USFPDiddy

Rutgers can't go to the NC game.  They are at 15 and do not have enough time to make that kind of jump.  They would have needed to start at 8 or 9 in the initial BCS ranking to have any chance of jumping that many teams.  The perception that the BE is weak, does not help.  WVU will fall to about 10 and Lousiville will only move to 4 (if at all), depending on who wins this weekend.

Sorry to say that  in my opinion, last night's game did not help the BE from a quality of play perspective.  The play did not indicate well-coached teams.

6 fumbles       (5 WVU 1 Lv)

22 penalties  (14 WVU 8 Lv)

1000 yards of Offense (541 WVU Lv 467)

Those numbers does not indicate good football teams or top level coaching.  It indicates weak schedules.   A clean 24-21 game would have done the conferene better.

UL fumbled it ONCE.  Are you going to say last year's title game also did not indicate well coached teams?  UL looked fine to me on thursday, and WVU lost precisely BECAUSE of their mental errors.  FIVE fumbles!  Try beating anyone but the biggest patsy ever with fiiiiiiiiiiiiiive fumbles!

IF IF IF RU were to win out they'd deserve to go to the NC as much as an undefeated UL or WVU would.  I think RU SOS is about 33 by season's end or something.

Poll voters aren't nearly fluid enough, because they let perception get in the way of what happens on the field.

He has the potential to be just as good of college qb, but White have much more NFL potential.

Grothe is not as fast, and lacks the arm strength of White, but is a more accurate passer and better vocal leader.

Unless White improves dramatically, he won't see NFL time as a QB ever.  He could get a similar role to randel el and such though.

Grothe has a shot.  It all depends on how well he develops.  To answer your question though, he will never RUN like White.

looky there...every state that has a 1 loss team voted for no

AND one that didn't.  Looks like Michigan is scared of a certain end of the year opponent.

Man, the SEC and Big 10 seem to hate the BE now.  UT too.  Sorry guys, you lost.  You have to hope the BE squads do too.  The benefit of a strong schedule is that you get in if everyone has one loss.  The drawback is that you still get beat out by someone who played a slightly easier sched but didn't.

wv  is running when they should be passing because white cant sustain a drive by passing

Wvu still would have been very in that game if not for their 1000000 fumbles.

If they win out and UM and OSU make it to each other undefeated we will have another USC Vs OU.....Awesome.....

ahhh, the year undefeated Auburn got screwed.  Love it.

Auburn has nothing to do with it as much as i think that it would be a game that would be over by the second quarter much like that one was.  The match ups favor the OSU Vs UM winner in a game against a UL team and thats where my basis comes from.  

yeah, those 2 teams that experts say are the 2 best in the country match up well against any other team in the country.  what a statement.  in 2000 FSU was heavily favored to beat OSU and lost.  UL could easily have that kind of game.  they are a great offensive team.

There i fixed that for ya  

Seriously can you tell me that the UL team you saw tonight can stop Wells and Pittman or Hart (who is Mr. antifumble) and do so with out biting on the play action to playes like Ginn, Gonzalez, Manningham, ect

UL has a chance vs Mich because their QB is neither mobile nor absolutely poised.  Mich's D matching up against that offense would be interesting too.  However, I think UL vs Mich is a moot point, because Ohio State just seems so much better than everybody else that it isn't funny.  Troy Smith with 22 Td 2 Int?  That, my friend, is sick.  That D gives up 7.3 points a game.  Ohio State would have to totally choke to lose to ANYONE.  Sometimes, teams just wind up stacked.  The mid 90's nebraska, 1999 FSU, 2001 Miami, 2004 USC, and it now looks like this OSU team were just unstoppable in those years.  Unlike many of those other squads, OSU has yet to have a close game.  Maybe Mich or UL or whoever can do it.  Maybe.

If two get a BCS bowl we get more money.  Other than that, it is best for USF to beat all 3 and be one of the two in the BCS bowl.  I always want the conference to do better than other conferences as a whole, so if I had it my way the BE would NEVER lose an OOC game no matter who played who.  If I had it my way though, USF would also go undefeated every year.

I'd be quite worried if WVU played for all the marbles. They've looked barely decent against several mediocre teams this year. Sending them up against OSU or Michigan in the National Championship game would be a spanking that the Big East doesn't need right now. That goes for Louisville too, though I tend to think they're deeper as a team than the core of WVU's wonderboys.

Disagree completely.  Did you watch UM against Northwestern.  They were less than impressive.

I'm not sure what you mean - what do UM or Northwestern have to do with WVU playing OSU or Michigan?

