July Musings
Well, what a wild and eventful offseason it’s been. I picked up my copy of Phil Steele’s 2010 magazine a couple of weeks ago, which gave me a lot of things to think about. You know college football is on the horizon when Steele’s publication, which I consider the best in the business, comes out.
Conference expansion is the big issue on everyone’s minds, but plenty of other noteworthy events have taken place recently. There’s been player-related turmoil, scandal and embarrassment. Several household coaching names left the college football scene, including Pete Carrol, Mike Leach, Charlie Weis, Bobby Bowden and (briefly) Urban Meyer. Texas Tech is facing a massive, probably deserved lawsuit from Leach, while USC was slapped with sanctions by the NCAA because of Carrol’s activities.
Still, no school felt the sting of bad publicity more than Oregon, which saw its team members commit stupid mistake after stupid mistake, culminating in the season-long suspension and subsequent dismissal of star quarterback Jeremiah Masoli. Masoli’s rags-to-riches-to-rags story should become a cautionary tale for all future athletic stars who see themselves as above the law and can’t grow up. For their part, the Ducks will forever wonder just how good this year’s squad could have been with Masoli at the helm (sadly, probably national title good).
But the Oregon situation is no longer the foremost issue on the mind of the national audience, even if it did create the most important position battle in the sport this upcoming season. No, the questions now shift to who the legitimate championship contenders are.
Defending champ Alabama? Certainly. The Tide return three outstanding offensive weapons in quarterback Greg McElroy, receiver Julio Jones and last year’s Heisman winner Mark Ingram at running back. The offensive line is powerful and the special teams are solid, which should make up for the losses the Tide suffered on defense. They won’t be as dominant on that side of the ball but the offense should be more explosive.
Ohio State is a contender, even though I’m not at all sold on Terrelle Pryor yet. The rest of the team is stacked with elite playmakers, particularly on defense, where the Buckeyes look to once again be among the nation’s best. Defensive end Cameron Heyward and cornerback Chimdi Chekwa should lead another lockdown unit for the Scarlet and Gray.
Oklahoma will rebound after a tough year with injuries in 2009 and be a player again. I don’t think OU will win the title, but they’ve definitely got the offensive power to come close with guys like receiver Ryan Broyles and running back DeMarco Murray. The question is whether the young players who had to step up last season, like QB Landry Jones, have learned enough to be great this year.
Tim Tebow’s departure should open up the Florida offense more to suit new quarterback John Brantley. It might be a bit soon to proclaim the Gators championship material, but the fact remains that this team has gone 13-1 in three of the past four years. They’re just very, very good. Along with one of the most hyped recruiting classes in NCAA history, this Florida team will be completely capable of winning the national championship.
So that’s the usual suspects. But everyone will have those teams down as potential championship winners. What’s difficult is finding which of those under-the-radar schools will come out of nowhere and thrust themselves into the race. There’s always a couple every year; some even go on to win it all, such as Oklahoma in 2000 or Ohio State in 2002. While both schools are traditionally powerful, neither was expected to challenge for the title.
Virginia Tech is going to receive a lot of preseason hype, but I just don’t see it. The Hokies will be packing their usual strong defense and running game – both hallmarks of a championship-caliber team – but too much of their potential is based on quarterback Tyrod Taylor. Everyone envisions Taylor as the second coming of Michael Vick, but he’s not a real quarterback yet. Taylor is even less a passer than Terrelle Pryor, and that’s saying something.
Like VT, USC will get a lot of respect based on their name, but they’re just not what they were a few years ago. While Oregon’s off-field issues will certainly open the door for the Trojans to take the Pac-10 again, they aren’t good enough to go undefeated, which is what it will take to make the title game out of that conference. Reasons? First, USC’s overall talent level is down from what it was; second, Lane Kiffin isn’t half the coach Pete Carroll is.
