jones Top Ten - Week Thirteen - 2011

Great encapsulation of a slate of games that got got really boring after Thursday night. Well played!

Top ten defenses?

In a year where the Big XII had the best out of conference record in the past 15 years or so, and practically every computer ranking system ranks the conference most difficult, the best teams in the conference sustain losses in-conference, so now the Big XII sucks? I am not picking on you in particular jones, it seems like everybody in the media has completely dismissed the conference. I don’t really think that anybody in our conference is better than LSU or Alabama, but I would much rather watch Okie Lite or Stanford play LSU for the championship, and not just because I despise Nick Saban.

Here’s my argument against a rematch: it proves NOTHING! If LSU wins, we knew they were better. If Bama wins, it’s a push. Who cares?

So what bowl are we lookin at?
I’m hoping for Holiday and Insight. But thats cuz i’m out here already and got family in both those spots. Good places to play a game too.

What DeepEddy said.

I like this LSU team and I don’t automatically like SEC teams for any reason.
This is not last year’s Auburn, a team I absolutely detested.

This LSU team is one of the most impressive squads I’ve seen in a long time.
The offense is efficient and disciplined. Not big numbers (for this day and age), but they can run, they pass well when they need to, and they rarely turn the ball over.
The defense is a monster. It does not have quite the gaudy statistics that Alabama’s defense has (but damn near as gaudy) except in turnovers, and that makes the difference.

I, for one, have little doubt that, on a neutral field, LSU will handle Alabama with the same disdain they have every other team on their schedule, and Alabama can handle any other team in the country. Big drop-off after those two.

A Brittany is a damn fine dog, and in my experience passing away is the only thing that can diminish their desire to run. And with most of them, probably not even that.

I’m sorry, but I have to disagree about Arkansas, USCe, and Georgia being all that great. USCe and Georgia both play in the SEC east. No other team in the SEC east has a winning record. On top of that, both USCe and Georgia played the Mississippi schools and Auburn (USCe manage to fuck that game up some how). They took out GaTech and Clemson. Good for them. The ACC sucks. We all knew Clemson was a joke.

Arkansas is a solid team, but they struggled against Troy (somewhat), A&M, Ole Miss, and Vandy, who combine to have a 17-32 record. They have beaten TWO teams with winning records: SC and Auburn. I’ll call them solid, but I don’ think they are any better than kstate, NU, Michigan, or USC. Fortunately, I think we’ll get to see this worked out in the Cotton bowl

LSU’s two-deep roster is younger than ours.

Are you sure they are younger T man or classified as having more frosh and sophs? I don’t like the idea of a rematch either, but who is going to score enough to win against either team? I also hate conference championship games. Especially this year as LSU could lose a key player demolishing Georgia that they may really need against Bama. Meanwhile Bama gets to sit idly by and start game planning and practicing for LSU. This is absurd! For that reason alone I hope LSU thrashes Saban’s Tide! That’s not even counting all of the other absurdities arranged in the other BCS games. Let’s face it. Boise St. could have won the SEC East. Also, they won’t go to a BCS bowl as they are not part of the cartel. Enough.

“In a year where the Big XII had the best out of conference record in the past 15 years or so, and practically every computer ranking system ranks the conference most difficult, the best teams in the conference sustain losses in-conference, so now the Big XII sucks? I am not picking on you in particular jones, it seems like everybody in the media has completely dismissed the conference. I don’t really think that anybody in our conference is better than LSU or Alabama, but I would much rather watch Okie Lite or Stanford play LSU for the championship, and not just because I despise Nick Saban.”

Exactly right. While I think that Oklahoma St COULD beat either LSU or Alabama in a single bowl game with a month’s preparation……I don’t think they could win a seven game series against either. Thing is besides those two teams, the SEC flat sucks this season and I’m sick of hearing all the SEC homerism just because it is top heavy with two teams in the same division much like this Big 12 South has been with Texas and Oklahoma the last decade. To listen to all the SEC Homers……they have an undefeated non conference and bowl record the last 7 years and that is far from the truth.

