You're Ben Mauk. In high school, you called your own plays, led your team to back-to-back state championships and obliterated national passing records by accounting for more than 7,900 total yards and throwing 76 touchdown passes as a senior. Still, you were kind of small and just an OK recruit who wound up at bottom-dwelling Wake Forest. There, you redshirted in 2003 -- because of complications from a broken leg? -- then tied the school record for longest touchdown pass on the first snap of your career and made a strong bid for the full-time starting job by the end of the 2004 season. You continued to share the job through 2005, until, with a firm grasp on the position as a fourth-year junior, you went down for the season in the first game of 2006, watched as your back-up led Wake to the best season in school history, and decided to transfer home to Ohio. On your behalf, the NCAA waived the mandated transfer year, and as a full-time starter for the first time in your career, you set school records for passing yards and touchdowns while leading Cincinnati to its first finish in the final polls, ever. Still, the NFL was not all that interested.

Blitzers, Ben Mauk can elude -- unlike the NCAA, at least you know when they're coming.
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The NCAA denied your appeal for a sixth year once, then denied it again after spring practice. You are persistent, if lacking the appropriate documentation to classify the initial redshirt season in 2003 as a medical hardship, instead of the ordinary dues-paying. Late last week, your coach told the Cincinnati Enquirer you'd know by the end of this week about your status for the upcoming season, which for UC starts with practice next Friday. At the end of another week, not so much:

A little more than a week before the University of Cincinnati begins football practice on Aug. 1, the Bearcats' once and maybe future quarterback still doesn't know if the NCAA will grant him a sixth year to complete his four years of eligibility.

He doesn't even know when the teleconference that will give him the forum to plead his case to the Student-Athlete Reinstatement Committee will be held.

Mauk said he doesn't sit around agonizing over what's going to happen. But he would like to have his status resolved.

"I think it would benefit me because now I'm missing out on some job opportunities," Mauk said. "I don't know what to tell employers that are inquiring about what I'm going to do."
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If I was Ben Mauk, and I had succeeded wildly at football at every opportunity but had little interest from the pros, I would sit around and agonize over what's going to happen. Or if I was Brian Kelly, ex-sometimes-starter Dustin Grutza or ex-Weisenstein's monster Demetrius Jones, whose immediate futures all hinge on whether Mauk returns, or generally anyone tangibly or just emotionally associated with Cincinnati football, I'd be agonizing over what's going to happen. But maybe, in addition to frustrating (for opponents, anyway) gamesmanship and perseverance, Mauk has record-breaking reserves of patience, as well.

There’s a pretty strong consensus so far about how things are going to play out in the Big 12 North:

Switch Nebraska and Kansas State (which lost to the Huskers by six touchdowns in one of the conference’s many bizarre November shootouts), and this is exactly the order of finish in the division last year. We’re led to believe, then, that 2007 was in fact the best available model for predicting 2008. The Sporting News, for example, besides picking the Huskers fourth, specifically lists the team’s "stock report" as "Steady."

The Huskers have been truly Blackshirt-esque on defense a couple times since falling off the national radar following the high profile, back-to-back blowouts that closed 2001, once in 2005 but to a much greater extent in 2003, when they led the nation in pass efficiency D, were second in scoring D and finished in the top 25 in every major category. They’ve struggled to reach the top 25 in any single category since. The defensive coordinator in 2003 (and only 2003): Bo Pelini.

It’s not possible to say last year’s defense was "on the brink," when it was so clearly in a freefall into the abyss as early as September; the Big Red was humiliatingly crushed by USC, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Kansas and Colorado, and the only somewhat close loss, at Texas, ended with the Longhorns running for well over 200 yards en route to 19 lightning-fast, decisive points in the fourth quarter alone. If anything, it was close to being an even greater disaster, just a late interception at Wake Forest and a missed field goal by Ball State away from 3-9 and a strong bid for Worst Team In Husker History. It was certainly the worst Husker defense anyone could remember, by many, many miles.

All numbers according to Rivals. Red indicates best in category for an individual year.
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Nine of the projected starters on this year’s defense were top 50 recruits at their respective positions, what Phil Steele would call at least an "HT," in some cases a coveted "VHT." As you might expect, that’s about as many as the rest of the division combined. I wouldn’t mention this if it was close.

This is not exactly par for the course.
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So: steady? As in "expected to allow 475 yards and 38 points per game," steady? With potentially the most physically gifted unit in the division, under the fresh guidance of the architect of the best Nebraska unit (on either side of the ball) of the decade? Who was also the architect of three straight defenses at LSU that all finished first or second in the SEC by any relevant measure, as well in the top five nationally in yards allowed all three years, and that visibly dominated three straight top ten teams in consecutive bowl wipeouts? Nebraska’s defense may not be LSU’s, personnel-wise -- really, outside of maybe USC, nobody’s is -- but "steady" means "last in the conference," and it deserves a little better than that.

In terms of hemorraghing of yards, points and turnovers (Nebraska was a horrendous –19 in turnover margin, worse than all but two other teams in the country), "steady" does not even seem like a possibility; they literally cannot be worse. If the offense is merely steady -- it finished the season on a tear with Joe Ganz at quarterback, averaging 53 points over the last three games -- and Pelini’s initial efforts are good enough just to progress back toward the mean defensively -- that is, to split the difference between the best-case scenario of his lone season as coordinator and the worst-case scenario of last year’s collapse -- this is unavoidably one of the most improved teams in the country, and an impending threat to Missouri’s supposed stranglehold on the division. Or, you know, if you’re talking about Nebraska from any perspective beyond the worst single-season implosion anyone could have imagined, just steady as she goes.

This fall is Joe Tiller’s farewell tour after twelve years at Purdue, more than any other active Big Ten coach except the immortal Paterno, and in relative terms -- if you were looking forward at his record on the day he was hired in 1997 -- his tenure has been an unquestioned success. Purdue was more than a decade removed from its last winning season when it lured Tiller from Wyoming, and his throw-first-ask-questions-later offense immediately surged to the top of the notoriously stodgy Big Ten. The Boilermakers won nine games his first year, played in the Rose Bowl three years later, earned ten bowl bids in eleven years (twice as many as in its previous 110 years) and pioneered the journey of the once-novel spread across the Midwest. More than a decade on, Tiller is two wins from setting the school record and it appears very likely that mulitple-receiver sets will dominate the league for the forseeable future.