However, I do like a pair of teams out of the ACC, which is a surprise in itself given how weak that league has been of late. I’ve ragged on the conference as much as anyone, but now I can really get behind a couple of squads (and no, it’s not Georgia Tech, who will probably come back to earth a little after their great 2009 run).
I like Miami (FL) a lot based on their personnel. Jacory Harris is a great quarterback, they’ve got some big, speedy, traditional Hurricane wideouts and the defense should be more than adequate. The caveat is their schedule, which is Fresno State-like in its ambitiousness. The Canes travel to both Ohio State and Pittsburgh before October, then face a decent South Florida team at season’s end. In between, they get Virginia Tech, Florida State, Clemson and Georgia Tech in conference play. If they win all or nearly all of those games, they’ll be worthy of championship consideration, but that’s quite a feat. Of course, they also have to play my other surprise team, North Carolina.
Butch Davis is a very good college coach, as he proved at Miami. In just a few short years he’s made North Carolina relevant again, building the Tar Heels into a team that looks suspiciously similar to his powerful end-of-the-decade Hurricane squads. UNC was better than their 8-5 record last year indicated and they return all but three starters, including nine players from what was already the ACC’s best defense. Their offense held them back at times last season, but I firmly believe the maxim that “senior quarterback = wins” in college football. With T.J. Yates back behind center and a running game that can only improve, North Carolina is my biggest surprise pick for 2010.
From the non-BCS conferences, it’ll be a couple of traditional powers making their case to be included in the championship talk. TCU is pretty much the exact same team they were last year and their only tough game is their opener against Oregon State, which traditionally gets off to bad starts. They have a great chance to have an undefeated regular season again.
Boise State is in a similar situation, as they’re just much too powerful for any of their league opponents. The Broncos schedule is once again laughably weak, but it’s not really their fault that the WAC is so bad. BSUhas a chance to make their biggest statement in years by getting Oregon State (home) and Virginia Tech (neutral site) to face them this season. In their last year in the WAC, you can’t say they’re not trying. If they beat Tech and OSU they’ll go undefeated, too.
Pac-10 thoughts
It wasn’t just Oregon who saw off-field issues this year. Oregon State had a couple of embarrassing incidents as well (including one for which potential starting quarterback Peter Lalich was given the boot), UCLA recently had three incoming recruits arrested and USC received a two-year bowl ban and scholarship reductions from the NCAA. All in all, not a strong offseason for the Conference of Champions.
You might have noticed that I also didn’t include a single Pac-10 team as a contender for the national championship. None of them deserve it, at least right now. Oregon blew maybe its best chance ever, USC is on a bit of a downswing and Oregon State will be breaking in a new quarterback. As exciting as it is to see the Oregon schools in the same breath as Southern Cal, the truth is that the Pac-10 is full of very good but not great teams this year. Oregon, OSU and USC are likely the top three in some order with Stanford, Cal, Arizona and Washington making up the middle. Arizona State and UCLA are a step below those teams and everyone is miles ahead of Washington State. But teams one through seven all have potential to be the league champ and it’s hard to predict which one will come through. Since 2006, when the league changed to a nine-game conference schedule, there has never been an undefeated team in Pac-10 play (USC and Cal went 7-2 in 2006, USC and Arizona State went 7-2 in 2007, USC went 8-1 in 2008 and Oregon went 8-1 last year). A one-loss conference champion is almost certain, and a two-loss team could clearly still have a shot.
So how to pick a winner? One of the most important aspects of a successful college football team is experience. As I’ve said, a multiple-year starting quarterback is almost always a must, but experience at other positions – particularly along the offensive lines – can never hurt. Even without Masoli, Oregon returns a lot of starters. The Ducks are second in the conference at seventeen and also return both kickers. Washington returns eighteen starters and both kickers, while Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State all return fifteen starters plus their specialists. These numbers generally indicate that a team will perform at least as well as they did the year before. However, returning starters don’t tell the whole story.
