RT @MichaelRueckert: Colin Cowherd just said that he has sources confirming that Utah & Colorado to the Pac-10 is a done deal.
RT @MichaelRueckert: Colin Cowherd just said that he has sources confirming that Utah & Colorado to the Pac-10 is a done deal.
I didn’t hear this first-hand, but message-board chatter had two points:
1. Cowherd’s “sources” was Ted Miller’s Pac-10 blog on ESPN.com.
2. The Pac-10 can’t do anything until the Big Ten acts.
Ted Miller’s Pac-10 blog doesn’t seem to be saying it’s a done deal.
I’d love to see this plus four more schools, preferably Texas, Texas A&M and a couple others (Texas Tech? Nebraska?) etc. That creates a nice East/West split:
Washingtons, Oregons, Californias in the West (8 teams)
Arizona’s, Utah, Texas’s, Colorado, etc. in the East (8 teams)
Arizona schools lose their annual games in LA for recruiting, but gain the Texas area.
12 game season you’d get 7 division games, 1-2 cross division games, 3-4 non-conference games.
As a further ripple effect with the Big Ten presumeably gaining Missouri, you could see a consolidation of the Big 12, WAC and Mountain West into two conferences.
And by “done deal” he means the kick-off to a flurry of wild, baseless, and misinformed speculation.
Utah won’t go to the Pac-10 because that will mean they won’t ever get to a BCS bowl game again. If that guy from CU didn’t die back in the late 80s, nobody would even know Colorado has a football team.
“Utah won’t go to the Pac-10 because that will mean they won’t ever get to a BCS bowl game again”
Just when I think you can’t get any dumber…how does being a member of an auto-qualifying conference mean they WON’T make it to a BCS bowl game again? I’d say it gives them alot better odds, especially given USC’s step back in dominance the past couple seasons.
“If that guy from CU didn’t die back in the late 80s, nobody would even know Colorado has a football team.”
CU won the national championship in 1990. Sandy, perhaps you shouldn’t talk about college football.
Yeah, as a Nebraska fan I’m obligated to hate Colorado, but they had some very good teams in the late 80s and early 90s, a Heisman winner in 1994 and a surprise run to the top of the polls in 2001.
I do not recognize CU’s 1990 national championship because of the 5th down 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Down_Game_%281990%29
The 2008 Utah Utes had a splashy non-power conference BCS win when they knocked off arguably-dispirited Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
If you follow the Wikipedia link, you’ll note that those mighty Utes had to come from well behind to squeak past the other good team in the MWC, TCU. They also trailed at halftime to mediocre Air Force, and were spared defeat against the admittedly-awful New Mexico Lobos thanks to their top-flight P/K, Louie Sakoda.
I found it odd to read your comment, David, that Sandy was “dumb” for thinking teams like the ’08 Utes would find it more difficult to make it through the Pac-10/12 undefeated than the MWC undefeated, since – well, since, I kind of had the same reaction, but I was coming from an east-of-the-Mississippi, Pac-10-sucks kind of mentality, and I thought you were one of these guys who was trying to promote the Pac-10 as comparable to the SEC? The Pac-10 is no better than the MWC? Is the MWC also as good as the SEC?
I never was that upset about that 5th down because the QB spiked it on 4th down only because he saw that the down marker was set at 3rd down (by mistake). If the down marker was right, they would have run a different play, and could just have easily gotten the touchdown anyway.
But the truth is that Colorado has had a long stretch of sub-par teams. And they have poor attendence and support from the student body. And they have had race relation problems, mainly because Boulder is about as white as a town can get. I lived in Boulder for most of the 90’s, and I can attest that Boulder is NOT a football-town. Probably the least support for a team in all of the Big-12 (not sure about Baylor). The Big-12 will survive without them.
Jazz, while I don’t agree with David that Sandy’s comment about Utah is “dumb” (this time), you’ve also got it wrong. The question isn’t whether “teams like the ‘08 Utes would find it more difficult to make it through the Pac-10/12 undefeated than the MWC undefeated.” The question is whether they would find it more difficult to win the Pac-10/12 championship than to go through their current schedule, including MWC play and non-conference play, undefeated… and, in the process, finish ahead of any other undefeated non-BCS teams that might be out there.