But unless something very drastic and unexpected happens in the next five months, it’s hard to say Boiler partisans will actually be very sorry to begin the Danny Hope administration. As we speak, you can still read things at your local newsstand like "the Boilermakers should play with a lot of emotion" and "Purdue will be explosive offensively" (Phil Steele), or "If everything clicks, Purdue could even be a darkhorse to win the conference" (The Sporting News). But as I pointed out last summer, the actual record suggests a very different path:

* Based on final record
** Based on year-end AP poll
*** Excludes MAC teams
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The one win against a winning team in 2005 was a season-opening triumph over eventual Mid-American champ Akron (final record:7-6, 1-3 outside of the MAC, including a shutout loss to Army) and the two wins against winning teams last year both came via Mid-American champ Central Michigan (final record: 8-6, 1-5 outside of the MAC, including a 30-point loss to I-AA North Dakota State). So it’s safe to assume the Boilermakers could probably dominate the MAC, given the chance, but outside of the snuggly confines of nearby mid-majors, the losing streak to non-MAC teams that finished above .500 stands at 16 games since an October 2004 win over Ohio State.

Well now, that all depends, doesn’t it, coach?
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And the gaps in those games have only gotten wider. The offense scored two completely meaningless touchdowns in the final minute of last year’s loss to Michigan, a game they trailed 48-7; a week earlier, they’d also scored a meaningless touchdown with ten seconds left to escape a shutout against Ohio State. Subtract those 21 irrelevant points from the ledger, and their efforts against the conference’s "Big Four" -- Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin -- have netted 3, 0, 7, 0 and 19 points the last two years. It’s a good thing the rotating schedule hasn’t forced the Boilers to play all four in the same year since 2004 (when, for the record, Penn State finished 3-8).

For what it’s worth, Athlon attributes this backslide to the Boilers’ "failure to perform up to its talent level," but they actually seem perfectly in line with Purdue’s talent level. From 2002-05, Rivals ranked the Boilermakers’ incoming recruiting classes fifth, fifth, third and fifth in the Big Ten, respectively, and ranked a dozen individual signees as four stars or higher. The last three years, they’ve ranked eighth, tenth and ninth, and signed exactly one four-star guy all three years. This looks exactly like what’s happening on the field.

The schedule is kind again this year, missing Illinois and Wisconsin, just as it did last year, after two years of leaving off Michigan and Ohio State in 2005-06 (although it does get tougher outside of the conference, with the addition of Oregon and must-be-better Notre Dame). Still, unless Northwestern, Minnesota (another team certain to improve by the law of averages alone), Michigan State, Iowa and Indiana manage defy to long odds and all fail to top 6-6 -- the permutations to make that mathematically possible are too obscure to consider -- the extension of that streak of futility in the face of competence will almost certainly leave Purdue to transition out of the Tiller era from the cold, lonely confines of a bowl-less Midwestern winter. Which is just about -- not quite, but very close, as judged by the fundamentals: recruits, hardware and general perception -- right where he started from.

Not that you'd ever need to go there, especially in the summer, but if for some reason you have tried to access any part of the official Web site of the Bowl Championship Series, BCSFootball.org, since last week, you've probably come across an interesting surprise:

Surely there is a very good explanation for this, such as a re-launch, or rebuild, or a move to another domain that for whatever reason has not replaced BCSFootball.org on a Google search for "Bowl Championship Series" or the Wikipedia page for the BCS or the FOX Sports CFB home page, or something, and not simply an embarrassing oversight by the Series, FOX Sports and/or its various other corporate masters, who of course are very much on top of such routine details of running a modern organization. Maybe they've decided to, uh, move away from the Web?

Although, whatever the explanation, I'd like to buy the algorithm that generated the picture of the kids playing soccer a drink. 

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Hat tip: a mysterious e-mailer who goes by "Sports Information." Anyone who can explain why this is or is not what it looks like, by all means, proceed. I just spoke to Orson Swindle and he says he's going to buy it, so act quickly.

[UPDATE, 1:41 pm CT 7/24/08] Commenter "georgiablue" notes that the BCSFootball.org url now redirects to the FOX Sports home page. So somebody somewhere is paying attention.

When I called for votes a couple weeks ago to close out this season’s Absurd/Anticipatory preview series, I got a couple of expected responses from Northwestern fans in my inbox and in the comment thread, where one enthusiastic Wildcat backer pulled out "most exciting team in the Big Ten," "darkhorse for the Big Ten championship" and "NU could be 10-2 or 11-1" in one bold swoop. Whatever. But when decidedly non-Northwestern partisan Brian Cook also shot me a note dubbing the Wildcats "interesting" and hailing C.J. Bacher’s imminent ascent up "the Basanez ladder" of minimally gifted but surprisingly effective Cat quarterbacks (see also: Kustok, Zack and Schnur, Steve), "Northwestern On the Rise" graduated to full-on meme. After all, the magazines may not be on board, but the solid and sober Wildcat blog Lake the Posts has been quietly giddy over NW’s coordinator hires and has not been shy about the prospects of going 8-4, and he doesn't seem like the type for irrational exuberance.

Northwestern has won at least six games four of the last five years, but it seems doubtful the ceiling goes much higher than that. The easiest take on the ‘07 edition, despite its down-the-fairway mark of 6-6, was that it dealt in extremes: the offense was prolific in the passing game (first in the conference in yards) and in moving the ball in general (second in total yards), but terrible at running (last in the conference, largely due to the midseason absence of Tyrell Sutton), holding on to the ball (tenth in turnover margin) and anything relating to defense -- if not for the hall-of-fame collapse at Minnesota, the Wildcats would have paced the league in futility by every conventional measure. For all the fireworks and big yards, the turnovers and blown opportunities left them next-to-last in scoring. They were –9 in turnover margin and can plausibly attribute the losses to Duke (–1, and four very long drives that ended on failed fourth down attempts inside the Devil red zone), Purdue (–4) and Iowa (–2) to giving the ball up. This is not chronic (NW had positive turnover margins in 2004 and 2005) and a pretty good indicator that

Bacher, another classic Northwestern quarterback: kinda short, kinda slow and sneaky all the way.
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But the fortune wasn’t all one-sided: what about the overtime wins over Michigan State and Minnesota, or the wild, five-point win over Nevada, where the Wildcats were outgained by 100 yards and enjoyed a +2 turnover margin? Even fully healthy, Sutton’s talents will be of little use if the defense continues to fall so far behind so often: 24-10 against Nevada, 20-7 against Duke, 45-0 at the half at Ohio State, 35-14 against Minnesota, 14-0 at Purdue, 21-0 at Illinois, all deficits Bacher was called on to pass the team out of. The run defense was a disaster for the third year in a row, allowing 4.8 per carry in conference games after giving up 4.9 to the rest of the league in ‘05 and ‘06. Bacher was sacked more than any quarterback in the conference except poor Jake Christensen in Iowa, and he threw a huge number of interceptions -- nineteen for the season and eleven in the last four games alone. Et cetera. This was by no means a team on the cusp of breaking through last year.