Two other very important stats to predict a team’s success are starts lost to injury and turnovers, and both depend to some degree on luck. If a team is lucky, losing very few players to injury and getting a big edge in turnovers, they usually have a good season and will trail off the next year when their luck evens out. For example, last year’s champ Alabama was +19 in turnovers, Rose Bowl winner Ohio State was +17 and undefeated Boise State was +21.
No Pac-10 school reached that kind of extreme, with most schools flirting with about a .500 mark. Unsurprisingly, WSU “led” the league with -7 turnovers, while conference champ Oregon surprisingly had only +2 turnovers. The best rating went to UCLA at +6, followed by Oregon State and Cal at +5 and +4, respectively. Such a small edge shouldn’t mean those teams lose any more than one additional game next year, so the injury factor becomes relevant in predicting how the league will finish next year.
Oregon State had the fewest starts lost to injury in the nation in 2009 with just two (out of a possible 264). The next closest Pac-10 team was UCLA with 14, while the rest of the conference averaged around 20. This is where Washington State fans will shake their heads in dismay: the Cougars had an astonishing 67 starts lost to injury, which led the nation by a wide margin. For reference, the most starts lost in 2008 was Utah’s 51. If you think injuries don’t matter, just look at the tales of the two teams at the top and bottom of that list. WSU went 1-11, with their only win against lowly SMU, and was outgained by a ridiculous 260 yards per game. OSU went 8-5 and just missed the Rose Bowl, finishing second in the conference at +78 yards a game. It's a bad idea to read too much into statistics, but these things do matter.
I’ll come back at the end of the summer and make my official picks for each conference, but I need to think about the teams for a while longer before I do. For now, I’ll give you my thoughts on the future of college football.
Conference expansion
College football has maintained a certain status quo since the Big 12 was formed in 1994, the ACC’s raiding of the Big East notwithstanding. That all came crashing down this spring when news broke that the Big 10 was looking to expand to twelve teams. Of course, everyone’s initial reaction was that Notre Dame, a natural fit, would be the new team. However, the league opted for the next best fit in Nebraska, which has long played an ugly, gritty brand of football like that seen in the Midwest. I have no problem with the Cornhuskers joining the Big 10; it makes sense from a competition standpoint. I do dislike the reason the addition was really made, which is obviously money. The ever-greedy Big 10, already the richest conference TV revenue-wise, wanted the extra cash that would come from having a conference championship game, which the NCAA only allows for conferences that have at least twelve members.
But such is life. The rich get richer. The truly earth-shattering news just a few days later was the revelation that the Pac-10 was looking to expand – not to twelve teams, as people expected, but to an unheard-of sixteen. Even more shocking was the list of schools the league was looking to add – Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Colorado, Texas Tech, Texas A&M and mighty Texas. The potential ramifications for college football were enormous.
As everyone knows by now, the deal fell through at the last minute when Texas backed out. But it’s sobering to think of what the Pac-16 would have meant for college football. Analysts saw sixteen-team conferences as the leagues of the future, envisioning five such superconferences that would run everything in the sport. In that scenario, all mid-major schools would have been cut out of the BCS money entirely, permanently shifting the NCAA landscape to a black-and-white split between haves and have-nots. We likely would have seen something like this:
Pac-16:
Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, UCLA, USC, Washington, Washington State
(Current) Big 10:
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Wisconsin
Mountain West:
Air Force, Baylor, Boise State, BYU, Colorado State, Fresno State, Houston, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, San Diego State, SMU, TCU, UNLV, Utah, Wyoming
SEC:
Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Miami (FL), Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Virginia Tech, West Virginia
ACC:
Boston College, Cincinnati, Clemson, Connecticut, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, South Florida, Syracuse, Wake Forest
I chose the teams based on the original plans of the Pac-10 and Big 10, assuming:
1) It’s likely that the SEC would have made the next move, snagging some of the top East Coast schools in West Virginia, Miami (FL) – a school the conference has long coveted – and Virginia and Virginia Tech, which were rumored to be a package deal.