UM isn't just Miami.  UM means Michigan too.  And no, they didn't beat the stuffing out of Northwestern so easily.  That was also the first game of the season.  Saying Ohio State would blow out WVU and make the BE look bad is fine, except that Ohio State has blown everyone out so far.  They won by several TD's AT Texas.  I'd rather see UL take a crack at it than a repeat of that mismatch.  UT didn't *barely* lose.

Michigan just played Northwestern this weekend, winning by two touchdowns.

My bad, got confused with Vanderbilt, which was their first game of the season.  Mich doesn't seem to blow a whole lot of teams out, but their games don't seem to have their outcome in doubt very often either.

Also, if WVU wins out they will easily jump a lot of teams in the computer rankings.  They've had a soft schedule so far, but it will improve significantly over the remainder of the season.  It won't be great, but it will be enough to move them up quite a bit in terms of SOS.

Holy Crap, Wes Colley "bias free" ranking rates Rutgers No. 7, UL no. 9 & WVU 13!

The Colley matrix is about as objective as it gets.  The explanation of how it works involves some integral calculus, but even if you didn't know that reading through would probably give you a general idea.  This is probably my favoirte computer system, because it factors only wins/losses and SOS based on first an average rating for week 1, and then the real ratings of the teams as they progress week to week.  Because it uses the ratings of opponents to factor SOS(which are based on the ratings of their opponents and so on), SOS is factored in VERY well.

Colley is a true ranking based on only wins and the strength of those wins based on other wins.  If you like objective comparisons, there is nothing better than this by season's end.

lurkle, i really wish you'd get off this SEC love fest.  the SEC teams are good but they are only all ranked so high because they were ranked high in the preseason.  when they all beat each other they just claim that the conference is just that hard, and yet arkansas got blown out by USC, didnt they?  so what they scheduled USC if they didnt beat them, and oregon state did.  louisville scheduling Miami can't be discounted just because years after the game is scheduled miami happens to have a down year.  and they beat miami without their top RB and QB.

i hope all these high ranked SEC teams start losing games to vandy and ole miss.  then we can claim that those teams should be ranked.  it's ridiculous every year.  they arent all uber-elite teams.  they are pretty good and get nice preseason rankings that enable them to move up until they play each other and then they claim that they are only losing games because everyone is so good.

florida lost to a team that couldnt score offensively on them and they are the highest ranked BCS SEC team.  i dont buy it.

Ill take a proven commodity over speculation any day but thats just me, and im not asking you to do the same its just MHO.  You can call it a love fest all you want but its no more of a love fest than everyone  who is all about the BE who has not played a team that is good this season.  If you want to look at the facts more SEC teams are ranked the conference is ranked higher in the computer polls and they will play more ranked teams than the top BE schools.  Those are facts that are indesputable not just someones opinion and thats where i base my view on.  Who knows maybe WVU or UL will blow the doors off of everyone left on their schedules and show me that they are for real but until i see them tested against a good team i wont change my view on them as possibly being teams that are like the bill snyder K-state teams that played cream puffs all year then lost when it counted as far as bowl or conference championshios are concerned.  Also you know why SEC teams get better preseason rankings, look at recruiting class rankings, bowl history, conference records over the past few years and you will see where those rankings come from.   Your acting like the people who make the polls just say well we need some SEC teams lets throw LSU , AU, and UF in the top 10 for S's and G's.  Respect is earned not just given and if the BE can keep having a couple teams that compete for a spot in the NC game year in and year out those programs will gain the same respect as teams in the SEC Big 10, and Pac 10 when it comes to preseaon polls.  You have to remember even a few years back when Miami was still in the BE everyone used to critcize their schedule for being so much weaker than the other major conferences and giving them an easy path to undefeated season as long as they could get by FSU.  The BE and USF are in the same boat in alot of ways both are on the come up when it comes to being a major power in the conference wars/college football and your going to have to earn your respevt with year in and year out success.  If BE teams keep winning and recruit well you will see more and more of them in the preseason polls.  

Rankings are just speculation, by the way.  Comparing conference records is useless.  If you want to see how good a conference is, look at its out of conference record.  That only tells PART of the story, but it IS objective.  Even within the SEC the rankings are a tad...wrong.  Auburn started out high preseason, Arkansas didn't.  Arkansas beats Auburn head to head and has the same # of losses, and is still behind.

Was 1998 Marshall undeserving of a shot at the NC?  In hindsight, maybe not.  There were some very talented players on that roster.

