2011 NCAA Football Thread

manofmystery wrote:   Inconsistent?  I've been arguing for fairness for Boise State for years.  You're just exposing your ignorance in saying that all they are is offense every year.  Just because they aren't in the SEC doesn't mean they take off the defensive downs.  I'd have taken Boise State, as a more complete team, over either of those two jokers in the championship game last year.  And what game did you watch yesterday?  Bama's QB throws balloon passes and LSU doesn't have a pocket passer.  I'd be more than happy to take the over on Boise putting up more points on either of those defenses than either of those teams did last night.    Do you really think putting clearly defenseless teams like Oklahoma State and Sanford ahead of Boise State is fair?  If this all about your love for defense (which it clearly isn't) then surely you'll decry Oklahoma State and Sanford as title contenders.   Also: U mad?

In 2008, Boise beat the following teams:

Idaho State (1-11)
Bowling Green (6-6)
Oregon (9-3)
Louisiana Tech - (7-5)
Southern Miss (6-6)
Hawaii (7-6)
San Jose (6-6)
New Mexico State (3-9)
Utah State (3-9)
Idaho (2-10)
Nevada (7-5)
Fresno State (7-5)

They beat ONE team with 8 or more wins. Five teams with winning records.
Conversely, Florida, the 2008 national champions, beat five teams with 8 or more wins and eight teams with a winning record.


In 2009, Boise beat the following teams:

Oregon (10-2)
Miamo Ohio (1-11)
Fresno State (8-4)
Bowling Green (7-5)
UC Davis (6-5)
Tulsa (5-7)
Hawaii (6-7)
San Jose State (2-10)
Louisiana Tech (4-8)
Idaho (7-5)
Utah State (4-8)
Nevada (8-4)
New Mexico State (3-10)

They beat THREE teams with 8 more more wins. Six teams with winning records.
Conversely, Alabama, the 2009 national champions, beat FOUR teams with 8 or more wins and TEN teams with a winning record.


In 2010, Boise beat the following teams:

Virginia Tech (11-2)
Wyoming (3-9)
Oregon State (5-7)
New Mexico State (2-10)
TOledo (8-4)
San Jose State (1-12)
Lousiana Tech (5-7)
Hawaii (10-3)
Idaho (6-7)
Fresno State (8-4)
Utah State (4-8)

And more importantly they LOST to this team:

Nevada (12-1)

They beat FOUR teams with 8 more more wins. Those were the only four teams with winning records.
Conversely, Auburn, the 2010 national champions, beat SIX teams with 8 or more wins and SEVEN teams with a winning record (and three 6-6 teams).


Sorry, but I don't see any argument that Boise State is on the same level as the recent National Champions. Playing a good team is a rarity for them, whereas it's the norm in the SEC. It's easy to gear up for the ONE or TWO tough games that they have over the entire season when they can rest players and take it easy in the other ELEVEN games. In the SEC, once you start conference play you're more or less going to play 5 or 6 tough games in a row. There's a huge difference there.

It has nothing to do with Boise State's defense. It has to do with their weak schedule. They don't have to work as hard for their wins as teams in the SEC do.




Claiming that Boise is the best team in the country would be like me claiming that I'm the best MMA fighter in the world if I went around challenging high schoolers in MMA fights. Sure, I may face someone that's actually pretty good every now and then, but ultimately I'm going to face a bunch of dudes that are smaller and weaker than me. I wouldn't have near the claim that someone in the UFC would have.

Last years title game was a stinker and I would argue that with more than one undeafed team at the end of the year nothing was settled.  Give us a playoff system and these type of merit complaints would go away.

As an Auburn fan you should be happy the SEC chairman made a phone call to Nick Saban at halftime of the Alabama-Auburn game last year and made it clear they needed a no-win team to come out of the conference.  You don't get completely undressed and dominated for half of a game then come back without something else going on.  Especially not with the passing game (I struggle to call it that) Auburn had last year.  You could actually tell that the Bama defense laid down in that game.  Wasn't even good acting.  Roll Tide was Roll-over Tide.

manofmystery wrote: As an Auburn fan you should be happy the SEC chairman made a phone call to Nick Saban at halftime of the Alabama-Auburn game last year and made it clear they needed a no-win team to come out of the conference.  You don't get completely undressed and dominated for half of a game then come back without something else going on.  Especially not with the passing game (I struggle to call it that) Auburn had last year.  You could actually tell that the Bama defense laid down in that game.  Wasn't even good acting.  Roll Tide was Roll-over Tide.

Eh, sorry but that's complete BS. Auburn was down by a considerable margin half a dozen times last year and we always fought back and won. All the people I was watching the game with even felt like we were still going to win when it was 24-0. We were so used to being down as fans that it didn't phase us, so obviously it didn't phase the team, either.

Alabama's defense clearly did NOT "lay down" at all. That's an absolutely ridiculous assertion. They held Newton to 39 yards rushing and Dyer to 27 yards rushing. Newton only had 217 yards passing.


And as for Auburn's passing offense last year, you act as if it wasn't very good. It was. Newton threw for 2,854 yards, completing 66% of his passes and had 30 TD's to 7 INT's for a final QB rating of 182. The all time best single season QB rating is 186.

There's literally not anything to suggest that anything in your above post has any truth at all to it.