2) The ACC would have had to move to counter the new SEC’s size and snapped up the majority of the Big East, which is already down to eight schools after the ACC stole its top three teams in 2003.
3) With just twelve teams the Big 10 would have had to expand once again, and probably would have added regional schools in Notre Dame, Iowa State (a natural rival for Iowa) and Nebraska rivals Kansas and Kansas State.
4) The Mountain West, scrambling to keep up, would have retained Utah and added Boise State as planned. For its final six members, it would make sense to take the best teams left, which I saw as Nevada and Fresno State from the WAC, Missouri and Baylor from the splintered Big 12 and Houston and SMU from Conference USA (both teams have a history of success in a BCS-level conference).
If all of that makes your head spin, don’t worry. It demonstrates the potential madness we would have seen had the Pac-16 been formed. In that structure there would be 80 BCS teams, as opposed to the 65 now. However, this system would be anything but inclusive. Right now there’s at least a chance, however minimal, that a smaller team like Utah or Boise State can play their way into a BCS game (and potentially even the national championship). In the superconference era, it would be impossible. The remainder of the mid-majors not invited to the big leagues (largely teams from the MAC, WAC, Sun Belt and Conference USA) would never again have a sniff at the BCS money. And that’s not even accounting for independents Army and Navy, which have traditionally fielded solid teams and are important to the game historically.
I have always been against conference expansion. I believe that with a few exceptions, the conferences as they are work well, ensuring relative fairness and quality of competition. Sure, Notre Dame should probably be in the Big 10 and the East Coast conferences are a little jumbled, but the six BCS conferences and five mid-major conferences that currently exist make sense. The problem isn’t which teams reside where, it’s the BCS itself. But that seems to be a fruitless argument, as we’re stuck with the non-playoff system for several more years.
The BCS has been the cause of the near-Armageddon we’ve seen in the past several years. The horribly weak non-conference scheduling from BCS schools in the past few years is a direct result of teams trying to succeed by playing the BCS’s rules rather than beating good opponents on the field as they should. With better records, conferences can send two teams to BCS bowls, which pay out about $15 million. Conference championship games are pathetic money grabs, nothing more. With more TV revenue a league can leverage its influence into a private network a la the Big 10 and further increase the money each school receives. The reason Texas turned down the Pac-10’s offer at the eleventh hour had nothing to do with conference loyalty; it was because the Pac-10 requires its members to share TV revenue equally and the Big 12 allows Texas to take more than their share. Because Texas acted as if it wanted to leave, though, it managed to milk an even sweeter deal out of the Big 12. Clearly, in this day and age, money is more important to college football than ever before. The full extent of the greed of the sport was on full display this offseason.
As to how the Pac-10’s addition actually shook out, I have mixed feelings. The Pac-10 never needed expansion. It had the best organization of any conference: an even number of members, no phony championship game, five sets of natural in-state rivals. Everything was settled on the field in round-robin fashion – nine games, with each team playing everyone else. However, if the league had to expand, Colorado and Utah were always the most natural additions, particularly geographically. I’ll admit that I like the idea of seeing Ralphie (Colorado’s mascot) charging around Pac-10 fields and Utah adjusting to playing with top competition full-time.
At the same time, though, I’ll miss the old format. People have already started questioning how the conference will split into two divisions. North-South? East-West? The Northwest schools would be furious at being denied their annual trips to the fertile recruiting grounds of southern California, but travel would be split bizarrely if, say, Cal and UCLA played in different divisions. There are also reports that Colorado believes it was promised a spot in the South with UCLA and USC, but the league has denied such rumors. It’s all worked out to be a little bit exciting and a little bit messy, so as fans we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
The 2010 season is fast approaching. I hope you share my excitement and choose to join me again on my blog journey throughout the year. America’s greatest sport will soon return! Let the new season be every bit as glorious as the last.
