Sunday Morning Quarterback

Check out SB Nation Race to the BCS

2008-11-15T01:11:48Z

Where It's At

2008-08-22T01:16:13Z

A few people have written about the new digs, and a couple people even hunted me down and posted the url on the sidebar. I've been writing somewhat incognito at the new site for a few days, but it's only now getting to the point that it looks like it's going to look and I'm comfortable unveiling it for public consumption.

You can find it here.

See y'all on the other side.

Happy Trails

2008-08-08T09:39:57Z

I wish there was a way to figure the number of posts I made to this version of SMQ since moving from the original site two years ago, just prior to the start of the 2006 season, without spending hours in the archives, counting on my fingers. SiteMeter recorded a little over 1.28 million unique visitors since then, peaking in January of this year -- the only month in its run that SMQ drew more than 100,000 different sets of eyeballs -- but without a spreadsheet or desktop calculator, I'm worthless with numbers. Usually even with those things, too.

So that's it then. Many people said many very nice things about SMQ and made it seem bigger, better, and more influential that it ever actually was -- by the numbers, at least, and this site has always trusted the numbers unless there's some compelling reason not to. All of these people are greatly appreciated for helping sustain and give some rough direction to an entirely ambition-less hobby. All of you who fall into this category are a little wacked out, frankly, and I thank you.

I'm out of town all day today and most of the weekend, but I'll be along shortly to pass on the whereabouts of my new digs, once the place is up and running and properly branded, etc. The posts there will probably be shorter and more frequent, but I don't know how to write like anyone else, and (so far) have not been asked to try.

Anyway, come early, stay loud, wrap up with both arms, and keep it real. Peace out.

The Fate of the Crystal Ball, or, Talkin' Bout Playoffs

2008-08-07T15:26:38Z

Part of SMQ's "Farewell Week."
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Regular readers have been incessantly hammered with my criticism of the BCS as a soulless corporate cabal and unwavering advocacy for a true playoff, and within that argument my firm opinion that the sport has been defined over the last decade mainly by its acceleration toward that end: the Bowl Coalition beget the Bowl Alliance, which beget the Bowl Championship Series, an ostentatiously roped-off exercise that dramatically diminishes the relevance of every other bowl game -- the focus on the cushy confines of the BCS as much as "bowl glut" is responsible for rendering half of the postseason utterly meaningless -- and which itself has expanded to include a roped-off, corporately-dubbed "championship game" as a bridge to the inevitable "Plus One," a format that will either introduce a small playoff itself or soon evolve into one.

Ten years ago -- hell, two years ago -- no president, athletic director, commissioner or other establishment power broker would be caught dead considering the idea of a playoff in public. "They will never let it happen," yes? Now, in consecutive offseasons, a small insurgency of the men always said to be staunchly barricading the castle from the bracket-wielding barbarians has not only promoted the idea of a playoff on multiple occasions, in an official capacity, but declared a playoff an inevitability. Its time will come.

The specific format doesn’t matter much (it will almost certainly evolve and likely expand with time, anyway) but size, as in all matters, definitely does. It is not a legitimate argument that "the regular season is a playoff" -- that would make sense in baseball, basketball, or hockey, where teams play dozens of games against virtually identical schedules rather very few games against varying levels of competition, at least a third of which (for most championship contenders) can usually be ignored for failing to qualify as competition at all; that "regular season=playoff" argument goes out the window, too, when the last two and three of the last five BCS champions lost at least one game during the regular season, and the most recent winner lost twice to teams that finished outside of the final polls -- but it is a legitimate argument that a 12-team or 16-team tournament would devalue probably college football’s greatest asset, namely that there are no mulligans. Or very, very few, anyway, and only under certain, unlikely circumstances.

Six or eight teams is still exclusive enough to enhance the stakes of the regular season (probably two or three times as many reams would carry legitimate championship ambitions into the final weeks of the season as do now) without allowing a streaky fluke into the fray, a la the New York Giants, to use the most handy example, who finished three games behind the winner of their own four-team division and had no business competing for the same title as the far superior Patriots. The equivalent of a No. 5 seed winning the basketball tournament would permanently undermine the three-month marathon/battle royale that makes college football so fascinating now; a playoff is essential, but so is the necessity that it remain exclusive.

I haven’t always thought that, and I still lean towards a playoff of any feasible configuration over the arbitrary and overly-exclusive BCS "championship." When the day comes, though, it will be just as important to state certain objecives of the enterprise, and establish some kind of precedent for limiting expansion in the name of maintaining a tense, meaningful regular season. The best approach is a balancing act.

It’s also a fantasy, because this is America, and nothing is more American than the gusto of expansion -- in playoff terms, the college basketball and baseball tournaments, like the "second seasons" of the NHL and NBA, have pushed the velvet rope so far from the door that the bracket has become an end in itself, rather than serving the just purpose of crowning a deserving champion; chaos, drama, and undermining expectations based on prior performance is the point, and thus the prior performance is nearly irrelevant (as TV ratings in these sports can attest). The NFL, MLB, and lower divisions of NCAA football have more manageable formats but have all significantly expanded their postseason fields in the last three decades, too. Where money can be made, there are no bounds.

Along the same lines, another American tradition, sans intervention from above, is consolidation of power. The demise of the old Southwest Conference is still the only unmistakable step in the direction of the true "super conference," that long-imagined, NFL-style cabal of elite programs that further ropes itself off from the academically-oriented hangers-on and the directional rabble. Prognostications along these lines, though they briefly reared their head this offseason, are much farther off than the increasingly deafening calls for a playoff. But they are part of the same evolutionary branch, and the truly exclusive "super conference" also fits a long-term trend, begun by the split in Division I in the seventies and evident in the ever-swelling contracts for apparel, television, and especially the big money bowls; the Big Eight’s transition to the Big Twelve is the most unambiguous effort so far to cut the chaffe, but the ACC’s expansion at the apparent expense of the Big East four years ago was expected to be a similarly mortal wound to the Big East’s status as a major conference, and it might yet prove to be when Pat White graduates and West Virginia falls back into its historical pattern. One of the most interesting developments of the next decade will be the relative "ceilings" of Rutgers, South Florida, and Pittsburgh, the programs that seem best positioned to keep the league above water despite histories (or, in USF’s case, lack thereof) that suggest they’re more likely to sink it.

The point is, as the stakes and rewards increase -- and, as opposed to a decade ago, a playoff is now widely regarded as an unquestioned fount of lucre -- the number of legitimate aspirants inevitably shrinks. The college game can never compete with the NFL without retaining the elements that mark it as a unique animal. A playoff is not a threat to that distinction, as the huge swatch of sports on all levels thriving with a postseason tournament can attest (personally, I associate the exhilirating, unifying experience of advancing through a playoff with high school, not the pros, and this is a very key difference). But some of the trends that accompany the road to a bracket -- the growth and increased autonomy of athletic departments headed by sugar daddies/surrogate "owners" like Phil Knight and T. Boone Pickens; the overwhelming media saturation, corporatization, and unstoppable commercial/logo creep; the never-ending facilities race and the further separation of the haves and have-nots -- do threaten the distinction. Progress on one front (a playoff) also requires deliberation and foresight to fend off the creeping corruption of the board rooms and marketing departments. They portend the wholescale commodification of tradition, and for a sport that thrives on organic loyalties, the shared experience of the campus, and simple, common bloodlust, nothing could be more fatal.

Regard Your Ballot With Excessive Care, or, Any Given Saturday

2008-08-06T14:36:24Z

Part of SMQ's "Farewell Week."
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When I unveiled my preseason top 25 last week, I tried to do it in context of a conflict that seems inherent to any basically subjective ranking of teams -- especially in the preseason -- yet gets short shrift: what, exactly, are we ranking?

In no other sport does this question carry the weight it does in major college football, the only enterprise in the world that selects its nominal champion according to the arbitrary assessment of media types and coaches who almost universally spend their weekends focused on the specific game they’re working, and who must turn their ballots in under the heat of a deadline the discourages second-guessing, contemplation, deep comparison and/or below-the-surface analysis in favor of a quick glimpse at the final scores and a handful of highlights presented with little or no context. These few elite opinions, forged in a matter of hours -- maybe less -- are granted a total monopoly on opening the closing the gates to Shangri La (Presented by AT&T), but have never been charged with stating or adhering to any consistent criteria for the enterprise.

From the perspective of pure entertainment value, it’s one of the best set-ups in sports, if for no other reason than the enduring intensity of arguments such ambiguity always generates: was Oklahoma really better than USC in 2003? Were the Sooners better than Auburn in 2004? Was Michigan the better team compared to Florida in 2006? Did anyone really believe South Florida -- or, later, Boston College, then Kansas, then Missouri -- was actually the second-best team in the country when it briefly assumed the position last year? How could anyone deny that Georgia and USC were the best teams at the end of the season? These annual dilemmas require a consistent, systematic method, and the way a voter solves them says a lot about the way they look at the game.

But no one involved with any of the mainstream polls, despite their all-too-frequent use of the term, has ever defined exactly what they mean by the concept of the best team, or how they reach that judgment in comparison with that team’s peers. Most of the time, the terms are described in an abstract way, as a mental sum of perceived parts, as if there existed a secret rating system, EA Sports-style, that could settle the issue once and for all.

