My picks for the BCS Conferences

We'll take a stab at them right now, the non-BCS Conferenes and Bowl Projections will follow.

Pac 10

1. Oregon 7-1
2. USC 7-1
3. Arizona St. 5-3
4. Oregon St. 4-4
5. Cal 4-4
6. Washington St. 4-4
7. Arizona 3-5
8. UCLA 3-5
9. Stanford 2-6
10. Washington 1-7

SEC East

Tennessee 7-1
Georgia 6-2
Florida 5-3.
South Carolina 3-5
Vandy 1-7
Kentucky 1-7

SEC West

Alabama 7-1
LSU 7-1
Auburn 5-3
Arkansas 5-3
Miss St. 1-7
Ole Miss 0-8

SEC Championship: Tennessee over Alabama

ACC Atlantic

BC 6-2
Forida St. 5-3
Clemson 5-3
NC St 3-5
Wake 2-6
Maryland 2-6

ACC Coastal

Miami 8-0
VT 6-2
GT 5-3
Virginia 5-3
UNC 1-7
Duke 0-8

ACC Championship: Miami over Boston College

Big XII North
1. Colorado 5-3
2. Nebraska 5-3
3. Kansas St. 4-4
4. Missouri 3-5
5. Iowa St. 2-6
6. Kansas 2-6

Big XII South
1. Texas 8-0
2. Texas A & M 7-1
3. Oklahoma 6-2
4. Texas Tech 3-5
5. Oklahoma St. 2-6
6. Baylor 1-7

Big XII Championship: Texas over Colorado

Big Ten

1. Ohio St. 8-0
2. Purdue 7-1
3. Iowa 6-2
4. Michigan 6-2
5. Michigan St. 5-3
6. Penn St. 4-4
7. Wisconsin 3-5
8. Illinois 2-6
9. Minnesota 2-6
10. Indiana 1-7
11. Northwestern 0-8


Big East--coming

Ranking the Defenses: Who to fear

I'm always a little puzzled when I get my Lindy's, Athlon and TSN previews and they all decide to rank the defensive and offensive units by position. While its interesting to know that Iowa has some of the nation's best linebackers coming back, that isn't real practical information unless their green defensive line adapts quickly.

So, in the spirit of establishing a more practical read of each team's strengths without simply listing last year's defensive team leaders, I've broken my list for 2005 down into the 10 teams you don't want to have to run against and the 10 teams you don't want to have to pass against.

The 10 teams you don't want to have to pass against:

1. Ohio St. : Virtually the entire 2004 defense, which one of the 5 best against the pass in the nation, is back, including its stars: LB A.J. Hawk and CB Ashton Youbody. If this team can generate any kind of consistent pressure from the front four, you might want to give up on throwing.

2. Alabama: Arguably the staunchest unit against the pass last year, the Tide only

3. USC

4. Georgia Tech

5. Miami: While there were occasionally problems last year (see the Thursday night Louisvilee game), its hard to argue with a defense that brings back 11 starters, especially when their overall numbers last year against the pass weren't too shabby. Hester, Merriweather, Reddick and Jenkins form a ridiculous starting defensive backfield.

6. LSU

7. Boston College: These guys could be scary impossible to pass on next year, with a potential top-5 NFL pick Mathias Kiwanuka at DE, a more mature LB Brian Toal coming off a solid true freshman year and, at times, do-everything WR/CB/KR Will Blackmon in the secondary. BC might actually improve on its #9 national ranking in interceptions forced in 2005.

8. Penn St.

9. NC State: The only team in the nation that gave up less than 5 yards per pass attempt last year loses Andre Maddox and the rest of a great defensive backfield, but but an ultra-experienced front four will keep the pressure off of the newcomers.

10. Fresno St.: Although the defense loses the heart of its front four, Garret McIntyre is a force as a tweener, with 7 sacks last year, and the secondary that pulled down 16 INTs last year is almost completely intact.

Just Missed: Oregon St., Iowa, Clemson, West Virginia, La-Lafayette


The 10 teams you don't want to have to run against:

1. USC: Last year--79.4 ypg on the ground, 2.62 yards per carry. That'll be hard to best,

2. Purdue

3. NC State: You could argue that this is the best run-stopping front four in the nation, as ends Mario Williams and Manny Lawson were all over ACC backfields last year and DTs Tank Tyler and and John McCargo have the job of freeing those two up to improve on their gaudy TFL numbers from last year.

4. Texas

5. Florida St.

6. Iowa

7. LSU

8. Penn St.

9. Arizona

10. Georgia Tech

Just Missed: Cal, Kent St., TCU, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia


Coming Next: The best offensive passing and rushing units.

Instant Replay: Who's doing what.