While Ok State would have a puncher’s chance with either of LSU or Alabama, if they played either team 10 times they would lose 8 and 7 each. That’s because a great defense is more consistent. It’s like the difference between a great offense and great pitching in the MLB Playoffs. Ultimately, great pitching tells. And that’s because it is consistent.

Wow, to quote Monty Python, I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.

I’ll start with Parlin: Thanks, he was a great dog.

As for the rest…

First off, I would also note that I don’t want to watch an LSU/Alabama re-match either. But that’s what is going to happen. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I’ve also never been called an SEC homer before (other than Scipio believing I overrate Georgia each pre-season). If you look at the cold hard math, all of you, starting with DeepEddy, have a pretty valid point. Let’s go to Sagarin, an unbiased source. If he’s good enough for Huckleberry, he’s good enough for me.

Total conference rating:

SEC: 80.21
Big 12: 84.89

We have a winner. Good for the Big 12.

I wouldn’t, however, argue that our best two are better than theirs.

I did argue that their next three are (it’s right above you in black and white).

Sagarin:

7 Arkansas
15 S. Carolina
17 Georgia

11 Kansas State
12 Texas A&M
14 Texas

Damn, you guys are right again, or at least it is a push. Except, to quote Bill Parcells, at some point you are what your record says you are. We are talking about a 6-6 A&M team that underachieved all year and always found ways to lose. Our own guys—and I am proud as hell of them—can’t really point to a signature win and aren’t even competently quarterbacked. I think in a round robin of these six teams (on a football field, not on a computer), the SEC would win. No, I don’t think they are clearly superior.

But here’s what is really interesting:

16 Baylor
18 Missouri
29 Iowa State
31 Mississippi State
33 Florida
34 Auburn
39 Vanderbilt
44 Texas Tech

(Kentucky and Kansas are equivalents (84 and 88) and Ole Miss is simply atrocious—108)

I wouldn’t have guessed this at all, and I don’t know that I buy it. Some of this comes from Tech and Iowa State posting huge upsets over top five opponents, which simply didn’t happen in the SEC this year. I get Baylor, but I am not sure I buy Missouri at 18 at all.

That said, Florida faded badly down the stretch, Auburn is average and Vanderbilt is punching above its weight class.

What does it prove? Well, it doesn’t prove that I am an SEC homer.

But it might prove that I don’t give my own conference enough credit. Part of that is because I don’t think OU is particularly dominant at this point in the season; I am historically tougher on our Longhorns than they probably deserve and I think any team with half a heart would find a way to beat Texas A&M (and I think South Carolina, for example, would beat Ryan Tannehill to the same bloody pulp we did). I also don’t think Baylor or Texas Tech can stop anyone. But I would argue that K-State and Mizzou are underrated, particularly the Wildcats. I should have given them Georgia’s slot.

Good thoughts all around — thanks.

What else you got?

Both Dallas and Houston are great cities, but which one is BETTER? I say Dallas.

Texas and Oklahoma are down, Nebraska is gone. The top team in the league right now has a defense ranked 107 in yards and 64 in points. It’s a diminished conference this year – good across the board, but with no greatness. If I had to pick a word to describe the middle of the pack, which seriously boosted the conference’s rating, it would be plucky. Sorry, that’s just the way it is.

Oklahoma State needed Oklahoma to win that Baylor game in the worst way. Look at the P12, which is just God-awful putrid spots 4-12. They have 3 good teams with 10+ wins who reinforce each other. Oregon beats Stanford who beats USC who beats Oregon – and voila, all Top 10. The Pac-12 has a couple of decent wins out of conference — a couple against Notre Dame, one against Missouri – all season. I would make the case that Stanford, which has played an SOS around 100, has been and remains one of the most overrated teams all season long. But there they are, number 4 in the BCS. Mind-boggling.

Alabama dominated every game they played except LSU, and that one played to a draw. LSU dominated everyone they played except Alabama. I’m a firm believer in the “two best teams” criteria rather than the “two teams I would most like to see play” criteria, but at the end of the day, I understand it’s a beauty contest, and those things are relative.

The AM game is staying on my DVR for a long, long time. That thing played out like a movie. Just awesome.

Jones – hey, we beat the Pac12 South Championship game representative! /sarcasm

Houston is vastly underrated by those who don’t explore it enough.