Clearly the best.
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It’s this idea that led Kirk Herbstreit and other Big Ten-backers to endorse Michigan over Florida for the mythical championship game opposite undisputed No. 1 Ohio State in 2006, regardless of schedule, because the Wolverines were "just better" than the Gators. This was a serious argument, and an extremely close vote. Had Michigan won that argument, either the Wolverines or Buckeyes would have won a cataclysmic showdown and been dubbed "The Best" amid a shower of festively-colored corn chips, and no moderately serious person would even consider referring to the Big Ten, as Lindy’s did this summer, as "Charmin soft." The decision was largely arbitrary and political -- the main consideration of voters seemed to be less an endorsement of Florida over Michigan than that they didn’t want to facilitate a rematch, especially between two teams from the same conference -- but the result both in Tempe and in Pasadena, where Michigan was obliterated by USC, completely changed everyone’s very confident assumptions about "the best."

It’s this idea of inherent strength that works for well-regarded teams like LSU and Southern Cal, which, despite regular season stumbles to unranked teams, may still be endorsed because, on the average day, at full strength, they’re "just better" than everyone else, and deserve the one all-defining chance to prove it for eternity. This is probably intuitive and certainly sounds better than calling them the beneficiaries of specific sequences of unpredictable, chaotic and occasionally downright lucky events among comparably strong teams that subsequently fail to balance the arbitrary scales. Them’s the breaks, I guess, when you’re the best.

What seems closer to the truth is that there’s little to no difference in the potential of the top ten or dozen teams in the country, or between the next ten or dozen after them, or the next twenty or so after that, and so on, and the eventual order within these groups is nearly random -- the team or teams that emerge do so not as an inevitable result of superior talent and spirit (among 18-to-22-year-olds, these tend to be somewhat inconsistent concepts) but, taking ability, desire and preparation for granted, by a unique chain of events, some of them coincidental, some of them entirely outside of the team’s control (see: computers favoring Florida State over human favorite Miami after Miami beat FSU head-to-head in 2000, and Oklahoma over human favorite USC in 2003, and USC over Auburn in 2004; the door opened to Florida and/or Michigan by the Trojans’ stunning loss to UCLA in 2006; and the default baton-passing to LSU in the final hours of the regular season after losses by Missouri and West Virginia last year), but none of them preordained.

That is, assumptions about "the best" are frequently proven wrong by actual events. The best system, then, is not a rigid assessment of perceived strength, but an extremely fluid, strictly achievement-based approach that systematically rejects assumptions and accounts for chaos -- the inevitable black swan -- as the natural order. If South Florida’s resumé is the second-best in the country in late October, then yes, it’s the second-best team at that point. But probably not for long.

Not since Miami in 2001, or for years prior to that, has the difference in the split-second muscle twitches governed by hopeful strategies through thousands of snaps over hundreds of games been very obvious. For the rest, by some combination of achievement and attrition, being the best is about consistency, a little luck, and whatever else goes into just surviving.

Don't Cry For Me, Tony Barnhart, or, Content Is King

2008-08-05T19:00:09Z

Part of SMQ's "Farewell Week."
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I only knew him from television, not his newspaper (or its Web site, or his blog), and I didn’t think a lot of his last book, but news of Tony Barnhart’s impending departure from the Atlanta Journal Constitution last week revealed him as apparently the most respected name in his particular corner of the ink-and-paper business, which moves just that much closer to its inevitable demise.

The arthritic consequences of the hand-wringing over this particular subject, the much-heralded "death of newspapers," has never ceased to mystify. The business of the news is not dying but evolving, and not by very much, unless you consider a computer screen an altogether different animal than a broadsheet. It is, of course, in all the best ways: no frustrating folds, no flipping to the back of the section to finish a story (ideally -- the division of online stories into several "pages" is unnecessary and unwanted and should be ceased immediately), no paper cuts, no ink stains. All of the good things are still there in front of your face.

People may be worried about newspapers as they’ve existed for the last several centuries -- the big ones, anyway; shortly after I started SMQ and for about the next year, I worked in a non-sports capacity at a small, locally-owned daily that is in no danger because it a) has been family-owned for more than 100 years,and b) is the only outlet in the world, print or otherwise, that cares specifically about the government, economy and culture of the 30,000 people in its circulation range -- but nobody is worried about Tony Barnhart. His prospects are better than ever, in fact, because Barnhart is a talented, respected professional with contacts and traction among the people he covers for a living -- coaches, players, athletic directors, recruits. This is not exactly a shrinking beat. Readers are still interested in those people, and as long as Barnhart provides competent access and insight to them in a unique way, he’ll be a sought-after commodity on your TV, computer screen, iPod, whatever. Worthwhile content -- the things people actually subscribe to newspapers to read, or used to -- is only shedding its skin.

Say, mack, you heard’a anything comin’ down the pipe?
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Beat writers are worthwhile; they’re being snapped up by some of the most nefarious, monolithic media giants on earth, and as long as people remain interested in the games, the people who provide the definitive reports on those games will be paid. And rather than wind up in a landfill before the month is out, those reports will live on forever, where literally anyone can access, read and compile them. Beat reporters do things most bloggers can’t do: call up coaches, talk to players after practices, report on useful news like injuries, arrests, lawsuits, suspensions, and departures and, if they’re good, know how to have a good time in the process. In whatever form he takes, long live the beat writer. We’d be lost without them.

The columnist is a guy who watches the game, does some more esoteric reporting -- his function is rarely to break news, but instead to provide unique insight and analysis -- and tells readers what he thinks. When I was in newspapers, briefly, I made no overtures to joining the sports department, because I did that in college, as an occasional stringer for local papers and on the student newspaper. I sat in the press box, and it was cool, for a while, just long enough for me to realize how much more fun it is to be in the parking lot before the game, or in the student section, especially, and what a total waste of time it is to sit in a room to wait for coaches and players to emerge from a far more emotional room, put on their media faces and give canned answers to awkwardly-posed, obvious questions whose only purpose is to fill the [insert quote here] part of the "inverted pyramid," like they taught you in journalism school. So you don’t look stupid, anything that might elicit "no comment," which is everything you’d actually ask if you saw the same person in a bar, is avoided like the plague (Brian Cook, obviously, never went to journalism school). John Gasaway probably said it better when he bid adieu to his outstanding hoops blog last year:

For decades the sports columnist, by virtue of their profession, enjoyed three effective though not total monopolies:

1. The ability to see the games
2. The ability to reach readers
3. The ability to talk to players and coaches

What we've seen over the past 20 years is the total breakup of monopoly number 1 by cable and satellite. Even more dramatic has been the antitrust action brought against number 2 by the internet over the past 10 years. Today the professional columnist is left with only monopoly number 3. And while it's true this realization can on occasion trigger a frightened yelp like that coming from a stagecoach manufacturer circa 1910, this state of affairs in fact doesn't faze most sportswriters.
[...]
Another way for sportswriters to greet the present is even more obvious: if you have a monopoly on access, don't do penance. Use it. Please. In three seasons of reading MSM fare as a blogger trolling for good stuff, I still feel that perhaps the single best piece I came across was a feature by Mike DeCourcy and Kyle Veltrop of The Sporting News in December 2004. That month Illinois played Wake Forest in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge and basically DeCourcy and Veltrop each took a team and trailed them for a few days leading up to the game. The resulting article, posted a day or two after the game, was filled with fascinating details to be found nowhere else: how each coaching staff broke down the game tape, what they told their players about the opposing team's weaknesses, the stats that each coaching staff kept on their own team, what each player's assignments were, etc. All gold.

I'm baffled as to why we don't see more reportage like this. You have a press pass. Trail these guys!

...the larger point is that giving anyone—columnist, blogger, or free-lance blueberry inspector—the abilities of former monopolies 1 and 2 should enable them to run rings around anyone limited to merely number 3 where analysis is concerned (again, as distinct from coaching searches and the like).

Columnists, give us what we can't get ourselves. It's interesting to us and in your best interest.
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[Emphasis Mine]

As I’ve said before, writing is writing. The one-sentence paragraph, like many blog posts, is a form of particularly bad writing. The likes of the AJC and L.A. Times might be in their death throes, or might be merely finding their way through the darkness toward the light of a happier, more profitable future in harmony with the virtual reality. But whoever hires Tony Barnhart to provide content for computer screens will certainly tell him, "don’t change a thing."

The Kids Are Going to Be OK

2008-08-04T21:39:13Z

Part of SMQ's "Farewell Week."
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Recruiting fans will know Josh Jarboe as both a sought-after receiver recruit out of Atlanta and as the kid who was charged with two felony counts for bringing a loaded gun to his high school about a month after signing with Oklahoma. In light of that trouble, he was lucky to retain his scholarship then and remain on schedule to start practice with the Sooners this week.

