Trying to get the week started on the right foot:
- Is it just me, or is this whole should-they-put-Michigan-and-Ohio State-in the same-division debate similar to the Florida State/Miami alignment issue the ACC struggled with when it went to division play? That’s worked out well.
- Here’s a look at some of the key SEC position battles going on now.
- It sounds like Emmanuel Moody has had his fill of running quarterbacks.
- Compare Cameron Newton to Vince Young? Gene Chizik doesn’t go there (to his credit).
- You want to know about the quarterback-center exchange? Mark Richt’s your guy. (h/t Leather Helmet Blog)
- Recipe for a long year in Knoxville: “When you’re operating at 72 scholarships … we’ve got 15 guys missing on the team who could be sophomores and juniors…” Better hope nobody gets hurt.
- It’s amusing to see the consequences of the Tuberville regime slowly dawning on the Texas Tech faithful: “Maybe the big surprise is that the offense has been “tweaked” enough that it favors the more refined Potts to hand the ball off to a stellar group of running backs and run the play-action pass more than Red Raider fans –and opposing teams — were led to believe.” ‘Ya think?
- Speaking of Tuberville, I noticed this over the weekend on CBS’ college preview show – the man’s forehead is ginormous.
- No grading on the curve in this review of Florida’s position groups. I’m by no means a Gator fan, but some of those marks strike me as being on the low side (the Gator secondary no better than “B” and “B-“?).
Get The Picture 
The ACC is exactly why I wish the Big Ten would stop overthinking this one. If you really want to create a “West + Penn State” division, then fine. But please, stick mostly to geography. I want to actually be able to remember who’s in which division, and I still struggle severely with that in the ACC … and I’m a nerd who spends way too much time talking about thinking about this stuff!
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If they do it on any geographic basis then OSU and UM have to be in the same side. That doesn’t mean they won’t bastardize something, though. Also, do you really want a conference championship game to regularly be a repeat of the same game the fans saw 2 weeks prior? Put ’em in the same division.
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There was an article in the Nashville paper the other day about Tennessee’s first scrimmage. Vol QBs threw 5 interceptions and one LB dropped 4 all by himself in the same scrimmage. Ouch.
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The FSU/Miami and Michigan/Ohio State are not analogous for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one is that FSU/Miami has never been a season ending game like UM/OSU. I think October is more typical. The biggest issue with UM/OSU is a potential rematch happening the very next week. You can laugh at Michigan’s place right now, but they are the all-time college football wins and win percentage leaders, so I would not expect them to stay down forever.
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@Bill C
The Atlantic is every reddish home jersey-based team except VT. Then add Clemson and Wake.
The Coastal is everyone else.
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Dayum….somebody needs to have a quiet discussion with Tuberville’s stylist.
I have never seen an aircraft carrier with wings before.
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LOL. You read my mind.
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If SNL ever brings back the ‘Coneheads’, TT would make a good guest host. I’m tempted to photoshop Connie Conehead into that photo – Connie says TT gives ‘good cone’.
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Even though the wings are usually on top of a flattop
http://www.1000pictures.com/view.htm?caircraft/carrier+f070406-n-5961c-008_1280x1024.jpg+x1280+y1024,
rather than on the sides of it,
TT’s stylist (a barber in Lubbock) actually did good work because now with Tommy’s new do, he is all set to be a stand-in model for a beer logo (profile shots only)
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See and I actually thought it was a decent idea. Accentuate the gigantic forehead to take focus off the huge ears.
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Why do they lump all spreads together?The Texas Tech spread was light years different from the UF spread. If you spread them to pass then the QB is a passer and if you can teach him to do it under center then he will be ok in college but if you spread them to run the QB as an old fashion Wing Back in the single wing then you have a college running back in all but a few spreads. Look at Tebow the ultimate spread runner he is built like a linebacker and still on his first game as a pro they blew him up. The very fact that he is such a competitor will cause him to get hurt. Tebow will not slide not now not ever. Ray Lewis will end his season if they meet.
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Lewis might end Tebow’s career if they meet.
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Gerrymandering conference expansion just to create attractive games for television and trying to maximize the potential for multiple BCS berths hasn’t helped the ACC, and it won’t help the Big 10-and-2. The FSU-Miami series has turned in a few interesting games since the conference expanded, but none of them have really moved the meter beyond “Fun Game to Watch” to “Classic”, because none of them have ended up meaning anything. The first FSU-Miami game was presented to us as the defacto ACC title game, since the actual title game was still a season away from coming into being. It was a great, tight game. But both teams ended up disappointing and haven’t been dominant powers ever since. The same would go for an Ohio State-Michigan matchup. It doesn’t matter where you put that game on the schedule this year, first game or last. Ohio State’s going to wipe the floor with Michigan. The Wolverines certainly haven’t been a national power the last few years, and there’s little reason to think Rich Rod will fix it this year. So next year you’ve got a new coach and probably a new philosophy. How long’s it going to be before OSU-Michigan is a true showcase game? And why would you want to screw up a tradition like closing the regular season with the OSU-Michigan game? If Tech were to come back into the SEC and the league tried to tell us to move the game to the start of the year, or the middle, I’d hope that we’d tell them GFY and stick with the format where you leave the best game for the end.