The main source of optimism seems to be a) Sutton’s return to full-time duty; and c) the schedule, which features no out-of-conference heavies and once again dodges Penn State and Wisconsin within the league. Taken in a certain light, that looks a lot like the formula Kansas rode to glory last year; when a glass-half-full type looks at the schedule and thinks "9-0 going into November!" it’s hard to say "No way" when the obstacles are Iowa, Michigan State, Purdue, Indiana and Minnesota. But in these cases, I always invoke the longstanding "Purdue Rule," coined in response to the unusually high expectations for the Boilermakers’ Michigan-and-Ohio State-free schedule in 2005: when the best thing you have to say about a team is which other, better teams it doesn’t play, that is not a team worth endorsing (this is also true for Iowa, which misses OSU and Michigan again this year, just as they did in the process of finishing 6-6 last year, again). Assuming there are no more bizarre early hiccups like New Hampshire in ‘06 and Duke in ‘07, Northwestern should start 4-0 without much trouble, and if things go well could come out of the midseason stretch against its second tier peers at, say, 7-2, which will probably lead to some attention from the polls and maybe some murmurings about the old "Purple Magic" or something. They could just as easily flop in October and go plodding into Ohio State, Michigan and Illinois like obscure, physically overmatched lambs to the slaughter.

Even assuming the best case through the first three-fourths of the year, all hosannas will be reserved until the Cats actually make a scratch in one of those final three games, and the prospects are not very good: since upsetting Ohio State in 2004, NW has lost the last three to the Buckeyes by 41, 44 and 51 points and failed to gain a yard rushing in Columbus last year; since the oft-referenced, scoreboard-assaulting upset of Michigan in 2000, the Cats have dropped five straight by an average of 19 points and haven’t come within two touchdowns of the Wolverines. The defense gave up 541 yards in a three-touchdown loss to Illinois last November, just as the Illini’s substantial recruiting advantage the last three years would suggest. I think 7-5 would be a successful season and a validation for the direction of the program under Pat Fitzgerald -- certainly a losing record with a veteran team in his third year would summon very dark clouds over the Boy Wonder’s tenure -- but those are pretty large gaps to close to make it special.

‘Steal’ is an operative word: can something that belongs to no one be ‘stolen’? By any measure, Virginia Tech has owned the Coastal so far, and the ACC at large: VT has won the division twice in its three-year existence and blew out the eventual champion the year it finished second; that doesn’t even include the Hokies’ conference title in 2004, before the league split into divisions. Tech has by far the best record since joining the ACC and has finished higher than any other ACC team in the final polls all four years. If there is an overlord here worthy of claiming ownership, it’s the Hokies.

But things change quickly, and even if the window is small, the mass exodus of multi-year starters that formed the backbone of the mini-dynasty in Blacksburg throws the Coastal division wide open. Not that you’d know it from anything you read this summer, every bit of which, while nodding to its potential flaws, holds Tech will be back in the ACC Championship against unanimous Atlantic favorite Clemson. This is like the Immutable Law of the ACC going in.

Hey! I'mtrying to keep this thing on the DL, dammit!
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The Hokies are extremely vulnerable, though, much moreso on paper than the Tigers on the other side. The consistently awesome defense was gutted by graduation and one killer early departure (Brandon Flowers) and what few promising options existed among a completely untested collection of offensive skill players are all either battling injuries or will miss the season altogether. The Hokie love is based in part on trust in the "Beamer Ball" brand and in part on the extreme undesirability of backing mysterious Georgia Tech behind its new coach and funky offensive scheme, foundering, dysfunctional Miami, or similarly gutted Virginia, which lost not only the best two players from the nation’s sketchiest nine-game winner to the first round of the draft, but also its starting quarterback and best up-and-coming defender to suspensions.

That leaves the Tar Heels, whom everyone recognizes must be the insurgent team in the conference, but on whom no one is willing to stake his obligatory "crazy pick" by pulling the trigger on UNC to overtake the Hokies for the division. That, based on the last four years, is too crazy.

Or...is it? If the Heels are worth a flyer in second place -- and a majority of outlets so far think they are -- it’s worth considering how well they stack up directly against the largely rebuilding Hokies, and in a couple of cases, UNC comes out looking pretty well:

Continue reading this post »

I wasn’t alone when I picked Florida State to win the ACC last year, again, but I knew then it was wrong, like a sucker who keeps doubling down instead of cutting his losses, or maybe like the defeated voice at the beginning of Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker album, who realizes he’s wrong about the original release of a particular Morrissey song, but still agrees, in the meekest, most hopeless possible way, "I’ll take that bet."

Until now, everyone has taken that bet with Florida State -- Stassen’s archive of preseason predictions goes back to 1993, FSU’s first season in the ACC, and only once (in 2004, when they picked a a virtual tie with Miami) have the mainstream outlets bumped the Noles from the top of the conference or the Atlantic division before the season, usually unanimously and always by an exceedingly wide margin -- and honestly, there’s never been a coherent reason not to project FSU as conference king, even after the disaster of 2006, if only because no rivals moved to fill the power vacuum. What, Wake Forest? At no point has Florida State ceded the bodily-kinesthetic crown, and when the athletic department moved over Papa Bowden’s objections to bring in Jimbo Fisher in place of no-account son Jeff Bowden, and hard-driving, promisingly foul-mouthed Rick Trickett to whip the perpetually underachieving o-line into shape, and old assistant Chuck Amato to bring back that old nineties magic on defense, the Noles still looked for all the world like the only bet in the division, at least, worth taking. What, Clemson?