Dallas is unfairly maligned by those with preconceived notions of what it is and isn’t.

Call it a push.

“Plucky” is the right word, GOF.

ut-06 — At the end of the day we may have ended up beating the Pac12 CHAMPION! (of course, if UCLA can’t stop Case McCoy, I am guessing Darron Thomas will be a problem for them…)

Jones, I would say Missouri is Arkansas except they lost their close games and finished 7-5 rather 10-2. They lost in OT to ASU (sort of like playing TAMU when it comes to underachievers), lost by 7 to KSU and lost by 3 to Baylor. With Josey in the backfield, I think they would give Arkansas a run for their money.

Fantastic column, except for this: “The SEC isn’t just the top two; ‘SC and Georgia, along with Arkansas, are easily the best third through fifth teams in any conference. A remarkable year for the SEC, by any measure.”

Argh… No, no, no. The SEC is usually the cream of the crop, but not this year, Adam. LSU and Alabama are premier, but bear in mind that Bama has defeated exactly three teams with a winning record. The SEC East is a joke, and (truly) by any measure (other than SEC mystique) the Big 12 is the superior conference.

Taking, for instance, Sagarin’s PREDICTOR ratings, the SEC has Arkansas (13), Georgia (15), and South Carolina (19). The Big 12 has A&M (11), Missouri (12), Texas (14), Kansas State (23), and Baylor (24). Using Sagarin’s ELO_CHESS ratings, the SEC has Arkansas (4), South Carolina (11), and Georgia (14). The Big 12 has K-State (5), Baylor (7), Texas (13), Missouri (16), and A&M (17).

I’m looking at Georgia’s schedule right now and… yeah, a lot of empty wins. Sorry, but I’m not putting nearly as much stock in wins over teams in the ACC — the fifth best conference this year — as you are. Bottom line: I’m happy to concede that the SEC is in most years the best conference in the country. It’s just not very good this year, at least not relative to most years.

jones,

Fantastic article. Your best weekly offering that I’ve read. The SWC Family Portrait poster hung on my wall as a kid for years.

I’ve tolerated most aggies idiosyncrasies (that’s the nicest term I could think of) and felt reasonably civil towards them for years…. but the last 12 months or so has really swayed me towards disdain. It will take a few years (or a decade or two) before I give a flip about their school or fans.

Somebody please create one of those LSUFreek moving picture thingies with R. Bowen Loftin sitting in a dark room watching the LHN while eating a Cheesy Bacon Bowl.

My childhood best friend’s family kept and bred Brittany’s… I grew up with those dogs and have always loved them. You’ve just gotta love any dog that has the same coloring as Bevo…

“I think every college game played at Jerry World seeps just a little bit more humanity from my unapologetic and anachronistic Southwest Conference soul.”

Indeed. And every time I hear “Thunderstruck” or “Crazy Train” in person in Austin or in the background of TV and radio broadcasts, from Ames to, well, everywhere, I think “why? who is it that is actually clamoring for this? who shells out increasingly absurd amount of cash in the hopes of hearing Ozzy’s old yelp at a college football game?”

PB —

Yep, I am more inclined to agree with you than you think. Check my response to the critics a few posts up. I used the base Sagarin, but PRED and ELO-CHESS are interesting data points, as well.

Nevertheless, your record is what it is. Texas A&M has a great predictor score - one that would not predict a 6-6 record, right? ;)

As for putting stock in wins over the ACC, I could make an argument that the Big 12’s biggest out-of-conference win is Oklahoma over Florida State (ACC) or is it K-State over Miami (ACC)?

Smartass aside, at the end of the day it is probably either Baylor over TCU or Iowa State, of all teams, over Iowa.

None of this proves all that much. We are left with a data set that doesn’t tell us a lot about anyone out-of-conference. Other than that LSU clearly beat Oregon, there is barely an OCC contest of elite-on-elite the entire year. OU would claim that FSU was a far better team in September than they are now. There’s some merit to that argument, I guess. But TCU was much worse in September than they are now. Where does that leave Baylor’s win?

