go even further. There are plenty of good arguments for having a playoff, and many good arguments against the current BCS system, but this isn't one of them.

SportsRatings Opinion: Consider Jake Locker for Heisman

The Heisman race is fairly muddled right now, with no candidate having taken charge. While normally at this point there are three or four very solid leaders, I'm not sure that can be said at this point.

Several of the top candidates have suffered setbacks:

• Sam Bradford suffered an injury that caused him to miss several games, taking him out of the race.
• Tim Tebow's injury still could help his "story" but it likely hurt him in the all-important stats line.
• Jahvid Best of Cal was irreparably harmed by the two blowout losses Cal faced back-to-back
• Case Keenum's chances went down with the Cougars' loss to UTEP
• Dez Bryant's slim chances disappeared when he was declared ineligible

There isn't much excitement for the other candidates, either. Colt McCoy of Texas, one of the remaining front-runners with Tebow, has been doing well but not as well as last year, and beating Oklahoma won't be a big deal. Losing to them would hurt him a lot, though. Jacory Harris of Miami seems like a longshot even if Miami continues to do well, and Jimmy Clausen would be an unsatisfying winner unless he can guide the Irish to a win over Notre Dame.

So who does that leave? I think it's time to do something that hasn't been done in a long time: throw out stats and win-loss record and look for an exciting player who is really the most valuable to his team. That player is Jake Locker of Washington.

Look at the difference in Washington: 0-12 last year, 3-3 this season already. They're an improved team, sure, but the main improvement as that they have Locker back. Last season wasn't that bad when he was playing: they nearly beat BYU and Stanford in their first four games. Without Locker they were a disaster.

This year he's back and look what they've done: a narrow loss to LSU, followed by a win over Idaho (Idaho's only loss so far, remarkably), an amazing win over USC, a game they should have won against Notre Dame, and a miracle comeback against Arizona.

Throughout the season Locker has been keeping them in games, almost single-handedly at times. His stats aren't incredible: 57% completions, a 10:4 TD to interception ratio. But he's come up with big plays when they've needed them. The huge 3rd down play against USC put them in field goal range to win the game. Last night against Arizona his late TD pass drew the team within 5 points, and while it still looked like a longshot it's Locker's never-quit attitude that kept hope alive with the team. The defense came up with the miraculous interception TD that put them ahead, but Locker's leadership deserves as much credit.

If Washington has any more losses, Locker's already miniscule chances are probably gone. There hasn't been a Heisman winner from a 4-loss team (not counting bowl games, which are player after the award is presented) since 1969. And if they do worse? Only Paul Hornung has won the Heisman Trophy as a member of a losing team, when Notre Dame went 2-8 in 1956.

Locker can't really be compared to Hornung, one of the great players of all time (even if he already has three times as many TD passes). But for my money he's as deserving as any other player on the current "short list." 

I'll be rooting for him to pick up traction as the season progresses. But assuming he doesn't factor into this year's race, the Huskies might be good enough for him to start as a front-runner next season as a senior, when the race should be pretty much wide open. It would be nice, though, if the unspoken "Heisman criteria" were flexible enough to consider him this year, when the college game seems to need  an injection of excitement.

AP thinks Arkansas State is an FCS team

Poor Arkansas State. Though 1-3, they aren't that bad of a team. Just ask 5-0 Iowa, the team they nearly shocked last Saturday, falling 24-21. They lost to Troy by a field goal, too, and their third loss was to Nebraska.

Still, they're from the Sun Belt, and that means the Red Wolves have to work to earn any respect...or even acknowledgement that they're in the same college football subdivision as Penn State, apparently.

In an AP article about Penn State's upcoming game with FCS (formerly Division I-AA) Eastern Illinois, Genaro C. Armas writes

The Nittany Lions have had other games against FCS teams in recent seasons against Youngstown State and Coastal Carolina. Another contest against Arkansas State was canceled last season in favor of a made-for-TV matchup against Pac-10 team Oregon State.

Though he could try to weasel out of it, the above paragraph implies, either by mistaken knowledge or clumsy writing, that Arkansas State is one of the FCS teams that Penn State has played (or in Arkansas State's case, was going to play).

What's the difference between Arkansas State and a Division I-AA team? Maybe not much. There are certainly some FCS teams that could beat the Red Wolves, but not that many. And when Arkansas State hosted an actual FCS team—Mississippi Valley State—in their opener, the result was a 61-0 win. Add that to last year's 83-10 demolition of Texas Southern and at least in these two examples the distinction is clear.

Not that either of those teams is a great representative of the FCS—they were a combined 7-16 last year—but the point is that there's a world of difference between a lower-rung FBS team and a lower-rung FCS team.

The sadder thing is, no one in the comments section seems to have noticed the slight. If the Red Wolves continue to play like they have this year, though, they may find themselves in their second-ever bowl game, and then at least people will realize, for that day, that the team is one of the 120 in the highest college football division.

Sorry Charlie, Notre Dame should NOT be ranked

Charlie Weis seems to think his Irish are getting a raw deal by not being ranked at 4-1. He thinks they've accomplished as much as many of the other ranked teams. The voters disagree, and so do I.

While the Irish may be good enough to be a top 25 team and will probably end up there this season—they're a decent team and their schedule is easy—they don't belong there right now.

Their current résumé isn't bad: 4-1, with three wins over BCS conference teams and only a loss to Michigan. This puts them at #12 in the SportsRatings Success rankings, which don't take margin of victory into account. Even in the Strength ratings, which do, they're #23, and in the Overall power rating (which combines the two) they're #24. So from these objective measures they're worthy.

But there's one problem: they could so easily be 1-4 right now that what they've accomplished means little. In fact they probably should be 2-3; we'll give them the Purdue comeback win. You can argue they should have won the Michigan game, but nothing unusual happened there, just Weis throwing the ball instead of draining the clock at the end.

Michigan State should have beaten the Irish; Kirk Cousins overthrew a wide open receiver in the end zone for a gimme touchdown. Washington should have beaten the Irish: a score that would have been a touchdown at any time before instant replay, and was called a touchdown on the field, was reversed even though the ball appeared to be so close to the line that "incontrovertable evidence" was not present.

Notre Dame gets the "W" in both those games and therefore is 4-1. That's the reality. But it's a joke to say that these could-have-been losses shouldn't affect where they stand—or don't—in the polls. They're a borderline top 25 team without the close calls; with them, they're just outside, looking in. It didn't help that Michigan lost on Saturday. With the Wolverines out of the poll, Notre Dame shouldn't get back in ahead of them.

So the question is, why is Weis complaining about the polls? It's not like his team is undefeated and getting the shaft. Isn't complaining about being ranked too low considered assinine? Coaches are supposed to complain that their team is ranked too high. When coaches complain about their low ranking, it usually means they're going to lose within a few weeks and prove the pollsters correct.

But Weis is campaigning for poll position to set up run at a BCS bowl. With only one loss—and one more expected against USC—the Irish could go 10-2 and be in the BCS bowl mix. Some have said it's a requirement in order for Weis to keep his job. I don't think it is but it sure would help.

Facing an off week before USC, Notre Dame needed to be ranked this week. That way they move up on their bye week without doing a thing. That didn't happen though. So the next best thing would be to sneak into the polls on their off week, hope they have a good showing against USC even if they lose, and stay in the polls, ready to march up as the (hopefully) sweep the rest of their schedule.

Weis is looking at the schedule and he knows there are no impressive wins on it, past or future, unless they beat USC which he isn't counting on. So the only way to get to the BCS is to be overranked, essentially, and count on Fighting Irish favoritism to get him to one of the primo bowl games.

Let's face it, a 10-2 Irish don't deserve a BCS bowl with the schedule they play this year. Depending on what other teams do, it's a possibility though. It's up to the pollsters to not overrank the Irish and make them do one of two things: beat USC, or beat the rest of their opponents in an impressive manner. 

That's what Weis should be focusing on, not whining about the polls.

Urban Meyer an idiot for playing Tebow too long

Urban Meyer made it clear before the game: no pansies allowed.

Asked if he would hold players with the flu out of Saturday's game with Kentucky, he said "absolutely not" and that it would be "one of the major errors in coaching history" if he did so.

It's now looking like one of the season's major blunders to leave an obviously ailing Tim Tebow in the game when the outcome was already decided.

Not that playing Tebow in the first place was wrong. He clearly wasn't suffering on the field and wanted to play. Tebow wasn't listed among those with swine flu, even though he took the same plane as those with the ailment. Tebow had a "respiratory illness" of undisclosed nature. But Florida took a 31-0 lead in the first quarter, and that should have been enough for Meyer. Especially since backup Johnathan Brantley needs experience for next year, and Meyer had talked about ways to lessen the burden on Tebow. What better way than to let an obviously sick player get some rest after doing his job?

Apparently that isn't in tough-guy Meyer's philosophy any more. "Got to get better and go play," he said about the sick players. "You go as hard as you can."

It's that kind of attitude that has college players dying in fall camp almost every year. The idea that players are slacking and have to be kicked into shape is popular among coaching because, in a lot of cases, it's true. Coaches are there to push players to their maximum performance, and if it happens to be in the heat of summer, how are they to know that it's because of heat stroke? But because they can't know, they shouldn't assume there isn't a real problem.

Meyer's attitude didn't cause Tebow's injury, but it may have blinded him to doing what he should have done: be very conservative with Tebow. Getting him out on the field was the right move, but getting him off the field soon would have been even better; it was well known before the game that Kentucky was an overmatched foe with or without Tebow's presence. Although he could just as easily have been hurt in the first quarter, there was no reason to play him more than was necessary, and 31-0 and a full quarter of playing was the perfect time to pull him.

Now after Tebow suffered a proven concussion and hospital stay, how will Meyer approach his recovery? With the same cavalier attitude he took toward sick players before? Is Tebow expected to "get better and play" and "go as hard as he can" next week against LSU?

For Tebow's sake, let's hope Meyer is listening to the team's doctors and if Tebow needs to sit, he should sit. Florida should be able to beat LSU with its defense alone, and the rest of the offense is no slouch. If they can't, then so be it; even one loss won't prevent Florida from being in the national championship as we saw last year, especially if it comes in a game Tebow doesn't play. But if he's hurt again it could cost the Gators a lot, and perhaps Tebow even more. There's no certain way to avoid injury in football but taking a conservative approach to the health of your players is not the bad thing that Meyer paints it to be.

LaGarrette Blount's punch after Boise State-Oregon game

LaGarrette Blount had a terrible night rushing for the Ducks, ending in negative yardage. The rest of his season should be a lot better if he's allowed to play after punching a Boise State player and trying to attack some fans after the game.

Let's see how long this video stays up...

Blount will probably miss at least the next game, I figure, if not several. There's no doubt that Byron Hout, the Boise State player he hit, had egged him on with some trash talking before the punch. Still, keep it on the field, dumbass.

Playoff debate: So who plays in the "plus one" game this year?

The idea of a playoff for college football is more popular than ever, but no one seems to agree how to do it. If it's going to happen, I hope it's done right. I don't think it will be, and that's why I'm not too excited about the prospect. I'd rather come up with criteria for determining the impossible to determine rather than see a crappy playoff system.

One of the worst proposals is the "Plus One" game. The idea is that after all the bowl games, even the BCS Championship, I guess, then the two top teams would be matched in a true championship game.

In some years that idea might have worked. Before the BCS, certainly. Since the BCS, there are a few that might work (last year, possibly) and many that wouldn't; after Texas and USC played, you'd have Texas face...who exactly? Penn State?

This year is a problem for the opposite reason. Now that the season's over, if a "Plus One" game had been the law of the land, who would play whom? Florida and Utah, the top two in the AP? Florida and USC? Florida and Texas?

Clearly this would have been a good year for a playoff, and a terrible year for a "Plus One" system. Some years are terrible for both. Again, 2005 comes to mind. Why deny ourselves Texas vs. USC to an upset?

But if it's a playoff everyone wants, let's do it right. Here are some things I think are musts for a playoff:

1. Sixteen teams is too many.

There should be eight teams, max; sometimes fewer, and maybe only two some years (i.e., no playoff when there is a clear top two).

2. All undefeated teams should make the playoffs. But no 2-loss teams should. 

Every year except 2007 the national champ had fewer than 2 losses. Why allow those teams in at all? If there aren't 8 teams with 0 or 1 losses, cut the number of teams to four. Then add 2-loss teams if needed, i.e., if there isn't an obvious #1 and #2.

3. All 1-loss teams from major conferences should be included; other 1-loss teams can get in if they are selected, otherwise they're out of luck.

If the Sun Bowl wants a guaranteed representative, all they have to do is go undefeated in their cupcake schedule. Some would complain that they have it easy, and they do. Suffer a loss and they're at the whim of the voters/computers.

4. Perhaps limit two teams to a conference in the playoffs, or use it heavily as a selection criteria.

This just makes sense for this year. Three teams from the Big Twelve might be too many.

5. If a 1-loss team has been defeated crushingly by another 1-loss team, the game should be considered a de facto part of the playoff and the loser removed from consideration.

Another way to keep teams like Texas Tech who've already been convincingly defeated, out.

Using these rules, this year would have worked out rather nicely.

There were 10 teams with 0 losses or 1 loss: Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, Alabama, USC, Utah, Texas Tech, Penn State, Boise State, and Ball State. Texas Tech (beaten badly, and third in Big 12), and Ball State (weakest 1-loss team) would be out.

The brackets should be arranged so that Oklahoma and Texas, as well as Alabama and Florida, wouldn't meet until the final. We don't want rematch games.

So put USC and Penn State in the Rose Bowl; Oklahoma and Boise State in the Fiesta; Florida and Utah in the Sugar; and Alabama and Texas in the Orange. The Rose and Orange winners meet, and the Fiesta and Sugar winners meet. Et cetera.

But many are enamored with the idea of having 2-loss teams like Ohio State in the mix. After all, the Buckeyes got a BCS bowl. Or people would want conference champs like Virginia Tech or Cincinnati to be in the tournament, or worse, have the Sun Bowl get a bid. And have 16 teams.

This would yield a tournament where a couple of 4-loss teams who got a few upsets would be playing for the national championship.

Some day we'll have a playoff in college football. And I think it will suck as bad as the BCS, if not more.

Shut up whiners, this was a great game

Already the whiners have started.

After complaining all season that teams weren't playing defense against the likes of Oklahoma and Florida, now suddenly the complaint is that there wasn't enough scoring in the game.

Make up your mind, whiners.

Do you want to see defense or not? Because defense means lower scoring games, like this one. 24-14 isn't the high-powered score you see when Oklahoma beats Baylor or Florida crushes Kentucky, but it's certainly better than Oregon State vs. Pitt (a 3-0 final).

Would they rather have seen a rout like USC over Oklahoma in January of 2005? Or like Ohio State suffered the last two years? Those had scoring—most of it by only one of the two teams involved in the game. Is that better?

Or were the whiners spoiled by the USC-Texas game in 2006, and the Miami-Ohio State game of 2003? Sorry, you can't have candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Of course the whiner in the link above, Jim Litke, was simply using this game as part of his argument for a playoff. Whether you want a playoff or not, bashing this game is not necessary. How would a playoff ensure that the title game was exciting? Answer: it wouldn't. Would it have matched two better teams in the final? Maybe, depending on who you think are the best. It's also possible two much lesser teams could have made it, by luck.

