Texas wins, but defense proves its gaudy statistics are due to joke schedule. Team’s #3 ranking due purely to preseason ranking. TCU better.
Texas wins, but defense proves its gaudy statistics are due to joke schedule. Team’s #3 ranking due purely to preseason ranking. TCU better.
You need to understand that the Texas/Texas A&M game played at Kyle Field is an incredibly hostile environment, and the aggies focus on this one game for the entire year. Their school song is about winning this one particular game (sawing bevo’s horns off). Those guys are nuts in their UT hatred, and always give Texas an incredible amount of hell when we go into their stadium.
Or, in more science speak, your chosen data point is abberation not trend. 🙂
I get the whole rivalry-game thing, really I do. Like how a bad UCLA team somehow derailed USC’s would-be national championship in 2006. But the fact is, Texas hasn’t really proven anything all season, yet has been lauded for their supposedly awesome defense… and that defense looked truly hapless tonight. I don’t care how motivated A&M is; an elite defense (like, say, just to pick an example at random, TCU’s) would have found ways to stop them more often than Texas did tonight, rivalry or no rivalry.
It would be different if there were other, better data points to contradict this one, but so far as I can tell, Texas has earned its defensive reputation by looking good against a pathetically horrible non-conference schedule and a seriously down Big 12 (not the Longhorns’ fault, obviously, but still the reality). Now they play a team with a pulse (not because of inherent talent, but because of the rivalry) and suddenly they look like crap. I can’t dismiss that out of hand.
I disagree Brendan, Oklahoma State is 9-2, and Texas held them to 14, they haven’t scored less than 24 in any of their other games, usually more than that (excluding the loss to Texas, they are averaging 35 points per game). Its not unreasonable to believe based on their dominant performances against weak teams AND a strong game against OK State.
Now i’m not saying that makes them better than TCU or anything, but there is at least SOME evidence that they deserved that reputation up til this point.
Of course I don’t think ANY of the top 3 would be where they are right now if they hadn’t started there.
Good point, I forgot about Okie State.
I still think TCU is better. 🙂 But I’m a mid-major homer.
Partly joke schedule, partly lack of competition.
I’d like to think Nebraska is a threat in the Big 12 title game, but that would require it to score more than 20 points. Barring a couple defensive scores, I don’t see that happening.
Oh well. Enjoy third place, TCU.
I still think you are underestimating how crazy Kyle field is for a Texas/Texas A&M game. TCU has never seen anything like that environment. It is truly otherworldly.
I can’t deny the claims that overall, Texas’s strength of schedule is weaker than some of the other undefeated teams. As you noted not really Texas’s fault that Big 12 is weak this year (they were monstrous last year), and Texas’s “cupcake” out-of-conference games are the regular season games for teams like TCU/Boise/Cincinatti. And Texas didn’t play any I-AA teams this year. Texas has been clobbering these weaker teams with a big margin of victory, and that margin would have been far larger if Mack Brown didn’t pull Colt in the 3rd quarter each game. So I think Texas did about as good as it could do with the schedule it had.
The hard-core rivarly games of UT/OU and UT/A&M were the only two close games this year for Texas. TCU will impress me once it establishes its program enough to have a rivarly game in the first place. But until then, it doesn’t get to experience challenges like that, so I don’t think it has had any games that can compare.
I like TCU though, so I hope Florida and Alabama both choke in the stretch and let TCU in the back-door that way!!!