Sunday, September 25, 2011

The Guru's BlogPoll (Week 4)

The Guru's BlogPoll ballot, with notes below:

* Yes, you read that right, LSU is my new No. 1 team. Despite the fact that I have picked Oklahoma since the end of last season, I cannot ignore the Bayou Tigers' superior resume. In three of its first four games, LSU has defeated two ranked teams and an SEC foe. And the Tigers' two big wins - over Oregon and West Virginia - were both punctuated with impressive fourth quarters while neither was played at Tiger Stadium.

* No. 2 OU and No. 3 Boise State actually now have a common opponent. Both teams walloped Tulsa at home. Alabama has been impressive, but lacks a signature win (please, don't bring up Penn State), so it stays at No. 4.

* At this point in the season, there is no reason to keep a 2-loss team in the rankings, no matter whom it has played. That's why Florida State is out. The bunch of 1-loss teams on the bottom are ranked based on actual head-to-head results: Arizona State beat USC, and USC beat Utah.

* New teams that made the ballot this week: Georgia Tech, Baylor, Arizona State.

* Conference-by-conference tally: Pac-12 (5), Big 12 (5), SEC (4), Big Ten (4), ACC (3), Big East (2), MWC (1), C-USA (1).
Posted by Samuel Chi at 11:24 PM 2 comments
Labels: , , , , ,

Sunday, September 18, 2011

The Guru's BlogPoll (Week 3)


* Not a whole lot of changes this week. Oklahoma merely confirmed its supremacy with a solid victory in Tallahassee over a game Florida State team. The rest, as has been the norm so far this season, was pretty ho-hum.

* Each of the four teams that were dropped from the ballot this week got exposed in nonconference road games. When the competition is pretty even, home field advantage is still immense in college football. The Guru would have liked to keep them on the ballot, just as a reward for at least making an effort on the schedule, but at the moment there just isn't room.

* The only teams with a loss that are on the ballot: Oregon (lost to No. 2 LSU), Florida State (lost to No. 1 Oklahoma) and Utah (lost to No. 18 USC).

* New teams that made the ballot this week: Clemson, Illinois, Utah, Texas.

* Conference-by-conference tally: SEC (5), Pac-12 (5), Big Ten (4), Big 12 (4), ACC (3), Big East (2), MWC (1), C-USA (1).
Posted by Samuel Chi at 4:14 PM 0 comments
Labels: , , , ,

Saturday, September 17, 2011

All Eyes Are Upon Texas

The Big 12 Conference at the moment shares much resemblance with the Holy Roman Empire in its dying days. It's neither Big, nor 12, and pretty soon, it might not be a conference anymore.
Blame that on the Longhorn Network.

The University of Texas' fledgling television network is reason No. 1 for all the current upheaval in college football. As a result, the expansions by the Big Ten and Pac-12 last year are merely a prelude to a much bigger revolution to come.

Chafing at the founding of the Longhorn Network and the preferential treatment Texas would be getting in the new, weakened Big 12, Texas A&M finally had had enough and decided to leave the conference, at any cost. Oklahoma, equally not amused, will soon make its westward haul and land in the Pac-12 (14?), taking Oklahoma State with it.

With Pitt and Syracuse officially moving to the ACC, Texas' only other safety chute has been effectively closed. Now the Longhorns are faced with two choices, and what they decide to do will finally complete the realignment frenzy, perhaps for the foreseeable future.

Texas' contract with ESPN stipulates that the Longhorn Network may only be disbanded if Texas leaves the Big 12, meaning that Texas cannot "save" the Big 12 in its current state. UT and OU can still save their rivalry - but only as fellow members of the Pac-16, with the Longhorn Network aborted in its infancy.

So the fork in the road is at hand for Texas. What it decides will bring down the rest of the dominoes.

If it chooses to go Route 1, keeping the Longhorn Network in a reconstituted Big 12, this is how the new conferences most likely would shape up:
  • Big 12 - Bring the old Southwest Conference band back together, replacing A&M, OU and OSU with TCU, SMU and BYU, and possibly adding Houston and Tulsa to round it back up to 12
  • Pac-14 - Add OU and OSU
  • Big Ten - Do nothing
  • SEC - Add West Virginia and Texas A&M
  • ACC - Add Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Rutgers and UConn to become the only 16-team conference
  • Big East - Add Central Florida, Memphis, East Carolina, Temple and have Villanova move up to D-IA to form a eight-team conference
In this scenario, the Big 12 may barely have enough juice to preserve its automatic bid in the BCS. The Big East likely would lose its, leaving just five auto-bid conferences.

