There is so much football that still has to be played. As A Hawkeye fan, I don't expect us to make the NC game, but I'm not counting it out either. Everyone has to keep winning, otherwise it doesn't matter As for fanbase, Iowa is know for having a rabid one, that travels very well. That's why last year we were chosen for the Outback Bowl over a Northwestern team that had a better record than us, and a head to head victory as well. Personally, if Iowa doesn't make the NC, I would be elated to have the Hawkeyes in the Rose Bowl. Before all the BCS BS, this was the Big 10's bowl. There is a reason they pass out those roses when a Big 10 championship is won. When everyone is talking about the merits of Alabama, Florida and Texas, and Iowa is mentioned with that group, one of these things is not like the others. For a school that isn't a recruit factory, this has been an incredible season. This team is greater than the sum of it's parts. I hope to see it continue.
False... !!!! They had the last 3 champions which means they had the best team that year but it does NOTHING to validate their conference as the best. Was the Mountain West the best conference the year BYU won it all? Come on ... DD
This is three years in a row, not just one. If you don't think that the SEC is the best conference then which one is?
I think everywhere is down. Especially the big 12. This year it's just Texas. All I know is that the winner of the SEC championship game (even if that team has one loss) will play Texas as long as they win out. Like I said before I'm a huge Texas football fan but I have to put my school first so I hope to see an Alabama Texas National Championship game.
You could make a pretty strong case for the Pac10 over the last decade or so, from top to bottom. Last year, I think they won all their bowl games, and this year, they had the best out-of-conference performance.
It would be interesting to see what happens if Texas and Iowa went undefeated, while the SEC champion had a loss. I'm not sure the SEC team could make it. Texas would be #1 in the polls and probably #2 in the computers. Iowa would be #1 in the computers and #2 in the polls. The SEC team would probably be stuck in 3rd in both.
i think the SEC is a bit down, but it's still tops in the country. I do think the once conference that is up is the pac-10. They have a lot of quality teams. It will be interesting to see how they fair in the bowl games.
Trying to figure out which conference is best is pointless I think....just another reason to have a playoff situation in CF. Man, I really hope Boise, Iowa, TCU, Texas and either Bama or Fla go undefeated....what a mess that would be... It will probably take legislation to fix it though. DD
However, last year the only conference to send less teams to the bowl games than the Pac-10 was the Sun Belt conference. The Pac-10 sent as many teams to bowl games as did the MWC and WAC...
Also curious, but where did you get the opinion that the Pac10 is best over the last decade? I would say the SEC was based on these stats: The SEC has the nation's top non-conference winning percentage (including bowl games) since 2000, the best bowl game win percentage of the past decade, and the SEC has had more teams ranked in the final USA Today Coaches Poll than any other conference since 2000 with 43 (2nd is the Big12 with 36). After that, I would probably go with the Big 12 as the 2nd best. Pac-10 probably comes in third place.
Part of this is their schedule and part of this is their size. The Pac10 has only 10 teams - the SEC, ACC and Big 12 all have 12, while the B10 has 11. You also have to win 6 games to be bowl eligible. They play an extra conference game every year over all the other teams so that's only less creampuff team that they play. In general, the Pac10 tends to play the toughest overall non-conference schedules as well. For example, the two teams that missed bowl eligibility by 1 game both played a ranked OOC opponent. Had they scheduled crap teams, they'd probably have won and the Pac10 would have sent 7 out of 10 teams to bowls.
There was a pretty good post on HornFans about it, but I can't seem to find it. It basically compared the Pac10 to the SEC head-to-head, and the Pac10 matched them or were better in virtually every comparison. I'm just going from memory, but I think head-to-head both regular season and bowls, the Pac10 had a winning record vs the SEC. And the SEC's non-conf record is in part due to creampuffs. For example, this year, the 12 SEC teams play a combined 11 1-AA schools (presumably going 11-0). Not sure how much that skews things, but it certainly has an impact. I'll try to find the original post about it - I hadn't really looked at the Pac10 as that good either until I saw the numbers.
most don't. I never did until I went to school in it. Then i started to notice, wow, this is a pretty tough conference top to bottom.
This is my rankings... 1. Florida 2. Texas 3. Alabama After watching the last two games over today (recorded), I'd put Texas ahead of Alabama... but this still doesn't mean any of these teams are better than one another. At this point, they are all equal.
After the loss to Texas A&M Mike Leach blamed his players fat little girlfriends... funny stuff http://everythinglubbock.com/content/fulltext/?cid=43131