It might have been best, with one eligibility-threatening incident behind him, for Jarboe to sequester himself in a room, cut his hair, practice knotting ties, and read up about the pre-war Bulgarian tendency to oscillate between strong support for Germany and enthusiastic Slavophilism toward Russia until practice started. Instead, if you haven’t seen it already, he made this:

As Brian Cook points out, as of Thursday, Bob Stoops had no inclination to consider a rap video as evidence of relapse:

"Kick a guy off the team for what he says?" Stoops said. The whole Internet culture frustrates Stoops. "We're starting to talk about everything kids say and do," Stoops said. "Now we're in people's homes, in their private spaces."
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A perfectly reasonable response to an incident in which a legal adult -- while undeniably behaving stupidly -- failed to harm, threaten, vandalize, accost, steal from, or otherwise intrude on the life of another individual. A hallmark of perspective.

Friday, Stoops kicked Jarboe off the team. What happened in 24 hours to take the coach from worry about violating his player’s "private spaces" to unambiguous expulsion? The video made the rounds on the Web, normal people had a laugh (or, more likely, a shrug), uptight people were shocked -- shocked! -- and accordingly e-mailed and wrote columns to express their Shock and Disappointment, and the resulting public pressure forced Stoops into the role of reluctantly overbearing sheriff.

Was it "the Internet culture" that asked him to act swiftly, with the full weight of his position? Every Day Should Be Saturday, the most widely-read college football blog on the Web, linked to the video with no call for discipline. The very mainstream-leaning Wizard of Odds, which broke the video’s existence and posted the version that drew tens of thousands of hits last week, made no call for discipline. None called Jarboe a "thug" or described his freestyle efforts as "jabber." Who, then, is Stoops actually frustrated with?

How can I ruin my future today?
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I haven’t listened to the video and don’t care what’s in it. Unless it contains a specific threat -- "William Moore, I’m-a come to ya house at 2429 West 26th Street #7, Columbia, MO 65201 at 1:47 a.m. Aug. 11, 2008, and stick my whistle in ya mouth!" -- its actual content is completely beside the point. I’m no fan of rap and personally regard the great bulk of it as aurally bankrupt and uninteresting, especially the amateur version no doubt offered here. But I also have a basic concept of contemporary popular culture, and a grasp of what therein does and does not qualify as an actionable danger to society. Rap, by its nature, does not qualify. I have good friends from stable Christian homes with no legal records who work desk jobs for the federal government and law firms and spend half their free time writing violent, misogynistic rhymes for their goofy "side project," the "Ghost Profits." Because they like rap, or at least think it’s fun, and that’s what rap is. I doubt they’d get fired from their über-white collar jobs if they took it seriously enough to post a video on YouTube, mainly because no one would see it. But if they did, it would be the equivalent of an embarassing turn at karaoke, and they’d be good-naturedly mocked for a day or two while being dumped with stacks of TPS reports or whatever.

Barry Tramel, because he’s old and somewhat frightened and confused by message boards and obviously has no idea what the kids are up to these days, isn’t expected to recognize that video as what it is, the modern 18-year-old black kid’s equivalent of karaoke, or the kind of harmless, dead-end garage band in which young Barry himself may have once performed (or at least dreamed of, perhaps to a cover of John Lennon’s catchy ode to murdering your girlfriend, "Run For Your Life"). Unlike John Lennon, though, or mafia-connected, filandering draft dodger Frank Sinatra, or whichever spaced-out addict rocked Tramel’s world way back when, Jarboe doesn’t look like them, or (probably) the kids in Tramel’s neighborhood today, and he certainly doesn’t sound like them. The kids these days, with their hair and music...

Tramel is right about one thing:

It was no clear choice for Jarboe to even be welcome in Norman in the first place, after he was charged with a felony in March and pleaded guilty in May. A judge reduced the conviction to a misdemeanor under Georgia's First Offender's Act, otherwise Jarboe would not even have been eligible for a scholarship, under OU policy.

Oklahoma media did not chastise Stoops for taking the gamble; he had earned the right to be trusted on such dicey decisions.
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This is true: Jarboe avoided serious felony charges only by the generosity of a judge, and it would have been reasonable to bar the kid from campus following such a serious ‘strike one.’ No one would have blinked. But he wasn’t barred, he got a second chance, one that presumably didn’t include a clause that said, "Void upon posting of boring videos on YouTube." Like Mike Freeman’s crusade against Phil Fulmer, enforcement of the standard implied by Tramel and his applauding Oklahoman colleague John Rohde would require an informal Stassi of informers and busybodies that obsessively monitors players’ Internet, drinking, and sexual habits and does its damndest to push them behind a wall, safe from the blogs and temptations of society. God forbid that a kid with one black mark -- in Jarboe’s case, not even a college kid, yet -- be allowed to continue to look like, dress like, and listen to the same music as most of the other kids he knows.

Incidents like this one will continue to pop up on a regular basis, moreso because of the Internet, and people like Tramel, Rohde, Freeman, and the online readers of The State will continue to express stunned outrage at the degeneration of a society gone horribly wrong. Coaches will continue to find themselves in the sights of do-gooding reformers who seem to demand a football team whose members conduct themselves at all times like they’re on a job interview. Old white men -- and a few old black men, like Freeman, age and cultural bearings being far more important here than race -- will continue to feel threatened or just bewildered by the proclivities of young black men, and compelled to condemn them by whatever argument they can put together.

But the men who know the players better than any beat writer who’s never met the kid -- like Fulmer, or in Jarboe’s case, his high school coach, Ray Bonner, or Stoops, whose instinct was to downplay the incident as an invasion of privacy -- continue to vouch for them:

"My players rap," Bonner said. "It's a cultural thing."

Bonner pointed to rap artist and Atlanta native Ludacris, whose new song "Politics as Usual" made headlines this week because of disparaging lyrics against political leaders.

"Ludacris can say whatever he wants to say, he doesn't care and he's a man," Bonner said. "To Josh, he (thinks he) didn't do anything (wrong) because he wants to be a rapper.
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There’s "probably bad judgment" and there’s "we must sever all ties with this kid’s best opportunity to earn an education and succeed in the future." Both are appropriate at times -- any instance involving violence, for example -- but beware the pundits who leap immediately to option ‘B.'

Blog Poll Countdown: The Cream

2008-08-03T23:14:11Z

A week-long look at SMQ’s preseason ballot.
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5. Georgia
There are no questions here about the defense, which wreaked all kinds of havoc down the stretch and returns basically everybody (with the notable exception of Marcus Howard and his 9.5 sacks in the last six), or about the identity of the offense on an average day, which needs not go further than Knowshon Moreno. Those elements are a given. But to take the next step, to break into the mythical title game, all expressions of optimism are riding on a) a continuation of the rolling stone from last year’s six-game winning streak, following a year and a half of relative malaise, including losses to Vanderbilt, Kentucky, and South Carolina, a pair of blowouts at the hands of Tennessee and skin-of-the-teeth affairs with mediocrities (or worse) from Colorado, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and Alabama; and b) Matt Stafford evolving when the chips are down into the quarterback he was supposed to be out of high school, as opposed to the quarterback he’s been.

Make no mistake: Stafford has been fine since a rocky start in ‘06, often very good -- he was positively brilliant in last year’s opener over Oklahoma State and in the momentum-building outbursts against Florida and Auburn. But he also had iffy games, throwing a pair of picks with the running game on less solid ground against Alabama and Kentucky and completing less than half his passes in the losses to South Carolina and Tennessee and the Moreno-led win over Georgia Tech. Given Knowshon’s presence in the backfield, the lack of a reliable, game-breaking receiver is hardly a deal-breaker, but the direction of Stafford’s continued growth into an efficient, consistent slinger -- however capable his arm, this offense does not need him lobbing bombs -- is. When the focus on Moreno leads to inevitable creeping toward the line of scrimmage, Stafford’s ability to make defenses pay is a prerequisite for survival.

So far, so good -- but if he’s really good, Stafford’s just getting started.
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I emphasize "survival" because my main argument against UGA in the penthouse is the unusually brutal nature of the road it faces: as we saw Friday, only one of the mythical champions of the BCS era (Miami in 2001) has faced more than four teams that wound up in the final AP poll in their championship season, and Georgia likely faces six teams projected for the poll going into the season (Arizona State, Alabama, Tenessee, LSU, Florida, and Auburn). That doesn’t even include games at South Carolina and Kentucky, and the finale against Georgia Tech, maybe the most mysterious team in the country going into the year. After the first week of September, other than Vanderbilt (knock on wood) and a couple of actual bye weeks, Georgia has no breaks; LSU, Florida and Auburn in a four-week span, all away from home, is particularly brutal, almost unfairly so, and I think almost precludes a run to the top barring the same kind of highly unlikely assistance LSU benefitted from last year. Consider, for comparison, that division mate Florida, even while getting Miami and Florida State outside of the league, only plays three teams in the preseason rankings, draws Ole Miss and Arkansas from the West instead of Auburn and Alabama, and gets LSU and South Carolina at home. Even if the Dawgs beat the Gators in the Cocktail Party and drag home another big win or two -- and there are enough of them that two or three high profile victories should probably be taken for granted -- that’s too many mines in the field, too long to be "on," to stagger out on top in December.