Because, of course, if you’re in the Pac-10/12, you don’t have to go undefeated to make a BCS bowl. You just have to win your conference, which can sometimes be done with 2 or 3 losses in conference play (and, hell, you could go 0-3 or 0-4 in non-conference play; doesn’t matter). Whereas, in a non-BCS conference, in addition to winning your conference, you almost certainly have to go undefeated across your entire schedule (although, one of these years, a one-loss team will make it — perhaps even this year, if Boise and TCU lose early and then win out, and nobody else goes undefeated), and then you also have to hope there are no other competitors for the “BCS buster” spot (unless you’re Boise ’09-10, and you manage to sneak in as the second “buster” because every other moderately attractive BCS at-large candidate chokes at the end of the season).
Point taken about the distinction between “undefeated” and “winning your conference”. Undefeated is almost certainly the criteria for a non-AQ school to make the BCS, while as you note, the Pac-10 champ merely needs to win their conference.
That said, a school such as 2008 Utah, which wins games ugly against awful teams thanks to a highly successful punter…they ain’t even thinking about winning the Pac-10.
Unless the Pac-10 really sucks.
Jazz, presumeably they could also increase their level of talent with the draw of being in the Pac10 vs. the Mountain West. Regularly playing schools like USC, Oregon, Washington (or in my scenario Texas, Oklahoma) helps recruiting too. They have allready shown with what they have they can build a pretty succesful program, but being part of a major conference would give them the potential for a boost as well. Could they win year in and year out? Doubtful, but the Pac-10 has at times allowed for a great deal of parity because enough teams were good that every team had 1-2 losses at the top.
If you want to draw from my statements a belief that the Pac-10 really sucks, well you are free to do so, but you are doing so based on your interpretation of my words, not what I’m actually saying. The Pac-10 regularly schedules plays and beats other top teams. They aren’t the best every year but they are usually in the top 2-3 conferences, and would be ranked higher if the SEC got off their lazy ass and did some serious scheduling such that you could see that they are usually a tad inflated.
David,
I know you don’t think the Pac-10 is inferior to the SEC. I was merely pulling your chain because that conclusion likely follows from refuting Sandy’s argument that Utah would more likely get to the BCS via the Mountain West than the Pac-10. I actually think you would agree with Sandy’s point when you think about it some more.
After all, Utah is a football program that achieved its greatest glory two years ago with a #2 ranking following a Sugar Bowl win over dejected Alabama. That Utah team was just barely better than 4-8 New Mexico, with the difference essentially being Utah’s good punter. Surely “just barely better than New Mexico” won’t cut it in the Pac-10.
You’re right that Utah might get better in the Pac-10, spend more money, etc. But from where they are right now, they can ride squeaker victories over New Mexico to a #2 ranking – that sort of thing may not happen often out of the MWC, but by all accounts it will happen exactly never in the Pac 10.
Which is more or less Sandy’s point.
Jazz,
This line of reasoning isn’t the open-and-shut case you seem to think it is. If a team has a pattern of playing overly close games against vastly inferior opponents, a la Hawaii 2007, that’s one thing. But a game here or there that’s closer than it should be is not automatically proof positive that the team in question sucks. Top-level BCS conference teams do the same thing all the time. It’s called playing down to the level of the competition. Granted, the bad Mountain West teams are worse than the bad SEC or Big 12 or Pac-10 teams, but the concept is the same: you’re playing a team you have no business letting within 30 points, you underperform, you win by a small margin, you lose style points, but you get the “W.” Again, unless it’s a pattern, it really doesn’t damn a team or prove how overrated they are.
Moreover, the constant repetition of the phrase “win over dejected Alabama,” or words that effect, is grating. Those sorts of excuses are only ever made to explain away wins by teams like Utah. If a Pac-10 or Big 12 team had beaten Bama in that Sugar Bowl, nobody would be talking about how “dejected” Alabama was. But when it’s a non-BCS team that’s getting the win, all of a sudden it’s necessary to come up with some bullshit explanation that diminishes the victory. Nobody looks at the SEC’s four consecutive national championships and recites that the victories came against two overrated Ohio State teams, an Oklahoma squad that probably wasn’t even the best team in its division, and a Texas team that lost its Heisman-winning QB early in the first half. People remember those facts if you quiz them about the specific games, but when it comes to the overall picture, they forget them, and instead uncritically learn the lesson that the SEC is WAR. But the equivalent lesson we should be learning about teams like Utah and Boise — that yes, actually, they really can beat the big boys, they’ve proven it time and again, etc. — somehow has to compete with phrases like “dejected Alabama” in a way that you never see in a big-time, big-names-on-the-jerseys matchups. The double standard is irritating.
