NCAA Football 2004 (1 Viewer)

[Shane Martin]

Chris,
Interesting notes you make.

What concerned me the most was the inability to rush the pasher. We hardly ever saw Leinart in trouble. This is beyond the turnovers. They tried to blitz but it wasn't that often. When they did, USC seemed to design a rollout to counter that. Really IMHO Ou's D Line was overrated and is a big source of concern. I don't think you'll be successful at running the ball at OU but they guys are not that fast to the point where they can rush the pasher that well. Dan Cody is it and it seemed like he was double teamed more often that not.

I will say that they normally do throw the ball deep but it is setup by their ability to run the ball and throw the short pass much like St Louis does in the NFL. Their receivers are much the same.

As far as a mobile QB goes, I think White is plenty mobile but they do have a guy who is reshirting that might change that a bit. Their other 2 recruits are more Leinert-esque as far as size and arms go.

Honestly though, I do think USC had a better team as far as athletes go and they proved it on the field. They are going to be alot better next year too. I have no problem saying they have a good shot at repeating next year.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I thought JoJo was kind of cute, though.

 

[JohnRice]

The kind of trash talk Robert and George are talking about is childish anyway. At the best, you end up looking arrogant and unsportsmanlike and at the worst you end up looking like an arrogant, unsportsmanlike moron. Unfortunately, almost all of them do it, on every team.

The concept of sport, as in teams playing each other to determine a winner, trying to make the whole thing as fair and competetive as possible and treating each other with at least a bit of respect is completely lost these days.

 

[Joe Wilmore]

The only loss USC has in the last 2 years is to Cal. Pretty hard to lose to KSU when they don't play them. I believe your thinking of when Carson Palmer was QB.
Also, Urban Meyer has admitted his team would not be competitive with USC or Oklahoma.
As far as a playoff system, the team that plays the best for the enitire year often does not win a playoff. If anything, they should go back to the original bowl system. Just because a team won a playoff, would not mean they were the best team for that whole year.

 

[JohnRice]

Which has absolutely nothing to do with pleasing his new BCS darling employer, I have no doubt.

Bottom line is, a playoff is the only way to essentially remove subjectivity from the crowning of a "champion." There is no practical way to determine the "best" team for an entire season. Once again, that is why every sport known to man uses playoffs.

 

[Chris]

Ah! ESPN has led me wrong. I knew we played USC home-away and won both.. I was thinking that was 2001/2002 seasons (then we beat OU last year, the 2003 season)

So, my bad.

Still, the point basically was that if you are going to win against a pass ready offense, you have to be willing to mix it up and play a game that makes the other team guess.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

I have no allegiance to any college football program, and only dislike one Nebraska. Under the system that is currently in place, USC is the number one team in the country. I still hold though that this year isn't any more or less clear cut than last year which was a joke for completely different reasons.


But it will ring in the ears of most of the public as being pretty hollow. I mean in the basketball tournament if U-Conn beats Duke in 1 final 4 game, and Kansas beats Arizona in another...its not like people would really listen if Duke fans said that they would've gotten to play for the national title had they played either Kansas or Arizona and not U-Conn.
In football if you set the number of playoff teams at 8, sure team 9 might have some kind of argument...but it wouldn't be as bad as having 3 different teams with undefeated records at the end of the season.


Speaking of the BCS, did anyone hear that they are considering using a selection committee like Basketball. In a way I would like this if it replaced both polls, because it would probably cut down on the amount of political posturing by coaches...or at the very least they would have to shift their efforts.

So USC is the champion and they earned it, but Auburn and Utah didn't do anything to disqualify themselves and had either one of those teams ended up being the champion under this system they would've earned it. So you have 3 teams that can say they earned it, and only 1 that has the trophy which is why I hate the system.

 

[Dave Gorman]

Except for NCAA Div I Football, which relies instead on popularity contests to determine its champion.

In any sport where athletic competition is actually a priority, a championship has to actually be earned. It would seem for NCAA Div I football, athletic competition is actually a secondary concern, far less important than the money and politics. As long as all involved are making truckloads of money, particularly the decision-makers, there will never be any incentive to change the system.

 

[Shane Martin]

Dave,
Ding Ding Ding. You got it.

A playoff will not solve the equation either. We'd still have whiners on why xyz didn't get to play ZYQ and how their loss was a fluke.

Still even if we use a playoff someone is going to get screwed. There will be plenty of 1 loss teams saying "Why was So and so chosen over me". Then we are back to sqaure one.

 

[Carlo_M]

As a UCLA alum, I hate USC.

But I respect the hell out of them and their program. True, "on any given Saturday" one ranked team can pretty much beat another. But we can't live in a world of "what ifs", we have to take what we've been given, otherwise "any team could be champs...if only..."