I think we are at a point in college football where the general fan just believes “everyone sucks.” That’s just not true; 30 or 40 teams play pretty good football. Imperfect, flawed, inconsistent…but let’s not pretend that the Golden Age of Bear Bryant and Darrell Royal and Woody Hayes was any different in terms of greatness. It wasn’t.

You’ve had a hell of a year on BON, by the way — much appreciated.

If UCLA loses the PAC-12 championship game to Oregon, does that mean they are no longer bowl-eligible at 6-7? What a bad break for a struggling team. “Congratulations, UCLA! For finishing second in your division to an ineligible team we will reward you with effectively stripping your bowl game away from you. Best of luck in your future endeavors!” They could always pull off the upset and have amazing momentum heading into their Rose Bowl appearance, but I doubt anyone outside of LA has any hope of that happening. And even within LA the hope is probably pretty scarce.

Funny thing is you have 4 SEC teams in the top 10. I think there are only 6 teams bowl eligible in the SEC. It is very possible they are top 10, but more probably you have been drink fro the SEC hype machine

My bad I thought you needed 6 wins vs FBS to make it. I forgot you can include 1 FCS win

College football is all about match ups (quoting Scipio).
I’ve been telling anyone who’d listen that Baylor and Missouri have been grossly underrated all season and would beat offensively-challenged SEC teams. The injury to Josey really hurt Mizzou but I still wouldn’t want to play Baylor again. Kansas St is overrated and would lose to most top SEC teams.

Baylor only losses game where they have turnovers. RG3 has only thrown 5 picks all year, but they fumble a lot and lose their share. Texas loses if Baylor cares for the ball because Baylor’s offense against UT’s defense should be more efficient than UT’s offense vs. Baylor’s D. Vaccaro is key not because of his coverage, but because he may be used to spy RG3. Tony Jefferson didn’t play much vs. Baylor so Wort was the spy for Griffin. Griffin is way too fast for most DB’s and all LB’s. Teams that play Baylor need top performances by 4 DBs (spy for RG3 + 3 WR, quoting Bill C).

Ohio State has a freshman at QB who is playing pretty well. Michigan, Ohio State, USC are all “rebuilding” from actual sanctions. They will be better as in top 10 next year. Unlike those three, our rebuilding is self-imposed.

I’m not going to compare the Big 12 to the SEC. It’s a “pick one and strt arguing loop” that you can’t get out of with no imerical evidence that either is clearly superior to the other on an overall level. They have two super teams, but it gets pretty subjective below that, What I really is the the way we stack up against them on an overall basis going forward. They have considerably diluted their overall power by adding Aggy and Missouri while we have considerably upgraded ours by replacing them with WVU and TCU, both of whom are currently in the Top 25 BCS rankings.

If you look at the BCS right now, we have 7, count ‘em, 7 teams ranked, including the incoming Frogs and Mountaineers. What I’d prefer to do at this point is fart in the general direction of all the crybabies in our own fanbase and those from the media and other fantake sites who have posted here about the inevitable doom factor and how woebegone the Big 12 is.

The Big 12, without NU, Mizzou and Aggy is no worse than the second best conference in football
and its demise has been greatly exagerrated. From a competitive standpoint, the SEC has hurt itself through their expansion and will realize at some point that the St. Louis TV market is pro sports oriented and that the only “new” variety of Texas recruits they are going to get are, by and large, those that would have gone to Aggy or Missouri. Besides, teams like Florida, Bama and Georgia aren’t going to drift very far away from the areas that have brought them success and who the fuck wants to go to school in Mississippi that wasn’t born there for God’s sake!? LSU will be the only team from there that might get any significant benefit but they’ve been recruiting in Houston and East Texas for a long time anyway.

Texas will continue to get pretty much whoever we want, OU will still do well in the North and DFW area and OSU, because of its success, will also do well. Patterson will continue to get the talent he needs from shrewd evaluation and will probably now do even better. Aggy, after they get prison raped next year by virtue of their talent vacuum, will no doubt be surprised how much winning affects recruiting success over conference affiliation. Ugly sorority girls don’t get more dates than hot independents.

