After Penn State lost to Iowa last Saturday, I started thinking about the strength of the conferences. Specifically, I was trying to determine which one loss team deserved to play for the BCS Title should Bama or Texas Tech lose. The players are Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, USC and Penn St. On the surface, I think most would argue that Texas and Florida have the stronger resumes for being considered. The validity is from watching Texas and Florida win most of their games in convincing fashion, and doing it in the Big 12 and SEC.
Unfortunately, Oklahoma lost to Texas, USC to Oregon State and Penn St to Iowa. None of their losses was so terrible to leave them out of the discussion, but it is hard to overlook USC's loss to a team that Penn St throttled, and Penn State's loss to a team with four losses. By default, the Longhorns should get the nod over the Sooners because they won the head to head.
Should Texas win the rest of their games, their one loss would be to Texas Tech in Lubbock on a last second touchdown. Granted, Texas looked awful throughout much of the game, but the Longhorns did what they had to do to get the lead late in the fourth quarter to make it a great game. Florida's loss was more problematic because they lost at home against an unranked Ol Miss team. Despite playing as poorly as they possibly could, the Gators still kept it close.
I would be inclined to give USC the nod over Florida if the PAC 10 had more ranked teams, but the conference is not too strong top to bottom. I would also consider Penn State over Florida if the Big 10 were deeper this season. Unfortunately, Penn State is going to bear the consequences from Ohio State's flops in the 06 and 07 title games against SEC opponents. This is not fair, but it is going to happen.
Thus, Florida and Texas should be the favorites in the one loss world of the BCS.
Switching directions for the last part of this post. Since the Big 10 is having an identity crisis, I thought I should draw a map out of the woods by comparing the Big 10 to the Big 12. I see a lot of similarities between the Big 12 in 2003 and 2004 and the Big 10 in 2006 and 2007. In 2000, Oklahoma overachieved and defeated Florida State 13-2 to win the BCS Championship. This win created an allusion of greatness under Stoops that was probably unfairly
rewarded in 03/04 when the Big 12 was not a strong conference. Similarly, Ohio
State overachieved in 2002 and won the title by beating Miami 31-24 in 2 OT's. The Big 10 was much stronger in
the early 2000's than 06/07 when the Buckeyes marched through the conference.
While the 06 title appearance was earned, the O7 appearance was a gift. Fortunately, OSU is
being critically judged this season based on the flops in 06/07, and hopefully
that will pay dividends in the future.
Having a deeper conference with more dynamic teams should help this transition. Dantonio was one piece, Rodriguez another, and hopefully the new Pa St coach will be a younger/dynamic coach (presuming Jo Pa steps down this year). Tim Brewster seems to have Minnesota moving in the right direction and Ferentz has Iowa on the upward path again. If Northwestern can maintain a good program and Wisconsin can rise to the top third again, the Big 10 will get some mojo back. I see the Big 10 turning the corner, but work is yet to be done.
The final piece of the transformation is getting young and creative offensive minds into the Big 10. Looking at the Big 12 South, Missouri, USC, Oregon and Florida, one cannot help to imagine a modern offense being implemented into a top Big 10 team. Ohio State probably has the greatest potential to make this change if Tressel decides to do it. Besides USC, Texas and some SEC programs, no other school in the country can recruit like Ohio State. If Leach can do it at Texas Tech, Tressel can do it at OSU.
The SEC and the Big 12 have already made the transformation into modern college football conferences. For the Big 10 to get to this level, the transformation has to occur. I am confident this will happen by 2010.
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