So take your playoff propaganda somewhere else. It has nothing to do with this game, the clock stoppages and awkward timeouts that marred the contest. Nor does it have anything to do with the four touchdown passes, four interceptions, and numerous big-time defensive plays that the game featured, aspects that true fans of the game can appreciate.

But whiners can only whine. And we can only shut out their noise, as well as any other arguments they're trying to promote along with their whining.

Syracuse—not Auburn—should get flack for not hiring Gill

There's been a lot a whining about Auburn not hiring Turner Gill, the ex-Nebraska star and coach that turned around the Buffalo program in a few short years. But those complainers are wrong; Auburn had no obligation to hire Gill rather than Gene Chizik, who coached Auburn's staunch defense of years past. Instead, it's Syracuse that missed the boat and should be receiving the criticism.

Charles Barkley started the shouting, saying that "race was the number one factor" in Chizik's hiring. He then went on to say that—get this—Gill should have been hired because of his race. "Clearly, if we’d hired a black coach, it would have created a buzz," he is quoted as saying in the Rivals article.

We can pardon Charles for his loud mouth, as it's par for the course for him. But why does Rivals' Dan Wetzel have to wholeheartedly agree with him? His arguments against Chizik are moronic, much like his infantile and constant grousing about not having a playoff system. He points out that Chizik hasn't done well at Iowa State, ignoring the fact that he's had success everywhere else he has been. At various jobs at Middle Tennessee, Stephen F. Austin State, and Central Florida, he helped raise middling and fledgling programs up, before going to Auburn in 2002.

At Auburn, he was defensive coordinator during one of the Tigers' best seasons ever, when they went 13-0 largely due to tough D. The next year he was defensive coordinator for the national champion Texas Longhorns. This is a record to be mocked? Just for the purpose of propping up Gill and shouting about injustice?

Chizik's record at Iowa State was terrible. Being a poor team in the best conference in the country this year was no easy task. The team floundered the last few years largely this was due to recruiting, which we can assume won't be a problem at Auburn. If it is, he'll be gone soon enough. But clearly he proved himself to the people at Auburn when he coached their team's defense which led directly to a #2 finish.

So complaining about Auburn hiring Chizik over anyone else is stupid. They know him, they like what they saw, and they believe the Iowa State record is irrelevant. They weren't looking for "any white guy" they were looking for "their guy" and their guy is Gene Chizik.

Instead, were they supposed to hire Gill, a man with no connections to Auburn or the SEC? Sure, Gill worked a miracle at Buffalo, and for that alone would have made a good hire for anyone, but Auburn clearly wanted Chizik, and not because he was white. That theory is ridiculous.

Now the team that should be taking the heat is Syracuse. The Orange play in the same state as Buffalo, so he knows the area. If Gill can recruit decently to Buffalo, imagine what he could have done in Syracuse. Unlike Auburn, Syracuse really did need to "make a splash" as Barkley said. Dismal for the last half-decade, they needed to make a bold move, and the answer was right in their backyard. Instead they hired Doug Marrone, an alum who has no head coaching experience. For a program in such dire straits, hiring one of their own is not the way to go. And as a move for Gill, going to a major conference but not to a mammoth hot-seat like Auburn would be a good move, his last stepping stone before going to one of the big programs (for example...Nebraska?).

So why are people all over Auburn's case and not Syracuse's, when the Syracuse job really was the perfect fit for Gill? I don't know. Maybe they assume that Syracuse is completely incompetent and therefore excused, while Auburn is in the south and is therefore suspect when it comes to race issues. Gill himself said he though the fact that he has a white wife is what made the difference.

People in situations like that always see their unique circumstance as the determining factor. I really doubt Auburn would have hired him but thought, "wait, remember, he has a white woman for a wife." What they did say was "we have to interview some other people before we give our good friend Gene the job" and Gill was one of those interviewed. He had an uphill climb because he was up against a good friend of the people making the decision. It happens a lot in job searches, when the people doing the hiring want to hire a specific person but have to do a "search." If Gill had been the defensive coordinator at Auburn from 2002-2004, they would be hiring him right now, even if he'd struggled at Iowa State for a couple of seasons, while Chizik brought Buffalo to life.

So lay off Auburn. The real thing people should be mad at them for is giving Tuberville the $5.1 million firing bonus that he forfeited by quitting. And put the heat on Syracuse, they are the ones that deserve it for passing over Gill.

Meanwhile, poor Iowa State wanted Gill, and he didn't want them. Can't blame him, it's a tough job right now, pretty much a dead end...unless you have friends in high places elsewhere.

Wetzel's playoff plan features 2nd round rematch we all want: Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma

A college football playoff. It seems that everyone wants one, but no one can agree how to do it. Which is why I'm wary of the concept, even if the BCS has managed to make the idea popular through its incompetence.

Dan Wetzel writes his usual weekly article about how college football needs a playoff and rails against the unnamed "apologists", and includes brackets for a 16-team playoff, and therein lies the rub. I think college football will eventually adopt a playoff system, and most likely it will suck as bad as the BCS.

First of all, there needs to be a system for choosing the teams involved. Certainly, a BCS-like system will be adopted. At least they've simplified the stupid formula from the years when all sorts of pointless data was included, but still it's less than ideal, with the Harris poll and coaches poll featured without the much-better AP, and too few computers to make that section legitimate.

Second, how many teams will be featured? Do we really want to go from a tradition where only a select few are in consideration for the national championship to one where sixteen teams have a shot? From decades where a team had to have an incredible season, and finish undefeated or with just one loss (last year's aberration notwithstanding), to one where a four-loss team is in the running?

Third, though they claim otherwise, the regular season will be greatly diminished. There will either be fewer games, and/or those games will be less relevant. Questions that were solved will be re-opened by a playoff.

Wetzel's brackets have all of these pitfalls: far too many teams, four-loss teams competing, a questionable system for choosing the very few at-large teams, a diminished regular season, and rematches among teams where the first game was an unmitigated stomping.

For the latter point: Oklahoma and Texas Tech would meet in the second round of this playoff. Does anything more have to be said about this? Wasn't the question of which team is better settled when the Sooners dismantled the Red Raiders 65-21?

That's not to say Texas Tech wouldn't deserve to be in the field. But a good system would insure that they had to earn the rematch by putting them on the other side of the bracket so they'd have to meet in the final. Of course, that has its own problems. Would they be considered the best team by winning a rematch by 1 point?

I think a playoff with far fewer teams would be better. Eight, at most, or even four. Some years, there should be no playoff: who would argue that in 2005 anyone but Texas and USC should have had a shot at being national champion?

But the system that eventually will be adopted will have no flexibility. It will have major flaws, and they will either tweak those flaws like they did the BCS, or stubbornly hold on to the system, like they have the BCS...

And everyone will complain about the system, about how their team was screwed, and about how the system needs to be changed.

Sound familar?

Thoughts: Big Twelve rankings; Utah's BCS bowl Orange; the Oregon State-Penn State rematch

Some thoughts after Saturday's action:

• How the rank the Big Twelve teams
  
  With Oklahoma having beaten Texas Tech, who beat Texas, who beat Oklahoma, there is of course a "round-robin" situation where each team is 10-1 and has beaten and lost to one of the other. Normally this would be a tough situation, where you'd have to ignore one of the losses and place someone on top, but Oklahoma's convincing win made it clear that Texas Tech should not be that top team.
  
  Further, Texas' win on a neutral field, combined with their last-second loss, makes them the most logical top team going by head-to-head competition principles. Voters (remember, the criteria for breaking a three-way tie is whichever team is highest in the BCS rankings) may jump Oklahoma over Texas on the idea that they are playing better "at the moment," but taking the viewpoint that the entire season is what matters—and with no playoff, the idea that the entire season matters is paramount—I would have to rank Texas at the top of the three teams.
  
  The computers will probably agree with that assessment. Since margin of victory is not used, there is no reason they will elevate Oklahoma over Texas at this point. But another win over Oklahoma State might be enough for at least some of the computers, and enough of the pollsters, to put the Sooners ahead of the Longhorns. Currently in my Success power rating—a BCS style computer rating in that it does not consider victory margin—Texas is #2, and Oklahoma #4.
  
  Oklahoma still has to beat Oklahoma State, and if the Sooners are the South rep, Missouri. So they may yet stumble. If they do, it leaves Texas and Texas Tech. Head-to-head, the Red Raiders win that one, though I'd find it far less objectionable if Texas were ranked ahead of them than if Oklahoma is currently ranked ahead of Texas.
  
  Seeing Oklahoma in the Big Twelve title game is not a bad thing, as they have yet to play Missouri, and Texas already has. I don't like rematch games where the first game was a convincing win (see the third item). But ultimately even if Oklahoma wins out I put Texas ahead of them at least until the bowl games are played. Then it's another judgement call depending on who they each play and what happens.


• Where is Utah going to play their BCS game?
  
  I've recently seen articles that say Utah "is going to a BCS bowl, probably the Fiesta" and "probably the Sugar." According to what I can suss out, the Orange bowl has last pick among the bowls that have to fill slots. It seems that Utah will go in the last open slot, meaning they'd play a middling ACC team, much like the middling Big East team they beat in 2004.
  
  If all goes according to "plan," which it never does, Florida beats Alabama and goes to the BCS title game. Oklahoma wins out, wins the Big Twelve, and is also in the title game. The Sugar and Fiesta pick replacements (Alabama and Texas), the Rose is filled by USC/Oregon State vs. Penn State, and the Orange has perhaps Georgia Tech.
  
  So seven slots are filled: Two in the BCS title game, two in the Rose, one each in the Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange. Then the Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange pick their 2nd team, in order. If USC is available at this time they will be taken first; then Ohio State, Georgia, possibly some Big Twelve teams, all will be likely be taken ahead of Utah, who will end up in the Orange bowl.
  
  Traditionally, the Orange Bowl was the Big Twelve's bowl, but for some reason the ACC was given the bowl as its link (probably due to Miami and Florida State). So while there could be an interesting matchup with Texas and USC in the Fiesta, the Orange is looking like this year's dud.
  
  The only hope is that Utah gets selected in one of the other two bowl games. A Utah-Alabama matchup in the Sugar would be nice, but it requires that USC be in the Rose Bowl (see below).
  
  Update: I realize I hadn't mapped out the possibilities correctly. The Big East rep (probably Cincinnati) is in the mix as well, and Utah probably will be chosen ahead of them. So the Sugar bowl really is the most likely place for the Utes. And the Orange Bowl will be exactly as it should be: a poor, inconsistent ACC rep vs. a poor, inconsistend Big East rep.
  
• Penn State vs. Oregon State: The worst Rose Bowl ever?
  
  It looks like it's going to happen. Oregon State beat Arizona and now just has to get past Oregon at home to make it to the Rose Bowl. Rivalry games are tough and Oregon has a chance, but right now it's looking more and more like the Beavers will be in Pasadena.
  
  Congratulations will be due Oregon State if this happens, of course; they've earned it under the rules, they had to beat USC, and they're playing far better than they did early in the season. But none of that makes up for the fact that this game will stink for two reasons.
  
  One, a USC-Penn State matchup in the Rose Bowl would be a great thing. Two classic teams, both presumably 11-1, vye for a higher position in the rankings and possibly some #1 votes. Joe Paterno vs. Pete Carroll. Enough said.
  
  Two, Penn State already beat Oregon State 45-14 earlier this year. They should not have to "prove it" after that convincing of a win. As bad as rematch games are when the first one was close, they are a joke when the first game was a blowout. From Oregon State's point of view it's a win-win, as they have a shot at avenging the loss. From anyone else's point of view, the first game is sufficient and should stand. The rematch would undoubtedly be closer, as Oregon State has improved and rematches are almost always closer. But that doesn't take away from the fact that very few people would be exited about this game, and the college football world will be rooting for the Ducks next week. Sorry, Beaver faithful, but it's true.
  
  Remember when everyone was afraid that the Rose Bowl would be an Ohio State-USC rematch? I don't know which is worse, that outcome or the present one. An Oregon win next week could avert that possibility, but remember, if USC sneaks into the BCS title game, then Oregon would be going to the Rose Bowl. Which isn't a whole lot better than Oregon State, but at least it averts the blowout-rematch scenario.
  
  I guess I just like the BCS bowls to be filled with teams with 2 losses or fewer. This year, between the Rose Bowl, ACC, and Big East, there could be three BCS bowls with three-loss teams, while several undefeated and 1-loss teams end up in the lesser bowls.

Penn State has no cakewalk to an undefeated season

Ok, we get it already—the Big Ten gets no respect. Despite the obvious shortcomings of the Big East, ACC, and this year especially, the Pac 10, it's the Big Ten that is summarily dismissed most often. Now that Penn State is looking to go undefeated, we have some saying an undefeated Penn State isn't worthy, while the rest are saying the Lions' last three games are walkovers.

An example: this column by Mike Huguenin is par for the course, as he writes: the only way Penn State doesn't finish unbeaten in the regular season is if it beats itself.

Admittedly, the Nittany Lions cleared their toughest hurdle by beating Ohio State on the road. Looking at their three remaining foes (Iowa on the road, Indiana and Michigan State at home) doesn't strike fear into hearts the way Texas Tech's remaining schedule might. Penn State will be favored in all three games, and probably should finish 12-0. But the sportswriting nation is selling the Big Ten short.

First of all, Iowa. The Hawkeyes are only 5-3 and have played sloppy football at times. But those losses were to three winning teams: 5-2 Pittsburgh on the road; 7-2 Michigan State, also on the road; and 6-2 Northwestern at home. More importantly, the three losses were by a combined eight points—Iowa could very easily have won each of those games, and if they had they be 8-0, and this game would be seen as a huge hurdle in Penn State's way. Which is how it should be seen. Penn State's rushing defense did a great job against Beanie Wells, but Iowa's Shonn Greene could be an even tougher test. And the Hawks' defense is just as good as Ohio State's, so the game could be very low scoring, making it anybody's ball game. Check out the power ratings if you are skeptical: Iowa is firmly in the top 25 when judged on a pure-points basis such as my Strength ratings, and Sagarin's Predictor has them #10 to Penn State's #3. This is a perfect trap game for Penn State to fall into.

Next, Indiana. This is clearly the least worrisome game remaining, but 3-5 Indiana is coming off a win over Northwestern and has lost only to decent teams: undefeated Ball State, Michigan State, 7-1 Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Quarterback Kellen Lewis has been injured but could be back for the Penn State game. Still, as it takes place in College Station, this is the one game that should be a gimme for the Lions, though there's a chance the Hoosiers prove pesky.

Finally, Michigan State. This is another home game for the Lions, and because the Spartans were so thoroughly spanked by Ohio State many are discounting their threat. But at 7-2 they should be treated with a bit more respect, and we've seen many strange things happen to teams on their final week of the season—remember West Virginia vs. Pitt last year? Penn State will have to be focused, especially if either of the teams ahead of them have lost by this time, causing visions of a national championship to dance in front of them mesmerizingly.

That's no cakewalk. As West Virginia-Pitt and USC-Stanford/Oregon State proved, no conference game against a capable foe is a given, not even at home. Penn State won't have to "beat themselves" to lose a game; their opponents will be more than happy to try to do that for them.

