College Football Week 5: Help us raise money for needy John L. Smiths

Maybe. I don't know. I think Stanford's offense is better than you're giving it credit for and I know it's better than Auburn's.

What started me on that tangent was the idea that no conference could win a game -- maybe one -- in a five-on-five matchup against the SEC''s tops. I think the Pac-12 could go 2-3 or 3-2 even assuming Alabama beat Oregon.

 

I think you're taking too much from the LSU-Auburn game. It was an offensive stinkbomb from LSU, to be sure, but the defense was solid as always. If you can keep any opponent to two touchdowns or less you're going to win the overwhelming majority of your games, no matter how bad the offense is.
I'm not saying Stanford's offense is bad. It might be better than LSU's, to be honest. What I'm saying is, its offense isn't good enough to score the 20 points it would need to win. Very, very few teams are. LSU could score 17 points and gut out a 17-10 win.
We'll see a good comparison tomorrow when Stanford plays Washington. It's a common opponent. LSU beat Washington 41-3, and the 3 came off a fumble at the 20-yard line on the opening kickoff.

As for your hypothetical head-to-head matchups, Alabama-Oregon would be interesting to watch. I'd give Oregon a chance, if only because I don't think Alabama has seen an offense as good as the Ducks' in a while. But Oregon probably also hasn't seen a defense that can keep up with its offense the way Alabama can. I'd envision a game much like last year's LSU-Oregon opener. Oregon puts up enough points to make it respectable, but ultimately loses something like 35-24.
USC could beat Georgia. I'll give you that one. Might be a different game, though, if they were to play this week versus playing in a hypothetical January bowl game. Georgia might have an edge there based on a season's worth of injuries and depth taking a toll.
Florida and South Carolina are both better than people are giving them credit for. They would wipe the floor with a couple of mid-card Pac-12 teams like Oregon State and UCLA, but could certainly lose to Oregon or USC.

 

I'd love to see Alabama-Oregon, so I can watch the Tide kick the shit out of somebody different this year.

Roll Tide.

 

The measure of any conference's depth isn't how good its top couple of teams are but how solid it is from top to bottom.

Take the Big 12. Yeah, Bama beats Kansas State. Perhaps LSU beats WVU again. But if I'm Bob Bowlsby in this situation, I'd take my chances with Kansas against Kentucky, or Texas Tech vs. Auburn (in the Tuberville Bowl), or Iowa State vs. Tennessee.

 

Please, as someone who watched cartoonish collapses the last three years, don't pit A&M with Oklahoma State

 

Sigh. This is about what it's come down to for WAZZU fans in regards to the game against Oregon.

 

In the past two weeks, the NFL has made it easy to choose college football Thursdays. Stanford at Washington should be much more compelling than the Browns at the Ravens, and there's no Mike Mayock (or Craig James).

 

I did some very quick research and discovered the former Pac-10 has a winning record in head-to-head games against SEC opponents since 2000 inclusive (12-9), not including this season . The conferences have not met in a bowl game. So whatever dominance the SEC has, it hasn't come against the Pac-10/12.

 

They haven't met in a bowl game?

 

Technically that wasn't a bowl game.

 

Correct. Although it was for all the Tostitos.

 

Whoops, it wasn't a bowl game so it didn't show up on the site I was searching and I forgot about that.

And a 3-point win on the final play of the game hardly is dominance, no? So that makes it 12-8 Pac, I think.

No one disputes the SEC is very good, and that for the past two years or so Alabama has been the best team in college FB. But the overall gap between leagues, taking teams 1-12 (or 14) into account isn't anywhere near as large as some would make it out to be.

Especially now with each SEC team skipping five conference opponents. Any team that gets to skip Alabama and LSU, like (I think) Georgia does this year, is going to benefit tremendously from their reputation but won't have to play them and risk a loss or two that will drop it in the rankings and out of BCS consideration.

It's changed now that the Utards and Colorado are in the league but one of the beauties of the old Pac-10 was the complete round-robin. Nobody got to skip USC when they were a powerhouse and (almost) a guaranteed loss, and no one skipped Oregon and Stanford when they rose to power late in the decade.