But a game here or there that’s closer than it should be is not automatically proof positive that the team in question sucks
In 2009, Boise State was a darling early national champion pick for some pundits. Then they almost played down to the level of I-AA UC-Davis, in addition to a few other questionable games, and that, as they say, was that. You no doubt recall that when Boise reached a heady #5 at the outset of the season, Stewart Mandel threatened the credibility of the sports world should Boise be jumped, then UC-Davis happened, and Boise was jumped – by Cincy and TCU – and Mandel backed off, with no one (including here) calling him on it, because, honestly, everyone understood why Boise got jumped in the queue after the UC-Davis game (in addition to a few other questionable efforts).
Your observation that all teams play down to their opponents papers over the fact that not all opponents are created equal. Utah needed a 4th quarter goal line stand to defeat the very bad New Mexico Lobos, whose final 2008 BCS ranking was probably (probably = nowhere to look it up without risking a nasty virus) somewhere in the ballpark of those Sun Belt patsies Florida routinely beats up on. I got heady props on this blog for pointing out that Florida schedules such patsies because they are reliably impressive wins; if Florida ever struggled mightily with a North Texas the way Utah did with New Mexico, it is a foregone conclusion that you, me, David, many others would rightly say that Florida sucked. Speaking of double standards, giving Utah a pass for such efforts on the basis of “playing down to the competition” seems like one, though in fairness double standards benefiting little guys are less odious than those benefiting giants.
Now wrt that Sugar Bowl: I grant the point that the opponents of those four SEC national champions may not have been best suited to give the SEC team the best game; particularly where a couple of USC teams might have done a better job of it. However bad those Ohio State teams were, they were still playing for a championship, they had a month to prepare for said championship, and so they undoubtedly gave, or intended to give, their best Ohio State effort in those games, however humble that may ultimately have been.
By contrast, Alabama was undefeated and playing Florida in a national semifinal the month prior to their Sugar Bowl loss to Utah. Maybe they weren’t dejected, per se, but it simply beggars belief that the same Alabama team would have showed up for Utah had the Crimson Tide defeated Florida a month earlier. You can make the argument that Alabama was just as up for the Sugar Bowl, having previously lost their shot at the national championship, as they would have been for the national championship, and I suppose I have no way of proving it either way, but I suspect you will quickly lose any credibility as a sports analyst if you attempt to push the “Utah game is just as good as a national championship game” meme too far.
As I was thinking about this conversation today, it occurred to me that one of the real contributions of Kyle Whelliston is his talking of the red line in the context of money and infrastructure. Teams above the red line spend a lot on their basketball programs; teams below the red line don’t, and if those below the red line would compete with the ones above, they need to overcome the infrastructure disadvantage. Props to Kyle for reminding us of this fact; it seems to me that this is even more important in the world of NCAA football than in NCAA basketball.
So while Alabama, coming off a devastating loss to Florida in the national semifinal, may indeed have given their best Crimson Tide effort against Utah in the Sugar Bowl, and games like Utah’s New Mexico in ’08 (or Boise’s UC-Davis in ’09) may not diminish their “best-in-the-land” status (the way Florida would never be penalized for beating Troy 10-7?). Perhaps the bar for competing in the Pac-10 is not significantly higher than the Mountain West. For me, I’d rather take a Whellistonian view of the world: the bar for the little guys is quite high in large part because they don’t have as much. The romance of their rising up with less is in large part borne of the near-impossibility of such things occurring, and the constant tragedy that they just never do.
Having written all of the above, holy crap if I didn’t just have a huge a-ha moment wrt why there’s no playoff in D1 football. First of all, to Sandy’s original argument, that Utah has an easier road to the BCS via the Mountain West than the Pac-10, I think we’re all in agreement. David is the only dissenter, though in #12 above he agreed that Utah would have to raise their level to win the Pac-10, which I suppose may be tantamount to saying that the Mountain West is an easier road to the BCS than the Pac-10.
Utah in 2008, Boise State in 2009 – midmajor schools with memorable Top 5 finishes, in spite of multiple games along the way (e.g. New Mexico, UC-Davis) that would simply never happen to their mates in the Top 5. We will almost certainly never see a Florida game against a New Mexico or UC-Davis that was as close as the Utah/Boise State versions.
Echoing Whelliston, this is in large part due to the fact that Florida has invested more heavily than Boise or Utah in a football infrastructure putting greater distance between themselves and the New Mexicos or UC-Davises. Florida’s winning margin in those types of games is at least 5 touchdowns greater because, put simply, Florida has spent a lot more money to be a lot “better” than Utah or Boise State.