Dienhart wants USC, Florida, Georgia ahead of undefeated Penn State

Poor Penn State. They have to live with being #3 behind undefeated Texas and Alabama, faced with the possibility of yet again going unbeaten and left out of the national title picture. Even Texas Tech, waiting in the wings if they beat the Longhorns, could hold the Nittany Lions out of a spot in the top two.

And that's the way it should be. The Big Twelve and SEC are so much better than the Big Ten that any team that emerges undefeated from those conferences should have priority over an unbeaten Big Ten team. Especially since both of the former conferences play a championship game, meaning they'd have to go 13-0.

But now, adding insult to injury, prominent sports writers like Tom Dienhart are suggesting that teams that have already lost a game should move ahead of the Lions. That's plain sad. Especially when there is little to no logic behind the sentiment.

Dienhart names, in addition to the aforementioned Texas, Alabama, and Texas Tech, three other teams he thinks are more deserving than Penn State: Florida, Georgia, and USC. Let's look at them one by one.

Florida just got done crushing Kentucky 63-5, a few weeks after they beat LSU 51-21. No doubt they've been pretty dominant, except when they lost to 4-4 Mississippi—at home. So the Gators have a home loss to a marginally winning team, to go with blowouts over outmatched competition. Yes, even LSU counts among the severely overrated. The dirty secret is that the SEC, which has been the premier league the last two years (or more), isn't as good this year. That doesn't mean that a 1-loss team that wins the league shouldn't play for the national title, but they shouldn't jump over Penn State.

Georgia just beat LSU as well. That seems to be the litmus test for whether an SEC team is good: can they crush LSU? Florida and Georgia pass the test; Auburn, not so much. We saw what happened to Auburn against a struggling West Virginia. Face the facts: the SEC has three good teams—Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. Florida and Georgia play each other, so only one can possibly figure into the national title talk. Should the winner of that game win the conference, they deserve to play for the national title, but again, not ahead of Penn State.

USC sputtered past Arizona on Saturday, the same Arizona team that lost to Stanford and New Mexico. Dienhart complains about the Big Ten, but where is his outrage at USC's easy path to national title contention in the abysmal Pac Ten? Sure, you can compare USC's 35-3 whipping (at home) of Ohio State to Penn State's 13-6 win (on the road), but at least Penn State won the game. Which is more than can be said for USC against Oregon State, a team that Penn State destroyed 45-14. Now THAT is a relevant comparison. And Dienhart has the gall to suggest USC is more deserving than Penn State? An undefeated USC and an undefeated Penn State would have the same basic résumé; give one team a loss and it's no contest, and no person using logic could suggest otherwise.

The three teams he mentions, Florida, Georgia, and USC, each have one win to hang their hats on so far: Florida and Georgia beat LSU, and USC beat Ohio State. Dienhart complains so much about the Big Ten and Ohio State, but somehow USC deserves a title shot due to beating the Buckeyes? And where is the derision for LSU, who has given up 50 points twice now? Should they not be as contemptible as Ohio State? After all, they *won* the title last year, so they have fallen much farther.

The bottom line is, if Penn State loses, they're out, period. Just like USC should have been when they lost. Florida and Georgia deserve a shot at redemption because of the schedule they face, and next week one of the two will be eliminated. But currently, Penn State deserves their ranking, and they are properly ahead in line of those three teams in the national title picture.

Dear Mike Huguenin: BCS Computers can't consider score margin

Same day, another article about the BCS computers and how they can't use score margin. This one comes in response to Mike Huguenin's article about the first BCS rankings this week.

In an overall decent look at how the initial BCS rankings shape up, he writes:

USC is 10th in the computer rankings and has no remaining games against teams currently in the BCS top 25. The Trojans beat Ohio State by 32, yet are ranked five spots behind the Buckeyes in the computers.

That statement is unfair to the poor computers. (Not that their feelings can get hurt). I agree it's worthwhile to point out that Ohio State is ahead of USC by the computers' estimation, since that is unusual and very unintuitive. But to point out that USC beat Ohio State by 32 is not relevant to evaluating the computers' performance, because the computers aren't allowed to "know" the score of that game, only that USC won it.

Put into perspective: what if USC had won by a single point? They subsequently lost to Oregon State, giving them one loss as well. And for all the computers know, that loss was by 50 points. But just assume we know two things: USC beat Ohio State in Pasedena, then later lost to Oregon State.

Is it so ridiculous to put Ohio State ahead of them? Maybe it still is. But some of the computers will evaluate Ohio State and conclude that they've won seven games, and lost one game, on the road, to a very good team. USC, on the other hand, beat five teams, one of them a very good team, but lost to a mediocre team. That's how Ohio State ends up ahead in four of the six computers, and tied in another. Only Richard Billingsly's algorithm has USC ahead, by a single place.

Add in the score margin and almost any computer algorithm will put USC in front. They're #2 in my Strength Power Rating, which uses score margin, while Ohio State is #13. In my Success Power Rating, which like the BCS computers does not use score margin, USC is #6 and Ohio State #8. The Trojans are still ahead, but as you can see, remove score margin from the equation and they are a lot closer.

BCS computers can't use score margin because the BCS committee decided to make it that way. On one hand, it makes the power ratings less accurate, especially at mid-season, and allows examples like this one to make the computers look stupid. On the other hand, it gets rid of incentive for coaches to run up the score. However, coaches have enough incentive to run up the score anyway: to impress the human pollsters, though this can sometimes backfire.

Another statement Huguenin makes is also a bit misleading:

While strength of schedule isn’t a BCS component, all six computers have a strength-of-schedule factor in their rankings.

It's true the BCS used to add in a ridiculous "strength of schedule" component, back when the formula was overcomplex and they tinkered with it every year to try to somehow make it match the AP and Coaches polls' #1 and #2 teams. They got rid of the strength factor, as well as the "quality wins" bonus, leaving it 2/3rd human polls, 1/3 computers.

The computers include a strength-of-schedule factor by their very nature. There is nothing "added in" as far as I know, to any of the formulas; it's just part and parcel of how they work. Imagine a computer ranking system that didn't include strength of schedule in any way. In other words, the computer couldn't know which teams are playing each other.

That's right: by letting the computer know which teams are playing each other, strength of schedule gets factored in no matter what. Without it—and also banning score margin—the computer might as well rank teams by winning percentage and let that be it. Or add in a home/road factor of some sort. There's nothing else to go on. It's the way the computer uses the head-to-head comparisons between teams that makes a power rating. Very few power ratings, if any, do what the BCS used to do, which is figure out a strength-of-schedule score and add it in later, as its own component.

My problem with some computer ratings, as I've mentioned before, is when strength of schedule is average rather than aggregate. When it's averaged, you can have a situation where an 11-0 team would be ranked higher if they didn't play Washington State in their last game. In an aggregate system, they'd play the Cougars, gain few if any points, and have basically the same rating they started with. If their strength of schedule is averaged, they lose points for winning a game.

That's all for now. I'll be back the next time someone writes something erroneous about the BCS computers, even if it's just to take a shortcut because they understandable don't want to have to write ten paragraphs about it. I'll do that part.

Dear Andrew Bagnato: BCS Computers can't consider score margin

I see it as my duty—since no one in the media seems to want to do it—to correct misconceptions about how the BCS computer algorithms work. While it may be difficult to get into details, a basic concept that all the BCS computer formulas must follow is this: margin of victory is not allowed to be used as a factor, period.

So when Andrew Bagnato writes in College Football Today,

With the first Bowl Championship Series standings due out Sunday, was No. 6 Southern California trying to send a message to the voters and the computers in a 69-0 rout of Washington State? Maybe.

He's inadvertantly spreading disinformation. The computers won't be impressed by the rout, no more than they'd be impressed by a 3-0 win by the Trojans. They won the game, and that's all they see.

In fact, some of the formulas might penalize USC for winning the game. If they use overall (average) strength of schedule in their algorithm rather than considering each game individually (like my Success power rating, which doesn't use score margin, and where teams aggregate points for each win), USC's schedule strength may decline and make them rate slightly lower.

Some of the formulas have had this effect in the past, though I'm not certain they still do—I don't want to spread disinformation of my own in this campaign season, but it's a common feature of many power ratings.

The really sad thing is, it probably will send a message to the voters. Not that a huge shutout win shouldn't send a message; I believe in using score margin to an extent when evaluating team performance. But let's put this one in context: they beat the 119th best team in Division I-A 69-0. Just because Washington State is a BCS conference school doesn't make the win impressive. But when voters see USC crush a team 69-0, the Trojans get a lot more credit than other schools would, mostly because no one pays attention to scores like these:

• California 66, Washington State 3
• Oregon 63, Washington State 14
• Oregon State 66, Washington State 13

From these results, it's clear no one should be impressed that a top ten team could score 69 on the Cougars, nor that they shut them out. It's almost the expected result. Using my Strength power rating, which *does* use score margin for it's results, the predicted result was USC 55, Washington State 0.

Therefore, a score-margin-based power rating might be somewhat impressed by USC's win. The voters, however, should note that everyone in the Pac-10 was scoring 60+ on the Cougars, so high-ranked USC should do the same. And certainly, none of the BCS computers will care at all.

It will be interesting to see if USC jumps anyone else due to beating one of the worst teams in Division I-A by a score that should come as no surprise to anyone. In the AP poll USC was 6th and Florida—idle this week—5th. The Harris poll finds USC tied with Oklahoma, which is a joke considering Oklahoma's résumé, which was strengthened further with a win over Kansas. The Sooners should pull ahead this week, unless USC's win mistakenly sways the Harris voters more.

ESPN360, get your shit together

I've had it with ESPN360. They list two great games—Ohio State vs. Michigan State, and Kansas vs. Oklahoma—only to "black out" one of them right before the game (there's no technology that could determine this earlier?) and the other is a blank screen.

This is almost as bad as ending the broadcast with 1 minute left in the 4th quarter, which is another all-too-common occurrence. Get your shit together or stop promising what you can't deliver.

Update: Now the entire slate is down. Nothing showing at all.

Another O.C. Bites the Dust: Auburn fires Offensive Coordinator Franklin

Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville reversed himself and fired offensive coordinator Tony Franklin, whose spread offense didn't catch on with the Tigers. Auburn averaged 19 points a game, scoring only 3 points against Mississippi State and 13 in a loss to Vanderbilt last week.

Tuberville had voiced support for Franklin just days ago. Most observers didn't think Franklin's offense was close to fully implemented or used at Auburn, which raises the question of how much authority Franklin had over the playbook.

Whatever the case may be, Auburn's O wasn't getting the job done. When adjusted for opposition, Auburn's offense ranked just 102nd in the nation in scoring, and the latest yardage stats show that the Tigers were 96th in passing offense, 69th in rushing offense, and 103rd in total yardage so far in 2008.

The person hired to replace Franklin will be the team's sixth offensive coordinator in the last eight years, starting with Noel Mazzone's final year in 2001. After Bobby Petrino left voluntarily after the 2002 season, all since have departed due to dismissal.

Job Security? Auburn's offensive coordinators

Year	coordinator
1995-2001	Noel Mazzone
2002	Bobby Petrino
2003	Hugh Nall
2004-Dec, 2007	Al Borges
Dec, 2007 - Oct, 2008	Tony Franklin
Oct, 2008	???

We think that whoever gets the job as Auburn's new O.C. should write into his contract a Wall-Street-style Golden Parachute for his inevitable firing. Either that or Tuberville should stop passing the buck and just take over the offense himself. New offenses take time to gain traction but clearly something was up in Auburn making it harder for Franklin to do his job.

LA Times article ignorant about computer ratings

Here we go again. The annual article showing a complete lack of understanding about computer rating systems. It's not so much the ignorance that bothers me, but that the authors never even attempt to try to gain an understanding. They just push forth a few examples that make computer rankings look stupid or irrational, and then say "wow, can't possibly make heads or tails of that! Why even try?"

The examples in the article make complete sense to me, mostly because my two rating systems mirror the examples almost exactly. The author (Chris Dufresne) exhibits dismay that Jeff Sagarin's two systems can evaluate the same team differently. Here are his examples:

• USC: #1 but also #16
• Northwestern: #28 and #2
• Florida: #7 and #46

He doesn't even understand how Sagarin combines his ratings. The real numbers he should have cited are:

• USC: #1 (Predictor) and #16 (ELO)
• Northwestern: #35 and #2
• Florida: #2 and #46

Using my comparable ratings (Strength is similar to Predictor, and Success mirrors ELO somewhat):

• USC: #3 and #17
• Northwestern: #37 and #10
• Florida: #6 and #40

So while the differences in my ratings aren't quite as extreme, they're pretty close on the whole. So why the discrepancies between two methods of rating college football teams? There are many reasons.

One is that it's early in the season. With only four or five games to go by, any one game can have a big effect on a score-based system. Likewise, using winning and losing only, five games is a paltry amount to base a rating on. This is why I (and Mr. Sagarin) combine the two systems. When combined, the deficiencies of the two systems are lessened. USC ends up #3, Florida #8, and Northwestern #27 in my Overall ratings. In Sagarin's method, USC is #1, Florida is #7, and Northwestern #28.

Also, early ratings are sometimes handled differently until there are enough "connections" to make valid comparisons. Jeff Sagarin uses some weighing of last year's results until this year has enough data. At this point, according to his site, Predictor (the score-margin system) still is using some weight from last year, while the ELO portion does not. This is naturally going to lead to greater discrepancy between the two.

For the SportsRatings power rating, there is never any use of last year's data. But early ratings are naturally weighed heavier with the results of Strength rather than Success. The Success ratings build throughout the year as teams win games. It's difficult for a Win-Loss-only system to have good results until teams have played about 10 games; until then, the score-based system carries more weight. My motto is "you can't argue with Success" but only at the end of the season. Until then, some results, like Oregon State's upset of USC, can be at least somewhat written off as a fluke.

Dufresne does point out that USC's huge wins over Ohio State and Oregon count for a lot in a margin-based system. From there it doesn't take a lot for the ratings to make perfect sense; why should a 3-1 team by any higher than #16 anyway?

Florida's case is easier to understand. If you only knew that some "Team X" had defeated four teams that were each 2-3, and Team X had lost to another that was 3-3, wouldn't #46 seem like a possible ranking? But knowing that the score of the four wins were 56-10, 26-3, 30-6, and 38-7, and that the loss was by 1 point, you might think it reasonable that they be in the top ten. 

Just a little digging could help people understand the computer rankings, and it's an area that journalists have failed. There is so much coverage of every aspect of college football by the press—offenses, injuries, history, human-interest storylines—but the computer rankings are addresses with either pure ridicule and/or ignorance. There is no attempt to educate the fans on exactly what mechanisms they operate by. Why not? Sure, it may make for a longer, more in-depth article, but it has become a crucial area due to the BCS system. But all we get is "oh my God, look at what those computers did!"

Even for the financial meltdown in the stock market has articles that attempt to explain, step-by-step, just what happened in a technical sense. And that "system" is so complex than no one really understands how it works or where it is going since its scope is so huge. College football has a finite amount of games—it would be possible to show exactly what a computer is "thinking" every step of the way!

