Steele’s top 15 games of ’08

Phil Steele has a post up at his blog ranking the top 15 performances by D-1 schools in games last season.

Basically he’s done that by looking at the power rankings of the losing teams, where the games were played and then assessing the differential in yards rushing, yards passing, points scored, rushing yards allowed, passing yards allowed and points allowed to determine which were the best games of the season.  It’s hard to argue with what’s on his list.

A few tidbits –

• Southern Cal has the most games on the list, with four, the top one being its demolition of Oregon.
• Florida and Oklahoma both appear on the list three times.  That includes Florida’s defeat of Oklahoma in the title game.
• Mississippi made the list with its victory over MSU.  Somehow I missed the fact that Mississippi State’s offensive output of 37 total yards was the lowest such figure achieved by any D-1 school last year.  But MSU’s athletic director didn’t.
• Georgia doesn’t make the list on either side of the ledger, which surprised me a little in the case of the Florida game.  (Steele, by the way, gets one fact wrong when he states that Oregon’s 34-point loss to USC was the most lopsided defeat of any team that finished in the top ten.  Unfortunately.)  I assume the yardage totals were the Dawgs’ saving grace in that one.
• Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Missouri were the only schools to show up on the list as winners and losers.  Does that say something about the Big XII?