4. Ohio State
This is not exactly a logical conclusion, based on the entire sum of available evidence, but anyone who claims to harbor zero doubts about Ohio State’s competence re: elite competition after the last two BCS championship games is a liar. Look in their eyes, and at their votes:

They may be No. 1, but no one has it in them to actually rank them No. 1; the coaches didn’t want to pull the trigger, either. I’ve expounded against this notion, on logical grounds, and concede that, on paper, the Buckeyes look like the best team in the country. Or at least the team with the best shot at running the table, again: they have a senior quarterback, a H*i*m*n favorite shouldering most of the load on offense, another manageable schedule, and a complete stranglehold on the rest of their conference, a mile ahead of the pack of teams vying to be the top challenger.

Still, when I consider the team that’s closed the last two seasons in humiliating championship beatdowns visiting the team that’s closed the last two seasons on the better end of triumphant Rose Bowl massacres over teams that had pushed the Buckeyes to the brink (or, in Illinois’ case, past it) a few weeks before, and that’s won 38 of its last 39 at home, let’s just say OSU has not earned the benefit of the doubt. In a field of contenders this crowded, there is no room for doubt.

All of the above could be invalidated if Ohio State wins in L.A. on Sept. 13, where it is, after all, the more experienced team, the more consistent team, and can plausibly claim the best player on the field on any given play in Beanie Wells or James Laurinaitis. It’s impossible not to focus excessively on the date with USC, not only because it’s one of the biggest non-conference blockbusters in recent memory (though OSU’s heavyweight battles with Texas in 2005-06 were in the same class, and had the same filtering effects for the winner on the eventual mythical championship shot), but with the Big Ten schedule being what it is, it’s the Buckeyes’ only real opportunity to pre-empt the gnashing of teeth destined to accompany another scarlet and gray turn on the big stage in January.

3. Oklahoma
OU is in a similarly prone PR position, off four ill-fated BCS appearances in five years, but the Sooners have a few more practical concerns, as well: six of the starters in the back seven on defense are new, elite receiver Malcolm Kelly left early for the NFL, and none of several options at tailback has proven durability and/or consistency over any extended period of time. This is a problem for Sam Bradford -- though he was extremely well-protected as a redshirt freshman, and should be again with five mountainous starters back on the line, Bradford’s sky-high efficiency rating belied his dependence on a strong running game. His four lowest-rated games, against Colorado (a loss), Iowa State (in which OU scored just 17 points in a harrowing near-miss), Texas Tech (another loss in which he was knocked out of the game almost immediately), and West Virginia were easily the team’s worst games of the season, and all four came on the road, to defenses without much of a reputation but that largely kept Oklahoma runners intact. Though he had some outstanding games against respectable teams -- an efficiency rating over 200 against Miami, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State, for starters -- much of Bradford’s statistical success was amassed against rock-bottom units like North Texas, Utah State, Tulsa, and Baylor. Against foes that could actually defend themselves, the question is still out about his ability to guide the offense through an entire season without an unexpected lapse.

If the Sooners want it, it’s DeMarco’s time to shine.
- - -

To be sure, there will be no expected lapses. The schedule here is really well-suited for a championship run, combining plausibly good enough opponents outside of the Big 12 in Cincinnati, Washington, and TCU to avoid the scourge of the "soft" schedule without posing much legitimate threat of an upset, while drawing the toughest games, Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas Tech, at home (with Texas at the neutral Cotton Bowl, obviously), and avoiding the conference’s only other likely heavy hitter -- in the regular season, anyway. It will take another stunning upset to keep the Sooners from running the table through the Big 12 Championship, and if last year’s efforts against Missouri are any indication, a few new ideas on the Tigers’ part -- or whomever emerges from the North -- to keep Oklahoma from either playing for the BCS Championship or complaining loudly about an inexcusable snub.

2. Southern Cal
I have two competing, diametrically opposed instincts re: USC, both of them enticing and backed by reasonable evidence, and both lacking as a complete theory. On one hand, Pete Carroll has thoroughly out-recruited everyone in the country on an annual basis over the last six years, dominating an entire recruiting cycle that’s left the Trojans as monolithically talented and potentially overwhelming as ever. On the other hand, the "second wave" of blue chip kids under Carroll has not lived up the standard of the 2002-05 teams, losing three random, paradigm-shifting games the last two years and another (at Oregon last October) that, while less shocking, further chipped away at its unbreakable hold on the conference -- the last two conference championships, while acknowledged via polls and tiebreakers, were actually co-championships, shared with Cal and Arizona State, respectively. In relative terms, SC has looked rusty on offense, lacked consistent playmakers, and generally shown many early symptoms of a hegemon in decline.

Maybe only because of the emphatic way they closed last season, routing Oregon State, Cal, Arizona State, UCLA, and Illinois with a healthy lineup, at last, the "dominant powerhouse" role gets another year to make its case before the doubts begin to take over. This is not, like, stubborn or naîve or anything -- where SC may be the least experienced team in the entire countdown in terms of returning starters, all the way back to No. 25, the supposed newbies were very much in the fire last year, and held up well; based on their talent and early returns in limited duty, any or all of the "inexperienced" lineup of Mark Sanchez, Stafon Johnson, Joe McKnight, Ronald Johnson, Kris O’Dowd, and/or Everson Griffen could be a star by the end of the season, along with the existing stars (Rey Maualuga, Brian Cushing, Kevin Ellison, and Taylor Mays) off a defense that finished second to Ohio State in total and scoring defense. No one can ask for a return to the heights of the Leinart-Bush-White-Williams-Jarrett years on offense, but the sheer volume of potential firepower on offense should lead to more explosiveness -- with Johnson, McKnight, Johnson, Patrick Turner, Vidal Hazelton, David Ausberry, and on and on with the VHT mustangs, there’s no good excuse for the relative stagnation of the last two years. Even among four new starters on the offensive line, all four were once hyped recruits and started at least once in last year’s injury-plagued shuffle.

Once they get past Ohio State, if they get past Ohio State, the Trojans find themselves in the same position as Oklahoma: no particularly daunting road trips, and nobody coming into the Coliseum worth dropping the point spread below, say, ten. Of course, this is the same old story, callously interrupted by the chaotic appearances of Oregon State, UCLA, Stanford, and Oregon the last two years, but as much talent as remains on hand here, the smart money is on another happy ending somewhere along the way. Offensive line be damned, I can’t uncover any good reason this team won’t dominate the Pac Ten, as usual.

1. Florida
All endorsements of the Gators must answer straight away for the defense, which is no red herring of manufactured doubt. Last year’s D was 71st in pass efficiency (national champions, as we covered Friday, virtually always finish in the top 20 against the pass, specifically, if not the top ten), for allowing 310 yards and a 155 efficiency rating to low-fi Ole Miss; 415 yards and five touchdowns at Kentucky; three touchdowns and an astronomical 200-plus rating against Georgia; and 373 yards, three touchdowns and a 160 rating to supposedly lame duck Michigan in the bowl game. Meanwhile, while leading the SEC against the run overall, when not being torched through the air, they were severely gashed by competent ground games: 247 and three touchdowns at LSU (not to mention yielding to successful dives on two crucial fourth-and-one situations and another third-and-goal on the Tigers’ game-winning drive, which featured 13 runs in 15 plays and kept the Gator offense off the field for eight of the most crucial minutes of the season); 196 and three touchdowns against Georgia; and 151 and two touchdowns -- it should have been more, if not for two uncharacteristic Mike Hart fumbles at the goal line -- against Michigan. Eight of the Gators’ defensive starters were freshmen or sophomores, with more filling in off the bench, and they often played like it.

The good thing about noobs, though, is that they grow up, and in Florida’s case, all signs are that the wounded pups are destined to mature into relentless pit bulls on the order of the front seven that dominated the SEC and the mythical championship game in 2006. Rivals might be better at this argument, or perhaps Phil Steele, whose aggregate system rated Carlos Dunlap, Torrey Davis, John Brown, and Justin Trattou among the top dozen incoming defensive linemen in the country last year; they’re joined this year by three more of the same caliber, in Troy Epps, William Green, and Omar Hunter, with future first round prospect Jermaine Cunningham back at end and prodigal firearm enthusiast Ronnie Wilson, a starter on the offensive line in ‘06, returning to walk on as a defensive tackle. The linebackers last year were a pair of sophomores and a true freshman, one of whom (Brandon Spikes) was first team all-SEC by the coaches, anyway, and all three return; even the much-maligned secondary is led by two sophomores (Joe Haden and Major Wright) expected to emerge from the freshman kiln as reliable all-conference types, if they’re not overshadowed by incoming Will Hill, who’d have to change his name to "Tebow" to raise expectations any higher.

Assuming the offensive production remains steady -- Tebow, Harvin, actual tailbacks, et al aside, it’s hard to ask much more than 42 points a game -- just how much better does the defense need to be to close the gaps?

The front seven has dominant potential, and should be outstanding again in the pass rush and against the run overall, but the secondary is still a work in progress, and expecting a wholesale reversion to the elite 2006 version is not realistic, regardless of the recruting stars (remember, too, that most of the ‘06 numbers are deflated to an even greater extent by that season’s offense-sapping clock rules). The very good 2005 effort, however, is well within reach, and in fact is probably the minimum standard for improvement for a group this talented. That team, Meyer’s first, was out of the mythical championship running by mid-October because it was subpar and occasionally pathetic on offense (3, 17, and 22 points in losses to Alabama, LSU, and South Carolina, respectively, and just 16 and 14 points in wins over Tennessee and Georgia).