Sportswriters do a disservice to fans when they use the computer ratings only to take potshots at the BCS rather than to introduce fans to a very interesting nexus of sports and mathematics. The introduction of computer power ratings has clearly influenced sports and college football in particular. Spreads on games hew close to computer models these days. And pollsters, over the last ten years, have started to refer to power ratings when making their choices. In the early days of Sagarin's ratings being featured in USA Today, the difference between his ratings and the polls was huge. Then many of the teams he ranked high started to "upset" other teams. After years of this happening, you started to see these teams enter the top 25 earlier, and move up faster, than they did in the past.

Now, with spreads and the AP poll mirroring the computer rankings so much, any discrepancy is quickly noted. But does the AP poll make that much sense right now? #24 Pitt beat #19 South Florida who beat #16 Kansas; all teams have 1 loss. Michigan State is at #23 at 5-1, but the 4-1 Cal team that beat them isn't rated. There are justifiable reasons for these discrepancies perhaps. But the polls have another advantage: they are the aggregate of 70 different opinions. Combine 70 computer rankings and you wouldn't be able to pick one or two apart for having widely contrasting results.

The inconsistencies and biases that show up in the human polls are one reason I like computer power ratings. It's also why I base the SportsRatings Top 25—a non-computerized, subjective ranking—on a few basic principles so that teams are ranked in a fair manner. First and foremost, I try to explain why I put teams where I do, so that someone who takes issue with them at least knows where I'm coming from.

It's a lot easier just to mock a rating system than to try and understand it. But I think there is fan interest in knowing how these systems work, and journalists would be doing their job to go a step further in this direction.

Ball State receiver Dante Love's football career is over

Dante Love, senior wide receiver for the 4-0 Ball State Cardinals, and until last weekend the leading pass catcher in the country, will not play football again.

Love was injured in the 2nd quarter against Indiana Saturday, and spent 15 minutes on the ground before being rushed to the hospital for five hours of surgery to repair a spinal fracture. Love was reportedly able to move his hands and feet after the operation, and doctors say he'll likely make a full recover—aside from being able to play football.

Full story here.

Commentary: Apart from the obvious bad news for Love, the injury was bad news for the Cardinals as well. Love was an important part of the offense, and with him they had a real chance of going undefeated this year. It's a good sign that they were still able to beat Indiana without him, though maybe emotion gave them the edge. The Hoosiers were their big hurdle, but they have a lot of games left and he was their go-to receiver.

At the bottom line, it's great news that he can live a normal life, but unfortunately a "normal" life doesn't include playing in the NFL, or even on a college team trying to have a breakthrough season.

Below is a video of Dante Love in action.

Sooners coaches SHOULD be whining about Granger injury

I'm not sure why Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops and defensive line coach Jackie Shipps decided not to publicly support their players, saying that they won't "whine" about the play that resulted in DeMarcus Granger possibly missing the rest of the season. If I were them, I would be whining loud and clear, or at least taking matters through the proper channels to let Washington know that their players did something wrong.

Granger was hurt during Oklahoma's 55-14 blowout of the Huskies. On a broken play, Granger bulled through the line after the whistle had blown. He was unapologetic, but why not? He hadn't done it on purpose. He clearly though the play had started when Washington's line jumped. He didn't get away with it, either; a penalty was called by the officials.

On the next play, though, Washington's players triple teamed him and "gave him the business" a la the famous referee calls from years past. Granger limped off the field, and as it turns out was hurt worse than initially thought. He may be out the rest of the year, all for a little premeditated revenge. No penalty was called on the play.

What Granger did was a natural part of the game: being overaggressive. It only took a split second for him to run into the lineman, and he couldn't have stopped himself if he wanted. What the Washington players did was inexcuseable: they agreed to take a player down and physically punish him, and try to hurt him. That's beyond being aggressive, and has no place even in a game as violent as football.

But what adds insult to Granger's injury is how his coaches don't have his back. They should be livid at Washington and demand that Ty Willingham discipline his players for their actions. Instead, not wanting to look like "whiners," they've essentially said that Granger got what he deserved. "Those things happen. In this game, you’ve got to learn how to take care of yourself," Shipp said. I for one wouldn't want to play for a coach who had that attitude about an incident where opposing players had deliberately injured me.

Here's a video of both plays. You can judge for yourself as to how much Granger is to blame, and how much the Washington players were out of line, but to me it's Oklahoma's coaches that look like the losers in the end.

Ohio State will NOT play for the national championship!

The latest talk is that somehow the Ohio State Buckeyes, despite being roguered 35-3 by USC, will end up playing for the national championship.

One theory is that voters will see how good they are with Beanie Wells back and decide they deserve a shot. Another scenario states that the BCS is so screwed up that it will just put OSU in the championship game.

Well I hate to tell you (no...actually I'm happy to tell you), it's just not going to happen.

Of course the BCS system is screwy; everyone knows that, even those who think a playoff is a stupid idea. But just because a system is screwy doesn't mean that it is forced to lead to a screwy result. No one voting in the Harris poll will want to see Ohio State in the title game. No one. So if there is ANY team as an alternative, they will get the nod.

First we are assuming, of course, that the Buckeyes sweep the Big Ten, which is no longer a given due to their performance Saturday, but let's say that Beanie Wells pushes them to an 11-1 record. Then we assume that no other team (than the Trojans) goes undefeated, another questionable assumption (remember, last year was a huge anomaly).

Even if this happens, any one-loss team from the SEC or Big Twelve will be ahead of the Buckeyes, no question. Even the faltering ACC and Big East would provide a champion 1-loss team. Right now Ohio State is 13th in the AP poll, 14th in USA. But there are teams behind them who will pass the Buckeyes if that's what it takes to prevent them from finishing #2.

In fact, this is a great year to be a BCS-buster team, because your school has a much greater chance than ever to play for the title. The Mountain West has a good shot of producing not only a BCS bowl team, but a national title contender, thanks to Ohio State. It works like this: let's say the SEC and Big 12 are both so tough that every team in the league finishes with two losses. Very unlikely, but it essentially happened last season. If Utah or BYU ends the season undefeated, they'd have a great argument—unlike Hawaii last year—to play for all the marbles.

East Carolina would also have a good argument if West Virginia and Virginia Tech recover and win their conferences. An undefeated Boise State (if they upset Oregon) and TCU (has to beat Oklahoma, Utah, BYU) wouldn't be relegated to a minor bowl if there weren't alternatives.

So while an Ohio State-USC rematch will NOT happen in the BCS title game, there really is a decent chance of a rematch—in the Rose Bowl.

No one's even considering the possibility of USC losing, but if they do—say, to Oregon, and Oregon runs the table and goes to the BCS title game—then USC will have to settle for the Rose Bowl. And who will they face? Well, if Beanie comes through and the Big Ten is like butter to OSU's knife again, it will be Ohio State. In Pasedena. After settling matters at 35-3 just months earlier.

This is the real problem with the BCS. Not the title game, not the lack of a playoff. The problem is in the crappy matchups in the other major bowls. There is no chance, for example, for the ACC and Big East champions to meet in a bowl. Or the Big 12 and SEC champs. No champion of BCS Conference A shall meet the champion of BCS Conference B unless: 1) They meet in the championship game, or 2) The conferences are the Big 10 and Pac-10.

To be fair, even before the BCS existed, the Rose Bowl sometimes had repeat performances. In 1975, the Bucks won at UCLA 41-20 en route to an 11-0 record...then lost in the Rose Bowl, 23-10, to UCLA. The problem this year is not the BCS system, but the Rose Bowl auto-pairing, something that's been a tradition in football for quite some time.

But the facts remain. Ohio State WILL NOT PLAY for the national title, because the voters will not allow it, as there WILL be a viable alternative team. But the Buckeyes very well could play USC again in the Rose Bowl. This outcome is far more likely than the Bucks-in-the-title-game conspiracy theory floating around sports sites lately.

Here it comes again: "Best USC team ever" talk

It's started already. It's even being declared as a certainty. But we've heard talk like this before and it usually precedes an unexpected Trojan loss.

Does talk like this get into the players' heads? This year, given the dismal state of the Pac-10, overconfidence may be USC's biggest remaining pitfall.

How soon they forget Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, and LenDale White. Mark Sanchez, Joe McKnight, and C.J. Gable are good, but let's see how they finish the season before anointing them better than the best team of the decade. My column from almost exactly one year ago today still stands; just change the names of a few of the competitors.

ESPN360 still sucks ass

For a service that's several years old, ESPN360 surprisingly  has no technical solution for a game that runs a bit long. Today's Maryland-Cal game was just getting good, Cal knocking on the door with 2 minutes left, when the broadcast expired—it simply ran out of time. After a few minutes, the broadcast recovered, but by then Cal had scored a touchdown and failed on their onside kick and the game was over.

At least it's better than what used to happen: the game would die and never come back. Still, ESPN has got to realize that this issue is most likely to occur AT THE END OF THE FUCKING GAME WHEN THINGS ARE GETTING INTERESTING.

Of course without ESPN360 I wouldn't have been able to watch any of the Cal-Maryland game. But I also have to sit through 3,000 screenings of the 3 or 4 commercials they constantly run, too. For that alone they should have pity on me and find some way to seamlessly make the game run until the end, instead of cutting out when the allotted time slot is filled.

Not only that, but it looks like Purdue-Oregon is blacked out. Well I guess there's always Penn State-Syracuse. Not.

USC at #1 in AP, Coaches polls: Jumping the gun?

USC leapt past Georgia into the #1 spot on both polls this week after beating Virginia 52-7 on Saturday. The Trojans had been third in the AP poll and 2nd in the USA-Today/coaches poll.

It's pretty rare for top teams to give up the #1 spot without losing. Sometimes it happens if the top team has a particularly weak showing, but this wasn't the case with Georiga or Ohio State this weekend. There are a few reasons I can think of why USC made the jump, ordered from most to least legit:

1. Their opening win was the most convincing. This is true; they had the most dominant win of any Top 25 team in week one. Virginia was 9-4 last year, and the Trojans went on the road and obliterrated them. At the same time, it's pretty certain that Virginia is not nearly as good as they were last year, a year in which they were overrated due to winning a large number of close games. Florida beat Hawaii 56-10, and Hawaii was 12-1 last year, but the Gators didn't gain a single point in the polls.


2. Injuries, or lack thereof, were factored in. Mark Sanchez' knee didn't look hurt at all Saturday; no so Beanie Wells' foot. And Georgia lost another offensive lineman in their opener. Were some pollsters switching allegiances based on these developments? Could be.


3. Specific doubts about the Trojans were erased. Many pollsters think USC is the best team, but had a reason to put them lower. This year the offense and Sanchez were the main questions about USC; with those doubts removed, they ushered the Trojans to #1.


4. Judging based on limited information. No one likes the pre-season rankings, even those who vote on them. People want to make judgements on actual performance, not on potential and speculation. So when the first game is played, sometimes those results are given too much weight. As of this point, they're all we have to go on, but still, we don't know anything about the opponents. If Virginia struggles mightily from here, do we revisit the USC game and re-evaluate? Probably not.


5. Pro-USC bias. There used to be a West Coast bias, meaning teams from that region weren't fairly evaluated. Now there's a pro-USC bias. Whenever the Trojans are doing well, they're put on a pedastal above all other teams. It only takes one dominant win for this to happen (see last year's Nebraska game).

I don't think anything is wrong with USC being #1—if they had started there. But jumping them ahead of poor Georgia was a little premature. To leapfrog to #1, you should have to beat a worthy opponent, and Virginia was not in the top 25. Why not wait a couple weeks until they face Ohio State? A win over the Buckeyes would be the type of win needed to move a team ahead of a currently solid #1 team.

Arizona Republic Columnist Doesn't Know His College Football

Many have debated which is better, college or pro football, but when doing so you owe it to your readership to have an idea of what each is about. One who watches only the college game shouldn't dis the pro game, and vice versa.

Jay Dieffenbach, in a recent column in AZ Central.com addresses the issue, arguing in favor of the pro game. He mainly spends the article trashing the college game, calling the atmosphere overrated, then ridiculing the BCS system (now there's a tough target). He even compares the cheerleaders, siding with the NFL cheerleaders as "more professional."

But his most ridiculous argument comes when he discusses scheduling. Of course, NFL scheduling is more limited, more even, and not up to the team at all. But when covering college scheduling he writes:

The non-conference schedule issue - do you line up cupcakes (Iowa) or challenge yourself (Southern California)? - is fun to discuss, but all it does is generate more debate that cannot be won.

I'm not sure how old Dieffenbach is, but he'd have to be stuck in the 70s to call Iowa a cupcake. Sure, they've been mediocre for a few seasons, but not a "cupcake." Somehow he misses—or more likely, is ignorant of—the Hawkeyes' three consecutive top ten finishes from 2002 to 2004. Iowa certainly was a "cupcake" in the '60s and '70s, but since then they've had just three "cupcake" seasons, in '98, '99, and 2000.

Not to mention that using USC as an example of a "challenge" is like using a whale as an example of a large fish. Both these examples make it plain that Dieffenbach doesn't follow the college game at all. Maybe he shouldn't, as he clearly doesn't like it, but if you're going to try to argue that one is better than the other, you should at least have a cursory knowledge of both. Maybe 8 or 10 years ago when he last followed the college game, he knew that Iowa was a "cupcake" and that knowledge has followed him, un-updated to this day. (I'd wager he graduated around 2000, likely from a school that sucked at football, hence his 'knowledge' of Iowa and his disdain for the college game).

I prefer the college game for a number of reasons, one of them being the atmosphere he doesn't seem to enjoy. I understand the draw of the NFL—the players are the best in the world, the game contested at an entirely different level. But for years now (really, since the two strikes in the 80s) I've only turned my attention to the NFL when the college season is over. To me, the playoff system so many laud is the only part of the NFL season worth paying attention to. With well over 100 teams in I-A, the college game is a journey of discovery—which teams are going to be good this year?—that continues well into the fall, and then the real fun begins.

And when it's over, the NFL is still there if you want to watch the best of the best.

Darren McFadden runs a 4.27 40 yard dash. How does this convert to 100 Meters? Probably a world record.

Darren McFadden, working out at the pro combines, ran either a 4.27 or a 4.33, depending on who you listen to, in the 40-yard dash the other day.

4.27 was the "unofficial" time, 4.33 the official. But what does "official" mean?

It means it was "corrected for surface." How? No one knows for sure.

For years, I've been hearing these 40 times, and wondering: how do they compare to 100 Meter times achieved by the best sprinters?

The answer is, they are far, far faster than the best sprinters in the world.

Ben Johnson's 1988 ex-Gold time of 9.79 was analyzed, and at the 40 yard mark his time was 4.38 seconds. [For some reason 4.24 and 4.14 are floating around the internet on "answers" sites, but the better sources agree on 4.38]

So what was basically the fastest a human has run (the world record has been just barely lowered since) would be considered a decent time for a fast NFL player.

Yes! You might not expect that a football player would run faster than the fastest men in the world, but they do, even though the track stars are running on perfect surfaces with perfect shoes and perfect technique—the football players are faster.

Hearing these ridiculous 40 yard timings, I wondered if the players are allowed a 10-yard "start" before timing commences. This would explain why the times are so fast, similar to the explanation for 300-lb linemen with 40-inch vertical jumps (it's measured by how high their feet get, and they can bend their knees). But that's no so; they start from a complete stop.

The difference is in the start. NFL players can start when they want, instead of having to react to a starter pistol. Subtracting the 0.2 to 0.3 seconds that this takes and Johnson's 40 time is 4.08 to 4.18, making some of the NFL timings a bit more plausible. The times are hand-started by the timer when the runner begins.