For a guy four years in the system, Weatherford’s never had enough time.
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But even those of us who found reasons to convince ourselves these Noles who finally deserved the brand (and, much as you might protest, that was almost all of us) somehow knew we were hitching our wagons to a gimpy, wheezing horse, and that another iffy third place season after the infusion of new blood meant the glue factory couldn’t be very far away. After another season of injuries, rotating quarterbacks, a second straight loss to Wake Forest and fourth in five years to Clemson, complete failure to produce a consistent playmaker on offense and one of the most massive, embarrassing one-shot round of suspensions in the history of the sport, Phil Steele sums up the situation for professional assessors pretty well:

FSU disappointed me last year as I had them higher than most [True. PS bit on FSU in the top ten -- ed.] buying into their 3 new quality asst coaches giving the program a spark ... FSU hosts Clemson and could finish much higher but I am a little gun shy here.
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We all are, Phil, by experience -- although, clearly, some of us more than others. The brand still carries some weight, for Steele in particular, who incredibly is the only member of the mainstream prognostoscenti so far willing to take Florida State over Wake Forest in the Atlantic, and one of few who still considers FSU worthy of a top 25 vote, albeit barely: the bit of doubt he expresses is part of a blurb accompanying FSU’s position at No. 24 in his national magazine, in which he also says of last year’s underachievers, "They could have won the ACC but suffered some big injuries and lost some close games." Ah, injuries, my old friend -- healthy again, who’s going to stop them now?

At least there’s Clemson this time to offer a better-than-plausible alternative; the Tigers are experienced, have largely closed the gap athletically and have dominated the recent head-to-head with their former overlords. It took long enough, but a decade into Tommy Bowden’s tenure, consider the hype baton officially passed.

There’s no clear reason, though, that Steele’s more rational quasi-exuberance shouldn’t carry the day going into the year. Offensively, Drew Weatherford, Antone Smith and Greg Carr had their best season as a group last year and deserve much higher expectations as seniors and multi-year starters in their second season under Fisher. Weatherford, especially, now that Xavier Lee has fully flaked and left the job to Drew alone, has no excuse not to deliver his best season -- he was hurt for a lot of last year and wasn’t consistent or spectacular enough to hold off the promise of Lee’s hyperbolic athleticism, but after throwing a barrage of interceptions his first two years (30 TDs to 29 INTs) Weatherford had a 9:3 TD:INT ratio last year and finished with the lowest interception percentage in the country. If he’s not in line for the "Carson Palmer-like turnaround" Steele suggests might be looming -- Weatherford was still tenth in the offensively-challenged ACC in pass efficiency and has never been confused for a blue chip talent like Palmer -- he at least has the targets now in Carr and late season breakout Preston Parker and should have the confidence and solid footing to progress beyond "Do No Harm."

But (of course there’s a "but") the offensive line remains mewling babes, and the defense was possibly Mickey Andrews’ worst -- it played well in the win over Boston College, despite allowing 415 yards passing (that’s what happens when a future No. 1 draft choice gets off 53 passes), but allowed 23 points per game, a new high under Andrews, and specifically gave up 24 to Wake, 37 to completely moribund Miami, 40 to lo-fi, freshman-led Virginia Tech and 45 in another rout to Florida. There are no stars, and outside of the potential of ex-all-universe recruit Myron Rolle and incoming JUCO sack monster Markus White, there’s barely a twinkle: only one member of last year’s D was first or second team all-ACC, and he left early for the NFL. They didn’t finish higher than sixth in the conference in any of the four major defensive categories, and allowed more yards per game than any ACC defense except bottom-dwellers NC State and Duke. It’s not really a bad defense -- it’s just, you know, there, which is a horrible thing to say about an outfit that was so legitimately dominant for so long.

But that’s Florida State in a hollow, slightly depressing nutshell destined to be filed away in the third place bowl for another year. Not bad, still there, in a competitive sense. But now that everyone’s sobered up, just not very enticing.

Mid-major discussions these days seem to quickly devolve from the real, modest goals of obscurity -- a conference championship, a bowl game, a decent crowd at homecoming -- to the big picture analysis of "BCS Busting," as in "Fresno St. has BCS-game talent," or "High expectations for Boise State," or "The Cougars have their sights set on a BCS bowl invitation," or a season-long slogan like "Quest for Perfection." Perfection and big, big bucks. Don’t forget the paycheck, Bronco.

But that’s what the Series asked for when it expanded to five games, and what it’s gotten the last two years (with very different results) in Boise State and Hawaii. Beginning with Utah in 2004, mid-major teams have crashed the BCS three times now in four years, which makes the question less "Can anyone do it?" than "Who will it be?" Since roughly 2002, there’s been at least one annual challenge to the system from below, from a team (or teams) that otherwise wound up ranked among the top dozen in the country:

• TCU (2003): Defending C-USA champs opened 10-0 and climbed into the top ten before dropping the de facto league title game at streaky Southern Miss; finished regular season 11-1.

• Miami, Ohio (2003): Lost early at Iowa but rode Ben Roethlisberger to twelves straight wins, the Mid-American title, an easy GMAC win over Bobby Petrino’s first Louisville outfit and the tenth spot in the final AP poll. By far the best MAC team of the decade.

• Utah (2004): Blew out the entire schedule and made Alex Smith an improbable Heisman finalist/top draft pick. First peripheral team to successfully crash the BCS (unfortunately, it had to play another, sorry Big East co-champ Pittsburgh).

• Louisville (2004): Despite Utah's scorched earth trail through the Mountain West, this was probably the best of the mid-major insurgency in `04, the year before UL jumped C-USA for the Big East. The only loss was a Thursday night heartbreaker at Miami, after the Cardinals dropped the clinching interception with a couple minutes to go. Nobody else came close, until...

• Boise State (2004): Undefeated in the regular season, but scorned for the BCS by Utah and one-loss Texas. Had a New Year's Day-worthy Liberty Bowl with Louisville instead. Even if the Series took ten teams that year, BSU would have probably ceded the extra spots to the Cardinals and jilted California.