You can’t design your way into a great matchup for your title game and you can’t design your way into multiple BCS slots. The programs in your league have to make it happen individually. Do you think that the SEC should move the Georgia-Auburn game earlier in the year to make sure that TV won’t get mad at having a rematch two or three weeks after the first game? Hardly. And it should be noted that the matchup has never happened in the 20+ years of the SEC Championship Game. Michigan’s not going to be in the Big 10-and-2 title game any time soon, either, even with as weak as the sisters in that league are. Don’t follow John Swofford’s bungling example. If you divide the league, go with geography and hope that your teams can give people a reason to tune in. And keep OSU-Michigan at the end of the freaking year. After all, Herbstreit and Co. nearly did a good enough job in 2006 convincing people that they wanted to see an OSU-Michigan rematch for the flippin’ national championship a scant month (and no games) after the first game… I’m sure that they can prod people to show up for a Big 10 Championship rematch a few weeks earlier.
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What baffles me is that if the ACC were trying to engineer (see what I did there? Har) multiple BCS berths, and assuming that UM and FSU were going to be the two best teams, then UM and FSU should have been in the same division and played each other at the start of the year.
They play once, one has 1 loss and the other is undefeated; so long as the winner wins the ACCCG, you have two in the BCS (and potentially two in the BCSCG). But if they’re in opposite divisions, then play again, there’s no way a 2 loss team is getting an at-large OR your undefeated team just got knocked out of the BCSCG.
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That’s a good point. Then again, everything the ACC touches seems to fall apart, so I don’t think it’s a surprise that they don’t know what they’re doing.
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Doesn’t the geography work out just peachy in the Big Integer?
Yeah, you’d have three “power” teams in the east; but it isn’t like Nebraska, Wisconsin & Iowa are mush. It will have balance to start with, though, because it’s likely going to take Michigan awhile to get back to challenging after they fire Dick Rod after this year.
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Every single time I think about Rich Rod up there in Ann Arbor, I wish more and more he had taken the job in Tuscaloosa. That would have just been the best thing ever, especially since I’m not stuck in south Alabama.
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The beauty of the SEC is that the geography worked out. But they were also wise to keep teams in the same state in the same division, and they placed the two biggest rivalries (Bama/Auburn and Fla/UGA) in the same division, meaning those games would be once a year and often for all the marbles in the division.
Divisions CAN hurt some rivalries, especially if they end up playing again, it devalues that regular season game. Why would you want to do that to your BIGGEST game, when you could instead up the ante in that game to galactical proportions.
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The Precious acts as if the job he took is not the job he took.
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“It’s kind of like we only have 1s and 3s,” Dooley said.
Who moved Derek’s 2s?
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No crap. You can’t have the rug pulled out from under you if there was no rug to be pulled out from under you.
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“I overreact sometimes,” says Derek. Which is precisely what Mike Hamilton needs.
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I’ve posted this before, but I think it bears repeating.
“They cursed us. Murderer they called us. They cursed us, and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone. And we only wish to catch fish so juicy sweet. And we forgot the taste of bread… the sound of trees… the softness of the wind. We even forgot our own name. My Precious. “
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Not this? NSFW, home or anywhere else except inside the city limits of Knoxville…
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The TTFan writer is kinda dumb, no?
“The coaching staff’s decision could reveal where the Texas Tech offense is going under their control.
Potts certainly has the intangibles to play Big 12 football. At 6-foot-5 and 222 pounds he has the size and a much bigger arm than Sheffield. He also has better mechanics and more experience than Sheffield, starting 10-of-13 games last season.
But the “Air Raid” offense was always better served in 2009 when a 6-foot-4, 180 pound Sheffield took the reins.
Sheffield, also a senior, had a knack for reinvigorating the offense last season. He did it on four separate occasions against New Mexico, Kansas State, at Nebraska and against Michigan State in the final quarter of the Alamo Bowl.
By the end of the 2009 season, most Red Raider fans seemed to feel Sheffield was better suited to lead a pass-happy offense in the future. ”
That last sentence should be appended with, ‘, yet the architect of the pass-happy offense continued to start Potts ahead of Sheffield.
As fans, we’re generally idiots. Especially, when it comes to the backup QB.
I’m certainly a believer that TommyT wants to hand it off to the fullback and mow down a defense.
Who doesn’t? If you can do that all game long and stop the opponent from doing it to you, you’re going to win all your games.
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If FSU ever joined the SEC, they would be in the west, not the east.
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Actually which side a team goes might very well depend on who the other team was that came in at the same time (likely expansion would be 2 at a time). If Texas A&M joined at the same time as FSU I think FSU would clearly go to the East, particularly in light of the concerns raised by sUGArdaddy in his post above.
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Sugar Daddy was right about the SEC being smart enough to keep traditional rivals in the same Division. It was important to keep heated rivalrys going that crossed division lines also, Al-Tn and UGa-Au were very important to the culture of the SEC.
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18 years in, zero rematches so far in the SECCG.
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hasn’t Alabama played Florida all 7 times Alabama has been in the SECCG?
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