Here's the video of Darren McFadden's run. Is he going faster than the 2008 Olympic Gold medalist will run? You make the call.

Clearly the NFL timings are a joke, which is okay because their only purpose is to compare between NFL prospects. But haphazard timings, with a start determined by the runner and made in different venues under different conditions can have a dramatic effect on a player's worth to the league.

Of course we now know that Ben Johnson was on steroids, and indeed some of those who eventually surpassed his 9.79 were too. DMAC couldn't possibly be on the juice, right?

Most Disappointing Teams of 2007

Rivals.com has an interesting year-end recap, but I don't agree at all with one of their lists: Most Disappointing Team. Here's their list, which consists of a "winner" and 5 "honorable" mentions:

Most Disappointing Team: Louisville
Honorable Mention
1. Michigan
2. Miami
3. Nebraska
4. UCLA
5. California

I think one or two of the teams don't belong on the list, and they've left off the obvious Most Disappointing Team altogether.

Miami certainly shouldn't be included here. Rivals says they were "expected to contend for the ACC title." In which universe? Most observers, including the AP which put them at pre-season #31, thought they might aspire to finishing better than they did last year, but a BCS bowl was not expected by any means. The Hurricanes has a disappointing year, no doubt—especially the 0-4 finish and two huge blowouts—but expectations were not as high for this Miami team as they are normally.

And Michigan shouldn't be the runner-up. Of course their loss to Appalachian State was embarassing, as was their blowout against Oregon. But the Wolverines then put together eight wins in a row. How many teams in Division I-A won eight games in row? Exactly eight: Ohio State, Kansas, Hawaii,  Arizona State, Boston College, Boise State, BYU, and Michigan.

Here's my alternate list.

Most Disappointing Team: Notre Dame.

Is there any doubt? No, they weren't expected to be in the top 25, but they were supposed to have a winning season—roughly 8-4 if you look at their pre-season poll votes—not go 3-9. Everyone saw they had a rebuilding year ahead of them, and a tough first eight games. Struggle through that at 4-4, and sweep the latter, easy part of their schedule and voila, 8-4 as expected. But the first eight games proved much tougher, at 1-7; then 2 of the four 'cupcakes' bit them, including their first loss to Navy in 44 years.

And it wasn't just that they lost, it was how they lost. Georgia Tech: 33-3. Penn State: 34-10. Michigan State 31-14. And both Michigan and USC, 38-0. The Irish had trouble scoring all year, and finished 103rd in scoring offense and 118th in total yards (113th in passing and 102nd in rushing). In power ratings based on points, the Irish finish at #97, just below fellow 3-9 team Iowa State, and behind 14 Division I-AA or Division II teams.

Their upset of UCLA was nothing to brag about, as the Bruins handed them that game, and their two-game winning "streak"—against Duke and Stanford—can't be seen as finishing on a positive note. Notre Dame 2007 had the most losses of any Irish team.

Honorable Mention:

1. Louisville:  Rivals covered the basics here. Pre-season #10, national title hopes, lost to Syracuse at home, finished 6-6, no bowl game.

2. UCLA: Returning the most starters of any team in the country, UCLA started the year #14 and should at least have finished better than last year. Instead they fell to 6-6, and it was the strangest 6-6 in memory. After starting with two wins—one of them a win over BYU that was a big upset in retrospect—the Bruins got punked by Utah to the tune of 44-6. Another two wins put them back on track, including another strange-in-hindsight win over Oregon State, 40-14. Then they hit their low point of the year, losing to awful, winless Notre Dame, 20-6, while committing 7 turnover.

Then they hit their high point of the year, upsetting Cal 30-21 and tranferring some of their cursed mojo to them in the process. But they had more than enough to go around, as they lost their next two to lowly Washington State and Arizona, before giving Arizona State too close of a call at 24-20, shutting out a Dennis-Dixonless Oregon, and losing to UCLA. It's one thing to be bad; it's worst to be bad an completely unpredictable.

Still, after all this, they qualified for a bowl game: a rematch against BYU.

3. Nebraska: This was supposed to be another step in Callahan's rebuilding of the program. Sam Keller was supposed to be the spark that put them firmly on the road to repeating past successes; instead, the defense got worse each week, and the Cornhuskers finished with their second losing season under Callahan, who was promptly fired.

Picked #20 pre-season, the Huskers kept up appearances for a while, crushing Nevada 52-10 like old times, and beating last year's ACC champ Wake Forest. Even a crushing, 49-31 loss to USC at home didn't spell doom for the season; after all, USC was a team for the ages (at least in September). No, the first real sign that something was very wrong was at home against Ball State, who came withing a point of shocking the Huskers, and scoring 40 points on their once-proud blackshirts.

A win over Iowa State followed, but then, disaster: Missouri 41, Nebraska 6; Oklahoma State 45, Nebraska 14; Texas A&M 36, Nebraska 14; Kansas 76, Nebraska 39. They recovered briefly to beat up on KU's little brother 73-31, but ended the year slapped by Colorado 65-51.

When Sam Keller got hurt they found out how well Joe Ganz could run the offense, but by then it was too late, and even so, offense wasn't the issue, it was defense. The blackshirts finished 94th in scoring defense, and 91st in adjusted yards given up.

4. California:

#12 rank + 5-0 start = #2 rank

5-0 start + 1-6 finish = 6-6 season.

5. Michigan could go here, for the cruel fate that awaited returning seniors Michael Hart and Chad Henne, and for the loss to a Division I-AA team. But it wasn't so much that expectations were high for Michigan; they had a chance to play for the national title. But if they made it, there was no doubt they'd be playing the team that crushed them last year: Southern Cal. The most talented team to ever grace college football.

USC going undefeated was a foregone conclusion. And when they beat the stuffing out of Nebraska on the night of September 29th, it was clear: this was the best USC team ever. Or so some people believed. Just a few weeks later, they struggled to a 3-point win over Washington. And the week after that, the unthinkable happened: they lost, at home...to Stanford.

Enough has been said about this, but it's telling that some people still believe USC is the best team in the land, after two losses, including a loss, at home...to Stanford. The excuses roll in: Booty was hurt or they would have won. Stanford isn't that bad of a team. Other teams got upset, too.

Yes, but none of those teams claiming to be the best got upset by a team like Stanford, who really isn't as bad as all that, but still bad enough to get beat by Notre Dame. Sure, Booty was hurt, but was well enough to play, and any team claiming to be the very best should beat Stanford with half their roster injured. The final excuse: USC is playing better than any team right now.

Which is a joke. All season, they beat one ranked team: Arizona State. Two teams total that have a winning record. They beat a 1-win team, a 3-win team, a 4-win team, three 5-win teams, and two 6-6 teams. They beat a 10-2 team and an 8-4 team, and lost to a 4-8 team.

They won the Pac 10 thanks to Dixon's injury and are now in a BCS bowl. But can this season be considered anything but a disappointment given their lofty status and all-around acclaim? Not the biggest disappointment, but 6th-biggest for sure. After they beat Michigan in last year's Rose Bowl, they became the team to beat. USC was a sure thing, until Stanford happened.

Kevin Smith will break Barry Sanders' record—in the Bizarro Universe

There's a lot of talk about Central Florida's Kevin Smith, and how he might break Barry Sanders' single-season rushing record in UCF's bowl game against Mississippi State.

Smith will enter the game as the NCAA's leading rusher with 2,448 yards; Sanders ran for 2,628 in his 1988 Heisman season, so Smith needs slightly less than his 188-yard average to top the mark. Mississippi State's rushing defense is 65th in raw average yards allowed, so there's a very good chance he'll get the record.

There's a problem, though, one that should put a huge asterisk by Smith's mark. No, nothing about steroids. And nothing to do with UCF's comparatively light schedule, or the fact that they've already played 13 games this year. Yards are yards, and a season is a season, and if Smith rushes for more yards in 2007 than Sanders did in 1988, he should have the record. But the problem is, we'll be considering Smith's entire season, but not Sanders'.

The fact is, while the NCAA will count Smith's bowl game in the total, Sanders' bowl game from 1988 did not count in his total. In 2002 the NCAA changed a rule, making bowl game statistics part of the season totals. That's not a problem; what is, is that they didn't go back and add bowl game totals to the current records.

So the very definition of "season" is different for Sanders and Smith.

Sanders, of course, went on to rush for 222 yards against Wyoming in the 1988 Holiday Bowl. It was a fair performance by Barry's standards; only a few yards shy of his 239 yard average. But while it gave him 2,850 yards for the full 1988 season, for the purposes of the record he has only a paltry 2,628.

This means it's quite likely Smith will gain 181+ yards against Mississippi State, making him the single-season rushing king, yet leaving him a couple hundred yards short of the amount of yards Sanders rushed for in 1988. He will surpass Sanders while not really getting very close to him at all.

A strange paradox, wouldn't you say? And a bit unfair.

Now, if Smith were to rush for just above 400 yards (403, to be exact), he could truly surpass Sanders, and there would be no asterisk needed. Regardless of how many games are in a season, or who you play, a yard is a yard, a season is a season, and to begrudge Smith the record in that case would be to behave in a manner similar to those louts who denigrated Roger Maris' accomplishment.

But what's happenening here is akin to taking several of Ruth's home runs and not counting them.

Kevin Smith has had an amazing season, no doubt. He rushed for over 200 yards five times, and only had one game under 100 yards. But regardless of whether he breaks* the record, there's no comparison between his season and Sanders'. Though, as I said earlier, it has no bearing on the record, Sanders had fewer games, and tougher foes. And still, he ran for more yards, averaging 50 more yards per game.

Here is a game-by-game rundown of Smith's 2007 season, with 150+ yard games in bold and 300 yard game in red:

  Kevin Smith 2007        yds
North Carolina State      217
Texas                     149
Memphis                   124
Louisiana-Lafayette       223
East Carolina             147
South Florida              55
Tulsa                     170
Southern Miss             175
Marshall                  188
UAB                       320
Southern Methodist        177
UTEP                      219
Tulsa                     284
Regular-season Total:   2,448 (188.3 yds/game)

and for comparison, Barry Sanders' 1988 season with Oklahoma State:

  Barry Sanders 1988      yds
Miami Ohio                178
Texas A&M                 157
Tulsa                     304
Colorado                  174
Nebraska                  189
Missouri                  154
Kansas St                 320
Oklahoma                  215
Kansas                    312
Iowa State                293
Texas Tech                332
regular-season Total:   2,628 (238.9 yds/game)

Wyoming                   222
Overall season Total:   2,850

I hope that clears things up.

Bowl Overkill

Looking over the list of bowl games apart from the BCS contests, and one thing is readily apparent.

There are far too many bowl games.

The December 20th through 31st slate is watered-down mess, with 21 contests involving 42 teams. Add in the oddball bowls that play on January 6th and that's 23 games between 46 teams. The BCS bowls, plus the other New Year's Day games, number 9 bowls with 18 teams. All told, that's 32 games, 64 teams.

There are only 120 (officially 119 at this point) Division I-A teams, meaning that over half go to a bowl game. So it's no wonder there are so many crappy, worthless games being played almost all the way through December.

The genesis of this took place a few years ago, when two things happened: The NCAA softened its requirement regarding number of wins needed to be bowl-eligible; and, they allowed one win against a Division I-AA team to count toward the total.

Both of these things happening at once watered down the bowl pool immensely. Just a few years ago, on an 11-game schedule, a team had to go at least 6-5, with all 6 wins from major opponents. Or they had to go 7-4 if any one of those wins was over a Division I-AA team. The requirement then was that a team had to have a winning record and six wins over Division I-A teams.

This lead to a shortfall of bowl eligible teams. A lot of the teams that finished 6-5 had a win over a Division I-AA school and weren't eligible. The NCAA foresaw a time when there wouldn't be enough teams to fill the expanding number of bowls. So they allowed teams to count one Division I-AA game toward the total. This would allow more teams to qualify without allowing them to count several lesser opponents toward the tally. A team could go 5-5 against Division I-A and make it to a bowl.

Later, the season was expanded to 12 games. Since this would lead to fewer teams with strictly winning records—due to the expected large number of 6-6 teams—the NCAA stated that six wins would still allow a team to be bowl eligible. However, they kept the clause allowing a win over a Division I-AA opponent to count towards the total, thereby effectively making a 5-6 record against Division I-A acceptable.

This watering down effect was seen last year, when Iowa and Miami both made bowl games with extremely weak 6-6 records. Iowa's wins included Division I-AA Montana; Northern Illinois; and conference cellar-dwellars Syracuse, Iowa State, and Illinois. Likewise Miami beat Division I-AA Florida A&M; ACC dog North Carolina; and two teams that went winless in '06, Florida International and Duke. Neither the Hawks nor the Canes were close to their usual standards, but both got bids. Miami squeaked by Nevada, 21-20, while Iowa performed admirably before falling to Texas, 26-24.

Basically, any bowl including a 6-6 team is suspect. Remove all the 6-6 teams from bowls this year and there'd be enough teams to fill 28 1/2 bowls instead of 32. Then there are the 7-5 teams. Most of these come from Conference-USA or, in other years, the MAC. If these 15 teams were cut to 8, that would eliminate another 3 1/2 games, making a manageable 25 bowl games.

Then theres the matter of scheduling. This year there are two crappy bowl games after the 1st of the year, bowls that should be played before Christmas. The NCAA should nix the "International" bowl, which this year has the long-awaited meeting of Rutgers and Ball State. Likewise the GMAC bowl should have to move or die, taking Tulsa and Bowling Green with them. Clearly those bowls don't belong on January 6th, after the Rose Bowl and three other BCS bowls are finished.

Everybody complains about the BCS, but the worst part of it isn't the selection of the #1 and #2 teams, it's the bowl-selection process that follow. The major bowls start the problem by choosing terrible matchups, and after that, the field is so watered down that good matchups occur only randomly. Every year the projections include interesting, amazing games—USC vs. OSU, LSU-Hawaii, Florida-Illinois—only to have upsets and bad picks kill these possibilities. Underrated teams are matched with 6-6 or 7-5 competition, allowing them to prove absolutely nothing.

The first step in all of this is quite simple: the NCAA should cut back on the number of bowl games. Every matchup would be better, and would more than make up for the disappointed fans of the teams that didn't deserve a bowl game in the first place.

LSU or Oklahoma, NOT Georgia

If things work out in the BCS, either LSU or Oklahoma should face Ohio State in the title game. Georgia absolutely does NOT deserve it.

Georgia has, for some reason, risen in the ranks without really beating anybody of note, and become the media darling. Their string of wins in the second half of the season is more due to their schedule than to any greatness on their part.

Their best win is over 9-3 Florida, a team LSU also beat. Their losses came at home to South Carolina, a team that finished 6-6 on the year. Then they were crushed by Tennessee, 35-14. No team that loses a game in that manner should be playing for it all, especially a team with 2 losses.

Other than the Florida win, what other top 25 victories do they have? 7-4 Auburn, whom LSU also beat.

Louisiana State lost two games, both in triple overtime. How can these losses be compared to a 35-14 demolition? Both were good teams, particularly Arkansas (who is 26th in the AP poll, 25th in the coaches poll, and 27th in the BCS standings). LSU has the same wins as Georgia, over Florida and Auburn, and a win yesterday over the Tennessee team that beat Georgia, plus a win over BCS-bound Virginia Tech.