You can spout all the hot air you want, but last year the SEC had 6 teams with winning records, 1 more than the PAC-10.  Also, they had one more ranked team than the pac-10 if I recall correctly.  Does that make the SEC harder?  Not necessarily, considering that they also get an extra bottom feeder or two.

Everyone whines when this or that conference comes out on top in computer ratings.  Why?  Because computer ratings are OBJECTIVE, given a set of inputs.  If the SEC was really that awesome, wouldn't they be a clear favorite given the inputs used for the computers?

I'm not saying the computers are always right, but this brings up a key point: the SEC isn't necessarily the best conference.  People attach way too much value to names.  There should be no preseason rankings.  

I would be tempted to see how polls would wind up if you replaced each team's name with a number from 1-119, and voters only saw that team number and its score vs another team #.  Early in the year, it wouldn't be very accurate.  By the end of the season, you'd have the most objective human poll ever.  

I'd be quite worried if WVU played for all the marbles. They've looked barely decent against several mediocre teams this year. Sending them up against OSU or Michigan in the National Championship game would be a spanking that the Big East doesn't need right now. That goes for Louisville too, though I tend to think they're deeper as a team than the core of WVU's wonderboys.

Disagree completely.  Did you watch UM against Northwestern.  They were less than impressive.

I'm not sure what you mean - what do UM or Northwestern have to do with WVU playing OSU or Michigan?

UM isn't just Miami.  UM means Michigan too.  And no, they didn't beat the stuffing out of Northwestern so easily.  That was also the first game of the season.  Saying Ohio State would blow out WVU and make the BE look bad is fine, except that Ohio State has blown everyone out so far.  They won by several TD's AT Texas.  I'd rather see UL take a crack at it than a repeat of that mismatch.  UT didn't *barely* lose.

Exactly my point.  I'm not defending Smith, just pointing out that sending him to clinics isn't going to get USF what it needs in an OC.

The biggest way coaches find success and climb the ladder is to mentor under other successful coaches then move up.  Along this line of thinking, you'd almost have to peruse through the QB coaches at programs like USC, Cal, Boise (long run of strong QB's), Texas Tech, or whatever until you find a guy that's been under his OC a long time and can run that system/make his own wrinkles in it.  That's the type of guy we can afford...maybe...and the type of guy that should replace Smith.

You don't promote from within if your system was not up to par.  That's a recipe for failure, which our offense has shown nearly every time it couldn't out-talent someone (UL was an oddity.  Their tendency to overpursue most have been a beacon or something!  To get burned on the reverse THAT much is horribe!)

Our guys aren't smaller, weaker, slower, or significantly "less recruiting star" than kansas, cincy, rutgers, and so on.  In fact, we're supposedly ahead of them.  So why do we get beat?  Execution and/or playcalling (mostly execution).  Who is in charge of that on offense?  Smith.  Leavitt should do something about it, and as mentioned shipping a guy to clinics won't show him how champions behave on a daily basis.  It will improve him somewhat, but not enough.  If Smith were a winner, we'd have seen something out of him by now other than subpar QB play and weak offensive performances.

BE: Schiano

Nationally: Tough call, but Houston Nutt, Lloyd Carr, whoever took over for hawkins at boise are my early favorites along with Schiano(which, if he somehow won out, WOULD win it).

I'm thinking both will get bowl bids.  Usually not every conference can fill all thier bowl slots, and bowls would rather take a big east team rather than a non bcs team.  Maybe some one can look at each conferences tie ins and project which slots will go unfilled.  Plus, don't assume they are going to take UC over USF.  Thier attendance has been terrible this year.  They have a smaller stadium and it still looks absolutely empty most games.

In the past, there were rules that said no 6-6 team could be taken ahead of a 7-5 team when the bowl was selecting an at-large team.  I need to verify this when I do my next bowl analysis.

It could mean that a 7-5 Kent State team gets selected ahead of a 6-6 USF team. :-/

Can we call the selection committee in for "owing us one"?  That rule was practically made because of us.

awesome, now let me find the threads where people said USC would win out...

You have my confession.  I thought they were better than that, and would at least wait until Cal, Oregon, or a team like that until they lost.

No way should a 1 loss UF or 1 loss Auburn make it in over UL (IF IF IF UL manages to beat WVU).  In fact, I'm having doubts Auburn even plays for the SEC title.  Arkansas has to lose 2 games, and that might not happen.  UL played a decent schedule, and I bet they could get through the SEC in similar fashion to UF or Auburn.  The BE isn't a picnic, and UL will have wins over several ranked teams should they go undefeated.  Keeping them out would be similar to keeping 2001 or 2002 Miami out...BS

For that matter, if you analyzed it from a complete season perspective, would 1 loss UF even be better than 1 loss Michigan (or Ohio State)?  I don't like teams being penalized more or less for when they lose in a season...especially in a case where the loss came to a much, much better team than any UF or AU have seen or will see.