• TCU (2005): Took down Adrian Peterson-led Oklahoma, lost inexplicably to SMU, and won its last ten en route to the Mountain West title in its first year in the conference. Eleventh in the final AP poll.

• Boise State (2006): Obviously. Undefeated again, got into the party this time with the addition of the fifth game and did more to advance the status of mid-major insurgents than any team since BYU’s mythical championship in 1984.

• Hawaii (2007): The beneficiary of possibly the softest schedule in D-I history, the Warriors did more in the Sugar Bowl to set back the status of mid-major insurgents since the combined NFL careers of Andre Ware, David Klingler and Ty Detmer.

Using those teams as a composite model, we get five solid trends all -- or almost all -- of these would-be party crashers have in common:

Trend: The Set Up Year
 • Past Trendsetters: TCU (2003), Utah (2004), Boise State (2004), Louisville (2004), Boise State (2006), Hawaii (2007)
 • Exceptions: Miami, Ohio (2003), TCU (2005)
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Teams that struck the memorable season did so as the culmination of a strong, multi-year push, best demonstrated in the quick, dramatic turnarounds orchestrated by Meyer at Utah and Petrino at Louisville in 2004: both coaches won nine games their first year and blew the doors off everyone in their second. Gary Patterson accomplished more or less the same at TCU, where the Frogs won the C-USA championship in 2002, shut down Colorado State in the Liberty Bowl and finished No. 23 on the year-end AP ballot in Patterson’s second year, prefiguring their run through the first two-and-a-half months of ‘03. Hawaii had a banner, 11-win season in 2006 and opened 2007 already in most preseason polls. Boise State had three straight one-loss seasons under Dan Hawkins before it went undefeated in the 2004 regular season, and was still on the same track when the Broncos broke through in ‘06.

The peak rarely lasts more than a season, though -- even Boise State and TCU, the programs that have continued to win double digit games through coach and personnel turnover, have suffered through relative down years (the Frogs were 5-6 in 2004; BSU was 9-4 in 2005). Beginning in 2003, no mid-major team has put together three straight seasons of ten wins or more.

2008 Candidates (Nine wins or more in 2007): Air Force, Boise State, BYU, Central Florida, Fresno State, Hawaii, New Mexico, Tulsa, Utah.
Air Force and Tulsa made intriguing pushes under first-year coaches (see below), but with Hawaii’s inevitable fall from grace, Boise and BYU were the teams that had the kind of big season that suggests a bigger run to follow -- although both teams made big, surprising runs in 2006, as well, and may have played out that momentum last year (see the "Two Year Rule" above). Both would be bucking the trend to challenge again.

Another team that could fit into this category despite falling short of nine wins last year is East Carolina, a moribund club that’s found its footing with consecutive bowl games and a potentially program-making upset of Boise State -- which does not lose under those circumstances, like, ever -- in the Hawaii Bowl.

Trend: Young/Upwardly Mobile Coach
 • Past Trendsetters: All eight
 • Exceptions: None
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This is the reason I don’t particularly care if Larry Fedora plans to spend more than a few years at Southern Miss: as deeply as my heart yearns for the halcyon comforts of the alma mater, as bewildered as I am that anyone might be lured from its understated treasures, coaches who hit the mother lode at this level tend overwhelmingly to do it early, and to have the sense to take the money and get while the gettin’s good. Entrenched career types like Pat Hill still make the occasional ruckus, but the really big, storybook seasons lately have been orchestrated by eager young minds en route to bigger jobs -- Urban Meyer, Dan Hawkins, Bobby Petrino, Chris Peterson. The core of TCU's program was built by unknown Dennis Franchione, who took a winless team in 1998 to 10-2 in 2000 before moving on to consecutive bouts of infamy and ‘Bama and A&M, and has been sustained by Gary Patterson, who remains for now a perpetual hot commodity when big jobs open up every winter. Prior to Hawaii last year, all of the teams that challenged for the BCS since 2003 have done so with a coach less than five years removed from his arrival at the school, most of them -- Utah, Louisville, TCU in `03 and Boise State in 2006 -- within the coach's first or second season; back in 1998, Tommy Bowden took Tulane to 12-0 in his second year there and landed his current gig.

Brandstater: Kid may work out, after all.
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If they’re not young, they’re still mobile. The late Terry Hoeppner was not exactly a spring chicken in 2003, but he was in only his fifth season as boss at Miami, and rode that success to the Indiana job. June Jones was also relatively long in the tooth at Hawaii, which made it all the more surprising when he bolted paradise for the post-death penalty hell of SMU in January -- although the Mustangs don’t necessarily qualify as an "upward" move, unless you’re comparing facilities and returning experience rather than conference affiliation or actual on-field success in the last two decades.

2008 Candidates: Air Force, Boise State, BYU, East Carolina, Tulsa.
Bronco Mendenhall, Chris Peterson and (to a lesser extent) Gary Patterson still fall into this category, although maybe not for much longer if they don’t strike while their respective irons are hot. At their age and tenure, Pat Hill at Fresno and George O’Leary at UCF definitely do not fit, though O’Leary is only in his fifth year in Orlando and has the program on a definite upswing, considering the Knights were 0-12 his first season and have since won the East division twice in three years since hopping to C-USA. The best fits here, again, are Skip Holtz at ECU, Troy Calhoun at Air Force and Todd Graham/Gus Malzahn at Tulsa: even by mid-major standards, none has much talent to work with, but all three have wildly exceeded initial expectations, and Calhoun and Graham/Malzahn installed prolific offensive systems that seem capable of withstanding some personnel losses. Then again...

Trend: Upper-Class Quarterback In Second or Third Year in the System
 • Past Trendsetters: Miami, Ohio (2003), Louisville (2004), Utah (2004), TCU (2005), Boise State (2006), Hawaii (2007)
 • Exceptions: TCU (2003), Boise State (2004)
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Not only have BCS party crashers been led by veteran quarterbacks, but half of them --Miami, Louisville, Utah and Hawaii -- made their names behind once-in-a-generation types who served as the Face of the Program and put up obscene numbers. Louisville’s had a lot of great quarterbacks in the last decade, but none had a single season on par with Stefan LeFors’ shred job in 2004; Alex Smith, Ben Roethlisberger and Colt Brennan will be synonymous with the Utes, Red Hawks and Warriors for the rest of their lives, as will Jared Zabransky with Boise State, albeit for Fiesta Bowl drama and subsequent NCAA Football covers rather than astounding production. Add TCU’s workmanlike Jeff Ballard, and those six quarterbacks were combined 133-20 as starters during their junior and senior years.

