A few things of note to throw at you:
- I’d say Ohio State had better win that Southern Cal game, don’t you think? (By the way, “J. J. Joe” is my new favorite college football name. That sucker just rolls off your tongue.)
- HeismanPundit does a little cherry picking with the SEC. If he’d have only gone one click further…
- I know some are going to consider this heretical, but I just don’t get all the love for Bobby Johnson. Yeah, I know it’s Vandy, but this guy’s had an NFL first rounder at quarterback (which body part do you think Croom would sacrifice for that?) and a pretty stout defense and still hasn’t been able to cobble together enough for a postseason trip to Shreveport. By going conservative, he mismanaged two games last year (Georgia and Tennessee) which should have resulted in wins that would have made his team bowl eligible. Sorry, but especially when I look at what Grobe has been able to do, it’s hard to get worked up about this guy.
- I’m not sure I would have picked the Dick Nixon imagery, but farewell to Sunday Morning Quarterback and best of luck to Mr. Hinton in his new career at Yahoo!.
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I agree with Bobby Johnson love fest. I was somewhat impressed with what he’d accomplished at Vandy until the year (’05 I think) they were 5 – 0 and needed only a win against Middle Tennessee St. to be bowl eligible and ended up 5 – 6 (or 7). Although I was pleased with his mismanagement of the Georgia game last year I was not so with the UT game. That game was a coaching disaster of monumental proportions.
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Hats off to you Blutarsky. You’re right on with your comments about Bobby Johnson. I’ve never understood the obsession with him. He’s taken Vandy from bad to mediocre and nothing else. While he seems to draw up good pre-game schemes, his in-game, on-the-fly decisions are questionable at best. Lots of smart men in the SEC… gotta be bale to adapt.
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I guess I could have gone one click further, but that would result in the Ivy League approaching the SEC for total national championships.
The point of covering 2000-2007 was to make it relevant to our era. And to point out that ‘year-in, year-out’ doesn’t even apply to the last 8 years, much less the last 80.
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HP, I doubt that even the most crazed SEC supporter would argue that the conference has been college’s best every single season, so to that extent, I think you’ve done nothing more than set up a straw man.
That being said, I think it’s a pretty impressive counterpoint to your argument that the SEC manages to come out on top by a fairly wide margin over the entire era of college football. If anything, your Ivy League example reinforces that.
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Woody Widenhofer’s win percentage over five years at Vandy: 0.288.
Bobby Johnson’s win percentage over six years at Vandy: 0.286.
Johnson isn’t a great coach so much as one that has engineered consistent success in meeting lowered standards. I dare say that if Vandy had eliminated its athletics department and put the football program under the purview of the Division of Student Life in 1998, as opposed to five years later, Widenhofer would still be picking up a VU paycheck.
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