Penn State defeated Ohio State in Columbus on Saturday. For any SEC fan paying attention to the big picture, Terrelle Pryor’s fourth-quarter fumble (pictured above) might be the pivotal event around which the worm will turn in 2008. Winning a defensive battle by the score of 13-6, JoePa’s Nittany Lions passed their last (and first?) difficult test of the season. Now, a handful of Big Ten runts will have an opportunity to make their mark on the national college football landscape: Iowa (5-3), Indiana (3-5) and Michigan State (7-2) are all that remain to oppose Penn State’s romp to Miami.

It’s not a pretty picture. Sure, we can look back and try to find some hope. There was Pitt’s thrilling and improbable win over West Virginia last season, which set up two-loss LSU’s bid. And Gator fans remember UCLA’s even more unbelievable victory over USC in 2006, news of which was piped into the Georgia Dome at halftime, igniting the Gators’ 38-28 win over Arkansas to secure both an SEC championship and a BCS title berth.

But do you really think these three Big Ten scrubs have any chance of defeating Penn State? Really? If so, I’ll have some of what you’re smoking.
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With the biggest portion of the Out-Of-Conference (OOC) season slipping away before league games begin, several conferences made some significant “last stands” to try and regain some respectability.  Let’s look at last weekend’s action.

ACC
One of the doormats of the FBS had been the ACC which got off to a terrible start in the first 2-3 weeks.  This week the ACC put forth a quite respectible showing.  North Carolina State managed to win its first FBS game by upsetting East Carolina in overtime.  Miami went on the road and blew out Big 12 team Texas A&M while Georgia Tech dismantled Mississippi State at home.  Despite forcing overtime against South Florida, UCF didn’t put up much of a fight against Boston College.  Inside the league Virginia Tech looks to be winning ugly (or typical Beamer style) after beating Georgia Tech and North Carolina in back-to-back weeks.  Wake Forest solidified its hold as conference favorite by travelling to Tallahassee and extending its winning streak against FSU to 3 games in a matchup mired by offensive ineptitude, turnovers and mistakes.

BIG EAST
Another joke of a conference that has edged its way into respectability is the Big East.  Largely thanks to a number of intersectional matchups against the Big 12, the Big East is on a bit of a run in OOC games.  Going back to South Florida’s upset of Kansas last Friday, the Big East has gone 3-1 against the Big 12 in nationally televised ESPN night games.  Connecticut held off Baylor and Louisville tripped up Kansas State while only West Virginia failed to uphold the conference honor losing at Colorado in OT 17-14.  Rutgers continued its unexpected slide losing to Navy but Pittsburgh managed to outlast Iowa 21-20 and even Syracuse managed to win its first game this season against Northeastern.  The league is down to only one ranked team, South Florida, but at least isn’t the laughing stock it was two weeks ago.

BIG 12
As discussed, the Big 12 almost singlehandedly brought the Big East back to a legitimate FBS conference.  Having a traditional power like A&M getting blown out by Miami at home doesn’t help the conference pride either.  UNLV kept Iowa State winless in a matchup of a good Mountain West team against a bad Big 12 team.  Colorado provided the only significant win when they upset a talented, yet spiraling, WVU team. (more…)

Week three of the young college football season brings us to our third installment looking at conference strengths.  Since it is virtually impossible to identify how a region of football compares to another when conference teams are playing internally, the beginning of the football season is our best, yet far from perfect, indicator of overall conference trends and relative strengths.  So with that lets look at this past weekend.

ACC
For the first time this season, the ACC avoided the image of one of the worst conferences in the country.  North Carolina absolutely thumped Rutgers, in what should have been a matchup of roughly equivalent teams, 44 to 12.  Does this signify that UNC is ready to begin it’s turnaround under Butch Davis or that Rutgers is going to step back from it’s gradual improvement under Greg Schiano.  In a game of two of the best young coaches in the game, Davis seems to have put together a better team in Chapel Hill in his second year than Schiano has in his 8th year.