JJLehto wrote: So college football as we know it is unraveling. Any hopes of tradition, and geography, is being jettisoned as quickly as the 16 team super conferences are coming. Seems like one team bolting caused this small ripple, now altering all the conferences. Also what we all always knew, that HS kids are lured to school with favors/money and are paid while at school, has become officially "outed". If anyone thinks only those schools were guilty and only the coaches know....you are retarded Why I dont like to concern myself with such things. All I know is despite it all, Penn State finds ways to pull it out of their ass and stand 8-1 and undefeated in the big ten. Sucks they keep using 2 QBs, one if so obviously better and the offense can never fully develop like this but hey...guess it's tough to knock until you lose

Yeah, it does suck to see it moving to super conferences like this. And I'm sure every major program is paying players; I don't see why college players shouldn't be paid to begin with. They're investing huge amounts of their time and are making their colleges huge dollars. Sure, most of them get scholarships as compensation, but a little salary wouldn't hurt.

I heard the news on the radio today, and went right into work....now I can look into it and it is pretty disturbing that the first word of this was in 1998....and the next year was Sandusky's final before he left to start his camp for kids...

It certainly raises a serious question about if Penn State just kinda swept it under the rug, and if so who exactly knew?
Even if JoePa followed protocol, if he did know exactly what was going on (or even had some idea) should he have pushed to do more? I'll wait for more info to come out but even with Joe removed from it all, this is seriously bad news and Penn State will have it's legacy tainted for a long while, and St Paterno may have it done to him forever...


Edited by JJLehto - November 08 2011 at 02:55

To be fair to Paterno, sometimes alerting the proper authorities is all he's allowed to do. As a teacher I get yelled at if I get more involved with kids' lives. If I have a student getting abused or worse, of course I report it, but then I proceed to do something about it to put an end to it and it usually gets me in trouble.


And yeah, I excluded all bowl games because presumably all the teams in that post faced high caliber opponents in their bowl games anyway.

Boise is a good team, sure, but they don't have a grueling schedule. It's not fair to put them in the same breath as any SEC team IMO because SEC teams have to work way harder to get to the same point. I'd apply that argument against any Big East team, too.

JJLehto wrote: Oh yeah, and also we all remember when Hawaii played Georgia. Maybe I'm wrong but I remember there was a lot of buzz around it, especially as a bit of a litmus test of how one of these small undefeated teams would do against a giant, and they got so amazingly beaten it should've been considered a crime! All I know is I'm very sad, JoePa being the symbol he is seems to be getting too much attention, let's not forget the school obviously had a cover up/rug sweeping of a very major issue, which allowed a terrible man to go on for years...and while I hear what you say, what do you teach? HS or lower? Because of course this what at the college level and it was about a major figure sexually abusing small children. IDK, just a sad day for me knowing this is how the legacy ends. And my school, with a pretty good rep, now has a stink worse than Auburn, USC, Ohio State and so on

Any team can beat any other team on any given day, though. The Hawaii-UGA game is one example, but then you have Utah beating Alabama a few years ago or Boise beating Oklahoma. The key is that these small teams only have to gear up for one or two difficult games a year, whereas the SEC powerhouses usually have three or four top-notch teams to face.


And yeah, I mean Paterno certainly shouldn't be the one taking all the heat here. Like you said, the school is responsible for covering everything up, and they ought to pay dearly for it. I hated hearing about this story.
I teach high school; mostly freshmen.

And yeah, while cheating, paying players, getting money, etc. is all bad (I'll mention here that Auburn was completely cleared by the NCAA's investigation. Mississippi State is the only one found to be involved with wrong doing in connection with Cam Newton's dad), this is a whole new level of terrible...

Yeah, Arkansas is a pretty good team, as Auburn found out earlier this season... I think LSU will hold them to under 24 points, though. LSU's defense is plain good.

Ugh, it's just a downer. I'm not alone, a Penn Stater who works with my mother has been down the last 2 days, and a friend out at St College texted me saying he saw a riot, heading the direction of President Graham Spanier's house...hope nothing happens with this 

Disgusting crime to humanity is what Sandusky did, the school covered it up which is not only horrifying but by saving their ass then NOW we are tainted, a huge shakedown is coming as well as inevitable lawsuits, and a hit in recruiting. Not to mention a shameful end to JoePa's legacy. It's a f**kin mess and weird I've never felt pride for many things, especially a school, but I am deeply saddened by all this as a Penn Stater.

Oh you have missed a bit...

It's sadly far worse than that Catcher.
The former defensive coordinator was raping boys, as young as 9 or 10.

As if that's not horrible enough, the school then swept it under the rug.
This is just my pure speculation, but supposedly it was first reported in 1998...99 was Sandusky's last year then he retired to start this camp for kids...which we know now was a vehicle to help him, well ya know.

So it's pretty bad news.
Where JoePa comes into question did he do enough? After being told of something happening (I've heard he was told of "inappropriate behavior" or full detail so IDK yet) he told the athletic director but never told the police, and should he have?

IMO I can see letting it be handled by the proper people, but this guy was around for years! Till just last week, and was told he could no longer bring kids with him...
Maybe Joe was kept out of the loop on purpose (which I could see) but regardless, a lot of people are in deep sh*t