SEC slips in bowls but shouldn't slide far - Jan 5 SEC Blog (ESPN)

SavannahBee

SavannahBee

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Now is not the time for excuses.

Don’t tell me about a lack of motivation. Don’t tell me about key injuries. Whatever you do, don’t try to tell me about luck.

Last week, the SEC was exposed. The West, in particular, failed. Miserably. Undeniably. Disappointingly.

If we’re being honest about what we saw, it was destruction. Ole Miss fell flat on its face. Mississippi State continued its downward slide. Auburn’s defense, once again, had the resistance of a wet napkin. And Alabama, supposedly the best of the them all, couldn’t function on third down -- the money down -- if it’s life depended on it.

And before you start saying that it was about the SEC beating itself, stop. TCU, Georgia Tech, Wisconsin and Ohio State weren’t lucky beneficiaries; they were the better teams. Period. The Big Ten and Big 12 were superior conferences this bowl season.

http://espn.go.com/blog/sec
 
GTJoeBrew

GTJoeBrew

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Scarborough was calling it as he see's it. I'm sure that the delusional SEC fans will look to their overall record in the bowls as their standing, instead of the bowls against ranked teams(2-4).
 
TheGridironGeek

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It's a left-handed column really. The first part just sets up the false dilemma of the second. Who says a conference is either #1 or dead?? I don't think the ACC or Big 12 want or need to be thought of as better than the SEC or anybody else, they just want equal respect.

And who's responsible for those recruiting rankings? Media outlets mostly tied to the SEC, you say? That makes sense.
 
Bruce Wayne

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A basic problem is the insistence on trying to think of and write about conferences as a whole as if that is the most interesting angle with which to grasp the sport of college football. It is a long-standing problem and will always continue to be a problem of dominating narratives until this sport fixes its postseason to best approximate the crowning of a proven champion.

Compare to college basketball. There are still conference narratives to muse and debate over throughout the season and even somewhat after the tournament when you can see how your conference teams fared in the bracket. But those narratives always are just background noise, or just otherwise pale in significance to the discussion over TEAMS. Really the same occurs in every sport as even in the pros you can say "well, the NL East was pretty weak this year" or "NFC South was weakest division in NFL this year" and so on. Such discussions should just be amusing sidelights to the sport. College football media treatment, however, gets dominated by such lines of discussion and it is bad for the sport that this is the case.
 
TheGridironGeek

TheGridironGeek

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Bruce Wayne said:
A basic problem is the insistence on trying to think of and write about conferences as a whole as if that is the most interesting angle with which to grasp the sport of college football. It is a long-standing problem and will always continue to be a problem of dominating narratives until this sport fixes its postseason to best approximate the crowning of a proven champion.

Compare to college basketball. There are still conference narratives to muse and debate over throughout the season and even somewhat after the tournament when you can see how your conference teams fared in the bracket. But those narratives always are just background noise, or just otherwise pale in significance to the discussion over TEAMS. Really the same occurs in every sport as even in the pros you can say "well, the NL East was pretty weak this year" or "NFC South was weakest division in NFL this year" and so on. Such discussions should just be amusing sidelights to the sport. College football media treatment, however, gets dominated by such lines of discussion and it is bad for the sport that this is the case.
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Yaller Jacket

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If the guy is right about the preseason rankings, then the "SEC problem" will probably pick right up where it left off last year. The first step in what causes the SEC problem is the preseason rankings. It gives the ranked teams an automatic legitimacy they haven't earned. As the Rolling Stone article said, as Paul Johnson said and Boomer said and many more, what happens is that if SEC number 3 looses to SEC number 15, neither drops out.

I don't know how to fix this, unless the SEC bowl swoon makes some voters question whether all the SEC teams they think are so good really are.
 
Js-showman

Js-showman

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"Some people are born on 3rd base and go through life thinking that they hit a triple." -- Barry Switzer.

This is exactly the problem with the SEC. It won't change until we have more seasons like 2014 and the talking heads and know-it-alls who regulate the preseason rankings wake up.
 
UgaBlows

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texasjacket said:
What will help is no SEC team in the final game again next year and the ACC sweeping the SECe on the Saturday after thanksgiving again.
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i don't know if that will happen again but there's a decent chance of it i think. Parity in college football is real now and these A-clowns need to accept it. Boise St., Bayor, TCU, GT etc. are proof of that.
 
GTNavyNuke

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Yaller Jacket said:
If the guy is right about the preseason rankings, then the "SEC problem" will probably pick right up where it left off last year. The first step in what causes the SEC problem is the preseason rankings. It gives the ranked teams an automatic legitimacy they haven't earned. As the Rolling Stone article said, as Paul Johnson said and Boomer said and many more, what happens is that if SEC number 3 looses to SEC number 15, neither drops out.

I don't know how to fix this, unless the SEC bowl swoon makes some voters question whether all the SEC teams they think are so good really are.
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Nothing needs to be fixed for the non-voting ranking services I follow. Since the SEC lost a lot of OOC games this year, they will automatically be marked down by services like JHowell. http://www.jhowell.net/cf/cfindex.htm

The ACC sucked in bowl games and won't be helped either.

If you listen and care about what talking heads on ESPN say, that's your problem. The actual performance will win out eventually. I can't stand the idiocy put our on either Fox or MSNBC and don't waste my time listening to them.
 
GTNavyNuke

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SavannahBee said:
Thanks GTNavyNuke!

In a cursory review of your fabulous link, I found this: http://www.jhowell.net/cf/cf1956.htm

Speaks to SEC dominance in days of yore! Notice the head of the pack!
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Yup, I've looked at all of JHowell stats since the 1800's. They have GT as #1 6 times. So of course I like them! (I'll be doing a post at some time going back to the "beginning" in 1904 for GT. I've already done the last 70 years which I'll update too. https://gtswarm.com/threads/70-years-of-gt-football-–-comparing-teams-under-different-coaches.2501/

As I've said, there has to be consideration of previous year's games and results in ranking teams. Since there are only 12 regular season games a year (8 of which are inbred in conference) and there are over 120 teams, there is no way to get enough data to reasonably evaluate teams.
 
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