So LSU beat the two teams that beat Georgia, and beat the two teams Georgia is considered so great for beating. The Bulldogs did beat the Kentucky team that was one of LSU's losses. But there's no question LSU is more deserving to be in the title game. Georgia has really done nothing to be ranked so high, except not lose for a number of weeks.

Oklahoma has a much better argument than Georgia, and maybe better than LSU's. By beating Missouri for the second time they wrapped up the Big 12, and they also have a win over Texas. That alone is better than Georgia's win résumé. Overall their schedule doesn't compete with LSU's though.

Their losses are close games to 6-6 Colorado, and borderline top 25 Texas Tech. These are certainly no worse than Georgia's losses to 6-6 South Carolina and the blowout to Tennessee.

Here's a summary of the teams seasons, using (yesterday's outdated) BCS rankings:

Oklahoma (11-2)   Lost at 6-6 Colorado 27-24, Lost at #28 Texas Tech 34-27
                            beat #20 Texas 28-21, beat #1 Missouri 41-31, beat #1 Missouri 38-17
LSU (11-2)             Lost at 7-5 Kentucky 43-37 (3ot), Lost to #27 Arkansas 50-48 (3ot) 
                            beat #6 Virginia Tech 48-7, beat #14 Tennessee 21-14,
                            beat #10 Florida 28-24, beat #24 Auburn 30-24
Georgia (10-2)       Lost to 6-6 South Carolina 16-12, Lost at #14 Tennessee 35-14
                            beat #10 Florida 42-30, beat #24 Auburn 45-20

It's too bad Tennessee pulled out the victory over Kentucky, otherwise we would have had a Georgia-LSU final in the SEC championship game, and the Bulldogs' possible title birth would have had some legitimacy.

As it stands, I would put Virginia Tech ahead of Georgia. Tech has two losses to top 25 teams, and three wins over top 25 teams, including the avenging of one of their losses. Even Missouri has a better resume; both their losses are to Oklahoma, and they beat Illinois, 1-loss Kansas, and Texas Tech. Both these teams should be ahead of Georgia, but by head-to-head competition Tech is behind LSU, and Missouri is behind Oklahoma. Hence the title shot should go to the Tigers or the Sooners.

The BCS computers, of course, can't see that LSU's losses were both in triple overtime, nor that their win over Virginia Tech was 48-7. Taking away that information, and weighing recent games more than earlier games, might lead one to put Georgia in front. But I think the entire season has to count, and count equally. A playoff system would reward teams that are "hot" at the moment, but to determine who's deserving of a single-game playoff, the entire season must be the standard. And even so, I don't buy the sentiment that Georgia is playing the best right now; they were playing poorly in the first half of the season, and are playing well in the 2nd half, leading to a string of wins that propped them up as other teams stumbled, but their earlier stumbles were worse, and later wins less impressive, than the others.

It's up to the human element—the polls—to take into account the information the computers aren't allowed to see, and the intangibles that the computer can't ever taken into account.

Coaching Michigan & Nebraska

Two of the biggest programs in college football are in the hiring process.

Michigan has been rumored to be considering Les Miles of LSU, and if that's the case I can't imagine an announcement being made until January. Unless Miles has given up on this season because it's not a championship season, then maybe right after the SEC championship game we might hear something.

Tom Dienhart thinks Iowa's Kirk Ferentz is actually the front-runner. I doubt Michigan fans are too hot on Ferenz, who is as low-key as Carr and won't dazzle them with new offensive schemes. Also his recent record is suspect. But the administration knows him, and people who know coaching know he's good, and at Michigan he'd be able to recruit consistently.

The one thing Dienhart says that doesn't make sense to me is this: Ferentz, who likely won't command a big salary, is the early leader.

For one thing, isn't Ferentz already one of the highest-paid coaches in the country? And two, if he weren't going to make at least as much at Michigan, why would he go there? Michigan's President Mary Sue Coleman used to be Iowa's President; she's well aware of his current salary. If they want Ferenz, it's because they want him, not because they can get him on the cheap. Just because it's Iowa, Dienhart assumes Ferenz is getting paid in corn.

Speaking of corn, Nebraska needs a new coach too, and they want an insider. Bo Pelini has been mentioned (is everyone from LSU looking to jump ship?), as well as Grobe from Wake Forest, but the bold move would be to hire Turner Gill away from Buffalo. That's the only way to make Nebraska football exciting again. They could get either of the other two coaches and rebuild the program, of course, or they could energize it with a young coach, an ex-player who is identified as one of the Husker's greats.

More conservative heads may prevail and not want to "take a chance" with Gill, and there's the chance they're just using him as a token minority interview. Let's hope Tom Osborne has the balls to make the bold move and bring his guy into the fold.

Update 1: Tom Osborne has declared himself "interim coach." Fans probably hope this is similar to Steve Jobs being iCEO of Apple.

Update 2: Found in a story on Joe Paterno's salary; from a 2006 USA Today article: Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz has a base salary of $1.4 million this year and is guaranteed another $1.4 million in supplemental compensation for media and other obligations...

...Iowa's Kirk Ferentz will pocket a guaranteed $4.6 million in an atypical 13-month period ending next June, including $1.8 million in one-time payments. With the incentive bonuses he still can earn, he could push his take to more than $4.7 million. That's the most among the 107 coaches for whom USA TODAY could obtain a contract or other official document showing compensation.

If that's what Dienhart defines as "not commanding a big salary," then I would please like to not command a big salary.

 

Ohio State, USC, Georgia are not the best teams

This article by Mike Freeman sums up everything that's wrong with sportswriters today: they can't let go of the past, and are far too influenced by a team's name when deciding how to rate them.

He argues that Missouri and West Virginia aren't the best teams: Ohio State and USC are. Ignoring the part where he says Missouri-West Virginia won't be watched, since that has nothing to do with the quality of the teams, his argument boils down to this: Ohio State and USC have "developed" into the best teams by the end of the season.

For USC, this serves the purpose of being able to ignore their loss to Stanford, and act as if it never happened, which is necessary to avoid having someone laugh in your face for suggesting such a team deserves a title shot. If West Virginia or Missouri had a loss to Stanford on their record, they wouldn't be close to the top ten, and every writer of Freeman's ilk would ridicule them for it.

For Ohio State, somehow we're supposed to believe that in the one week between their loss to Illinois and their win over Michigan, they recovered and became one of the two best teams. Because, you know, a lot can change in one week. They're so good, they're getting better during all their idle weeks, too! Look how it helped them last year....oh but wait, we're not supposed to bring that up. Freeman writes "it takes a lot of guts to do what Tressel has," making another run after being crushed last year. What? How does this make them better than the two other teams we're discussing exactly?

He then mentions that he'd take Florida over either of WVA or Mizzou, and that even Georgia is better. A sidebar picture contains the caption "Despite two losses, Mark Richt's Bulldogs might be the best team in the nation."

Where did all this crap talk about Georgia come from? Is it just the fact that they've won a few games in a row? When you look at their record, you see exactly one impressive win: over Florida. Other than that, nothing special. They beat Auburn, Kentucky, and Troy, and lost to South Carolina, and at Tennessee 35-14. They're far from the best 2-loss team, let alone best overall. Oklahoma, LSU, Virginia Tech, and even Boston College have more solid wins over top 25 teams and/or less embarrassing losses. They've been playing well recently, and it's unfortunate they don't get a shot at the SEC title, but winning streaks aren't always due to greatness. They were playing mediocre football in the first half of the season and that's skewed people's perceptions of what they've done in the 2nd half.

Missouri and West Virginia both have one loss, on the road, to top 25 teams. Ohio State's loss was at home, to Illinois, a good team, but one that Missouri was able to beat. The Buckeyes have one win over a top 25 team, Wisconsin. West Virginia has one as well, in addition to destroying another one so badly they fell out of the poll, while Missouri has two and will need a third to even get to the championship game. You can't argue that Ohio State's championship résumé is better than those two teams. USC, of course, has one win over Arizona State, and two losses, one to Oregon, and the other we're supposed to forget ever happened.

Freeman is salivating over the potential USC-Ohio State Rose Bowl, and so am I. Why can't we have both games—the classic Rose Bowl matchup, as well as the matchup of the two teams that deserve to be in the championship—and enjoy both of them?

Can You Guess the 20 Most Valuable College Football Teams?

From Forbes via Yahoo! Sports comes an interesting article about the 20 most valuable college football teams. Can you guess all 20? I tried, and got 17 of the 20 correct. To try it yourself, write down 20 teams you think will make the list, then compare it to the answers at the bottom of the article (cleverly hidden as white text; select all text to reveal the answers).

Here's a hint: the list is formulated based on "what the football programs contribute to four important beneficiaries: their universities, athletic departments, their conferences, via the distribution of bowl-game revenue, and local communities with a vested interest in the team."

In other words: huge stadiums with large attendance, stadium renovations adding premium seating, merchandising royalties, TV revenues, bowl game revenues, loyal boosters, corporate sponsorship deals, etc.

The answers (select text to reveal):

1.  Notre Dame
2.  Texas
3.  Georgia
4.  Michigan
5.  Florida
6.  LSU
7.  Tennessee
8.  Auburn
9.  Alabama
10. Ohio State
11. Oklahoma
12. South Carolina
13. Penn State
14. Southern Cal
15. Arkansas
16. Texas A&M
17. Washington
18. Nebraska
19. Michigan State
20. Wisconsin

My omissions:

Included Florida State, Iowa, and BYU instead of South Carolina, Michigan State, and Washington

Miami's Great Orange Bowl Run

As the Hurricane era at the Orange Bowl (and soon the Orange Bowl itself) comes to an end, there have been several articles about the stadium's history and key games played there. But many of them, like this one, give short shrift to one of the greatest achievements of the Miami Hurricane program: the Streak.

Most college football fans have heard about Miami's record 58-game home winning streak at the Orange Bowl from 1985 to 1994. But what many don't realize is just how many tough games the Hurricanes had to go through to accomplish it. As an independent at the time, Miami scheduled its fair share of pushovers, but they also regularly played the best teams in the nation, and counted within that streak are several bowl games against top competition.

So in honor of Miami's last game at the Orange Bowl, here's a look at the best Miami victories during the "streak":

1985: Miami 38, Cincinnati 0 (win #1)

On October 12, 1985, no one could have known this nondescript game marked the start of a record. A month earlier, Florida had defeated Miami at the Orange Bowl 35-23, the 'Canes only regular-season loss that year. The rest of Miami's home games were blowouts over lackluster competition, including a 58-7 beatdown of Notre Dame that stands to this day as the Irish's worst defeat.

1986: #2 Miami 28, #1 Oklahoma 16 (win #6)

A hard-fought game that included a bench-clearing brawl was the first of an annual string of wins over #1 teams. The 'Canes dominated the game physically, ending the game on the goal line instead of sneaking it in like they did against Notre Dame the previous year.

1987  #2 Miami 20, #1 Oklahoma 14 (win #18)

Actually this was New Year's Day, 1988, in the Orange Bowl (bowl game). Not as competitive as the score would indicate, the Sooners scored only on fourth down from the one, and on a screwy fumblerooski late in the fourth quarter.

1988 #8 Miami 31, #1 Florida State 0 (win #19)

Has any other team in college football history beaten the #1 team two games in a row? Couldn't have happened very often. The Hurricanes confidently picked apart this FSU team using a smothering defense and patient offense to control the contest from start to finish.

1989 #6 Miami 27, #1 Notre Dame 10 (win #32)

One of the most anticipated games in the Orange Bowl's history, a rematch of the classic game at Notre Dame that the Irish won by a point. This game wasn't nearly as close, but both teams fought hard as Miami progressively pulled away in the second half. A third-and-44 pass play was the stake in the Irish's heart as Miami avenged their only 1988 defeat.

1990 #9 Miami 31, #2 Florida State 22 (win #34)

After four seasons in a row of beating #1 at the Orange Bowl, Miami has to settle for defeating the #2 team.

1991 #1 Miami 22, #11 Nebraska 0 (win #45)

The games weren't as big this year, but there were several of them. Earlier Houston had come in ranked #10 and left, humiliated, 40-10 (inches away from being 40-3) on route to a 4-7 year. Penn State arrived ranked #9 and played it close but lost 26-20. The bowl shutout of Nebraska allowed Miami to claim a share of the national championship, their fourth.

1992 #2 Miami 19, #3 Florida State 16 (win #48)

The second "wide right" game.

1993 #6 Miami 49, #23 Syracuse 0 (win #55)

The 13th shutout during the streak. Victims of shutouts during this span include Florida State, Nebraska, and Notre Dame.

1994 #6 Miami 58, Georgia Southern 0 (win #58)

Another shutout marks the final game of the streak. Three weeks later the 'Canes would fall to Washington, 38-20, in a game where Miami kicked off to start both halves. The 58-game streak beats by one game the string of home victories Alabama put together from 1963 to 1982 (which doesn't count wins or losses in the scads of games they played in Birmingham, their "other home" during these years), and is two games greater than Harvard's 1900-1905 streak. Looking at only modern, comparable streaks, the next best is Nebraska's 1991-1998 run of 47.

But the venue where the record occurred is to be no more. Tonight, should the 'Canes start a new home winning streak, it will have to be continued in a different year and at a different stadium.

Last Miami game at the Orange Bowl

Letter from Donna Shalala, President of the University of Miami

On Saturday, November 10, the University of Miami will conclude a glorious chapter in its history when our Hurricanes take on the University of Virginia in the final game to be played in the Orange Bowl.

Oops, no actually FIU plays the last game there...

It will be a day to be remembered, as we gather together for the last time in the stadium that has been the site of UM home football games for the past 70 years—a place where fans have enjoyed some of the greatest moments in collegiate football history.

Yeah...remind me again why UM's leaving the Orange Bowl?

We hope you’ll join us for the game, which will be broadcast on national television and will feature an exciting halftime show as well as other special activities to mark the historic occasion.

Sorry, can't make it, but it sounds nice...

We are counting on all our fans to make the University proud in front of millions of viewers by displaying the highest level of spirit, sportsmanship, and decorum. We certainly don’t want to leave the Orange Bowl on a down note.

A down note? Whatever do you mean?

We raise this matter because it has come to our attention that some fans wish to rush the field at the end of the game—a move that would have serious consequences indeed.

OH MY GOD. TELL ME YOU DIDN'T JUST SAY FANS MIGHT RUSH THE FIELD. HOW CAN I HELP STOP THEM?

Security will be in full force, with at least 300 City of Miami law enforcement officers assigned to the field at the conclusion of the game. They plan to arrest any fans who rush the field or vandalize the stadium in an attempt to secure a memento.

300 Miami cops...against 50,000 fans? Did they see that movie or something? Too bad they're not playing Michigan State.

Hmm...and now the criminals know where 300 cops aren't going to be that night...

The University will also enforce its own disciplinary code, and any UM students who rush the field may face major discipline charges.

Wow. Just wow.

Please note that ACC rules clearly prohibit rushing the field at any time,

OH NOES! ACC rules...well now I'm certain no one will rush the field.

and FIU is scheduled to play three more games at the Orange Bowl after November 10.

but wait, up there before, you said Miami - Virginia was the last game...never mind.