This edition has no such problem -- in fact, if there were any offensive issues last year, it was that the Gators couldn’t get their hands on the ball enough:

You cannot score if you do not have the ball, and in each of its losses, Florida suffered from at least a four-and-a-half to five-minute deficit in possession due mainly to the epic drives allowed by the defense. Like most clear-eyed non-haters, I have very little doubt the Tebow Child’s sophomore season of destruction was no fluke and that we are, in fact, watching one of the rare superstars whose presence and production nearly defy hyperbole -- even Vince Young did not dominate to such an extent so quickly, and it was Young that I thought of during the first half at LSU, when Tebow effectively stole the show from the vaunted Tiger defense (scoring drives of 47, 77, and 72 yards in four possessions) before being held to 16 non-desperation plays in the second half because his youthful counterparts on the other side couldn’t get LSU off the field. He only had 55 plays altogether against Auburn. If the defense is just a little better -- and obviously it should be much, much better -- Tebow and Co. should be that much harder to avoid, and nearly impossible to outscore.

You realize, of course, I’ll regret all of this by the time voting begins, much less the season itself, determined to rip all assumptions to ribbons of bloody hubris. This time of year is so much damn fun.

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Nos. 10-6: The Short List
Nos. 15-11: The Dreamers
Nos. 20-16: The Also-Rans
Nos. 21-25: The Wildcards

Anatomy of a Mythical Champion

2008-08-02T02:27:09Z

The ongoing Blog Poll Countdown is down to five "finalists," all of whom appear to me have about an equal opportunity, on paper, to carry the day to the mythical championship. Florida, Georgia, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and USC all have their merits, and I don’t know how to separate them in any way that’s not completely arbitrary; separation is impossible. Such is the way of the preseason poll.

Where the top spot is concerned, though, at least there is some precedent: the BCS has been in place for ten years, and produced ten champions, plus another pair of teams -- USC in 2003 and Auburn in ‘04 -- that made sufficient noise about being snubbed by the mythical title game to merit inclusion (the Trojans also have the traditional AP vote to back them up; Auburn has it unblemished record). Looking at those dozen, there are a few discernible trends over time:

Numbers beneath stat categories are national ranks per category.
* Number of years as starter in () parentheses -- ex: first year starter listed as Jr (1).
** Based on final AP poll; regular season/conference championship games only.
*** No team stats available, but Weinke finished seventh among individual QBs.
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The most immediately striking, consistent feature is the strength of the defenses, and -- if not necessarily indicative of an actual star at quarterback -- the extreme efficicency of each of the passing games in question. Aside from the running attacks of Florida State and Oklahoma in 1999 and 2000, respectively, no one was bad at anything; almost every team was in the top 20 in both pass efficiency and run defense, and most were among the very best against the pass, too. They also dominated opponents by at least 140 yards and/or 20 points per game, were led by a young coach (within five years, or one recruiting cycle) and a veteran quarterback and overwhelmingly drew their toughest assignment of the regular season at home, or at a neutral site. Somewhat contrary to the "Best Player on the Beset Team" cliché, less than half produced a star worthy of an appearance in New York as a Heisman finalist -- although, to be fair, Florida State, Oklahoma, Miami, Ohio State, LSU, Texas, and Florida all beat teams with either Heisman winners or multiple finalists, so the trophy has been dramatically over-represented in the championship game -- even if a hunk of bronze is more of a result than a cause (and whether this actually describes Eric Crouch or Jason White), it can never hurt to have a really unique, dominant player on your side.

The test is how well the template can be adapted to make sense of the jumble of teams vying for the top spot going into the season -- as Auburn can attest, it’s not a semantic distinction:

Stats based on 2007 national rank.
* According to Stassen Preseason Consensus.
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Georgia, it should be noted, is probably in better shape offensively than its numbers indicate, as the post-Moreno spark that vaulted them into contention over the last month and a half of the season is dragged to earth by the first month and a half, which suggests Matt Stafford has further to go that his counterparts at Ohio State and especially Florida and Oklahoma. This is not exactly true, and if it was, Georgia would still be as well off offensively heading into the season as Florida and Oklahoma are defensively, where both units begin behind the eightball to hold down their end of the deal opposite dynamic, high-scoring offenses. The Sooners, like USC, also benefit from the absence of a fearsome road game, getting Kansas and Texas Tech at home and Texas on the familiar grounds of the Cotton Bowl. Florida, though UF has to visit Tennessee, gets LSU in the Swamp and Georgia in Gainesville Jacksonville [Duh. See comments -- ed.].

It’s Georgia that ultimately comes up short in terms of the schedule: three road games against teams ranked in the preseason polls -- at Arizona State, at LSU, at Auburn -- plus Florida at a neutral site would be an unprecedented gauntlet if UGA emerges unscathed.

That brings us to Ohio State, which is closer across the board to filling the mold snugly, down to the nooks and crannies -- the Buckeyes can run with a Heisman-worthy workhorse, start an experienced, efficient senior at quarterback, are smothering on all levels of defense and already took care of opponents by championship-worthy margins with a team that was juat supposed to be retooling for a serious run this year. And so here they are, with only one major precedent to overcome to emerge as the "perfect fit": not only have few champions had to face their biggest test on the road, but aside from Texas’ close win in Columbus in 2005, none of them faced a team on the level of this version of USC on its home turf; in the Trojans’ case, they’re virtually unbeatable at home under Pete Carroll, winners of 32 straight in the Coliseum before the shocking (and possibly indicative) loss to Stanford.

I still say no team needs to win a single game this year more than OSU needs to win at USC. The stakes are pretty obvious.

Blog Poll Countdown: The Short List

2008-08-01T20:40:00Z

A week-long look at SMQ’s preseason ballot.
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10. Wisconsin
There has to be a second banana in the Big Ten, and with Michigan presumably on a temporary hiatus from Rose Bowl ambitions, I don’t see a better candidate than the Badgers. No other Big Ten team behind Ohio State has been as consistent as Wisconsin the last four years, including the Wolverines, and the personnel on offense is ideal for UW’s prefered style of grinding defenses to dust: the backfield is deep, led by big, two-time 1,000-yard thumper P.J. Hill, behind a huge, experienced, deep offensive line with 104 career starts among the five likely starters, and Travis Beckum and likely up-and-coming Kyle Jefferson to keep defenses loose. The running game should be formidable enough to keep new, iffy quarterback Allan Evridge in his comfort zone, just as it did for similarly underwhelming athletes Tyler Donovan and Jon Stocco before him. Without impressing anyone very much, Donovan and Stocco were 47-17 as starters and led units that averaged 29 points or more the last three years, a testament to the offense’s ability to succeed consistently as a power running attack without a great quarterback, as long he makes defenses pay occasionally.

The difference in a run at the BCS (very likely the Rose Bowl, if Ohio State takes care of its business) and another New Year’s morning tilt in Florida (currently at four in a row) is whether the defense veers more towards last year’s mediocrity -- which allowed 241 yards rushing to Michigan State, 289 to Illinois, 221 to Penn State, 145 to Indiana and 211 to Ohio State (most after taking a brief lead in the second half) in one dismal midseason stretch -- or the killer 2006 unit, which finished in the top five nationally in scoring, total, and pass efficiency defense. Given Bret Bielema’s track record as a defensive guru at Kansas State, and the nine starters back on this defense, the better bet is probably on the 2006 version, or something closer to it. If they can get out of the midseason gauntlet of Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan State -- with the toughest games, against the Buckeyes, Lions, and Illini, all in Madison -- at 4-2 and avoid a stumble against, say Fresno State, I’d chalk up the Badgers as favorites for one of the big money affairs.

9. LSU
Ostensibly, the Tigers’ only question mark post-Perrilloux is quarterback, because there are no questions about their unfair talent and depth at running back, receiver, offensive line, safety, and especially defensive line, stocked with cadres of enough excessive blue chip firepower to blow up opposing quarterbacks a thousand times over.

But no matter how punishing any particular combination of the front four is on defense, the looming tribulation under center is hardly academic. Remember how many extremely close calls the Tigers had, not even including the pair of overtime games it lost: four points over Florida, six points over Auburn, seven points over Alabama, all fourth quarter LSU comebacks that were in doubt in the final minute -- in the case of Auburn, down the final harrowing second. Matt Flynn was probably an underrated leader last year, and essential in those games -- he led the winning drive against Florida, threw the winning touchdowns over Auburn (where he had a sky-high 166.8 efficiency rating) and Alabama and was nearly flawless in the mythical championship win over Ohio State (166 rating, four touchdowns, five of six passing on third down). Without him, the offense was held to a season-low 14 points in the SEC Championship and had to rely on the defense to provide the winning margin.

Last year’s edition would not have played for a shot at No. 1 with two losses in any other season in the history of such a designation -- in fact, no SEC West champion since 2003 had won the division with more than one conference loss, including LSU in ‘03 and ‘05 -- and it survived a trio of extremely close, back-and-forth games to survive long enough to back into that opportunity. With trips to Auburn and Florida and Georgia coming into Baton Rouge, it’s hard to see the Tigers walking the same tightrope again with any regression at quarterback (not to mention the graduation of two senior corners on defense), which seems inevitable. Even if they survive at Auburn and into the conference title game for a rematch with UF/UGA, the best bet is the Cotton, Outback or Bowl Formerly Known as the Citrus on Jan. 1.