So here's what we have:
Auburn played the 8th/9th ranked team and beat them by 3 on a neutral field. USC played the consensus #2 team (heck, let's even give Auburn fans their due and say OU was #3) on a neutral field , and demolished them 55-19 in a game that wasn't as close as the score indicates (2 points on a stupid safety bobble, 7 in garbage time).

Or, Auburn fans, reverse the situation. If Auburn demolished OU and USC beats VT by 3, do you Auburn fans give USC a share of the NC?

I've singlehandedly watch Pete Carroll and Norm Chow take a 6-6 team which lost to Utah in a bowl 4 years ago, and turn them into what you see now. They have not only the best players in college football, but the best coaching staff.

By far.

Norm Chow: what can you say? His record speaks for itself. He turned BYU's offense into a winner (though the defense never turned up to help them out). BYU.

Pete Carroll. Say what you want about him being an NFL reject (trust me, a lot of us UCLA fans did in the beginning) but the man knows how to scheme defenses. To beat him you have to outsmart him, and not many teams have been able to do that in the last 3 years. And don't forget the smartest move he ever made as a coach: hiring Norm Chow.

Regarding the PAC-10 as a "weak/finesse" conference

As someone else has noted in the last page, I've always said that the PAC-10 scores are high because we have some of the best offensive minds in our conference.

Auburn fans, do you like "mini-Chow" (Al Borges) and how he's rejuvenated your moribund offense that got blanked by USC a year and a half ago? Same guy who was an OC for UCLA and guided us to our 20 game winning streak in 1997-1998.

Jeff Tedford, Cal's coach, was a former OC for the Ducks, back when...you know...Joey Harrington lit up not just the PAC 10 but also won the Fiesta Bowl over much ballyhooed Colorado (pre-suspensions/investigations).

We've had numerous excellent coaches and assistant coaches come through our conference, certainly no less than other conferences and probably more than most. But because we score more points, we must be weak defensively. Obviously, USC's defense certainly wilted in front of the biggest, baddest Big12 team in the land (yes, the same one that won the Red River Shutout over the much celebrated UT).

Want to dog Cal for losing their bowl? Sure, give no regard about how they may have let down after being demoted from a BCS bowl...yeah these kids aren't human and aren't susceptible to that. And punish Tedford for refusing to score that last TD in the last game, instead taking a knee to run out the clock, thus costing him votes.

Oh, and also conveniently forget that in that last game, their #1 star wide receiver broke his leg and didn't play in the bowl game.

Oh, and also conveniently forget that they outgained USC in yardage nearly 2-1 in a game they lost on basically a couple of special teams gaffs (punter bobbled the snap giving USC deep field position for a TD + a missed FG which made them have to go for a TD on 4th down and goal at the end of the game rather than kick a FG for OT). They held USC to just over 200 yards of total offense. The same offense that just ran up and down the field on OU's vaunted NFL-talent-laden defense. Oh yeah, and Cal did this *at the Coliseum*.

ASU won their bowl game despite their star QB Andrew Walters being injured and out for most of the game.

PAC-10 was 3-2 overall in bowl games, not worse than most other conferences. And it didn't get steamrolled by USC (who had 3 close games, vs. Cal, UCLA and Stanford), so we're not a one-horse conference.

West Coast football = West Coast offense

Most of the PAC-10 runs, surprise surprise, the West Coast offense. Why wouldn't we, when so many coaches out here came out of the Bill walsh school of thought (and who is still an administrator at Stanford)? It is that offense that lends to the high scoring in the conference. It is a diversified offense that emphasizes balance. If you try to take one things away (say, the run) then that offense can adjust and beat you the other way.

What we saw last night was classic West Coast vs. Traditional football.

Both teams said "we'll stop the run." Both, to a large part, succeeded. But when USC couldn't spring Bush, they went airborne. OU either couldn't, or wouldn't, or likely a combination of both. Peterson got, what, 23 carries when it was clear that he wouldn't be running for more than 4 yards a clip, and even when the Sooners were down by several TDs?

OU still subscribed to the "you have to establish the run first" theory that is quickly proving to be outmoded. No, you can't be a pass-happy team (ala Fun-n-Gun which while it was good for 9-10 wins, could be stopped by a disciplined and talented defense). But you have to be able to do both well. And sometimes you need to pass to free up the running game. That's what USC did. Leinart went to the air, and then with OU scrambling to cover receivers (which they never fully did), that's when Bush and White did their damage.

West Coast football is not pass-happy football. It is "do both well with the personnel you have, see what the defense gives you, and exploit it." Three yards and a cloud of dust is just that...being left in a cloud of dust.

Granted there will be years when the PAC-10 doesn't have the greatest defenses. But that happens in ALL CONFERENCES to ALL TEAMS. Just because the PAC-10 scores more, doesn't mean we have the weakest defenses year in and year out.