We are confident that all our fans will appreciate a great game experience that is enjoyable and safe and that maintains the integrity of the stadium and field. The Orange Bowl has earned a classy goodbye from our team and our fans. We look forward to seeing you there and your support as we begin a new exciting chapter of Hurricanes football next season at Dolphin Stadium.

The letter is co-signed by Randy Shannon, but you know damn well he didn't have a thing to do with this. Like he was so big on following the rules when he played with the 80s 'Canes! For some reason Miami has this control thing...something about the city, too much crime, there has to always be a show of force and control by the police. There are police dogs on the field at the end of games. Can't sue for a dog bite, right? It's a good deterrent.

I don't know what the city/University is so afraid of. I went to a college football game last weekend where the fans rushed the field at the end, and everything was fine. You see it on TV all the time and nobody thinks it's "classless" or negative in any way. The authorities should lower the goalposts immediately and get out of the way. Let the fans enjoy it once.

I hope it happens. Then we can watch the Kent-State-like beatdown the first few dozen students will get before the masses overwhelm security. Now that would be some kind of publicity, huh?

Maybe that's why they're closing the Orange Bowl down. That way, if they make it past this last game, no one can ever rush that precious field!

college football, scores, rankings, games, odds

Behind the Scenes at ESPN360

If you watch the replay of the Kansas-Texas A&M game, ESPN360 evidently kept failing to go to commercial. During the breaks you can hear ESPN2 announcers Gary Thorne and Bob Davie, unaware anyone is listening, discuss topics they should bring up, footage they want reviewed, and stats they might discuss on air. The best moment is when the camera lingers on an engaging closeup of the harvest moon, and Bob Davie offers this lighthearted speculation:

they could give a shit about this game I promise you that, if anybody's up there

That comes at about the 1:35 mark. The replay is still available on ESPN360, but who knows if they'll care enough to remove it.

Matt Hayes Gripes About Computer Ratings

Sportswriter Matt Hayes has some gripes about computer ratings. His examples are:

• Billingsly having Michigan ahead of Oregon
• Anderson-Hester having Arizona State #1
• Colley Matrix having USC at #24
• Massey having Virginia #6
• Wolfe also having Virginia #6

Some of these criticisms I understand, but a few are born of the ignorance that usually accompanies sportswriters when they discuss computer ratings. So let me attempt to explain what's going on, using comparisons from my own Win/Loss computer rating, which, like all the BCS computer rankings, does not use score margin in its calculations.

I can't defend Michigan being ahead of Oregon. I mean, I can see how it might happen given a certain system, and Billingsly's is definitely...different, but I think Hayes has a valid point. My Win/Loss rating has Oregon #10 and Michigan #14, closer than they've been for a long time, but with the Ducks still ahead.

As for Arizona State being #1, I don't see that as a major deficiency. Someone has to be #1, and why not an undefeated team? Ohio State's schedule hasn't been that much tougher, and they're #1 in AP, coaches, Harris, and overall BCS.

Hayes complains that ASU hasn't beaten any top 25 opponents...then goes on to berate Colley for having USC at #24. Well guess what? USC hasn't beaten any top 25 opponents, either, and they lost to an unranked opponent. That puts them pretty much in the same boat as...Virginia, the team he hates so much to see at #6.

Well maybe he has a point; if Virginia and USC have the same resumé, why can the Cavs be #6 and the Trojans #24? Using my ratings as a guide, I can see how this makes senses. In my Win/Loss component, Virginia is #7 and USC is #25.

Looking at USC's schedule, it's not hard to understand why they're so low. USC's Pac-10 wins are against the bottom four teams in the league: Arizona, Washington, Washington State, and Stanford...wait, check that, they LOST to Stanford. Add in a win over 1-7 Notre Dame, 1-7 Idaho, and woeful Nebraska, and Hayes thinks the Trojans have an argument to be in the top 20?

Virginia lost to 5-2 Wyoming, and beat weak teams like Duke, North Carolina, Middle Tennessee, and Pitt. But they also beat Georgia Tech and Maryland, and handed Connecticut its only loss. That puts them quite a bit ahead of USC when just comparing schedules.

USC dominated some of its opponents, however, while Virginia has won five of its games by less than a touchdown, Hayes would argue. And he'd be right...if this fact were allowed to carry any weight by the BCS computers. Which is what it all boils down to: scoring margin can't be considered by any of the algorithms.

Take a look at my Points power rating component, which does use score margin. There you will see Virginia at #45, way below Southern Cal, although USC is still only #22. So he's right about Virgina—#6 is too high if you really rank the teams on how good they are. But he's wrong about USC. #24 isn't far off for them, and I think we'll find that out over the next month.

Hayes goes on to joke (I assume), about the computers: Seriously, do these guys watch teams play -- or do they just throw darts against the landscape and hope to create a buzz?

No, of course the computers don't watch the teams play, and whether the computer rankings' creators do or not is irrelevant. But there are others out there, prominent sportswriters, about whom I wonder the same thing: 

Although the pass was caught with one second showing on the clock, there is a good chance time would have run out if the ball had been dropped or deflected and LSU would have been unable to utilize its last timeout. I nicknamed Coach Miles, "Sparky" after his gutsy fourth-down calls against Florida two weeks ago. But there was nothing gutsy about this one at all. It was just a bad call gone good.

—Terry Bowden

On Saturday, Miles passed up the chance to beat Auburn with a last second, 39-yard field goal and instead went to the air. WR Demetrius Byrd capitalized by hauling in a beautifully thrown touchdown pass from Matt Flynn that sent Tiger Nation into a frenzy. Imagine, though, how furious LSU fans would've been with Miles had that ball been intercepted – or if the clock had run out.

—Jason King, Yahoo! Sports

A bobble and an incompletion, and the game's over with Auburn walking away with a one-point victory and LSU coach Les Miles being hanged in effigy in the Bayou.

—Chris Low, ESPN.com

Apparently it's not just the computers that aren't paying enough attention. What is the alternative, then, to poor analysis by the computers, when the human analysts don't get it right?

Tom Dienhart is at it again

Why do I keep reading Tom Dienhart's columns? Is it to make my brain explode?

Today's gem:

At least an unranked team didn't unceremoniously dump the No. 4 Sooners. That has been the script in a bizarro season that has given up oh-my-god gems such as Stanford 24, USC 23; Kentucky 43, LSU 37; and Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32.

How can anyone mention Kentucky-LSU in the same sentence as Stanford-USC and Appalachian State-Michigan? Kentucky was rated #8 going into that game, so I don't know where he gets "unranked team." I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant to write "Syracuse-Louisville"

He also states that Oklahoma "arguably has been the team of the decade." I don't think it's very arguable, let alone true: USC has been the team of the decade, with two (or one and a half) championships and a second place finsh, and altogether five straight top 4 finishes. Oklahoma won the title in 2000 and played for it two other times, with five straight top 6 finishes. The tie-breaker is USC's 59-17 destruction of Oklahoma in 2004 that showed how far apart the top teams were. USC didn't start their run until 2002, so if you just count wins and losses, you might take the Sooners. But of course if you did that you'd have to consider Boise State, too.

As for the rest of his column, in which he touts Oklahoma as one of the two best teams in the country, I would say I'd have agreed with him a month ago. Now? Not so much.

For one thing, their level of play has definitely dropped off. I agree (gasp!) with his assertion that in the end, a win is a win, and close games against bad opponents are forgetten (and should be) by the end of the season. Surviving against lowly Iowa State shouldn't hurt their BCS resumé. But it does call into question whether this is the same Oklahoma team as September's. Back then, they would have won this game by 50 points. Something has changed. I still think they have the potential to be a top team, but they'd better start showing it again, week in and week out.

Dienhart thinks the Sooners will be playing for the national championship. Looking ahead at their schedule, I wouldn't expect another loss, so he may be right. Except for the Big 12 championship game. Kansas may be just as good as Oklahoma, maybe even better. Their schedule hasn't tested them much yet. They had trouble with Colorado, but then, so did Oklahoma. I think if these teams meet in the championship game, it's a tossup.

But with a win Oklahoma might be on their way. They're already high in the polls, and the computers will probably be much kinder to them this week as well. Win out, and they very well might play for the title.

The one thing that really makes me question this is that Dienhart thinks it's going to happen. Remember how right he was about USC? :)

Random notes

Since many sportswriters think a column can be made out of a list of random notions, I thought I'd do the same.

• Ohio State's defense could win them the national championship...if their offense would stay out of the way.

• Oklahoma is not the best one-loss team. The best one-loss team should be able to handle the nation's worst 1-win team (Iowa State) without a major scare.

• Score: Vegas 1, Rich Brooks 0.

• Who would have thought that two of the best games this week would be Miami-FSU and Auburn-LSU? In the past few years, these series were low-scoring, defense-dominated, and dull. Not so this time around...

• Look at the (AP) top 25 teams LSU has defeated: Virginia Tech, South Carolina, Florida, Auburn. The only other team with that many quality wins is...no one else. Not even close.

• Also notice that all of LSU's big wins came at home. The other ranked team they played? A road loss to Kentucky. LSU has two road contests left: Alabama and Mississippi

• Speaking of LSU, Les Miles is becoming the new Chuck Norris. First, he converts over 7 thousand 4th down plays against Florida. Then, LSU wins the Auburn game on a gutsy pass play with less than 1-millionth of a second to spare.

• Auburn could very easily be undefeated this year. They also could very easily have six losses.

October 20, 2007: LSU defeats Auburn, Kentucky, and robotic Tim Tebow

Already a fictional legend is growing up around LSU's "last-second" victory over Auburn. In just a few hours it's become the Paul Bunyan of football games. The legend goes: LSU, down by 1 inside the 25, snaps the ball with 16 seconds to go (or was it 10 seconds? or 6 seconds?). Matt Flynn goes back to pass and throws a daring bomb into the end zone and it's a touchdown! With 1 second left on the clock!

The legend continues with speculation: if the receiver had dropped the ball, time would have run out and LSU would have lost! Or even a simple incompletion means the clock would have kept running, game over, LSU loses! Which makes the play incredibly daring. And makes Les Miles the "luckiest guy on earth." Oblivious to the clock, he "had no idea he was taking the biggest gamble of the entire season."

The trouble with this fiction is the following:

• The clock was in no danger of running out. The pass was caught with 4 seconds to go, the touchdown called at least by :03. It ticked down to 2 and then to 1 for no discernable reason. Had it been challenged and reviewed, 3 or 4 seconds would have remained.

• An incomplete pass in college football stops the clock. Apparently the announcers for the game don't understand this. Even if the ball had been 'bobbled' there would have been 2 or 3 seconds left.

• LSU had a timeout remaining. Under no circumstances could they have been left without time to set up a field goal.

So, far from being a lucky idiot, or gunslinging devil-may-care, Les Miles knew exactly what he was doing. The only daring part of the call was going for the kill the way he did. And it was daring, don't get me wrong. But it made perfect sense and was well-planned and well-executed. The field goal was there for the taking had the shot at the end zone failed.

Oh yes, absolutely, watching the snap count it did look like they may have lost track of time—if you're expecting a run, which is what would make sense in that situation. Right? Set up the field goal with a short run. But if you let too much time bleed off before the snap—well, what if the runner gets held up? The clock keeps going! And if the runner breaks free for a winding run of 20 yards and is stopped at the 2-yard-line and the clock is at 0:00? So yes, before the snap it really looked like they might be blowing it.

Even more shocking was then seeing Flynn drop back to pass! What are they doing? What if it's intercepted? What good does a first down or 10 yards or anything do them in setting up the field goal? At this moment, it did seem like they'd lost their marbles, risking the clock running out to get a few more yards.

But then came the shot at the end zone, and it all made sense. Not because Demetrius Byrd caught the ball for a touchdown. That would be hindsight, like congratulating a coach for his gutsy 4th down calls when they succeed, and castigating the same coach for being too cavalier if they fail.

No, the end zone attempt was perfectly sound, perfectly called, and perfectly surprising to Auburn and everyone else in the stadium. Had it not succeeded, there was plenty of time to get the field goal team on the field. Because there was time left, even with the lazy timekeeper. Because incomplete passes stop the clock. And because LSU had a time out left.

It may be most surprising to those who weren't watching the clock, who looked up and saw 0:01 and therefore think LSU "dodged a bullet." Or to those who read about the game in the morning—thereby hearing the false legend—and think Les Miles dodged a bullet.

The legend will grow. Coach Miles had already used his last time out, they will say. After a few retellings, the pass will become a Hail Mary from the 50 yard line. Some day it will be said that time ran out before the ball was snapped, but no one noticed. Some day people will sing songs about October 20, 2007, when the LSU Tigers defeated the combined forces of Auburn, Kentucky, and a 100-foot-tall robotic Tim Tebow.

That will have to be the movie version. In this case, the real story is compelling enough.

Hurricanes and Seminoles have a good one: 37-29

So many times during a college football weekend, the games you anticipate the most fall flat, and the ones that don't matter become exciting barnburners that you wish you'd watched. And the recent history of a clash might provide a certain expectation that doesn't happen.

Case in point: today's Miami-FSU game. Recently these games have been dull, low scoring affairs; although close, the last several games have been less defense-dominated than offense-deficient: 13-10, 10-7, 16-10. And this year looked ready to follow the pattern. Both offenses rated in the 80s nationally while the defenses ranked much higher.

Add in the fact that the game carried less hype and importance than any in the series over 20 years, and you had a recipe for a game that few outside of Florida really cared to watch.

However, for sheer entertainment it proved to be one of the day's best. While Kentucky and Florida were playing a decent and fairly close, if not terribly thrilling, game that mattered a lot, the 'Noles and 'Canes had 66 points, six lead changes, two touchdowns on turnovers, and some nifty plays like Miami's fake field goal TD that helped them win it.

All that it needed was some significance. If this game had been played in the late 80s or early 90s, it would be talked about one of the classic college football games. Instead, it will be mostly forgotten, lost in the shuffle of even this week's upsets.

Can we agree Weis was overrated?

I think there's no doubt that Charlie Weis was one of the most overrated coaches in college football coming into this season. Notre Dame's disaster this year and Weis' inability to dig them out of it show that he isn't the miracle worker he's been portrayed as from day one.

Blame Ty Willingham's recruiting all you want, but anyone with two full years to recruit into Notre Dame (and Weis has had great classes) should be able to field a team that does better than 1-7. Granted no one expected much from the Irish this year, and their schedule has been tough.

But the degree to which they've lost, and the ineptitude on offense, should never happen at a school that the best players in the nation flock to. For example, today's loss was:

• the second time they've been shut out this year

• the sixth time they've allowed over 30 points

• the fourth time they've failed to score an offensive touchdown

Worst of all, the Irish rank dead last among Division I-A teams in total offense. Has that ever happened at Notre Dame? Have they ever been close to that bad in any category?

If teams that do better than expected can win their head coach "Coach of the Year" awards, then can we give Weis the "Worst Coach of the Year" award? I've seen no coach get the pass that he does for their team's awful performance. The faithful will be blaming Ty Willingham for the next decade.

Notre Dame's remaining schedule contains some winnable games, and 4-0 is a possible finish. I wouldn't count any of those yet, as Air Force and Navy aren't bad (Navy never passes, and passing defense is Notre Dame's one redeeming feature), and Stanford and Duke are capable of pulling upsets. But should Notre Dame win out, I hope people note that it was a scheduling fluke, not Weis "turning the team around for a redeeming finish" which I suspect will be the way it plays out in the media.