For all the hype Larry Scott managed to stir with a dumbass sports media, the PAC 12 is a jokeand will be an even bigger joke absent of both Harbraugh and Luck from The farm! The B1G is a distant third and is going to get worse with PSU’s demise and when the effects of the tOSU sanctions start to materialize.

I like where we (the Big 12) sit going forward, particularly with the impending alliance with the Irish. I like it a lot.

“Unlike those three, our rebuilding is self-imposed.”

MP, you may want to rethink your logic there. What’s happened to tOSU and USC is entirely self-imposed, as is what is about to happen with Penn State.

no need to argue Big 12 vs SEC, but it is amazing that SEC gets all this hype and half the conference has a losing record when you get rid of their FCS wins. Does not mean the top isnt great, but it certainly argues for more inspection

Jake, why stop there? Every rebuilding process would be self-imposed then.

Allow me to clarify. Those schools faced sanctions from the NCAA, which more than likely led to their short-term demise. (I’m not sure I would use demise here, have those programs had losing records recently?). All have new coaches and can point to one specific reason or another for a the problem, removed said problem, distance themselves from said problem and are now capitalizing on the momentum. Yes USC is a little different since they are not bowl elligible this year or next year.

However, they have experienced the least drop off of the four for some reason, and as far as records go would be in the hunt for a BCS bowl this year all things being equal. All things are not equal which is back to the orignal point I was trying to make.

Our problems are different which begs the question, can we be their equal next year (I would be delighted if we could mirror their sucess in 2012.) One could further deduce that we should actually be better than all three since we are the only one out of the four to not face said problem(s).

It is a difficult year to judge anything until the bowl results roll in.

But, my firm non-football, all-politics position on this:

LSU-Oklahoma State is going to leave the B12 with another 50+ to (one broken assignment plus garbage time points = somewhere 13-20) crushing which absolutely will impact perceptions of the B12 and its champions moving forward. That makes the hurdle that much higher for Texas down the road.

Alabama-LSU, on the other hand, creates a real SEC backlash which will work against them down the road.

Cynical and calculating? Absolutely. But until alignment settles and Fox/ESPN work out a playoff deal with the big conference commissioners that simply adds value to the regular season packages (and bypasses the small fry), it’s the system we have. This year’s narrative impacts next years, and on it goes.

All, I missed all of your responses to my post as I was busy all day, but thanks for the replies. I wanted to reply to one thing that jones pointed out, that the best out of conference win for anybody is LSU, but after that neither the SEC nor the Big XII has much to brag about. OU beating FSU? KSU beating UM? UGA beating Ga. Tech? USC beating Clemson? A big fat YAWN. I think about the best direct comparison between the Big XII and SEC is the Aggy vs. Hog game. And as funny as Aggy futility has been for us this year, the fact is that A&M kicked their ass for most of the game, and at the end of the day it was a close contest at a neutral site. And all last week until they got their ass kicked by LSU, we were supposed to believe Arky was the #3 team in the country. Year in and year out, most of the time the SEC is the best conference in the country, but the pendulum has swung too far.

But the thing that pisses me off the most about all of the above is something I have been bitching about for years: that the bowl system is sacrosanct because it preserves the importance of the regular season. What utter baloney. The list of out of conference games above is pathetic. College football has far fewer interesting games than any other sport, and it is precisely because of the beauty contest. I realize most people reading probably agree with me, thanks for letting me vent.

And don’t get me started on Stewart Mandel blowing his horn today about how he has said since the spring game that Case is our savior at QB…

Very well said on all fronts, DeepEddy.

And your user id remains one of the great beer joints in civilization.

Trent had a receiving touchdown against Auburn. You’re not the first, or even tenth person who has mentioned that he “didn’t score a touchdown.” Not sure why that has happened. I’d venture to guess that Luck gets credit for his rushing tds. Also, while its a different discussion, Richardson can count the number of times he’s turned the ball over in his entire career on one hand.

Your points are well taken, Adam. And I would add, also in your defense, that SEC teams tend to improve as the season goes on, and I think that’s true this year as well. So we’re even more inclined to agree than either of us originally thought.

Again, really article — your best of the season. Looking forward to lunch on Monday.

And don’t get me started on Stewart Mandel blowing…

No need, I think many – if not most – of us agree with you.