Even though the Big 10's use of replay in 2004 was well publicized before the season began, news didn't trickle down to everyone. I was in Las Vegas watching the Purdue/Wisconsin game last year (which turned out to be one of the best games of the year) with some buddies at the home of FSN's Poker at the Plaza, the Plaza. The guy behind me had obviously bet a significant amount of money on Purdue and the Boilermakers just had a call go in their favor when the ruling was reviewed by the replay official. Despite the fact it was October, two-thirds of the way through the season at the time, the problem gambler (obviously a local who chose to spend his entire day at the Plaza sportsbook) was absolutely flabbergasted and said something to the effect of "Instant replay in college football???? You've gotta be #*$%! kidding me".

So we moved into offseason 2005 and it seems like every couple of weeks this summer we heard about another conference that was either considering or adopting some form of instant replay after last year's alleged success with the program in the Big 10.

Now, while my Vegas friend (who lost on that game thanks to the late Kyle Orton fumble) didn't have an excuse for not knowing the status of replay, it is very forgivable to have a little unclarity regarding the replay situation in '05 since there's such a wide variety of conference legislation out there regarding this subject.

I wouldn't want any of my readers in 2005 to see Ball St. score a touchdown against the Eastern Michigan defense on a clearly trapped ball, assume that the play will be overturned, only to later realize that the MAC is one of the few conferences that has yet to approve replay for this year.

So here's the rundown:

The Pac 10, Conference USA, and the ACC will all use a clone of the Big 10 replay system.

The SEC is using a tecnologically souped-up version of the Big 10 system.

The Big XII is looking at using a sideline monitor like the NFL, allowing the on-field referee to review the play and to contact the in-booth replay official, but giving only the booth replay official authority to make the final call after review.

The Big East will use replay, and will soon be announcing the specific in-game procedures.

The Mountain West is proposing an NFL-like coach's challenge system that is yet to be approved by the NCAA.

The WAC sounds like they're going to hold off on instant replay, and I haven't been able to find anything on the MAC yet. Let me know if you do.

Duke will get at least one top 25 vote

I'm so glad that Steve Spurrier is back in college football. I don't have the intense dislike for him that most non-Florida fans do. I loved his tongue-in-cheek, yet needling remarks toward his SEC rivals like "You cant' spell citrus withouth 'UT'".

Well, the hits keep coming. Here he reveals that for several years he's been giving Duke a vote in the preseason poll because he simply likes them (in case you didn't know, he's a former Blue Devil head coach).

Speaking of the SEC, they are jumping on the instant replay bandwagon. League officials said that they'll use a system similar to the Big 10's from 2004, but that instead of relying on tivo, they'll use a fancy nine panel touch screen monitor. Supposedly, it will speed the process up considerably. While reading the articles about this, I keep picturing these two conferences as two guys trying to one-up each other with tech-gadget purchases. One gets Tivo on his 27" plasma HDTV, then, not to be outdone, his buddy goes with the 36" LCD model with touch screen functionality. The good news about this conference arms/tech race is that MTV Cribs: Vanderbilt Press Box will be airing soon.

That reminds me, my favorite thing about the Big 10 replay was the camera installed in the room where the replay official was stationed. The first time I saw it was in the Wisconsin/Bowling Green game, and they cut to a shot of the replay official, and the guy was slouching in his chair, with his hand mere inches from slipping into the front of his pants Al Bundy-style, with a bottle of Aquafina (that might as well have been a Miller Lite) by his side. I saw it and immediately called the Big Ten offices for a job application.

Speaking of things going on in the booth at Wisconsin games, does anyone remember the ESPN broadcast of the Wisconsin/Northwestern game in (I'm guessing) about 1996? Probably not, but its notable because Chris Farley was in the broadcast booth for a while. The only thing i remember from that game was when one of the ESPN guys, I believe Mike Gottfried, was talking about Aaron Gibson as the camera panned to him on the sideline. As the shot got tighter, Gottfried (if it was him) said, in a kind of oddly serious tone, "he is just a behemoth, weighing in at 395 pounds" or something like that. Then there was this awkward silence for about 5 seconds because they wanted to hear Farley's reaction. Eventually, Farley just says, "God bless him". It doesn't translate to the written medium that well, but it was absolutely hillarious.

If anyone knows which game that is or, better yet, has it on tape, email me.

This is going to be fun...

While I'm an advocate for completely doing away with the coaches poll, the AFCA has done the next best thing by de-classifying the ballots of each coach in the final poll. How fun is it going to be to see where there is conference allegiances among the coaches, whether rivalries carry over to the ballot box, and which coach has clearly paid the least attention to the college football landscape (remember basketball coach Rick Marjerus voting for Temple a few years ago?)

While this does a little bit for the credibility of the poll, more than anything, its going to be very interesting to dissect the patterns to which we've never had access before.

