Texas Longhorn blog Burnt Orange Nation has posted its picks for the best sports blogs.
Attention Volunteer football fans:
You do know it’s still football season in the rest of the world, right?
Check out some of the blogs on BON’s list and live vicariously.
1. Texas: UT gets nod over USC only because of USC’s would-be loss to Notre Dame
2. USC: Basically neck and neck with the Longhorns
3. Notre Dame: Two bad calls on final two plays cost them victory over USC
4. Georgia: SEC champ
5. LSU: SEC runner-up
6. Florida: Lost three games, but beat both SEC champ and ACC champ
7. Penn State: Only one loss, but docked for not having to play a championship game
8. Ohio State: Only losses to Texas and Penn State
9. Florida State: Yeah, four losses, but still champ of tough ACC conference
10. Virginia Tech: ACC runner-up
11. Georgia Tech: Four losses, but beat both Auburn and Miami
12. Auburn: Stumbled out of the gate and lost to SEC runner-up LSU, but beat SEC champ Georgia
13. Miami: Throttled ACC runner-up Virginia Tech
14. Alabama: Only losses to SEC runner-up LSU and number 12 Auburn
15. Oregon: Only one loss, but docked for relatively weak conference
16. West Virginia: Received a BCS berth while never cracking the top ten
17. Michigan: Beat Big 10 champ Penn State, but lost four games
18. UCLA
19. Clemson: Beat ACC champ FSU, but who didn’t?
20. South Carolina: Wins over Florida and Tennessee not as impressive in hindsight
21. TCU
22. Northwestern
23. Iowa
24. Iowa State
25. Louisville
Any other Tennessee fans watch big games in other conferences for the first time this season? If so, you might have noticed something.
Offense.
Big plays.
Both Texas and USC dominated their opponents with exceptional, exciting offense.
The LSU-Georgia game was . . . different.
More defense.
Some, but not a lot, of big plays on offense.
It really shows the difference in parity in the SEC and in the Big 12 and Pac 10. John Pennington has noticed, too, and has some facts and figures to back it up.
Just comparing SEC records from 1994-99 with the records from 2000-05, you can see a real shift in power among the league’s top seven programs.
From ’94-99, Florida (43-5) and Tennessee (40-8) were far ahead of Alabama (32-16), Georgia (26-22), Auburn (24-24), LSU (22-26) and woeful South Carolina (13-35). Two teams had more than 40 wins in that six-year span. Most of the other “good” programs were around .500 or worse. The difference between the best of those teams and the worst was an enormous 30 wins.
But look at the stretch from 2000-05 Auburn (36-12), LSU (35-13), Georgia (35-13), Florida (34-14) and Tennessee (33-15) are all separated by just three wins over a six-year span. And while Alabama (like Florida and UT) has fallen back to the pack (24-24), South Carolina has shown a huge improvement (24-24).
It’s getting much more difficult to win in the SEC.
Texas blog Burnt Orange Nation has an excellent post the Longhorns’ 2001 Big 12 title game against Colorado. I hadn’t realized that the other UT had a “We’re going to the Rose . . . wait, nevermind” moment in 2001.
Eerily reminiscent of the Vols’ 2001 loss to the LSU Tigers, which cost Tennessee the Rose Bowl and a shot at the national championship.
UPDATE: The Final Animated BCS Race to the Rose Bowl is up and running on its own static page.
Pesky Texas A&M couldn’t keep pace with the Longhorns, and the only real change in the line up this week is that everyone is one week closer to their final position.
The final two big games before the bowls are this Saturday: Texas plays Colorado for the Big XII Championship, and USC hosts No. 12 UCLA.
ABC has both games, Texas-Colorado at 1:00 and UCLA-USC at 4:30. If both the ‘horns and the Trojans win, they’ll meet in the Rose Bowl for the National Championship.
Entering the home stretch:
The Trojans and the Longhorns remain Nos. 1 and 2, and Penn State, LSU, Virginia Tech, and Ohio State all move up one spot due to Miami falling from No. 3 to No. 9 after losing to Georgia Tech. Oregon jumped from No. 10 to No. 7 after clobbering Oregon State, and the Fighting Irish improved by one position. Auburn rounds out the top ten.
The Tennessee Volunteers round out the top 117, and some players are behaving badly.
Games remaining that either will or could impact the Race:
UPDATE: This is Week Eleven. If you’re looking for the latest, see the Animated BCS Race to the Rose Bowl: Final Bowl Selections.
Games remaining that either will or could impact the Race:
Rounding the final corner:
Virginia Tech drops, but not by much, after getting thrashed by Miami, Georgia re-enters the Race, and Oregon’s putrid yellow and green breaks the top ten.
Games remaining that either will or could impact the Race:
College Football News’ Run to the Rose Bowl has Three Unbeaten Contenders — USC, Texas, and Alabama — and eight No Margin for Errors — Miami, Penn State, Virginia Tech, LSU, Georgia, Oregon, Texas Tech, and UCLA.
Even as the Tennessee Volunteers have come up lame, stumbled, fallen, fallen, and fallen out of the Top 25 altogether, the Race to the Rose Bowl goes on.
Georgia drops out of the top ten after losing to the Gators, and USC takes over the top spot it lost last week to the Longhorns.
Tonight’s game between the Virginia Tech Hokies and the Miami Hurricanes is huge. Plus, there are still a lot of games that either will or could impact the Race:
College Football News’ Road to the Rose Bowl has Five Unbeaten Contenders — USC, Texas, Virginia Tech, Alabama, and UCLA — and eight No Margin for Errors — Miami, Penn State, LSU, Florida State, Georgia, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Texas Tech.
John Pennington has examined teams’ perceived recruiting successes in the past few years and compared them with those teams’ current rankings.
Here are Pennington’s top ten recruiters over the last five years and their current BCS rank:
Pennington’s info is much more exhaustive than the above list. His data brings to light several interesting facts. On one hand, the current top two BCS teams — Southern Cal and Texas — have excelled in recruiting, so that would suggest that there is a positive correlation between recruiting success and winning games.
On the other hand, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Tennessee have recruited well, and have been terrible disappointments so far this season. Plus, some of the other data shows the vast disparity between the current success of teams that have enjoyed about equal recruiting success.
My take is that we fans too often fall victim to the old necessary-sufficient fallacy. In order to win regularly, a school must have a certain level of success in luring top players to the team, but simply having good players is not enough. There are just too many other factors that come into play.
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