new top 25, plenty to complain about.. but no way louisville can beat a sec team

Dear Idiot:

The first post on this thread was Mr. Whitlock's ballot in the weekly Associated Press college football poll.

Now get off our board.

Good-bye.

 

Physically, I think it's obvious that the SEC has the biggest, the strongest, and the fastest athletes as a whole. If you put Oregon in the SEC next year, Bellotti would probably have to hold open tryouts with the student body in the middle of the campus quad by week 9, because so many of his players would be beat to shit and walking with crutches. That's mainly what's difficult about playing an SEC schedule. Pac-10 teams, Big East teams, Big 10 teams, they can absolutely hang with an SEC team in a 60 minute game, but some of them would probably run into trouble if, a week after winning a slug-fest against Auburn, they had to turn around and play LSU, Georgia or Alabama.

Now, on the flip side, what everyone always overlooks is the fact that those same SEC teams don't have to prepare for nearly as much offensive innovation as teams do in the Pac 10, the Big 12, the ACC, the Big East, and some (but not all) of the Big 10. It ain't easy to prepare, depending on the year, for USC's offense one week, then Oregon's, then ASU's, then Cal, then UCLA, then WSU, just to point out a few. Those teams throw the ball all over the field, they line up in crazy formations, they force you to make adjustments and they keep you on your toes for 60 minutes. SEC teams wear you down and kick your ass. They beat you up physically, and unless it's a Florida, Tennessee or (occasionally) Georgia, a lot of them, at least consistently, have trouble changing tactics when it's not a physical battle. SEC football, for the most part, is old school. It's macho. It's a test of conditioning and commitment and guts. A lot of other football is about innovation and speed. It's would-be geometry teachers with whistles, scribbling three wide receiver formations on a napkin 10 minutes before practice, then trying it on Saturday.

So while a team like Cal or Louisville might get ground into a fine mist if it played a full nine-game SEC schedule, a team like Arkansas couldn't exactly win shootouts week after week in the Pac-10 either. In sports culture, especially football, we always want to equate physical strength with manhood, and toughness with superiority and dominance. But it's not always the case.

College football, in my mind, is like boxing. Some teams are successful because they're great punchers with strength. Others can jab and move and never get hit. Some are fast and technically brilliant, but soft if they get nailed. Not every fighter needs to stand toe to toe to prove he's great, especially not every time he steps into the ring. The best fighters, like Ali, or Leonard, or Roy Jones, are the ones who can do a little of everything, and the same is true for football teams. George Foreman and Earnie Shavers might have been the hardest punchers in boxing history, but Ali was faster, smarter, with a big-time chin and he could hit. If, in a round robin tournament, Ali had to face Foreman on a Monday, Shavers on Tuesday, Ken Norton on Wednesday, Chuck Wepner on Thursday, and Joe Frazier on Friday, he probably wouldn't have stood a chance to win the whole thing. But that doesn't mean those other fighters were superior boxers. Physically stronger, yes, but not better.

 

I heard this argument six years ago, again involving West Virginia when they were gettng ready to play Ole Miss and Deuce McCallister in the Music City Bowl. "Ain't no way WVU can match up with Ole Miss' line. Deuce is gonna run wild."

I think WVU built a 35-0 lead before Ole Miss mounted a late comeback in the fourth quarter. And WVU was the Big East's fifth best team that year behind, Miami, VT, Syracuse and Pitt.