It's Never Too Early

My favorite site of all-time put up one of the first comprehensive TV schedules I've seen this year. While I'll be posting a more complete (and visually appealing) schedule here in the coming weeks, be sure to at least take note of this one.

You've got to love opening weekend. Three televised games on Friday, scads on Saturday, four on Sunday and two on Monday. Ahh, the first weekend of the year....the only time a network can put Duke/East Carolina on cable TV at noon on a Saturday and pull the late summer football-starved crowd into watching the entire game. I love it.

Hate the Average, not the game

I've always had a little bit of an issue with the way defensive units are usually evaluated and ranked in terms of passing defense and rushing defense. While identifying the best team in each category is certainly a noble cause, and useful when breaking down matchups, the use of yards per game in either of those categories is quite a poor barometer of a teams success using or against the pass or the rush.

Remember the mid to late 1990s WAC? I'm talking even pre-ESPN2 10:00 p.m. Saturday night games featuring Pam Ward. It wasn't unusual to see 100 combined points and 5 hours of play in the intra-conference games. Quarterbacks like Josh Wallwork (Wyoming), Jon Denton (UNLV), Billy Blanton (SDSU) and Steve Sarkisian (BYU) were at the top of the NCAA Total Offense list, but no one had heard of any of them, and most still haven't. The defenses were flat out horrible, yet it wasn't impossible to give up 42 points in a game and only 130 rushing yards, which would have landed a team near the top 25 rushing defenses in the country.

The problem? The variable of rushing or passes attempts per game completely invalidates the use of the yds. per game statistic in terms of evaluating team units against the run and the pass. I'm not sure why the media, schools or whomever is in charge of affecting statistic usage trends, haven't began using the statistic of using yards per carry or per pass. The only place this average is really used widely is in evaluating individual offensive skill players. It only makes sense to extend it to team defense, given the fact that the colege football world can be regionalized when it comes to passing/rushing frequencies.

While one could make the same argument for team offenses, I think the ypg and ypc/ypa stats both have a place when it comes to that side of the ball.

An example of the defensive evaluation problem:

Last year, Boise St. had the #10 rushing defense in the nation according to the ypg method. Although the WAC isn't as singleminded about passing as it once was, Boise St. still saw fewer rushing attempts than all but one team in the nation (only Cal saw less). As we saw in the Liberty Bowl, once the Broncos saw a strong (and frequent) running team, they weren't able to put up the great per-game numbers.

If we considered YPC numbers when calculating the Rushing Defense numbers, Boise St. moves from #10 in the nation to #33.

So whenever I refer to defensive rushing/passing unit rankings here, I'll be using the ypc/ypa method.

Just for fun, here are the teams that were most inaccurately classified last year, for better or for worse, thanks to the use of an innacurate measuring stick (2004 ypg rank indicated):

2004 Rushing Defense

Overrated
Boise St. (#10)
South Carolina (#43)

Underrated
Miami (#67)
Clemson (#41)


2004 Passing Defense

Overrated
San Jose St. (#18)
Mississippi St. (#11)

Underrated
Iowa (#39)
Ohio St. (#41)

Weekly Roundup

Sonny Lubick doesn't like the fact that his team is going to face Air Force on an ESPN Thursday night game, and the Mountain West doesn't like the fact that Lubick told everyone he doesn't like it. Got it?

Temple has joined the MAC effective 2007, although they will be quasi-members this year as they've scheduled nearly half their games against MAC opponents.

SI's Stuart Mandel didn't rank Texas A & M, Oregon or Alabama in his post-Spring top 25, but he admits he may regret that decision later.

In Mandel's mailbag, he gets into what I call the "Adonis Jordan" rule. Adonis Jordan was a point guard at Kansas in the early nineties, and my friends and I could have sworn that he started for the Jayhawks for 9 years. Those guys are all over College Sports. Some recent examples in football include Chris Rix, Arnaz Battle, Vince Carter (OU Center), and many others. Here's Mandel's list of "11th year seniors"

-Fresno St. QB Paul Pinegar (he's been starting since the David Carr year)

-Texas DL Rodrique Wright (remember in about 1995 when Texas had that 30-something year old posing as a college football player? I think this guy and Larry Dibbles are doing this again)

-Washington St. LB Will Dierting (he's still mad he wasn't able to stop Brian Greise in the 97 Rose Bowl)

-Oregon QB Kellen Clemmons (I honestly think he played alongside Joey Harringon for a while)

-Penn St. QB Michael Robinson (not only has he been there for 8 years, he's played a different position each year)

No goal unattainable in the Big XII North

Could it be that 5, or even all 6 teams in the Big XII North can look ahead to 2005 with a legit shot of taking the division crown? With the arguable exception of Kansas, every team in the North has a realistic goal of travelling to Houston to represent the division on December 3rd (be sure to note the Big XII CCG lost its prime time spot to the new ACC title game, so the Big XII game will kickoff at 12 p.m. CST--don't plan any Christmas shopping trips that day).