8. Clemson
The more I think about the Tigers, the less I consider them as merely a default pick to win the ACC -- though some people aren’t even extending that consideration -- and the more I think of them as a team on the verge of legitimate breakthrough. Part of that does come from the schedule, which has the interesting neutral site game with Alabama to open but not much else that falls outside of "Taking Care of Business," depending on your opinion of the dangers inherent in a Thursday night trip to Wake Forest and back-to-back visits to Boston College and Florida State to open November. Contrary to popular myth, Clemson does not always fold at the end of the season (as often under Tommy Bowden, they’ve done the exact opposite), and it’s significant that it probably enters every game on the schedule, with the possible exception of Alabama, as at least a touchdown favorite, and is favored to win the ACC for the first time since Florida State joined the conference -- it only took four wins over Papa Bowden in five years for the prognostoscenti to give Tommy the benefit of the doubt.

Disregarding the schedule, though, there’s no denying Clemson has moved into position to finally conquer the ACC in the last four years: the Tigers’ recruiting classes have dramatically improved, from consistent finishes in the 50s and 60s in Rivals’ rankings -- behind the likes of Maryland, NC State, Virginia, and North Carolina, among others -- to four straight top 20 classes that have produced better records on the field (three straight eight-win seasons for the first time since 1989-91, again, just before FSU entered the conference) and NFL-bound talent like Cullen Harper, James Davis, C.J. Spiller, Michael Hamlin, Ricky Sapp, Thomas Austin, Chris Clemons, Jacoby Ford, and Dorell Scott, for starters.

Now boys, it’s time to fly.
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It is true that the Tigers have consistently lost games they shouldn’t lose (to Wake Forest, Maryland, Kentucky, and Georgia Tech since 2005, for example), and that precedent is probably keeping them on the fringe of the top ten and out of the mythical championship discussion. But there’s a strong argument, which probably couldn’t be made before, that Clemson is the most talented team in the conference, and it’s been building toward this season with incrementally greater expectations and results the last years; we’ve been waiting for a program to really take hold of this conference since it became obvious FSU and Miami weren’t up to it, and every possible factor points to Clemson taking that step this fall. If not now, then the doubts are really justified.

7. Missouri
If you think margins matter, Missouri is your team: the Tigers (this stretch of the countdown does love its Tigers, no?) outscored opponents last year by 17 points per game and only took two of their dozen wins by single digits, over Rose Bowl-bound Illinois in the opener and Orange Bowl-bound Kansas in the finale -- and both the Illini and Jayhawks had to stage late rallies to get the final score within a touchdown. They were felled by the pair of losses to Oklahoma, and basically dominated everyone else, including Nebraska (+35) and bowl teams Texas Tech (+31), Colorado (+45), Texas A&M (+14), and, maybe most memorably, Arkansas (+31) in a Cotton Bowl rout that wasn’t nearly that close. On a week-to-week basis, this may have been the best team in the country.

It seems part of that magic is bound to wear off, since Chase Daniel and the nearly point-a-minute offense can hardly be expected to be better than they were, and there’s only one way to go, etc. But Daniel didn’t come from nowhere: he was excellent as a sophomore, when he completed 63 percent of his passes for 3,500-plus yards and 28 touchdowns, and no one who watched him carve up Illinois, Kansas, and Arkansas on national TV (these are the games I watched personally, in addition to the much less impressive championship loss to Oklahoma) can possibly write him off as a fluke as long as he has a target of the caliber of Jeremy Maclin. It will be a disappointment if they don’t crack at least 35 points per game again, and it’s perfectly reasonable to expect 40. Daniel is all he’s cracked up to be.

The caveat is not so much the potential drop-off in the running game with the departure of Tony Temple, or the limitations of the good-not-great defense; it’s more that it seems impossible for Mizzou, a team that hasn’t won a conference championship in many of its players’ parents’ lifetimes and hasn’t made any remarkable inroads in recruiting, can threaten to go undefeated two years in a row. Like Clemson, it’s a presumptive favorite throughout the regular season, in specific games, but Illinois in St. Louis, at Nebraska (Mizzou is 0-15 in Lincoln since 1978), at Texas, and Kansas in Kansas City are serious tests, to say nothing of home games against potentially feisty Oklahoma State and Colorado. And if the Tigers do manage to achieve 12-0, there’s Oklahoma again -- or, just as daunting, some team that managed to beat OU for the South title -- waiting in the Big 12 Championship. In the context of the last four decades of this program, in a year with so many elite contenders, I guess it takes an encore before it deserves the benefit of the doubt.

6. West Virginia
I’ve focused consistently this offseason on the theme of the Mountaineers’ season, which as I see it is something along the lines of "Last, Best Chance" with Pat White and the unprecedented momentum of the RichRod era before falling from the national spotlight, content to compete within the Big East and make the odd run into the polls, as they did under Don Nehlen. That may be dramatic, but expecting WVU to field another combination on the order of White-Slaton or, presumably, White-Devine seems like a sucker’s bet to me. This year figures to be the Mountaineers’ fourth straight top ten finish, which is completely unprecedented (they’d never had two in a row prior to White/Slaton) and probably specific to this particular era.

Despite the overwhelming favor of the preseason polls, WVU has managed to lose two Big East games each of the last two years and must solve South Florida’s defense -- a season-low 19 points vs. USF in 2006, and just 13 in Tampa last year -- before it can take another conference championship for granted. By the time the Bulls roll into freezing Morgantown on Dec. 6, though, at least the stakes will be clear, and the Big East should be up for grabs, if not already sewn up; the Mountaineers’ national ambitions will be defined by two extremely interesting Thursday night games, at Colorado in September and at home against Auburn on Oct. 23, national showcases that could vault WVU onto the mythical championship short list if White remains healthy behind a fully intact, potentially dominant line and the spread ‘n shred remains sharp. Clearly, based on big bowl wins over heavily favored Georgia and Oklahoma since 2005, this team doesn’t mind the bright lights, or the baddest competition. As much as matching up athletically in the big games, it will be finding the consistency and versatility when things get tough against the Rutgers and Cincinnatis that will make the difference between another very good year and an all-time great one.

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Nos. 15-11: The Dreamers
Nos. 20-16: The Also-Rans
Nos. 21-25: The Wildcards

Anatomy of an Underdog '08

2008-08-01T15:44:41Z

This time the last two last years, in two very different preseason poll environments (2006 was a mashup of unworthy-looking, poor man’s contenders; 2007 was all USC, all the time), I’ve assessed the rogue mythical championship insurgents over roughly the last dozen years, teams that finished at or near the top of the year-end polls despite scant preseason recognition, with the question:

What traits are common to teams that class-hop the 10-15 spots that separate them from the championship pack at the start of the season?
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Both years, I found the precedent from past underdogs favored some combination of five steady criteria, from most relevant to least:

• Kick-ass Run Defense (less than 3 yards per carry)
• Steady Junior or Senior Quarterback (Although not necessarily game-tested)
• Relatively New Coach (aka "The Big Hire")
• Upward Trend (in connection w/ the new coach, a noticeable upturn in fortune over a 2-3 year period prior to the breakthrough season -- although not necessarily the immediately preceding year)
• Biggest Win(s) at Home

Though this criteria made me correctly high on Louisville in 2006 and on board with Boston College last year, neither really challenged for the mythical championship in the end, and I failed to predict the unsung teams that actually came the closest to pulling off the surprise run, Wisconsin in 2006 and Ohio State, Kansas, and Missouri last year. And, though the Badgers fit the above-listed formula pretty well, OSU, KU, and Mizzou shot it all to hell in various ways:

Preseason rank courtesy Stassen.com’s Preseason Consensus.
- - -

To the old, tattered list of indicators, I added another -- possibly the toughest to predict -- based on the tendency of most of the teams on this list (10 out of 16) to make its run in connection with the leadership of a spanking new addition to the lineup. This is not necessarily a first-year freshman or JUCO transfer, but any player who had contributed essentially nothing to the team in prior seasons yet eventually emerged as a star, or at least an essential spark in his team’s surge -- that includes Travis Henry and Todd Reesing, sophomores who had barely played as freshmen (Henry had two carries for 4 yards in 1997, then fell just short of 1,000 yards in UT’s run-oriented offense after Jamal Lewis was injured in 1998; Reesing, after redshirting in 2005, threw 24 passes in late action in 2006, but began ‘07 as a backup and had shown nothing to indicate he would throw for 3,500 yards and 33 touchdowns), and Brad Banks, who’d played very sparingly as a first-year JUCO transfer in 2001 (68 passes) and was a virtual no-name before finishing second for the Trophy Which Must Not Be Named following Iowa’s near-dream season in ‘02.