UCLA 30, Cal 21

Even after last week's loss, the Cal Bears were still the sportswriters' darling. Matt Hayes kept them in his top five, and one of the announcers for the Florida-Kentucky game said it would be a shame if the loss kept them out of the national championship.

Where were these people's heads? You can't ignore evidence to the contrary, such as a team getting beat by an unranked opponent, and continue to insist that they deserve the title shot regardless of other teams' standing. If Cal was one of the best, and/or deserved the title shot, they had to prove it by winning the rest of their games. That might have happened, and if so, they would have had much support from voters and from the computers in the BCS.

Unfortunately for them, they lost to UCLA, a result that shouldn't have been met with as much surprise as it was. UCLA has played great football apart from its two awful losses. Like I mentioned earlier, the Bruins only lose to bad teams. Now, at 4-0 in the Pac-10, they have to be taken seriously as a Rose Bowl contender.

Can you imagine UCLA, 10-2, with a blowout loss to Utah and a pathetic home loss to Notre Dame, facing 10-2 Michigan, destroyed by Pac-10 team Oregon and humbled by Appalachian State, meeting in the Granddaddy of Them All?

Sanchez will be one of USC's greats

Freshman Sophomore Mark Sanchez helped Southern Cal hand Notre Dame its second 38-0 defeat of the season, throwing for 4 TDs and 234 yards against  the Irish's 4th ranked passing defense. By doing so he solidified what I felt after last week's win over Arizona: that Sanchez will be not just a good successor to John David Booty, but will exceed him and be one of USC's great quarterbacks, as good as Carson Palmer or Matt Leinart.

Last week against Arizona Sanchez made two of the best plays ever from a freshman sophomore quarterback in his first start. On one he was in his own end zone, had to scramble, and completed a first down pass on the sidelines. Later, USC was in the red zone when Sanchez ran the ball for a first down, putting his head down to meet the defender, spinning off and lunging for a few extra yards. Both were strong, gutsy plays, and although he had his freshman sophomore moments as well, showed that with experience he will excel.

I doubt Pete Carroll will replace Booty once he's healthy, but next year Sanchez will take over the helm, and the offense and coaching staff should have nothing to worry about for the next few seasons.

Note: This article worked much better when Sanchez was a frosh in my mind, but the sentiment remains.

Florida State/Miami - ain't what it used to be

Today's Florida State - Miami game, is, as many have commented, the first one in over two decades where neither team has been ranked entering the game. Let's take a look at this contest over the years—why was there once so much hype, and where did it go?

Though FSU-Miami has always been a rivalry, 1987 was the year the rest of the country starting paying attention, and for good reason: Both teams came in undefeated, ranked #3 and #4. The game itself was a classic with Miami coming back from a 19-3 deficit to win 26-25 on a broken up Seminoles 2-pt extra point try (this was of course before overtime existed in college football). Ultimately this game decided the national champ, as Miami finished #1 and FSU #2 in the final AP and UPI(coaches) polls.

From then on the game had a long run of importance in the college football world, with many great games and, more importantly, top 5 finished by both teams. The hype surrounding the game was a product of the teams consistent high finishes and high rankings at game time. Therefore, we can create a "hype index" based on these values.

Year          Prev Year Finish      PreGame AP Rank   Hype Index(#)
1987          MIA #2  FSU NR        MIA #3  FSU #4     70     14
1988          MIA #1  FSU #2        MIA #8  FSU #1     94      4
1989          MIA #2  FSU #3        MIA #2  FSU #9     90      6
1990          MIA #1  FSU #3        MIA #9  FSU #2     91      5
1991          MIA #3  FSU #4        MIA #2  FSU #1     96      2
1992          MIA #1  FSU #4        MIA #2  FSU #3     96      2
1993          MIA #3  FSU #2        MIA #3  FSU #1     97      1
1994          MIA #15 FSU #1        MIA #13 FSU #3     74     12
1995          MIA #6  FSU #4        MIA NR  FSU #1     68     15
1996          MIA #20 FSU #4        MIA #6  FSU #3     73     13
1997          MIA #14 FSU #3        MIA NR  FSU #4     58     18
1998          MIA NR  FSU #3        MIA NR  FSU #8     41     21
1999          MIA #20 FSU #3        MIA #19 FSU #1     63     17
2000          MIA #15 FSU #1        MIA #7  FSU #1     82      8
2001          MIA #2  FSU #5        MIA #2  FSU #14    83      7
2002          MIA #1  FSU #15       MIA #1  FSU #9     80     10
2003          MIA #2  FSU #21       MIA #2  FSU #5     76     11
2003b         MIA #2  FSU #21       MIA #10 FSU #9     64     16
2004          MIA #5  FSU #11       MIA #5  FSU #4     81      9
2005          MIA #11 FSU #15       MIA #9  FSU #14    57     19
2006          MIA #17 FSU #23       MIA #12 FSU #11    43     20
2007          MIA NR  FSU NR        MIA NR  FSU NR      0     22

Looking at this chart, the green rows rate 90+ while the red rows are those below 70. The classic games in this series happened between 1988 and 1993, where for each previous year both teams finished in the top 4 in the nation, and both teams were ranked in the top ten at game time. It would be hard to find another series that had a run like this; even Ohio State/Michigan and Oklahoma/Nebraska never had such consistently high finishes for both teams.

The hype cooled a bit in the mid to late 90s as Miami slipped in quality and FSU won five straight games, but picked up steam again as Miami's program recovered. Shortly thereafter, though, the Seminoles began to slide as Miami won six contests in a row; Miami followed the slide, and the series hype declined with them. 2004 was the first year that both teams had finished outside the top 10 since 1984; likewise in 2006, both teams were ranked outside the top ten at game time for the first time since 1984. In 2006, neither team finished in the top 25, and neither team is ranked currently, giving the game a big zero.

If I had to pick a time at which the series really lost its luster, it would be the 2003 bowl game rematch between the teams. No one wanted this game to happen: not either team, the fans, nor the college football nation—especially with the creation of the expanded ACC (with title game) and the possibility that these teams would be meeting twice annually from now on.

That of course, hasn't happened yet, as Miami hasn't been to the ACC title game, and FSU only has once. Will the programs recover to make the series interesting again? With Florida back on top nationally and South Florida rising to prominence, is the fabled recruiting pool in the state big enough to support both Miami and FSU at a top ten level?

It seems inevitable that the programs will be back, and occasionally both will be in the top ten at the same time, but those will be random, sporadic occurrences from now on, rather than the expectation. The days of the rivalry circa the late 80s and early 90s won't be seen again by these teams, and very likely, never again by any other rivalry in college football.

Kentucky's Brooks Should Keep His Eyes on the Prize (Not the Vegas Line)

Although I think Kentucky head coach Rich Brooks is a prime candidate for coach of the year honors, he should make sure he doesn't follow the lead of the USC Trojans, who clearly bought into the hype surrounding their season and suffered the consequences. Kentucky football is for real, certainly, but that doesn't mean it can dictate who should be favored in the Wildcats' next game.

<i> "Those guys in Las Vegas, I guess they don't get fooled very often," Brooks said Monday. "Florida's a 7-point favorite and we just beat the No. 1 team in the nation? How does that equate? It's pretty interesting stuff."</i>

There are many ways that it equates. First and foremost: scoring margin analysis, an averaging technique that boils the scores of all games into a set of equations, essentially, and solves for the average of those equations. In practice, it means averaging and re-averaging a set of conflicting numbers until they converge on average values. Whether you look at Jeff Sagarin's results (the 'predictor' column), or my Points Power Rating component, you see the same thing: Florida is rated ahead of Kentucky, even after allowing a few points for  home field advantage.

6.  Florida                     (4-2)   26.57  44.27  17.70
7.  Ohio State                  (7-0)   26.37  32.05   5.68
8.  Oregon                      (5-1)   26.34  43.82  17.47
9.  Kansas St                   (4-2)   22.50  41.38  18.87
10. Missouri                    (5-1)   22.00  43.24  21.23
11. Auburn                      (5-2)   20.58  30.19   9.60
12. Cincinnati                  (6-1)   20.42  38.28  17.85
13. Arizona St                  (7-0)   20.17  36.84  16.66
14. Kentucky                    (6-1)   18.96  44.94  25.97

Home field advantage is 3.66 according to my results, so that makes Florida roughly a 4 point favorite in my book. This is the main reason Florida is favored. LSU, of course, was favored to beat Kentucky as well, and didn't.

But that was just one game. A triple-overtime game. Why, based on one triple overtime game, should Kentucky be favored over Florida, who went into Baton Rouge and led the same LSU team for most of the game? Both contests were flips of the coin. Florida could just as easily have won, and Kentucky lost; if that were the case, shouldn't Florida be favored to win next Saturday? And how does it really change matters that Kentucky prevailed and Florida didn't?

One possible answer: confidence. Florida has now lost two games in a row, whereas the Wildcats are coming off their biggest victory ever. The home crowd will be excited beyond belief to face the Gators. Sometimes success breeds success, and failure leads to more failure, in which case, Kentucky has a good chance to beat Tebow and co.

But sometimes teams become victims of their own success and suffer a letdown after a big victory. This usually happens if they buy into "the hype." Knock off the number one team and maybe you think, no one can come in here and beat us! Of course, just two weeks ago South Carolina did a number on Kentucky. If South Carolina can whip them 38-23, then Florida can do the same.

Another reason Florida might be favored: they've had a week off. A big reason Kentucky was able to stay with LSU is because LSU has had a brutal schedule, with Kentucky the fifth very good team they've faced. They just ran out of gas. I doubt the Wildcats could have won that game two weeks earlier. Now it's Kentucky that has to be a bit tired. And Florida is well-rested. I don't have statistics on how teams do after a week off, but it's likely something Vegas considers.

Comparing rushing offense/defense and passing offense/defense, we see that Florida has an advantage in the rushing department and Kentucky's rushing defense is weak. While Florida's pass defense is suspect (not good when facing Andre Woodson), their rush defense is strong and if an team can't run, it natually makes passing that much harder. Again, Vegas oddsmakers take these things into account and apparently they have decided the balance favors Florida.

This is especially true if Kentucky's players—and coach—buy into the hype. Thinking that they should be rated over LSU? Hype. Thinking they should necessarily be favored over Florida? Not really hype, but: questioning the Vegas line publicly? That's almost getting cocky. You don't get cocky when facing the defending national champions, even a defending national champion on a 2-game losing skid.

Coach Brooks is right about one thing: Kentucky's football cred is going to take some time to build. When Andre Woodson is gone next year, look for a precipitous fall in their pre-season rank compared to their year-end finish. No one's buying Kentucky as a football dynasty yet—just as an up-and-coming program that has some key players responsible for its success. The line may reflect what the oddsmakers think the public is willing to accept. Much of oddsmaking is in balancing the line between the two teams so Vegas isn't too much on one side or the other of a play; perhaps the public is skeptical of Kentucky, and likely still respects Florida, so the line is pushed toward the Gators to keep the betting even. There are all kinds of thigs going on in oddsmaking that have little to do with actual quality assessment of the two teams playing. Sometimes the stock of a good company goes down just because everyone decided to sell.

Maybe, too, Brooks knows what he's doing. The us-against-the-world, we-don't-get-no-respect ploy has worked for ages to motivate players. But I doubt Kentucky really needs any extra motivation. They don't need to get any more worked up; I would see that as counterproductive. I think Brooks legitimately feels that his program isn't getting its due for its success.

If that's the case, then continuing to win is the only answer. Worrying about being behind on the Vegas line? That's a distraction he shouldn't even be noticing at this point.

Boise State and Nevada score 136 points

Four overtimes, Boise State wins it 69-67. Well over 1,000 total yards of offense.

I think the overtime system in college football is flawed. The score ends up totally out of whack compared to the rest of the game. After the 2nd overtime, it's required to go for 2 points on the coversion; this is supposed to keep the number of overtimes down. But if one team misses, and the other team misses, how does that limit the overtimes? If Boise State had missed their 2-pointer on their possession, we'd have been into a 5th overtime anyway.

The NFL system has always been bad in that the team that wins the flip has a huge, huge advantage. It keeps the time and score down, but it's unfair and too random.

A better system would just have the game continue if it's tied when time runs out. The first to score wins. If they want to speed up the process, advance the ball to the 25 on any turnover. But I'd just let them keep playing. Scores wouldn't be inflated, players wouldn't get overtired, and it's the most fair system of all—you have the ball when time expires, you just keep going.

ESPN360: cool service that occasionally sucks

ESPN360 has become a fairly controversial content-delivery model; cable/high-speed providers pay ESPN to be able to stream college football games. This means that a large percentage of internet users can't access the service, since it requires a high-speed connection with one of the providers. Comcast, for example, doesn't pay the piper so their users can't see the games. Sort of like the Big Ten Network controversy, only online instead of on TV.

I've been watching a lot of games on ESPN360, as I happen to use one of the participating cable internet providers. Overall it looks pretty good: the resolution is good, there are quite a few games available, you can switch between them easily, and if you miss a play (or a whole game) you can rewind the playhead wherever you want. It's undeniably a cool thing.

But the system is far from perfect. There are minor annoyances, such as certain parts of the broadcast not being present. A lot a halftimes are far-off shots of the field, like a satellite feed, instead of highlights shown on tv. Interviews with off-camera personell often don't carry the other half of the conversation; whatever technical reason this happens, it's sort of weird. And there seem to be only about five different ads used during commercial breaks. They are amusing ads for the most part, but I've seen each of them 20 times now.

Those are the minor flaws; there are major ones that ESPN really should fix if they want the service to catch on. These are:

• Games aren't really quite "live." This varies from game to game, but most are about 2 minutes behind the actual "live" broadcast, and some a lot more. This isn't really that important to me, but it doesn't allow you to listen to another broadcast for audio, for example. The ability to rewind more than makes up for this drawback.

• You can't determine the true schedule ahead of time. Look at the ESPN360 schedule a day in advance and you'll see so many games your mouth will water. But several of those games, often the best ones, are available only if you ALSO have a GameDay subscription, which is some extra cost. Which is fine, ESPN can charge whatever they want for their content, but the point is there is no way to identify which games are available with the free ESPN360 service. Not only that, but some games are actually "blacked out" in certain areas, making it even harder to know what you're really going to be able to see.
  

• The worst: Games "die" when the broadcast slot runs out. That's right—if the game is near the end and is nearing the exciting conclusion, your ESPN360 broadcast might just stop. ESPN apparently didn't think the ability to extend a broadcast was of any importance, or that fans would care if a game goes into overtime. Hey, you get 97% of the game, who cares about that last 2 minutes?

It's this last drawback that makes it seem that ESPN doesn't really care if the service succeeds or not. You get the feeling that it was made on the cheap, just plug a raw satellite feed onto the internet and charge providers for it. Make a decent interface for viewing but don't worry if users miss the key final part of a game.

I like ESPN360, but I'm just waiting for the nail-biter game where the broadcast ends without warning. I've only seen it happen on games I didn't care about so far, but if fans are expected to take the service seriously as a viewing option, it should never happen, and ESPN needs to do something about it.