2008 Candidates: BYU, East Carolina, Fresno State, Utah.
The obvious candidate here is Max Hall at BYU, who will not be breaking records but was the Mountain West’s offensive player of the year as a sophomore, and who bears a huge share of the burden of the preseason hype surrounding the Cougars (see below re: the BYU defense). Tom Brandstater at Fresno State struggled early on but can be forgiven the Bulldogs’ 2006 disaster if he improves as much from junior to senior as he did from sophomore to junior last year, when he improved his completion percentage by eight points, his efficiency rating by 34 points and his interceptions by about a third (five INTs in ‘07, from 14 in ‘06). The most intriguing possibility for a breakout here is Brian Johnson at Utah, who had a brilliant sophomore season but has been bounced around by injuries the last two years; he remains the most talented and experienced passer in the MWC, and seems to hold the Utes’ fortunes in his fragile hands. Air Force, Boise State, Central Florida, Hawaii (obviously) and Tulsa are all replacing senior starters with extremely green newbies.

Stop the Run
 • Past Trendsetters: TCU (2003), Miami, Ohio (2003), Boise State (2004), Louisville (2004), Boise State (2006), Hawaii (2007)
 • Exceptions: Utah (2004)
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Most of the examples from the past were led by a great quarterback, but whether they ran or passed or did everything well offensvely, what almost every upstart has in common on the field is a completely suffocating run defense: seven of the eight model teams held opponents under 3.5 per carry for the season (Utah in '04 allowed 3.8). Even Hawaii, vangaurd of high-flying offensive theatrics and forgiving defense, only gave up 3.48 per carry last year -- not great, but best in the WAC, and given the offense and the opposition, more than adequate.

2008 Candidates: Air Force, Boise State, BYU, East Carolina, TCU.
The Cougars, Falcons and Frogs are the only defenses that hit the 3.5 number last year, or even came close -- Utah, Boise State, East Carolina and UCF were okay (each allowed just under four per carry), but Fresno State and Tulsa were not in the vicinity, and only Boise (which has a strong history against the run) and ECU have the returning talent in the front seven to expect to improve very much. BYU’s overall defense was decimated by graduation -- eight new starters, including seven of the back eight -- but have been solid against the run the last couple years and have two of their best back in Ian Jorgensen and David Nixon. This is still TCU’s party: the Frogs haven’t allowed more than 3.2 per carry in any season under Patterson (2.9 last year) and return five of seven starters in the front seven.

Trend: Beat a Decent/Mediocre (Not Good) BCS Team
 • Past Trendsetters: All Eight
 • Exceptions: None
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Every Cinderella needs a bitchy, arrogant ugly stepsister to vanquish, a role played with aplomb through the years by Texas A&M, Arizona, Northwestern and, on multiple occasions, Oregon State and North Carolina. Preferably this goes down at home; Utah in ‘04 and Boise State last year built their seasons by wiping out Texas A&M and Oregon State, respectively, in Thursday night games that counted as their early home showcase for the rest of the country before the conference kittens rolled in for ritual slaughter. Hawaii took a different route last year, using Washington in the season finale as validation after three months of consuming delicious, empty calories from the rest of the WAC (and worse). I hasten to note that none of those teams finished in the polls in their respective victim seasons except Oregon State in 2006, which rebounded from its blue-turfed humiliation to upset USC and finish 10-4, and even the Beavers had to squeak out three last-second wins in their last three games to close at No. 21 in the final AP poll.

There’s another part of this, though, which is probably more important:

Trend: Avoid High Profile/Ranked Opponents
 • Past Trendsetters: TCU (2003), Miami, Ohio (2003), Boise State (2004), Utah (2004), Boise State (2006), Hawaii (2007)
 • Exceptions: Louisville (2004), TCU (2005)
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Technically, Miami beat two ranked teams in `03, but both were similarly-positioned MAC opponents late in the season. Louisville built an impressive three-score lead at Miami in 2004 before watching it go up in smoke in the final minutes, its only loss of the season. That leaves TCU, which opened 2005 by shocking Oklahoma on the road, as the only example of a would-be upstart that took on a true heavy and survived -- and it immediately lost its next game to SMU.

2008 Candidates: BYU, Air Force, Tulsa
This caveat eliminates just about everybody: Utah visits Michigan and hosts Oregon State; TCU visits a much more ornery edition of the Sooners at midseason; East Carolina opens with Virginia Tech and West Virginia; Central Florida has South Florida, Boston College and Miami in a four-week span; Boise State plays at Oregon; if Fresno State survives Rutgers and/or UCLA, there’s still Wisconsin.

The Cougars have back-to-back games with Pac Ten teams, a bad omen, but those teams are Washington and UCLA, far from automatic (the Cougars lost to L.A. last September, and were very fortunate to survive the Vegas Bowl rematch by a point via blocked field goal) but much closer to the "Decent/Mediocre" category than the "High Profile/Ranked" designation. Tulsa only has one date with a BCS team, at Arkansas in November, an interesting showdown for Malzahn in his old stomping grounds and a chance for the Hurricane to show up a rebuilding SEC team for its resumé. The nicest schedule of all is Air Force’s, which has zero BCS opponents; outside of BYU, Utah and TCU in-conference, the Falcons’ toughest date is at Houston. But then, should AFA defy the odds, will the rest of the MWC pull its weight as "Decent/Mediocre" enough?

Things are looking good for Bronco. He’s a little verklempt.
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The only team with the ingredients and the schedule to make a BCS run, based on what’s come before, is BYU, despite the mass turnover on the Cougar defense. This seems to be the consensus: every poll released so far includes BYU in the top 25, including the one issued by Phil Steele, the only member of the prognostoscenti who dares to pick Utah to win the conference. USA Today specifically projects the Cougars to the Fiesta Bowl. Utah has its virtues, but has to overcome Michigan and Oregon State outside the conference, and then, of course, BYU within the conference, where the Cougars have won 16 in a row. East Carolina looks good on paper, but it would take a near-miracle to open even 1-1 against the Hokies and Mountaineers; 2-0 is completely out of the question, and any loss, even an early, possibly competitive loss to a very serious team, is the mark of death for the BCS aspirations of any mid-major. Even those who consider the Pirates a favorite in the wide-open C-USA race don’t deign to think they’ll challenge for anything better than the Liberty Bowl. Outside of Steele’s lonely vote for Utah and Mark Schlabach’s nod to Fresno State at No. 23, no other outlet has cast a top 25 vote for a single mid-major team -- except BYU. That’s a lot of water for one team to carry for an entire class.