In another ACC suprise, struggling mid level team Maryland upset Pac 10 upper tier Cal 35 to 27 in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score.   The same Maryland team that was unable to beat Middle Tennessee the week before took a huge 28-3 lead against Pac 10 power Cal and cruised to an eventual 8 point win.  In other games Virginia continued it’s losing ways by getting clobbered by UConn 45-10 while FSU continued feasting on Division AA programs by routing Chattanooga 46 to 7.  Duke has a winning record after 3 games after beating Navy 41-31 under new head coach David Cutcliffe.

Inside the conference Virginia Tech held off Paul Johnson’s up and coming Georgia Tech team 20-17 while Clemson continued it’s bounce back from their opening day fiasco by beating NCSU 27-9.  Two of the conferences better teams, Wake Forest and Miami, had open dates.

BIG 12
The lone conference losses this weekend were Kansas losing a nail biter to USF in Tampa 34-37 in what was perhaps the best game of the entire weekend and Iowa State losing to in-state rival Iowa 5 to 17.  Big 12 powers Oklahoma and Missouri pounded Washington and Nevada respectively.  Baylor also layed the wood this week to Pac 10 BCS team Washington State 45-17.  Nebraska, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State each won big against lesser opponents.  Texas’s game versus Arkansas (SEC) was postponed due to Hurricane Gustav. (more…)

Not too many legitimate college football pundits waste time arguing against the SEC being the best conference in the land.  Personally, I think the Big 12 is the only other conference that should be in the discussion when it is based on quality and depth.  The first weekend of college football led to some interesting inter-conference results.  In total the SEC beat 2 ACC, 1 WAC, 1 MAC, 1 Conference USA and 5 patsies who really need not be mentioned.  The league’s losers were Mississippi State to Louisiana Tech (WAC) and Tennessee to UCLA (Pac-10).

Overall the SEC has often been held as the leading football conference but never before has the league seen the kind of depth of talent as we are witnessing now.  There will be 8-4 teams coming out of the conference this year which would could easily be BCS bound if they played in another league.  It really is becoming a nightmare of brutal competition on a weekly basis these days.  I see three teams - South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, that I honestly believe would strongly challenge if not win outright conferences such as the Big East, ACC or Big 10.

Upsets abounded across the country and the SEC was no exception.  The MSU loss to La Tech suggests that last year might have been simply a blip on the Sylvester Croom tenure radar and the Bulldogs are headed back to mediocrity.  Despite a defense that plays as hard for it’s coach as any in the SEC you will be hard pressed to win games without any offense for opponents to respect.  The other dissapointment was, of course, the mighty (I jest) Vols.  (more…)

With two years like these, it’s bound to happen.

After Florida fans (and LSU, Georgia et al.) watched the pastings that the Gators and Tigers gave Ohio State, they saw the reputation of the Southeastern Conference validated on the BCS stage.

However, I want to look at some basic assumptions that fans of SEC schools have as a whole. Mark my words, this probably isn’t going to be the last post that I do on the subject.

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Click to see larger version

I love EA’s NCAA Football series. So help me sweet baby Jesus, I love it.

My first encounter was NCAA 2004. Didn’t play it much. Got NCAA 05 and via random button mashing and playcalling, learned that Chris Leak threw a fantastic bomb to Chad Jackson on play-action out of the Ace formation. Discovered the direct HB snap, slot outs, and the speed option. Addiction set in.

Now it’s gotten to the point that I eagerly anticipate EA’s July launch of their college football franchise. Hell, I even look forward to the unveiling of the cover athlete. I was a little annoyed when Jared Zabransky (are you kidding me?) made the cover — instead of national championship MVP Chris Leak! — for NCAA ‘08.

Now NCAA ‘09 is soon to be upon us and the requisite team ratings are starting to leak out. A screenshot of Florida’s team ratings appear above. Not surprisingly, “QB #15″ is atop the list, followed by “WR #1″.
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Losing to Georgia was bad. Losing to Michigan… far worse.

This is the team that lost to Appalachian State. The team I’ve picked on mercilessly. Karma’s a bitch.

Florida just embarrassed the SEC, and the ‘mo’ for the Big 10 vs. Southeastern Conference wars has swung decidedly back to the north.

Hell, Tennessee was able to beat Wisconsin, for crying out loud.

I’m having a hard time understanding how we lost this game. How our offensive line was manhandled. How we lost despite being +4 in turnover margin. How our players looked unprepared. How Michigan seemed to want it more.