Iowa State was a gimme Field Goal away from the CCG last year and the Clones return a lot of the ingredients to their 2004 success including Todd Blythe and Bret Meyer, not to mention 8 of 11 starters on defense. In fact, they may be the trendy pick this summer.

Kansas State loses Darren Sproles, but returns its two headed quarterback in addition to the best linebacking corps in the North. Despite the 4-7 record last year, most of the losses were decided on a few plays, and they weren't completely dominated very often (save the last game of the year when they mailed it in against Iowa State in the second half).

Colorado has Joel Klatt back for what already seems like his 8th year and they are defending champs. If Gary Barnett was able to put together a championship last year amidst all that was going on, its far from a stretch to believe that he could do it again. For the first time in a long time they'll be heading into the season without a real battle-tested RB, so that may hinder their ground attack.

Missouri still has Brad Smith, and even though Gary Pinkel almost lost his job for what many thought was his misutilization of the star quarterback, having an experienced Smith puts Missouri in the race, despite a Defense agape with holes. Don't believe it? Go back and watch a tape of Mizzou/Texas Tech from 2003. Smith can take a game over even if his defense doesn't make a stop if given the opporunity.

Nebraska is as unpredicatble as possible. Last year they ran a new offense with a quarterback who was not right for the system. This year, they've supposedly got their man in Zac Taylor, and its conceivable that eliminating, say, 25 turnovers this year would give their record a 2-game swing, which would have been enough, even last year.

Kansas looked very tough at times last year (almost took out a future Rose Bowl Champ Texas, despite the Longhorns were playing for a BCS berth). Adam Barmann should take the reigns back, and he showed a ton of promise in 2003. Kansas probably isn't a real threat to win the division, although a year ago, neither was Iowa State.

There's almost no way you can rule any team coming into tihs season which makes this division more unique than any other Conference Division in the country. Of the conferences that have divided into regional divisions, none can boast (if boasting would be appropriate for this) 6 teams that come into the season as legitimate division championship teams:

Consider that the following teams, with no realistic chance to win their division, exist in the other divisionalized conferences:

Big XII South: Baylor, Oklahoma State
ACC Atlantic: Wake Forest, Clemson
ACC Coastal: Duke, North Carolina
SEC East: Kentucky, Vanderbilt
SEC West: Ole Miss, Mississippi St.
C-USA East: East Carolina, UCF
C-USA West: Tulane, SMU
MAC East: Ohio, Kent St.
MAC West: Western Michigan, Ball St.

I'll bet you dollars to donuts none of the teams on those lists even sniffs their respective CCG. I won't make the same bet about any team in the Big XII North.

Another one bites the dust...

Joining the likes of Nebraska, Notre Dame, BYU, USC and several other tradition-laden schools in the last five years, Michigan has decided to tweak its uniforms that had gone seemingly unchanged as long as most of us can remember.

Some other changes to look for this year.:


-Pittsburgh is back to "Pitt" on their logos and helmets. The colors and the scheme look very similar to last year's, though.

-BYU, mentioned above, was one of the first schools with what I would call "traditional uniforms" to make a complete overhaul. Well, I'm happy to report that they'll go back to the old Royal Blue and White uniforms worn by Ty Detmer, Robbie Bosco and Steve Young but not by Luke Staley and Brandon Doman. Whenever our kids look at the highlights of that magical 2001 season that ended in humiliation in Honolulu and Memphis, they'll ask "Daddy--were those some sort of futurisitic throw-ahead uniform as part of a promotion?" No son, those were just the ugliest uniforms (outside of Eugene, Oregon) that we tolerated during the early 2000s.

-Cincinatti's helmet will change ever so slightly. It appears that the graphic designer in charge of brainstorming toward something fresh came up with the remarkable idea of highlighting the old logo on his computer and pressing CTRL-I....and magic! A new, italicized, Bearcat logo. The licensing money will be rolling in, even if Gino Guidugli isn't coming back for his 9th year on campus.

-In a move no one but insomniacs will notice, Hawaii has switched from Green to Silver helmets as they try to incorporate silver--apparently they were told that "the rainbow" doesn't count as a secondary color.


In honor of the changes, a few lists.

Top 5 "Traditional" Uniforms (even if they have been tweaked):

1. UCLA
2. Nebraska
3. Notre Dame
4. Penn St.
5. Michigan

Top 5 "Non-Traditional" Uniforms (not that these schools don't have tradition, but these uniforms don't go back 50 years).

1. Virginia
2. Colorado St.
3. San Diego St.
4. Utah St.
5. UCONN


Worst Uniforms in the game:

1. Oregon
2. Rutgers
3. Maryland
4. Vanderbilt
5. Kansas St.