The non-binding previews are finished (Arizona State is the last one, damn them all), and I finally got around Monday to picking up this year's copies of Phil Steele and The Sporting News. As much as I rely on the Web now for most of the stats, recruiting and history I used to look up in his magazine, the cover still fell off of last year's Steele, which makes this year's still glossy, non-dog-eared version look something like a particularly well-manicured Frankenstein's monster, or at least a car after an oil change, tire rotation, wash and wax, ready to roll. The guy at the checkout counter, who is probably not much of a football fan, noted my choices and offered, "Yeah, it's about that time, huh?" Yeah, it is.

On that note, I'm out for the rest of this week in part for some personal business, but also in preparation for the stretch run to the season, which I hope will be pretty intense in these parts -- the plan, if realized, is a weekly sketch of each major conference, including on-the-record picks backed by detailed, obscure formulas that would be just as valid if constructed by the same process I used to select teams for the non-binding preview series: that is, from random slips of paper in a giraffe-themed pencil holder. As far as I'm concerned, beginning next Monday, the offseason is over.

Happy trails, till then.

A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason. By popular demand.
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What’s Changed. Mike Pollack was all-conference and the only center picked on the first day of the draft, and tackles Brandon Rodd, Julius Orieukwu and Mike Gustavis were fifth-year seniors with a couple dozen career starts between them, but it’s hard to say the Devils will miss three-fifths of last year’s starting offensive line -- whatever he says publicly, Rudy Carpenter certainly won’t, for reasons best expressed by USC on Thanksgiving night:

The Trojans had six sacks, four by Lawrence Jackson alone, and that was hardly out of the blue: prior to that debacle, the Devil line had allowed three sacks to Colorado, four to Oregon State, six to Stanford (!), five to Washington State, eight to Oregon and six to UCLA, then finished the year by giving up four sacks to Texas in the Holiday Bowl. Carpenter was sacked more times per game than any quarterback in school history, more than any Pac Ten quarterback since the NCAA began keeping the stat in 2004, and more than any quarterback in the country last year except beleaguered Andrew Robinson at Syracuse. Anyone who watched ASU’s marquee, nationally-televised games against top ten-ish opponents -- Oregon, USC and Texas -- knows the high sack totals were only one symptom of the line’s inability to keep rushers off Carpenter, who was constantly hounded, hit and forced to throw the ball away in those games (all lopsided ASU losses) even when not actually sacked. How they managed to win ten while often allowing similar pressure in the late night FSN ghetto is a mystery, and a testament to just what a gamer Carpenter is.

This year’s group is not as experienced or talented on paper -- massive right guard Paul Fanaika is a two-year starter who’s been honorable mention all-Pac Ten both years, but the newbies are unheralded third and fourth-year players who couldn’t supplant the turnstile guys on the front line last year, and one of them, projected right tackle Jon Hargis, spent all of ‘07 on the defensive line -- but the law of averages says there’s nowhere to go but up. If they’re as easily overcome as that group, the problems here go much deeper than talent.

What’s the Same. If they get any blocking at all, the Devils’ returning skill talent is the most productive of any set of backs and receivers in the Pac Ten, including the thousand-starred menagerie at USC. This is to be expected from such a young group here: the Devils have had three different head coaches this decade, but have almost always managed to produce a good degree of balance by spreading the ball around among a lot of solid non-stars:

Outside of the quarterbacks, the only names from any of those seasons that really transcended regional notice and forced their way into the national consciousness were receivers Shaun McDonald and Derek Hagan (well, and Loren Wade, but for different reasons); otherwise, the Devils have just plugged in the best they can find and achieved pretty consistent results, which should be the case again this year. Carpenter will get (and should get) most of the attention, but ASU returns two of the three running backs who went over 500 yards rushing last year (Keegan Herring and Dmitri Nance) and both of the receivers who went over 40 catches/700 yards (Chris McGaha and Michael Jones, who averaged 16.7 yards and had ten touchdowns on 46 grabs). To that, you can also add Kyle Williams (6 TDs on just 29 catches) and incoming Ryan Bass, a must-have prospect rated as Rivals’ No. 2 "all-purpose" running back despite his iffy size (5’10", 186), who might be the best bet on the offense -- including Carpenter -- to break out of the confines of ‘role player.’

The Great Divide. The defense might have been somewhat overlooked in last year’s success, since the overall numbers obscure how well it played in the majority ASU’s wins. It was really a tale of two seasons, and the Devil D was borderline dominant in one of them:

The least you should know about Arizona State...
2007 Record • Past Five Years
2007: 10-3 (7-2 Pac Ten; T-1st)
2003-07: 38-24 (22-20 Pac Ten)
Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*
2004-08: 31 • 32 • 28 • 45 • 21
Returning Starters, Roughly
14 (7 Offense, 7 Defense)
Best Player
Given how often he was hit last year, there’s a good case to be made for Rudy Carpenter as the most underrated player in the country, or at least the toughest. He easily led the nation in pass efficiency as a freshman, and returned from the broken throwing hand that slowed him in 2006 to post a very good 145.1 rating (147.2 in Pac Ten games) in ‘07 behind the most porous line in the conference. Since taking over for Sam Keller midway through 2005, Carpenter’s 21-10 as a starter and somehow hasn’t missed a significant snap.
Completely Unsubstantiated Rumor
Before he put his head on ice, Walt Disney reportedly took time out to design the new logo for Arizona State College, which was scrapping the generic moniker "Bulldogs" for the more demonic and geographically appropriate "Sun Devils" in the early fifties. At least, Disney had the commission -- but the actual drawing may have been done by an underling who, in true disgruntled underling fashion, designed Sparky after Walt himself. Hey, if they can hide a boner in the Little Mermaid, subliminal messages in the Lion King and pedophilial suggestion in Aladdin, surely spinning the boss as a grinning devil is, uh, child’s play.
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* According to Rivals.

