Official College Football Trash Talking Thread

[mavriktu]

Well our coach just abandoned the team 3 weeks before the bowl game. Brady Hoke just resigned as Ball State's head football coach, and should be announced in the next day or two as the new head coach at San Diego State. I can't blame him for taking the job that pays 700K a year compared to the less than $400K he was offered by BSU. But at least he could have seen this year through and waited until after the bowl game to leave. I just hope that this doesn't leave the team with a hangover going into the bowl game.

Must have studied under Sabin,nothing like taking the wind out of the sails of your players during bowl week.

[snuffy2202]

It's okay, mavriktu, don't cry. It will get better.

[Captain America]

It's okay, mavriktu, don't cry. It will get better.

Don't worry, Snuffy. He'll probably do the same thing to Bama when he leaves for USC. I 'm surprised he didn't take the Auburn job.

[snuffy2202]

True dat!

[Five-0]

http://nationalchamps.net/2009/earlybird/index.htm

[Five-0]

More fun at aubarn's expense:

YouTube - The Ballad of Gene Chizik

YouTube - Auburn Fans heckle Jay Jacobs over decision to hire Gene Chizik

YouTube - The Downfall of Auburn

YouTube - Hitler Reaction to Chizik

[Captain America]

Lee Corso wants to have Pete Carroll's baby. You want to talk about a bromance.

[IndianaFuzz]

I know it is VERY early in the Sugar Bowl, but 7-0 Utes..............

Now 14-0 Utes.........

21-0 Utes..........

Uh, oh...21-10 now.

[CTR man]

GO UTAH!!!

[Bob Loblaw]

HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HOOK 'EM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Captain America]

....and Texas wins the BCS championship.....not. Seriously though that was a good game. If Oklahoma beats Florida , Texas gets my vote as champs...if I had a vote.

[Bob Loblaw]

that was a great game, no matter how you slice it. who said the Big 12 doesn't play defense? It's hard to hold a team under 40 when their quarterbacked by a Heisman candidate every week!






















Oh....did I mention HOOM 'EM?!?!?!?!?!

[CTR man]

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/footbal...yhoo&type=lgns

Why didn’t Utah merit consideration to play for the BCS national title?

Why are the Utes, despite their 13-0 record, victories over four Associated Press top-25 teams and the champions of a conference that went 6-1 in the regular season against the Pac-10, watching one-loss teams Oklahoma and Florida play on Thursday?

Just ask some of the voters in the Harris Interactive Poll, which helps determine the title-game matchup.

“I did not see them play [in the regular season],” Bobby Aillet said.

“I didn’t see any live games,” Lance McIlhenny said. “I just [saw] highlights.”

“I don’t recall if I saw them play specifically during the regular season,” David Housel said. “I don’t remember a specific game.”

Alliet, McIlhenny and Housel aren’t alone. It turns out there were a number of Harris Poll (and presumably coaches’ poll) voters who never saw Utah play this season. At least until the Utes manhandled Alabama in a way that Florida could only dream.

That 31-17 victory in the Sugar Bowl didn’t just cap the program’s second perfect season in four years, it left people wondering why Utah wasn’t at least in the conversation for the title game.
How did a team this good wind up a lowly sixth in the final BCS standings?

The answer speaks to the illogical way college football crowns its champion, a system where perception, reputation and media hype can mean more than touchdowns and tackles.

Utah could do the latter as well as anyone. It was non-competitive in the former – suffering from tired stereotypes, a lack of television exposure and the mind-numbing power of group think.

Even by the absurd standards of the BCS, having voters not bother to watch an undefeated team play a single game is a new low.

Whether Utah deserved to be ranked No. 1, 2 or 25 isn’t the point of this argument. The Utes deserved to have voters at least see them.

The coaches and Harris polls make up two-thirds of the BCS rankings. The average of six computer formulas is the other third.

Frustration with the BCS is often pointed at those faceless “computers.” It’s the human opinion polls, however, that are most subject to bias, laziness or disinterest.

The computers can’t help but plug in Utah’s info. One of them even had the Utes ranked No. 2.

The 61 voters in the coaches’ poll and 114 in the Harris weren’t as kind. They often voted on what they thought Utah might be, not what they saw Utah actually was. In a testament to copy-cat voting, almost everyone had the Utes between No. 7 and No. 10 in the polls.

Then many tuned in Friday for what they admit was the very first time and saw reality wasn’t perception after all. This wasn’t some lucky mid-major team; the Utes were big, strong, fast and talented.

“I wouldn’t say I probably was wrong. I was wrong,” said Housel, a former Auburn athletic director who had the Utes ranked 10th.

Utah’s championship hopes for this season were dashed on July 1, 1978.

That day the Pacific-8 Conference expanded. Rather than take Brigham Young and Utah, it went one state south and added Arizona and Arizona State.