As you can tell, indicators along these lines are much more like suggestions than mandates -- if you throw enough categories against the wall, every team is bound to hit one of them, but only Ohio State in 2002 and LSU in ‘03 qualified under every one of them. Many of these teams are also strong, run-first offenses with extremely efficient passing games (Michigan, Tennessee, Virginia Tech, Iowa, Ohio State, LSU, Auburn, West Virginia, Penn State, Wisconsin, Ohio State again), but that is a very loose disitnction and doesn’t describe the particular versions of Arizona State, Oregon State, Oklahoma, Kansas or Missouri in question; the nature of the venture means most of the teams in question will be coming off three, four or five-loss seasons -- they’d be ranked higher if the previous record had been better, and losing teams virtually never have the talent to make such a wholesale turnaround in one year -- but there are far too many three-to-five-loss teams in any given year to count that as an indicator of impending darkhorse-dom. So this year’s candidates are the ones that best fit the profile, because none of them are perfect fits:

I would give Alabama a strong endorsement under Saban 2.0 -- remember, ‘Bama is only a couple years removed from starting 9-0 with a senior quarterback under Mike Shula -- if it didn’t have two killer trips to Athens and Baton Rouge; even if the Tide manages to win one of those games, they’d still have to survive Auburn at home, and the six-game losing streak, etc., so even the prospects of a breakthrough don’t lend themselves to legitimate mythical championship consideration. The Tide are also a little off the mark against the run and are replacing most of the front seven, making the requisite push on defense unlikely.

The most consistent indicator of darkhorse teams over the last decade has been their impenetrable run defense (11 of 16 allowed less than three yards per carry, and only one, the fringe example of Wisconsin in 2006, allowed more than 3.6), and among this year’s candidates -- while I'm still not convinced it's actually a good team -- Wake Forest has the best chance of pushing its opponents’ numbers into that range. The Deacons have been better-than-solid against the run the last two years (3.2 per carry in ‘07, 3.1 in ‘06), which is part and parcel of playing in the all-around lo-fi ACC, and return five of their starting front seven, including fourth-year starter Matt Robinson and third-year starters Boo Robinson, Stanley Arnoux and Aaron Curry, who (along with cornerback Alphonso Smith) is getting a lot of attention from draftniks and all-ACC teams alike and could be the pace-setting defensive star of a temporary Wake ascendency. The Deacons have no apparent game-breakers in their incoming class -- and minus their two best big-play guys on offense and special teams, Kevin Marion and Kenneth Moore, probably need to find one, at least to serve as a threat in the return game and occasional offensive spark -- but they have an experienced quarterback, a potentially smothering defense with eight senior starters, a proven clutch kicker in close games and a favorable schedule that offers up only one game (against Clemson, in Winston-Salem) in which they’re obvious underdogs. For a senior-stocked team that built a lot of credibility last year by sustaining the potentially fluky '06 championship run, in a wide-open conference wherein the window of opportunity figures to begin closing soon, it’s now or never, and if any of this fall’s potential darkhorses screams "now," it’s probably Wake.

As always, let the buyer beware.

Blog Poll Countdown: The Dreamers

2008-07-31T22:10:58Z

A week-long look at SMQ’s preseason ballot.
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15. Texas Tech
Well, they can throw -- have you heard? -- and with a lot of people paying fairly close attention for a change, I imagine a rapid ascent from the mid-to-low teens into the top ten with a high-flying, probably record-breaking 5-0 start against Eastern Washington, Nevada, SMU, UMass, and Kansas State, against which Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree will accumulate a season’s worth of statistical feats in the span of about a month. With that padding, the season actually begins in October.

The Raiders have a very real opportunity to move into the mythical title consciousness with a sweep of Nebraska, Texas A&M, and Kansas over the next three weeks, leading into a wild, possibly dangerous environment in Lubbock if Texas comes in on Nov. 1 with Tech sitting at 8-0. Its like an old video game with progressively tougher and tougher levels, until you reach the big, bad boss in the end -- in this case, from mid-major pushovers in September to the conference middleweights in October, then on to well-heeled overlords in November, with heavily-favored Oklahoma playing the role of big boss in Norman, where none of Leach’s teams have come within two scores of the Sooners in four tries. The Big 12 Championship would be like some kind of giddy but challenging bonus level, like the "Star Path" in "Super Mario World," only there are no shortcuts to get there.

Personally, although I might not be exactly surprsied by an 8-0 start prior to the Texas game, I’m not willing to bet on it. There are many reasons to doubt the alleged defensive transplant, in the first place -- especially against the run, where the Raiders were routinely gashed even after Ruffin McNeil took over the D in late September -- and it’s a significant point that Tech has been a quantifiably different team on the road lately:

The record doesn’t even account for the weird games that reinforce the position one way or another: at home, the Raiders put up 70 twice in a three-week span as one-score home favorites over TCU and Nebraska in 2004, but later lost to Texas A&M on the road; they trounced the Aggies and beat Oklahoma in Lubbock in 2005, but lost in Stillwater to last-place Oklahoma State; in 2006, Tech averaged 33 points but scored just three at TCU and six at Colorado, both surprise losses; and last year it was crushed by 31 at Missouri but came home to beat championship-bound Oklahoma a month later.

So Texas might find itself in a game in Lubbock, but the Raiders are unlikely to survive the midseason road swing of Kansas State, Texas A&M, and Kansas unscathed, and less likely to get out of Norman with championship hopes of any sort intact. It’s significant that there are championship hopes to begin with, and that the Raiders are considered a threat in every game, but this is a strong conference and a schedule frought with land mines, likely leading to the Alamo Bowl.

14. Penn State
The continuity on defense alone justifies a push at ten wins: PSU has finished in the top ten in rushing defense, scoring defense and sacks three years in a row, and in the top fifteen in total defense; it’s also the only defense to allow less than three yards per carry each of the last three years. So nine returning starters, with much expected of the youngsters moving into the vacant positions, is an appropriate foundation for high optimism. There is no chance with this group that the bottom will fall out.

Maurice Evans will, in fact, do everything around here, if necessary. If the quarterback sucks, or whatever. Just let him know, alright?
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As good as it’s been and should continue to be, though, it’s hard to imagine the D being very much better, which shifts the onus to the offense to improve its output in big games -- against teams that finished in the final polls the last two years, the Lions are 2-7 and have averaged 15.5 points. The hope is that most of the malaise is at the feet of Anthony Morelli more than it is an indictment of the offense in general, which has a lot of potential if outfitted with a competent quarterback -- there are multiple, attractive options at running back and receiver (for the time being, anyway) and the offensive line is completely intact. They’re not a challenger to Ohio State, especially with the game in Columbus (OSU has won the last seven vs. PSU at the Horseshoe by an average of three touchdowns), but if Daryll Clark can pass well enough, or Pat Devlin run well enough, to balance the much-publicized "Spread HD," the Lions are a BCS contender. But that probably means going 6-1 against Oregon State, Purdue, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan (the Lions get the rebuilding Wolverines at home but have lost nine straight in the series), Iowa, and Michigan State, which is going to take more than two touchdowns per game.

13. Auburn
The big-picture on the Tigers sounds almost identical to the skinny on Penn State: a consistent, veteran defense holding down the fort while the stagnant offense decides between an emphasis on running or passing in the shift from a ‘traditional’ scheme based on power running to a new, more spread-friendly philosophy. Auburn, too, returns all five offensive linemen and a good-not-great set of skill players, and, at last rid of a longstanding burden, also finds itself torn between the athlete who emerged in the bowl game (Kodi Burns) and the passer (Chris Todd) at quarterback.

The difference is that Auburn has been more competitive against good teams (a solid 5-5 the last two years over teams that finished in the final polls, including two straight wins over Florida), and against its main target, LSU, which has been trading wins based on the site the entire decade -- though the combined margin in the last four games is just 13 points, the home team’s won eight straight in the series, and an even-numbered year means it’s Auburn’s turn. If only that were all: regardless of what happens against LSU in September, AU still must look forward to Tennessee, West Virginia (on the road, at night, in late October) and Georgia, then, if all goes according to plan, either Florida or Georgia in the SEC Championship. For a team with a new quarterback and an uncertain identity on offense, that’s too small a margin of error to forecast great things.

12. Texas
The Longhorns are supposed to be vulnerable, for a change, but aside from a question mark at running back -- and, from Priest Holmes to Ricky Williams to Hodges Mitchell to Cedric Benson to Jamaal Charles, when hasTexas not had an outstanding tailback? -- I don’t see it. They’re devoid of some of the elite stars of the past few years, temporarily, but the well is too deep and too rich to go to sleep on this bunch.

Admittedly, they weren’t very exciting last year, except at the times ‘exciting’ is not exactly a good thing -- as in, "Texas must rally from large fourth quarter deficits against Nebraska and Oklahoma State, then score 50-plus to keep pace with Texas Tech to win exciting games in consecutive weeks." Back-to-back losses to Kansas State and Texas A&M are disheartening, especially when the Big 12 schedule stiffens this time around with the additions of Kansas, Missouri and a trip to Colorado and Texas Tech in Lubbock. The defense, while typically stacked, athletically, is relatively green, especially in the secondary, and the known commodities on offense -- Colt McCoy, Quan Cosby, maybe Jordan Shipley -- are all in the ‘reliable’ mold, with nary a true gamebreaker a la Jamaal Charles in sight. It’s hard to see the defense getting away with allowing 25 points per game again, as it did last year, by far the worst performance of the Mack Brown era.