Those are outstanding, top ten-type numbers in the former category, but the fact that the dropoff was so steep, and especially because it occurred against the three toughest teams on the schedule, is not very encouraging for this unit’s ceiling when teams like Georgia, USC and Oregon come around again. In fact, among those ten victims, none finished in the top 50 nationally in scoring offense, and only Washington State was in the top 50 in total offense (Cal was No. 50 in both categories, but mostly because of its outstanding production prior to the injury to Nate Longshore; the Devils caught the Bears in the middle of their second half tailspin). Overall, there’s little doubt it was the best ASU defense of the decade, but when actually challenged by competent offenses, it was still very average, at best.

It doesn’t help that the two best players, linebacker Robert James (fifth round pick) and cornerback Justin Tryon (fourth round), were seniors, as was the best athlete on the defense, safety Josh Barrett, who disappointed on the field after leading the team in tackles in 2006 but still went in the seventh round and would certainly be welcomed back in the secondary if he could regain his junior form. This is an experienced group, and pretty talented in spots -- end Luis Vasquez, linebacker Travis Goethel and corner Omar Bolden were all four-star recruits who have played a lot, and less heralded prospects Dexter Davis and Troy Nolan might be better pro prospects; they’ve been more productive so far (Davis, in particular, was a terror with four multi-sack games as a sophomore, albeit against Stanford, Washington, UCLA and Arizona, some of the worst offenses on the schedule, which tracks with the defense as a whole). Given that potential, though, and a good track record under normal conditions, there’s no slack for being so overwhelmed again by any similarly talented attack with a pulse.

Overly Optimistic Post-Spring Chatter. For a guy three years into the system, Carpenter was undergoing a lot of work in April, voluntary and involuntary: he spent much of the spring session reworking his throwing motion ("trying to hold it a little higher and get it out of my hands a little bit faster"), with limited success ("sometimes in the heat of things I revert to my old throwing style"), and undergoing more surgery to remove scar tissue from his throwing hand after practices had ended. But the bigger change was a greater emphasis on more four and five-receiver sets to take advantage of the depth at receiver and more screens to get the ball out of Carpenter’s hands before he can be pummelled as mercilessly as he’s been the last two years. ASU was without Mike Jones, who was playing baseball, and ended up missing McGaha by the end of practice, no doubt to the lament of observers anxious to see the bubble screen that has big play written all over it. I.e., more thrilla, less vanilla: the four quarterbacks threw 80 passes in the spring game.

But the quote of the spring came from Dennis Erickson after a scuffle between linemen Jonathan English and Shaun Lauvao on a day when Miami’s coaching staff was visiting ASU practice, which left the old coach unimpressed:

"They couldn't hurt each other," Erickson joked. "I wish it would have been a little more vicious if you're going to do it. I was thinking about making them run afterwards. Give me a fight before I do that. That one was like it was almost planned. We've got to do something (for the visiting coaches). Let's show we're tough. That's about how exciting it was to me. I almost fell asleep."
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Considering Erickson struggled to keep his eyes open when Russell Maryland and Cortez Kennedy executed a tag-team powerbomb on Carlos Huerta in 1989, I wouldn’t take it personally, guys. After six years of earnest chest-thumping and semi-regular brawling in Miami, it takes a lot to move the old man.

Arizona State on You Tube. ASU’s done a very charming, well-edited little video series the last couple years called "Sun Devil Stories," the best of which, from just before the 2005 season, might be in need of a post-Katrina sequel -- some guys just can’t catch a break:

The rest of the clips follow Herb Sendek into the student section, unfairly cute kids, Devils fans on daytime game shows and maybe the only more or less hot teacher willing to teach third graders the shocker.

See Also: A recap of the dramatic 1996/7 Rose Bowl and the ghost of nine-year-old quarterback Joe Germaine, one of only two ASU trips to Pasadena since it started going to bowl games in 1939. ... UCLA fans converted to Sun Devils outside the Rose Bowl. ... And an impromptu rap battle between a bunch of lame white kids walking down the street on campus.

Best-Case: I’m not sure whether Georgia is really vulnerable or not -- ASU has faced three top 20 non-conference teams in Tempe in the last eleven years, destroying Nebraska in 1996 and Iowa in 2004 and taking LSU past the wire in the narrowest possible loss in 2005, but given last year’s flops against good teams, UGA at home and USC on the road look like extremely probable losses. They’re the only two in that category, though, and if the Devils can take five of six again against Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, UCLA and Arizona -- they enter the season a tentative favorite in all of those games, and as the presumed runner-up to the Trojans -- another 9-3, Holiday/Sun Bowl kind of season is in order. A lateral step in this case is progress: ASU hasn’t finished two years in a row in the final polls since 1996-97, or for many years before that, and with a rising talent level, another second place or co-championship season would go a long way to establishing the program’s staying power.

Just one year to go, Rudy. One year to go.
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Worst-Case: The schedule is very unkind in one respect: ASU gets Georgia, a highly probable loss, and then the toughest road tests of the season, at Cal and at USC, in consecutive games in late September/early October. A three-game slide over that span could lead to big problems with Oregon, Oregon State and Washington on tap; a loss during that stretch, and possibly another against UCLA or Arizona to close the season, could leave the Devils staring at the Emerald or Las Vegas Bowl, and without much momentum going forward.

Non-Binding Forecast: The New Status Quo or Bust. There’s not much wiggle room in those scenarios: 7-5 on the low end to 9-3 on the high end. ASU is virtually assured two non-conference wins and realistically should not regress beyond 5-4 in league games; at the same time, they’re almost assured to lose to USC and Georgia, but no one else. The difference will be whether the team can maintain the same consistency it showed last year against its peers in the conference -- again, 5-1 against teams as closely matched as Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, UCLA, Arizona and even Washington, which gets ASU in Seattle this year, is a tremendous effort, and will be difficult to repeat. For now, progress is best measured by holding the line in those games and closing the gap against the elite portion of the slate, because neither the record nor postseason prospects are likely to improve. No matter what Phil Steele thinks of Cal, I’ll still take this bunch over the relatively depleted Bears, as well as UCLA and Oregon State; along with Oregon, this does look like a good bet for second place in the conference. Again.

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