It cemented the opinion in the media – and thus the public and thus the coaches and Harris poll voters – that the only big-time sports league out west is the Pac-10. If you’re in it, you matter. If not, you might be a cute story, but you don’t.

It’s the never-ending asterisk; one that Utah and the Mountain West Conference can’t seem to shake no matter how many perfect seasons, No. 1 draft choices or NFL MVPs it produces.
It manifests itself not just in a skeptical eye of voters 30 years later, but in television contracts and media exposure.

Utah played just one game on ESPN this season – a September victory at Michigan. It (and the rest of the leagues’) other games were carried on Versus and the league-owned Mountain West Sports Network, which reaches less than three million homes. Nationally, you needed a satellite system to watch the Utes.

“I think you can find Utah if you want to find it,” Craig Thompson, the Mountain West commissioner, said.

You can. And you’d think the BCS would require voters to do so. Naturally, it doesn’t.
Instead, the BCS spreads the vote out to so many people while asking little in return. (One voter, broadcaster Don Criqui, didn’t even bother to cast a final ballot.)

The BCS has no set rationale for how or why a school should be ranked – is it record, strength of schedule, whom it beat, whom it lost to, how it won, how it lost? The decision is up to each voter.

The Harris voters are selected by conference offices. Most are media, former players or administrators. They are well-meaning but hold regular jobs and have their own busy schedules.

This is a secondary (at best) thing and watching all the games is a challenge.

“I don’t think I’m the only one that has that problem,” said Aillet, a retired SEC referee, who had Utah ranked ninth and said he might give up his vote next season. “I suspect most of the folks have that same problem.

“It takes a lot of time to get it right, and sometimes I wonder if I’m doing it right.”
Meanwhile, college coaches are admittedly biased and have little time to scout any team not on their schedule.

In contrast, the 10-member NCAA men’s basketball selection committee meets throughout the season to compare notes and stay on top of hot teams. It demands comprehensive scouting, sets common criteria and even asks committee members to get out and see teams in person. Then they all meet and hash it out.

While not devoid of controversy, the system is about as good as you can design.
The BCS might be the worst.

Thompson could only shrug off the frustration. He believes a 12-0 team from a league such as his will one day play in the BCS title game. This was a step toward gaining long-term credibility with voters and opinion makers.

“Even if we were on national television it’d still be a fight because we don’t have that history,” Thompson said.

The Mountain West had three teams ranked in the top 16 of the final BCS poll (the ACC and Big East each had one). It scored a number of notable out-of-conference victories, including strong success against the Pac-10. Yet reputations die hard.

“I just thought that the Mountain West is not as tough a conference (as others),” McIlhenny, a former SMU player, said. “Apparently I was wrong.”

Thompson knows that if a team went 12-0 in one of the six BCS automatic qualifying conferences, even ones that ranked lower than the MWC, they’d have gotten in without debate.

“Sooner or later they’ve got to take notice,” he said. “You can’t say the Pac-10 was stronger than the Mountain West. The Pac-10 went 5-0 in bowl games, but head-to-head (in the regular season) we went 6-1.

“If they start drilling down on it there’s nothing to say.”

Sure, if you think BCS voters bother to drill down.

The Mountain West doesn’t just suffer from a lack of game coverage on national television. It suffers for the lack of overall attention. ESPN, the 800-pound gorilla of college football hype, is notorious for promoting the games and teams that it broadcasts. This year that meant lots of Big 12 talk.

“There’s definitely some self-serving there,” Thompson said.

Utah didn’t receive the same attention. Even after the Alabama win, part of the debate on

Sunday’s “Sports Reporters” (the ultimate barometer of East Coast media thinking) was how Utah simply couldn’t be that good because, well, because it’s Utah.

“They don’t play in a good conference,” Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe claimed.

In the BCS chase, media is everything since the voters admit to taking their cues from highlight shows and articles.

The networks aren’t above playing favorites. Back in 2006, the CBS broadcast crew for the SEC championship game campaigned relentlessly on the air for Florida to be selected over Michigan.

Color commentator Gary Danielson later said CBS only did it because ESPN was doing the same for Michigan and the Big Ten.

If the Utes had a broadcaster campaigning for them this year it wouldn’t have mattered.

The BCS voters didn’t trouble themselves to watch anyway.

[CTR man]

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/footbal...yhoo&type=lgns

In one poll, Utah stands tall

By Josh Peter, Yahoo! Sports 10 hours, 12 minutes ago

College football fans might be in for a surprise as unexpected as Utah’s victory over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.

If the Bowl Championship Series had relied on one set of its computer rankings, Oklahoma would not be playing Florida for the BCS title on Thursday night. Instead, Oklahoma would be facing football’s newest darling.

That’s right, the Utah Utes.

