There's an alternating schedule in place between the divisions now. We only play ASU every other season. Same with UCLA and USC. 

I'm dubious about Oregon. The new coach doesn't seem to inspire the same play as Kelly did, but then again, it's still early for him, so we'll see. 

That's one thing I've come to love about Oregon. They may not be national champions, but damnit when they have the ball, it's never boring. I've watched Nebraska games where they'd stack defense and grind opponents to death 3.4 yards a play. I have no idea how they have any fans....

Ugh, that's painful just thinking about...

If you can figure out UCLA, let me know. I know traveling across the country is a big deal, but they've been unimpressive thus far.
I spent part of Saturday afternoon wondering who to root for between USC and Stanford. Apparently, you can't call penalties on 'SC without the coach whining to the AD and the AD throwing a hissy fit like a 12-year-old girl.
I've figure out nothing about ASU thus far, except they're better than New Mexico and Weber State. 

Week to week, I'm not totally up on the PAC 12 teams yet. I expect most of them to be pretty successful. Except for Washington State who I guess is 0-2 (losses to Rutgers and Nevada... Yikes).

I am noticing however that the UCLA Bruins don't really seem to be the superheroes of legend they were built up to be, but they haven't lost yet. USC/Stanford. I think USC is a good school, and I think Stanford is as well. Stanford holding USC to 13 points was shocking. USC holding Stanford to 10 was even more shocking. The USC sent a pretty clear message to the rest of the conference that they are also a team with serious possibilities. 

USC at UCLA on the second to last weekend of the schedule will be a game to watch.

"Artie, the division there is ASU's for the taking, run the tables."

Except Kelly left in the third quarter with a foot injury and probably won't play against UCLA. The backup QB looked worse than dreadful. The game was in hand, but I don't think ASU's offense picked up a first down after Kelly got hurt. They've lost the one guy they couldn't afford to lose in their offense. 

And there it is, the fears I've been having for 3 weeks of building now looking at a patchwork offensive line, and a very leaky defense have come calling on us to pay the price. 

You just tie the game up and Arizona is driving, and you stop them, forcing a field goal attempt. But wait, Washington Jr runs 40 yards down the open field after the drive stopping play to do a celebration and earn a taunting penalty. Now 1st and goal, now Arizona touchdown... Thank you Washington Jr. That actually saves us of being humiliated with a #2 ranking down in UCLA next week. 

The team needs a much better defensive gameplan if it wants to be great again.

"Impressive wins since the Arizona game leaves them with @Utah (might be challenging as Artie can attest to, ASU barely escaped them), Colorado and @Oregon State. "

You have to out-score Oregon to beat them, and I'm almost certain Utah won't be able to do that (and neither will ASU, for that matter).

This isn't 1996, but this ASU team has a horseshoe up its ass. They could almost as easily be 3-5 as they are 7-1 right now. If, and this is of course a galatcially-huge if, they beat Notre Dame on Saturday, they should be able to get by OSU and Wazoo (especially after Halliday broke his leg).
I think UofA has peaked. They still have to beat Washington and Utah to get to a point where the ASU game has title implications. 
 

alz wrote:

I haven't totally looked at the standings in the south really. I just know that Oregon has a 2 or 3 game lead in the north, and ASU is currently sitting in first down there in the South. Win out man, we'll try to do the same thing. The wins don't count for shit if we both come in there as 2 loss teams. We need the national vault!

Unfortunately FSU has no prayer of losing despite trying to do so for almost every week of the season. Miss St may lose, it has went through a lot, but has a lot left still. Even then though, a 1 loss team in the SEC West is still going to finish in the playoffs.I'm just hoping there's only going to be 2 SEC teams in that group, if neither Oregon/ASU win out, it could easily be 3....

Yeah, it's hard to see FSU not being one of the Final Four at this point. Maybe Florida gives them a game if the Gators play the way they did against Georgia, but I'm not counting on it.
You almost certainly have to take the SEC champ, but I don't know if you can take two SEC teams because they keep suffocating each other. MSU still has to beat Alabama and Mississippi on the road, even if its gets to the SEC title game, which right now would be against Mizzou. If 1-loss Mizzou beats and undefeated MSU team for the SEC championship, you might have an argument, but I don't know if you can take a 2-loss SEC team over a 1-loss Pac 12 champ.
If Notre Dame wins out, they'll certainly be among the Four because of their national appeal (read: whining by their fans if they don't make it). The Big 10 is weak. It's going to be difficult to take the Big 10 champ over the Pac 12 champ when Oregon thumped Michigan State by 19 points. I don't know about the Big 12. Maybe the winner of K-State and TCU is in the conversation.
ASU is in relatively good shape as far as the Pac 12 South is concerned. They have a half-game lead on SC, which they've already beat. The only tiebreaker they'd lose right now is to UCLA, which still has to play in Seattle (think it'll be cold and wet?) and then at home against SC and Stanford.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (11/03/2014 7:22 pm)

What does auburn have left? I believe they are currently already in the top 4, won't have a conference champ game unless they can jump Mississippi state. If they don't lose, I think they make it too.

"Mizzou has 2 losses"

I must have misread that. 
I think in a perfect world - well, in a perfect world you have an actual tournament with 16 teams, but that's another argument - you take the champions of the SEC, the Big 12, the Pac 12 and the ACC, because they seem to be the four best conferences, at least this year. 
But then you have the argument the second-best team in the SEC might be better than the champion of at least one of those leagues. But, the reigning national champ is from the ACC, so maybe there's an argument the SEC isn't as good as it thinks it is (especially if the team that ends up winning the SEC West has a loss to Indiana on its resume).
And, again, if Notre Dame ends up with one loss, there's no way they're not in the Final Four. There'd be so much caterwauling that all of our ears would bleed.

I believe eventually you'll see this expand to 8, potentially even the top 10 with 2 playoff games. Personally, I'd love to simply see this.

Pac-12, Big 10, Big-12, ACC, SEC - 2 teams each
All American, C-USA, MAC, MWC, Sun Belt - 1 Team each
Independants - Make this a "conference" ND, Navy, BYU, Army all must play each other during the season. Top team gets in.

There's your 16 teams. It pretty much guarantees Notre Dame gets in every year. Seeding is on a ranked basis, then set the tournament up like this. 

1v16
8v9

7v10
4V13

2v15
6v11

5v12
3v14

There's a few down sides to this however, there's no importance whatsoever on out of conference games, so Independent schools will have fun filling their schedule, but that's still true today. However since those games are rather meaningless for the conference schools, I'd expect them to come out potentially playing the 2nd/3rd string and treating it like a bye week lol. I can't get around that however, no matter what I think of. 

I believe that's probably the final landing point of this, though it might be 15 years before we arrive there. The NCAA needs to make the billions of dollars first to make sure it's a good economic move before it really focuses on doing this right. They only care about it making them a ton of cash, but I believe it will. Meaningful games with division and conference champions going against each other will make mad money, even if they aren't called "bowls", there's nothing to say you still can't let them be called bowl games.

Edit: Basically steal the perfect formula from the basketball tourney, and trim it to 1 bracket instead of 4. The pool of teams is clear, there's no selection mystery. Teams know exactly what they need to do to make it, it's brilliant I think.

Last edited by alz (11/04/2014 10:52 am)