Sorry for the long rant. I just am tired of seeing the PAC-10 on the ass-end of things. I'm not saying we're the best, but we certainly belong among those six "power" conferences and should not be considered some lowly stepchild of the others.

 

[JohnRice]

All these claims that a playoff would create all these problems just don't hold up. There might be a little grumbling from the few teams on the cusp who didn't make the tournament, but I can't remember the last time I heard a fan of team A complaining because their teams lost to team B, claiming they were screwed because the brackets didn't match tme against team C. Even in bastetball, where the brackets are regularly a little unbalanced, it is accepted because every team simply has to win to prove themselves.

Last year, the BCS excluded what was arguably the best team. This year it relegated 2 of the undefeated teams to minor opponents simply to discount thier possible claim to a title. I mean, come on. Utah gets a team which is barely in the top 20? There is no other explanation for it other than not allowing them the possible respect they deserve.

 

[george kaplan]

I'm a big playoff supporter, and rabid anti-BCSer, but I disagree with the above. There is definitely another explanation. The BCS doesn't purposely set out to screw anyone over (not even USC last year). Rather is screws teams over through incompetence. Utah got Pitt instead of Cal or some other better team, not because of a deliberate decision, but because of pre-set rules which led to the ridiculous match-up. One hopes that the latest tweak (i.e., the selection committee) will be set up in such a way that rigid rules could be overruled in order to get good matchups. But of course, this will open up the door to deliberate matchups designed to make someone look good or bad. And even though we could have had a better set of bowl games if a committee had chosen them this year, there's no set of matchups that would be fair to all the undefeated teams. That would require at a minimum, a plus-one game.

A playoff wouldn't solve everything, but it would be by far the best possible solution.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

I'm not even sure of the money-making excuse behind not having a playoff. Considering the amount of television coverage and advertisement (yes Nokia, we know you sponser the Sugar Bowl), couldn't that be applied to playoff/tournament games as well? And it's not like a teams' fans won't travel (unless you're Vanderbilt ).

Hats off to USC for obliterating Oklahoma. I was kind of shocked it turned out that way.



Very very true. You still have to play the game. Even in the field of 65, somebody always gets left out (I couldn't remember, but I think Long Beach State with a huge winning record got left out of the basketball tourney).

I still think you can do both the bowl and tourney structure. The "smaller" bowls aren't playing for an NC anyway, so why not?

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

George has it exactly right. Utah had to play Pittsburgh because Pittsburgh had to be in the BCS system. I don't know though why Virginia Tech couldn't have played Pittsburgh while Utah played Auburn...but I guess that would've made sense. Other rules and the Rose Bowl's allegiance to the Big10 also played a role in the matchup we got, but its allegiance to the Pac10 was over ruled, so figure that one out.

They can revamp things again by adding a selection committee....but its like trying to patch the Titanic with a bandaid.

As others have said, the playoff system doesn't fix everything but it does fix the biggest problems anyway.

 

[george kaplan]

I should amend my statement slightly, in that some of the voters of the coaches and AP poll, which are components of the BCS (at least this year), do indeed set out to try to screw teams over. Fortunately it's a minority of such voters, unfortunately it worked this year in at least one case.

 

[Joe Wilmore]

A playoff only decides who the hottest team is at that time. College football is great because every game is so important, and if they used the old bowl system, they would have had much better matchups this year.

 

[RobertR]

You're validating my earlier post. The question is, what are you really interested in -- good "matchups" or determining a champion without all the subjectivism or political or personal undercurrents?

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Well, the BCS can be looked at as a playoff system -- it just only involves two teams. Therefore, it determines which of those two teams is hotter at that time.

A small 4 or 8 team playoff would not invalidate the importance of the regular season. A team would need to either (1) win their conference championship or (2) have an excellent regular season to qualify for such a small field.

Now, if the playoff was 16 or 32 teams, I do agree that it would lessen the importance of the regular season. However, I doubt that there would be such a large playoff field -- hell, I doubt there will ever be any playoff.

 

[Jason Hughes]

I HATE the concept of the National Title as well as a playoff system. I wish teams would just worry about winning their conferance and then their bowl game. A playoff would just leave the same people whining about who didn't get in (#9 was better than #8 - they beat them!!! or #17 vs. #16, why is this playoff team seeded higher, etc).

Besides, isn't the debate about who is the best at least half the fun?

These days everybody has to pull a Kansas State and load up on cream puff teams for their non-conferance game. There is nothing more lame than watching scU-M, Ohio State, Florida, Florida State, Texas(the Rose Bowl champs) or whomever beat Eastern Michigan, San Jose State or the like 57-3. Lame, lame, lame.

 

[RobertR]

A true playoff system would eliminate such nonsense. Did you beat your playoff opponent or didn't you? If you didn't, shut up and go home.