USF: Okay, this time, totally ready for their close-up.
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Without the impressive bowl rout of Arizona State, I’d have more skepticism, but Brown seemed to instill a sense of urgency and aggression in that game with the explicit purpose of beginning 2008 on the right foot, and carried that over in the offseason by hiring Will Muschamp away from Auburn to whip the defense back into shape -- and he’s certainly got the groceries, as they say. I don’t expect UT to threaten Oklahoma’s hold on the South, but even with the increased degree of difficulty, this is an immensely talented, consistent program, and it’s still a disappointment if the ‘Horns drop more than two conference games.

11. South Florida
At the start of the process of putting this poll together, I probably would have balked at the prospect of the Bulls in the top 20, much less on the cusp of the top ten -- my image of USF, after it fell out of the top 25 with three straight losses last November and then was destroyed by previously foundering Oregon in the bowl game, was still essentially of the little underdog who could, briefly, but then was destined to fall more or less by the wayside.

But I looked at the offense, which lost only the right tackle, and the defense, which has successfully hemmed in West Virginia two years in a row and returns maybe the most feared pass rusher in the nation in George Selvie, and then I look at the schedule, and I have a hard time envisioning USF entering the finale in Morgantown at worse than 9-2. Really, with Kansas coming to Tampa in September for one of the most interesting early litmus tests of the season (for both teams), I’d rank the Bulls as a tentative favorite in all eleven, and, based on the last two years, a serious threat in a winner-take-all showdown with the Mountaineers. There are a lot of caveats to that: games with KU, Cincinnati, Rutgers, and Pitt are toss-ups, to say nothing of UConn and trips to Central Florida, Louisville, and NC State, which makes for a manageable schedule but still one frought with danger; the graduation of two tremendous cornerbacks is a glaring concern, and the offense can’t get away with being as reckless with the ball as it was in losses to UConn (–1 in turnovers despite a big advantage in total yards), Cincinnati (–6), and Oregon (–4). But as long as Selvie and Matt Grothe are healthy, the ceiling here is higher than it has any right to be for a program that’s only been in existence for a little more than a decade.

As we’ve seen the last two years, the addition of the fifth big money game has cast the BCS’ net almost as wide as it can go -- as long as only two teams per conference are eligible for the Series, and assuming the runners-up in the SEC, Big 12 and Big Ten are virtual locks for three of the four at-large spots, the only possibilities for the last spot are the runners-up of the Big East, Pac Ten and ACC, a mid-major insurgent, or Notre Dame. The Irish will be better, but not that much better; the ACC and Pac Ten, behind clear favorites in Clemson and USC, do not have strong candidates to run the table in those conference the way the Bulls can behind West Virginia in the Big East. USF has taken progressively larger steps on an annual basis, from mid-major obscurity to minor bowl team, to minor bowl winner, to surprise national insurgent and legit Big East contender. If it can get past the Jayhawks in the third game, that last at-large bid would be the next logical step.

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Nos. 20-16: The Also-Rans
Nos. 21-25: The Wildcards

All-Up-and-Coming Team: Defense

2008-07-31T17:21:22Z

Tomorrow’s All-Americans Today
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Click here for the Offense.

The rules for this team: all players are second or third-year guys -- no incoming freshmen or JUCOs -- set to start for the first time this year, or otherwise to contribute heavily after a redshirt year or a season (or two) as a backup; in other words, their move into the lineup should be less like a patient adjustment period and more like shooting a cannon. No one on the team was feted with awards or freshman all-America notices, and none has more than five career starts; many have none. Because they weren’t instant impact beasts, you won’t find many of these guys near the top of the preseason position lists, but you should expect to be well-acquainted with all of them by this time next year.

If your team’s budding star was left off, it’s probably because we know too much about him already. And what’s the fun in that?

DE: Allen Bailey Miami
Burned a redshirt year on special teams and spot duty in an injury-racked linebacker corps, but moved down to replace Calais Campbell at end in the spring and allegedly left coaches’ eyeballs lying on the practice field. His strength coach called him "freakish as they come ... a big Willis McGahee," and if he helps Miami turn the ship around at all, expect at least one soft-focus-y feature on his obscure island upbringing, and killing alligators with shovels, etc.

Griffen: Bring on the hype, children. Bring it loud.
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DE: Everson Griffen Southern Cal
It’s almost unfair to include him here, since Griffen was too hyped coming in to be "under the radar" and lived up to the ink by starting the first game against Idaho and eventually logging 5.5 sacks in a crowded rotation of ends. But he only started one more game the rest of the year, and if that performance (three sacks against Oregon State) is any indication -- or his multifaceted performance in spring practice -- his absence from all-America teams this summer is shortsighted.
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Honorable Mention: Carlos Dunlap Florida • Ben Martin Tennessee

DT: Torrey Davis Florida
Along with Dunlap, Justin Trattou and John Brown, Davis was one of the gems of Florida’s absurdly rich defensive line class last year, and though Trattou played the most of that quartet, Davis got on the field enough to drag down a couple quarterbacks (including Chad Henne in the bowl game) and has the higher ceiling. The only way he doesn’t break out if healthy is if fellow VHTs Brown, Trattou, Javier Estopinan or incoming Omar Hunter and/or Troy Epps also force their way onto the field. You can’t double team them all.

DT/DE: Eddie Jones Texas
Jones could have made this list last year as a redshirt freshman, based on his recruiting hype, but he limped through an injury and was lost in yet another of these impossibly stacked front line shuffles. He finished with 28 tackles, two sacks, but got a lot of attention in the process and should pass sometime-starter Aaron Lewis on the first team, cementing his nightmare status in the process.
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Honorable Mention: Al Woods LSU • Justin Trattou Florida • Dexter Larimore Ohio State

LB: Martez Wilson Illinois
Logged a couple sacks from defensive end as a true freshman, but plans to slide back to linebacker to take over J Leman’s "all over the field" role. Another "workout warrior" guy that Zook compared to Jevon Kearse.

LB: Chris Colasanti Penn State
The direct beneficiary of Sean Lee’s debilitating spring injury: his role starts a year earlier than expected, Colasanti is the heir apparent to the Posluszny-Connor-Lee line of deceptively fast, Caucasian linebacking terrors, and should not cede any ground to Lee if the latter returns for a sixth year in ‘09.

Kindle: Hanging on, biding his time.
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LB: Sergio Kindle Texas
Observant Texas fans like Peter Bean spent all last season wondering why the nation’s top incoming linebacker of 2006 couldn’t surpass just-okay Rashad Bobino as the starter in the middle, and after seeing him in person against Nebraska, I sympathize with their frustration. One play stood out, an overlooked burst of dominance that helped turned the game for the Longhorns: with Nebraska leading 17-3 late in the third and facing a 3rd-and-1, Kindle ran through a much bigger blocker like he wasn’t there in pursuit to the ball and leveled the runner behind the line of scrimmage. Texas got the ball back and scored 25 unanswered points. For the year, Kindle added another 37 tackles, three for loss, off the bench. He’s still listed as a backup by most accounts coming into the season, behind either Bobino or Jared Norton on the strongside, but it would be a major upset -- or else a total lack of judgment -- if Kindle finished there for the third year in a row. It’s now or never to shed the looming "bust" tag.
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Honorable Mention: Ross Homan Ohio State • Quan Sturdivant North Carolina • Chris Galippo Southern Cal • Luke Lambert Missouri

CB: A.J. Wallace Penn State
One of the top-rated corner prospects of ‘06 moved into the starting lineup opposite Justin King over the last four games last year and should ease the transition from King’s early departure. Wallace is a little bigger than King (6’1", 190) and if he’s not a weak link, the Lion defense probably won’t have one.

CB: Jordan Bernstine Iowa
Like Wallace, an elite prospect moving into the lineup for the first time, although Bernstine only sat one year at Iowa instead of two. Bernstine -- who we can say pretty definitively is not of Hebrew descent, despite the name -- is replacing Adam Shada, and should be an immediate upgrade, athletically.
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Honorable Mention: Domonique Franks Oklahoma • Deon Beasley Texas

S: Chad Jones LSU
Jones returned punts, picked off André Woodson and made one the biggest plays of the year by blitzing and stripping John Parker Wilson to set up the winning touchdown at Alabama, so he’s already known as much for his play as for his considerable hype. But unlike fellow freshman star Eric Berry at Tennessee, he didn’t start a game, so his ascension won’t really begin until he takes over for Craig Steltz at strong safety this fall.

S: Reshad Jones Georgia
Jones started a couple games last year as a redshirt freshman, and played enough to get some impressive photos onto Google Images, at least. Recruiting gurus set the bar high here: Georgia fans are already expecting Jones to contend for all-SEC in his first year as the full-time free safety. It’s a crowded field, with Berry, Chad Jones, Derek Pegues, Rashad Jackson, Major Wright, Emmanuel Cook, Curtis Taylor and his own teammate, C.J. Byrd, but not necessarily unrealistic.
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Honorable Mention: Chykie Brown Texas • Mike McNeil Auburn • Stevie Brown Michigan