But here’s the rub: sometimes Hayward’s shot goes in. Some years, Boise State will find itself in an 8-team playoff and, in round one, they’ll do a memorable hook-and-ladder, in round two, a statue of liberty, and in the championship, who knows what Chris Petersen would come up with, but we sure as hell would never forget it. And the fortunes (figuratively and literally) of Boise State would never be the same.
Therefore, the problem with the 8-team playoff in D-1 is this: while Utah is objectively worse than Florida as measured by their distance beyond New Mexico in October, Utah could still win that playoff. Since Utah is worse than Florida as a result of much less money invested in their program, it therefore behooves Florida to prevent Utah from reaping the financial reward of a championship without having invested behind it (the way Florida has).
This isn’t even as simple as greed or whatever, Florida has a gigantic D1 sports infrastructure that is to a large extent supported by the profits generated by their football team; the Utahs of the world don’t have the rest of their campus’ athletic programs relying on them in the same way. So while light-spending conferences split their occasional BCS stake (or last year, 2 of them), at the end of the day the AQ conferences want to keep those little guys out of the big windfalls that comes from being a champion. Cause those little guys are worse, but they might emerge champions anyway.
So returning once more to Whelliston, there are exceptions to the red line, schools such as Gonzaga or Xavier, who are in below-the-red-line conferences (well, maybe not Xavier), but spend as if they are power conference programs. Where does that money come from? A couple of well-placed elite eight runs. Maybe those teams weren’t ‘good’ enough for their great Elite Eight games, but they happened, as did Butler’s run this year, and so the Bulldogs will reap the rewards. (Aside – this is also the reason why the NCAA tourney is talking of expanding to 96 teams. Too much financial upside from the exposure; too many mediocre power conference schools, e.g. Seton Hall, who want in on that action).
In summary, it will be interesting to see if the powers that be really allow a Boise State to crash the party and make it to the national championship in January 2011. For while Boise State may have earned it on the field, based on their exploits and those of everyone else, from the perspective of the other AQ schools, Boise State will not have earned it based on what they invested. Interesting.
Been thinking about this more than I should this morning, and I’m coming around to the following idea: the “transitive property” in sports works to the extent that you’re talking about financial-related issues, but it breaks down when considerations unrelated to finances come up.
Here’s an example: at the open of the 2009-10 hoops season, humble Horizon member Detroit Mercy travelled west to get throttled by the Cal Golden Bears, 95-61. At the end of the season, those same Cal Golden Bears lost to Duke by 15 in the round of 32 of the NCAA tournament. In between, Detroit Mercy lost by 2 in OT to Butler.
By the logic of the transitive property, if Cal is 34 points better than Detroit Mercy, and Duke is 15 points better than Cal, and Butler is only a basket better than Detroit Mercy, than Duke must be at least 40-50 better than Butler – and if Butler’s key players brick almost everything in their game, then one might expect things to be even worse for Butler against Duke.
I didn’t watch the Cal-Detroit Mercy game. Did anyone? The recap says Detroit Mercy hung with Cal for a while, until Cal’s superior talent ultimately overwhelmed Detroit. Maybe the klieglights were also too bright. Whatever the reason, Detroit simply wasn’t good enough to stay with Cal, and those reasons were probably related to money (superior players, superior facilities, superior fan support, etc).
The big money differential is not at play to the same extent in a Butler-Detroit Mercy matchup. Butler doesn’t have significantly nicer facilities, generally only has marginally more coveted players, and no real aura to intimidate the Titans the way Cal likely would. So money sets Cal apart from Detroit Mercy, doesn’t seem to set Butler apart from Detroit Mercy, and given that Duke is even further up the food chain than Cal, it would seem that Butler has no chance against Duke (particularly when Hayward and Veasley shoot so poorly).
So how did Butler almost win that game? Discipline in playing tenacious help defense. Staying in their offensive sets. Etc. All things that require an investment of sweat equity…but not necessarily a lot of money. IOW, give David some non-financial assets in his battle with Goliath, and he may be a lot closer than he seems if his opportunity is evaluated only on money-related criteria.
Finally, back to Utah: by virtue of being barely better than New Mexico, the 2008 Utes look alot worse than Florida, which would have handled New Mexico easily, though like the Butler/Duke comparison, Florida would have overrun New Mexico as a result of superior resources. But would Florida nevertheless defeat Utah in a championship game?
Sometimes Hayward’s shot goes in.
I think “Hayward’s shot” is going to become a standard term used in theoretical college competology.