Final Thoughts on Rose Bowl

The Rose Bowl is tomorrow. Below are a few updates:

1) Terrelle Pryor is playing with a slight tear in the MCL in one of his knees. Its always possible that he exacerbates the injury or plays less than perfect because of it. This is a plus.

2) The Pac-10 has not been doing well in bowl games.

#21 Stanford lost to Oklahoma (31-27).

#18 Oregon State lost to #14 BYU (44-20).

#20 Arizona lost to #22 Nebraska (33-0).

Cal lost to #23 Utah (37-27).

All in all this is not good. Infact, its a terrible record for the Pac-10. 0-4 in bowl games so far.

However, Oregon also beat Oregon State, Arizona, and Cal. They lost to Stanford (then unranked) the week after demolishing USC at home.

Obviously I would prefer the Pac-10 to be winning its bowl games, meaning the relative strength of the Pac-10 is better.

However, what matters is what happens tomorrow between Oregon and Ohio State. Go Ducks!

Ohio State versus Oregon

Ohio State plays Oregon in the Rose Bowl this year; the game is still two weeks away. Oregon is favored by 3.5 points over Ohio State. My initial reaction was that Oregon should win by more than that, and a few things lead me to that consideration.

One is that they both played USC at home. Ohio State lost on a last minute touchdown, while Oregon blew out USC and trampled all over their defense.

The second is that Jim Tressel has suffered notable losses to option quarterbacks, and at least struggled more against them than they do against conventional attacks. Losses to Vince Young, Illinois two years ago, and the near to defeat to Navy (Navy?!) at home highlight his teams struggles. I think it is a combination of the rarity with which they face option attacks and simply a facet of Jim Tressel's coaching philosophy. He doesn't like to take risks, he doesn't like uncontrolled chaos, etc., that the option attack is more lethal than normal against him. He recruits players and coaches them to do specific functions really, really well and he tries to keep the game within those parameters. He's had a lot of success doing that (one national championship, three national championship appearances) but has also seen his teams struggle against the spontaneous playmaking and athleticism of spread and option attacks (like the loss to Florida).

This will require more thought and analysis, plus a return to Bleacher Report is called for!

Thoughts on the Heisman

The Heisman Trophy has, to me, lost some of its prestige. It is supposed to be given to the season's most outstanding player. But it is frequently given to the running back or quarterback on the top ranked team.

Team performance has a considerable effect on Heisman voting, but it is an individual award. This makes no sense.

Also the voting is divided by region, and the Heisman Voting regulations stipulate: For Heisman voting purposes, the nation is divided into six regions—each of which get 145 votes. Put another way, each region gets exactly 16.67 percent of the votes. However, each region does not constitute an even one-sixth of the population. Three regions (Far West, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic) have larger populations than that – and three have less (Northeast, South, and Southwest). In fact, the Far West has the greatest population at 21.1% of the country and the Northeast has the least – 11.9%.

To me this is a strange way to vote and decide a winner. I also disagree with the fact that it almost always goes to a quarterback or runningback and never to a defensive or offensive lineman. The award would be much more prestigious if it were spread evenly throughout the positions, simply trying to highlight the most outstanding players regardless of stats.

Florida's Woes

Florida ended up losing the SEC Championship game to Alabama, a resounding 31-13 defeat. Two things of note: their best defensive lineman, the MVP of last year's SEC Championship game, was suspended prior to the game for getting a DUI about five days before the game.

Second, I just read that defensive coordinator was officially hired by Louisville, just five days after the loss. He most assuredly had been contacted by Louisville before the SEC Championship game and had heard about their interest even earlier.

So did that help his focus? I'm sure it did. It certainly didn't IMPROVE his focus. And all the distractions inside his own head, visions of grandeur, etc., contributed to Florida's defeat. But thats how it goes in sports. The winners get copied, and the best copy of a program is a coordinator, or even better, the actual head coach of the program.

Lastly, Florida was a five point favorite.

The attack on Florida begins!

I was reading that the defensive coordinator for Florida, which has had one of the top defenses in the college ranks these last four years, is being sought after by the program at Louisville.

This is consistent with the idea that successful programs breed success in their coaches, and vice versa, and thus programs that struggled hire away coaches from good programs.

But that added bonus for Louisville, an SEC team, is two fold: they weaken Florida by taking away their defensive coordinator (who runs the defense and calls the plays), and the next time they play Florida, they will have a coach who knows their offense, defense, and personnel inside and out.

Upset alert the next time Louisville plays Florida.

Week #10 Lines

Boise St.	21	LOUISIANA TECH	50

NCAA Football
Saturday, Nov. 7
MICHIGAN STATE	20	Western Michigan	54½
CINCINNATI	16½	Connecticut
PITTSBURGH	21½	Syracuse	50
IOWA	16½	Northwestern	45
MINNESOTA	7	Illinois	51½
WEST VIRGINIA	20	Louisville	54
NC STATE	6	Maryland
GEORGIA TECH	16	Wake Forest
NORTH CAROLINA	10	Duke	43½
Wisconsin	10½	INDIANA	54½
ARKANSAS	7	South Carolina	53½
Oklahoma State	7	IOWA STATE	51
MISSOURI	14½	Baylor	44½
FLORIDA	35	Vanderbilt	47
Byu	13	WYOMING	48
NOTRE DAME	11	Navy	55½
SMU	17½	Rice	56
Utep	7	TULANE	57½
ALABAMA	7½	Lsu	39½
TEXAS	36½	Central Florida	48
Kent	3	AKRON	41½
AIR FORCE	17	Army	36
Kansas	2½	KANSAS STATE	57½
Oklahoma	5½	NEBRASKA	41½
PENN STATE	3½	Ohio State	40
Tcu	24½	SAN DIEGO STATE	47½
Fresno State	7½	IDAHO	70
UTAH	27½	New Mexico	46
ARIZONA	33	Washington State	60
CALIFORNIA	7	Oregon State	60½
UCLA	4½	Washington
Oregon	6½	STANFORD	57
Texas A&m	3	COLORADO	56½
MIAMI FLORIDA	13½	Virginia	45
TENNESSEE	26	Memphis	52
CLEMSON	8½	Florida State
TULSA	1	Houston U	67½
Usc	10	ARIZONA STATE	45½
MICHIGAN	6	Purdue	53
UNLV	1	Colorado State	61½
Utah State	2½	HAWAII	60
UAB	6½	Florida Atlantic	66½
NORTH TEXAS	1	UL Monroe	65½
Troy	24	WESTERN KENTUCKY	67
ARKANSAS STATE	13½	UL Lafayette	47½
MIDDLE TENN ST	13	Florida Intl	54

NCAA Football
Sunday, Nov. 8
Nevada	14	SAN JOSE STATE	62