Or, Texas may decide to junk the Longhorn Network and cut its losses, joining OU and OSU a year after Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott made his ambitious powerplay:
  • Big 12 - Effectively disintegrates, with each member fleeing to a new conference
  • Pac-16 - Take OU, OSU, Texas and Texas Tech
  • Big Ten - Add Notre Dame and Kansas
  • SEC - Take Missouri and Florida State, in addition to Texas A&M and West Virginia
  • ACC - Add Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Rutgers, UConn and South Florida to form a 16-team conference
  • Big East - Add Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas State and keep TCU, plus Central Florida and Villanova to have eight teams, though now much more oriented toward the Midwest than the East
In this scenario, there will be also just five BCS conferences: three with 16 members (Pac-16, SEC and ACC) and one with 14 members (Big Ten). If this should occur, we might be done with realignment for quite awhile.

(And this is making your head spin, check out our helpful Conference Affiliation spreadsheet)

So it's all up to Texas and what will it do? The guess here is that the Longhorns will abandon their eponymous network to accept a membership in the Pac-16. The TV venture so far has been a disaster, with prep games barred from being shown on it and few cable/satellite operators willing to take it on. When DirecTV openly questioned whether two UT football games constitutes "a network," the message seemed to be loud and clear.

Maybe they can show "A Bridge Too Far" on the night the Longhorn Network bids its farewell.
Posted by Samuel Chi at 11:18 PM 5 comments
Labels: , , , , , ,

Sunday, September 11, 2011

The Guru's BlogPoll (Week 2)

The Guru's BlogPoll Ballot, with notes below:

* The Guru's ballot this week is fairly static, a reflection of the disease afflicting college football these days. The competitive nonconference games seem to be the phenomenon of years gone by, the void being filled by what Gene Murphy used to call the "Body Bag Games," big paydays for small schools so they could be slaughtered by big school in front of their overhydrated fans.

* The only game pitting two teams in the AP Top 25 this past weekend was No. 2 Alabama's visit to No. 23 Penn State. But even that was a stretch. Everybody knew that this was a mismatch and Penn State was grossly overrated. Two of the day's three most exciting affairs were conference games (Mississippi State at Auburn; Utah at USC) and the other was Notre Dame at Michigan ...

* Speaking of Michigan-Notre Dame, while the game was witnessed by the largest audience in college football history and had a classic finish, they don't mask the fact that these two programs (the two winningest in history by percentage) are mediocre outfits living off their brand names to sell hundreds of thousands of tickets. As one disgusted Irish poster noted, it was a glorified MAC matchup. But that was the "best" we got all weekend.

* The only way to deal with this scheduling malaise is expanding the BCS "playoff" to more than two teams, so one loss doesn't kill your chances of winning the national championship and that winning the conference still means something beyond a bowl berth. But until we have meaningful reform with the BCS, expect more of Florida State 62, Charleston Southern 10.

* We did learn something from the USC-Utah game: If you are a betting man, don't tear up your slip until you're absolutely, positively the final score is really the final score.

* New teams that made the ballot this week: Auburn, Arizona State and California.

* Conference-by-conference tally: SEC (6), Big Ten (5), Pac-12 (5), Big 12 (3), Big East (2), ACC (2), MWC (1), C-USA (1).
Posted by Samuel Chi at 1:31 PM 2 comments
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Guru's BlogPoll (Week 1)

The Guru's BlogPoll ballot, with a few notes below:


* As usual, the Guru's early season ballots have a lot of upheaval because I want to let the games decide teams' placements, not preseason hype. That's why you see teams dropping even after victories and being punished for playing I-AA teams.

* The teams that made the biggest impressions during the opening week are obviously LSU and Boise State. Both teams thoroughly dominated on neutral fields (in Boise's case, really an away game) and closed out the games in impressive fashion.

* The rest of the top-ranked teams all played the usual cupcakes and won as expected. This is by far the most disturbing trend in college football - bodybag games early in the season for nearly all the contenders. Fans complain about the NFL's preseason, but at least in pro football, once the real season starts, the competition is real. In college, the entire month of September is like the preseason.

* Chip Kelly can run up the score with the best of 'em, but when it comes to a really big game, his Ducks go into a shell. Outside of the Pac-10, which he admittedly has dominated, his record in high-profile matchups is now 0-4: Lost to Boise State in 2009 opener, lost to Ohio State in 2010 Rose Bowl, lost to Auburn in 2011 BCS title game and now the season opener to LSU. The common thread in those losses: Oregon seemed ill-prepared and got ravaged by turnovers. The culprit? Coaching.

* New teams that made the ballot this week: Mississippi State, South Florida and Houston.

* Conference-by-conference tally: SEC (7), Big Ten (5), Pac-12 (4), Big 12 (3), Big East (2), ACC (2), MWC (1), C-USA (1).
Posted by Samuel Chi at 8:05 AM 3 comments
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Google