Saturday, September 26, 2009
GAME DAY TALK
Let's light up the comments section with our thoughts on the day's action. What surprised you, what excited you, what disappointed you? How will what is happening on the field effect the rankings? Who looks like a Heisman hero or a Heisman dud? Thursday's game started stirring the pot--South Carolina beat Ole Miss. Things will only get better today.
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What is with FSU? They come out and play well against Miami only to lose narrowly. Then barely get by against Jacksonville State. Then they come out and play again and stomp on BYU, only to have a huge letdown against South Florida? Who are FSU? They have my vote as the most inconsistent team in college football this year!
ReplyDeleteDoesn't there seem to be a greater degree of parity in college football this season? I haven't been that impressed by the historically "great" programs and I don't thing the mid-major teams have been either. I think that teams like Boise State and Utah (and BYU at times) have done a very good job at dispelling the aura surrounding the big name schools. I think that, for this season at least, we need to accept that any team can beat any other team at any point.
ReplyDeleteAlso, since this seems to be a BYU blog, I just have to say that I (a Utah alumnus and hard-core BYU hater) actually found myself cheering for BYU against Oklahoma. No mid-major team has had a better opportunity to play for a championship in the BCS era. I wanted them to do well for the sake of the MWC. Utah basically paved the way for them after going undefeated and then beating Alabama down in what was essentially a home game for Alabama. I thought that maybe the time had come for me to accept the sports program of my church's university, but I was grievously disappointed. Now that BYU has choked, I don't think that they will ever get me on board again.
Sorry everyone for not posting earlier. It was a long day of car shopping. Where are those good old days of bike transportation?
ReplyDeleteI, too, was shocked to see FSU drop that one against South Florida. At least that is still a non-conference loss, and they can still win the ACC, which will help BYU. Maybe that is far too wishful thinking.
Brandon--good to see you are participating. Just to clarify, this is not a BYU blog, it is a college football blog, but I do cater to the preferences of the visitors to this blog, and so far they are resoundingly BYU supporters. Anyways, have you forgotten who "The Editor" is? Did you expect anything less than a BYU slant. I hope you have dug through the past posts to see several posts are completely unrelated to BYU, or at least keep BYU on even ground as everyone else.
Although we find ourselves as polar opposites on our views towards the schools in Utah, I understand how you found yourself cheering for BYU. I was feeling good about Utah's sugar bowl win last year. This is what we are relegated to in college football today. If we truly love our team, we have to hope the other teams in our conference play well, even if we can't stand to see that happening. At least I could take some comfort that Whittingham was originally a Cougar, so some how BYU had a hand in Utah's success.
I don't know if parity is the word for what we are seeing this year. I know I have felt a greater degree of uncertainty. Coming into the year we all felt fairly certain that Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma would be nearly untouchable. However, that has not been the case, and everyone else is a question mark each week. We cannot look to one week to understand and predict how a team might play the next week. Teams are great one week, and mediocre the next. Miami did it today also (31-7 loss to VaTech). LSU has not lost yet, but they are flirting with it, and their competition has not been elite teams. Michigan nearly did it as well by almost losing to Indiana. I don't know if it is the competition is more equal or the media overdose is causing these young boys to be less focused and feel they don't have to work as hard because all the attention they get for a big win spots them 2 touchdowns to start the next game. Anyways, it is making for interesting football, and a season like none other, just not the way we all expected.
Amen, to that last paragraph on Scott's entry. This is a very unpredictable season.
ReplyDeleteCould you not chalk the uncertainty up to misguided expectations? For example, you would expect number 4 Ole Miss to beat unranked South Carolina. However, since South Carolina is obviously not competitively inferior to Mississippi, they won. I call this parity. The same goes for most of the other upsets that went down today, maybe with the exception of Miami because the weather was so terrible. When unranked teams are repetitively throwing beatdowns onto the top 10, I would say that the overall field is pretty level. Anyways, it looks like the top 10 is going to cycle. It's going to be musical chairs and the lucky teams at the top when the music stops will play for the championship.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to agree with Brandon on this one. Parity creates uncertainty. So far this season we've seen nine Top 10 teams - Oklahoma (#3), Oklahoma State (#5), Ohio State (#8), BYU (#7), USC (#3), Ole Miss (#4), Cal (#6), Miami (#9), and Penn State (#5)* - lose already. Of those nine, six (Oklahoma State, BYU, USC, Ole Miss, Cal, and Penn State) lost to unranked teams,** while of the three (Ohio State, Miami, and Oklahoma)that lost to ranked teams, one (Oklahoma) lost to a team that was ranked in the bottem seven, and only one (Ohio State) actually lost to a team ranked higher then they were. All this shows that there is a great deal of uncertainty and that the uncertainty is being caused because on any given night almost anybody can go out and beat anybody else. Are there still teams that get beat-up on by the more powerful schools? Yes. However, so far no one has looked invinceable. Even teams that haven't lost yet have struggled against poor opponants (i.e. see the first half of the Texas/Whyoming game). We still don't have perfect pairty (and really we never will), but it is definatly getting there.
ReplyDelete*All rankings are the teams AP ranking prior to the lose.
**Meaning unranked before they beat the Top 10 team.