How we went 4-and-out two consecutive freaking times to end the game.

One can always play the youth card, but jeez, we played horribly on both sides of the ball. I guess the Heisman Curse lives on.

Michigan commenters, and I’m sure we’ll see plenty of you guys, enjoy. Your team deserved to win and Coach Carr was able to go out in style. No excuses, Michigan is the superior team. (I just vomited in my mouth when I wrote that.) Commenting has been opened up so you can wag it in our faces all you like. We deserve it, I s’pose.

I’m probably going to take a break from blogging for awhile. Dive back into work. Spend more time with the family. I can’t really think about what just occurred because my frame of mind is… dangerous. Unstable.

I want to blame the coaches. I want to say Florida and the SEC is way overrated. I want to say that our defense is the worst I can remember seeing, and they were playing against a team that could only score a field goal against Ohio State. I’m wondering if LSU can restore some vestige of SEC pride in the championship game, or if Ohio State is licking their chops in wait for them there, too.

All that was assured is now suspect. Where once we stood on steady ground, we now find an undulating sea of uncertainty beneath us. Ugly speculation. Painful introspection.

And we get to do this for anther 9 months? Oh, joy.

Above: Appalachian State students in Boone, North Carolina, posing with the goalposts they ripped out of the turf at ASU Stadium, dragged down the street, and deposited in the University Chancellor’s driveway after the Mountaineers defeated Michigan in the “Big House” on September 1st, 2007.

From NWI.com:

Speed versus speed: When Florida defeated Ohio State last January in the Fiesta Bowl to win the national title, a popular theory was that the Gators triumphed because of superior speed.

But according to Illinois coach Ron Zook, who coached in Gainesville before arriving in Champaign in 2005, the perception of Southeastern Conference teams being faster than those in the Big Ten is misguided.

“In my mind, there’s not any difference,” Zook said. “We have every bit the speed they have in the South. There’s no question in my mind this league can compete with anyone in the country (in that regard).”

Er, excuse me?  Ron Zook?

You’d think the Zooker would have credibility in this department.  After all, he did coach in the SEC for a number of years (and not just as a head coach) before heading up to Big Ten country.

Unfortunately, the SEC team he coached was our Gators.  And he succeeded only in the “less with more” department for three seasons at Florida, while irritating Gator Nation with his incomprehensible statements and useless thoughts on college football.

And this is another one of them.  I’ll agree with one thing: “SEC Speed” is an overrated concept. While our conference is definitely the fastest top to bottom, there are fast teams outside of the SEC: Southern Cal, Texas, and Oklahoma come to mind.  But “Big Ten Slowness” is not overrated.  It was dramatically featured in last year’s BCS National Championship game as well as the Rose Bowl matchup between USC and Michigan.

Ron, the fact that in your ‘mind’ you have no doubt about the Big Ten’s ability to compete speed-wise is nothing less than another validation that the Big Ten IS slow.  Because you almost always get it wrong, buddy.  You have for the last five years.  And this is one’s no exception.

Remember Trev? He jumped ship from ESPN to greener pastures (okay, CSTV.) Actually, I really like CSTV — they’re gritty and real when it comes to college sports.

Anywho, ol’ Trevvie Trev Trev has been released from solitary to join with the rest of the general (unbiased) college sportscasting inmate population when it comes to the superiority of the SEC.

Trev writes:

I’m only looking at the top of each conference and I think it’s pretty fair to say that the top of the SEC is dominant and would dominate the Big Ten. That’s not to say the Big Ten in certain games wouldn’t be able to get a win.

It’s pretty easy to find some sort of statistic you want to validate whatever it is you believe in. The reality is the SEC is a far superior conference than the Big Ten. It hasn’t been forever, but it’s especially been lately. And I think it’s only going to get worse. We’re just starting to scratch the surface of domination.

Do you think he could have gotten away with saying that on ESPN? Methinks not. But I’ll tell you one thing: he’s absolutely right on the money.

I’m an unabashed SEC homer, but I know the best college football when I see it, and it ain’t being played in Ann Arbor or Columbus.

Trev, we now add you to our list of non-brainwashed sports commentators.