In the Anderson & Hester computer rankings used by the BCS, Utah finished in a virtual dead heat with top-ranked Oklahoma. And that was before the Utes stunned Alabama in the Sugar Bowl with a convincing victory that improved their record to 13-0 and guaranteed they will finish this season as the only major college football team to go undefeated.

But Utah will be watching the BCS title game rather than playing in it.

“Our rankings thought they were deserving,” said Jeff Anderson, who operates the computer poll with his former college roommate, Christopher Hester. “But our rankings are not the only thing to decide such matters.”

The BCS standings use a combination of six computer rankings, the coaches’ poll and the Harris Interactive Poll that includes 114 panelists. In the BCS standings, released before the bowl games began, Oklahoma finished first, Florida second and Utah sixth.

Utah finished no higher than fourth in the other computer rankings and finished seventh in both the coaches’ poll and the Harris Interactive Poll.

A special emphasis on the relative strength of each conference might explain why Anderson & Hester rankings are now the personal favorite of Utah coach Kyle Whittingham.

“If we’re tied with Oklahoma in that poll, I’m all for that one,” he said.

But the formula worked in Utah’s favor only because of the success of the conference in which it plays, the Mountain West. Generally speaking, the MWC generates all the rest of, well, the Utah Utes. But this season astute college football fans took notice. At least they should have.

The current BCS standings include three MWC teams in the top 20 – Utah at No. 6, Texas Christian at No. 11 and Brigham Young at No. 16.

“No non-major conference has had a year like this in the BCS era, or anything close,” said Jerry Palm, a noted BCS analyst.

The MWC was 25-11 in all games against non-conference opponents and 6-1 against teams from the Pac-10, so Utah’s victories against teams in its own conference carried more weight in the Anderson & Hester rankings than they had in previous seasons.

In explaining the importance of factoring in strength of conference, Anderson said, “It may well be that a 4-4 record in a strong conference is really more like going 6-2 in a weak one.”

But what the Anderson & Hester rankings took into account might have gone unnoticed by many others who help determine the BCS standings and, ultimately, which teams play for the BCS title.

For example, David Housel, former Auburn athletic director and one of the Harris Poll voters, ranked Utah 10th in his final ballot. When asked why he ranked Utah no higher, he said, “Probably because I didn’t have enough respect for that conference, to be honest about it.”

Nick Saban, Alabama’s head coach, learned the dangers of snubbing the MWC.

Alabama plays in the SEC, one of the six so-called power conferences, and Saban’s team finished the regular season 12-0 before losing to Florida in the SEC championship game. Before the Sugar Bowl, Saban irked Utah players, coaches and fans when he said Alabama was the only team to finish the regular season undefeated in a “real BCS conference.”

So there Saban was Friday apologizing for the remark after Utah had whipped Alabama 31-17.

Anderson, meanwhile, was beaming. Utah’s victory helped validate the team’s strong finish in the Anderson & Hester rankings that he and his friend have been computing for the BCS standings since 1998, when the postseason system began in its current form.

But Anderson quickly added, “I do want to make clear that I do not believe that Florida does not belong in the (championship) game.”

In fact, Anderson said he supports the matchup of Oklahoma vs. Florida in part because Utah finished seventh in the poll conducted by the coaches and the poll conducted by panelists that included former coaches, former players and others affiliated with college football.

Said Anderson: “There would be no point in staging a championship game between what nobody believes are the two best teams, even if in reality they are.”

[Terminator]

The BCS sucks...bad.

[mavriktu]

The BCS sucks...bad.

Agreeing with him more and more


note to self,ask Dr. to change the meds




BTW,anyone heard from 5-0???

[dadyswat]

Congratulations Texas. I have to say it was one of the best games I've seen all season and the Buckeyes gave them a real run for the money even with a true freshman quarterback. I think both Mack Brown and Jim Tressel run top notch programs and I don't think there's a team out that couldn't beat another on any given day. The bad part is now the die hards are calling for Tressel's head.

[Captain America]

BTW,anyone heard from 5-0???

Before the Sugar Bowl.

[IndianaFuzz]

CTR....... The best thing for teams like Utah and Boise (short of a playoff) would be for the Mountain west and the WAC to reunite into one super-conference and have a conference championship game. At least that would give one more game to play on national t.v. And it would allow say, an undefeated Boise play an undefeated Utah before the final BCS standings.

[Five-0]

Congrats to Utah. That game made me sick, but I have the class to give Utah their due. They definatly exposed Bama secondary. I was worried when Smith was suspended. When we lost another starter on OL we were sunk. Time to move on. It is recruiting time now. By the way, have y'all met Andrea Smith's replacement? May I introduce Mr D.J. Fluker, all 6'7" 350 lbs of him.

http://alabama.rivals.com/viewprospe...1&pr_key=61389

http://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=896895