It leaves us cheering for UConn, and as always for the Bulls.

Practice on ice and the Forum, I am sure an arrangement could be worked out

I can't wait to see trae williams making a roller skating motion as he chases down a WR.

Injury city!

Another heavily overlooked problem about going on the road is how well the team travels, how well they sleep in a new area, and so on.  Road teams can get jet lag or lose concentration/energy on long trips.  Also, going to bed at a time that you usually don't will affect you.  You can't be at 100% that way, even if you can learn to get close.  Take 11 people and raise their chance for mental error even 5% though, and more than half the time someone isn't playing as well as a result.

Practice on ice and the Forum, I am sure an arrangement could be worked out

I can't wait to see trae williams making a roller skating motion as he chases down a WR.

Injury city!

Another heavily overlooked problem about going on the road is how well the team travels, how well they sleep in a new area, and so on.  Road teams can get jet lag or lose concentration/energy on long trips.  Also, going to bed at a time that you usually don't will affect you.  You can't be at 100% that way, even if you can learn to get close.  Take 11 people and raise their chance for mental error even 5% though, and more than half the time someone isn't playing as well as a result.

Every once in a while I break 3, but that's about it.  Usually, I break 3 because someone else did first though.

Message boards are for venting, criticism, discussion, whatever.  They're not just for support.  You know how we need to show support?  Show up at games and cheer for the team.  The team mostly doesn' t care how many times I say we should fire Rod Smith on here.  Come game time, real fans will be there (or at least watching on TV for away games).  It's a pretty simple concept.

Well I was at practice Sunday night and went to do my first tumbling pass, just a layout...ya know, warming up. Ran and went to take off outa the backhandspring and my ankle completely flopped to the side and gave out, all while I still had a flip to complete in the air.  Somehow I managed to land on my feet still...but yeah I was real upset. Eventually hobbled my way to the car and drove home, watched the Cincy game.  Woke up around 3 or 4 am and it was just throbbing.  I wanted to scream.  I was gonna try and hold off till like 6 when I could go see the trainer during morning workout, but when I went to get up to go to the bathroom, I tried to put weight on it and screamed. So feeling like a horrible burden, I called my mom at 4...there was no way I coulda driven myself to the ER. So bless her heart...she comes and gets me, all the way from St. Pete which is about a 50 min drive, even at that hour from where my family lives.  So yeah she came and got me, took me to the ER, then to my ortho in St. Pete...thank God it wasn't broken cuz after having done this twice on this ankle already and once on the other ankle, we were sure I did myself in.  It's a sprain...it's really hard to say to what extent the ligaments are damaged but I've been advised that I'll probably need surgery after basketball, when I graduate cuz the ligaments are sooo messed up.  I'm just real depressed right now...it's my last year and I have 3 more football games left to cheer (2 home and then U of L) and then Nationals in January.  I'm just praying I can be better in time to do all of those!!

As far competition goes, I'm actually competing with coed.  We're having all-girl (20 girls) and then a small coed team (4 guys, 12 gals), which we feel we can do really well in both those divisions.  I'm excited about doing something different...we actually are doing choreography this weekend and learning our routines.  I just hope I can be out there and be a part of it.  It's just gonna be frustrating cuz a big part of why I made the team is my running tumbling...it's my forte.  And to not be able to do that just kills!!

Sorry to ramble...

I'm sorry to hear this.  I've had 2 sprains in my right ankle (one class 2), a minor one in the left, and most recently a broken foot (similar to the shaun alexander break, but it was my 5th meta, not 4th).  Rehab is a *****, and the throbbing is something else too.  Certainly not the worst pain I've felt, but not something I'll forget any time soon.  Soooo frustrating.  I hope you heal quickly and as completely as possible.

I want more linemen!  WR's are great, but the stronger our OL and DL, the better.  If I had to build a team, I'd first get a great QB.  After that, I'd go straight for the lines.  So what if that's just copying the patriots/eagles draft philosophy, it works!

That said, early commitments are a good thing, even at a position we already have good depth at.

I got the hugest hands and I just might use em, man.

If DB/WR's wear gloves, the only person that should be remotely affected is the QB.  He needs to keep his hand warm or it wll affect his grip.  I don't know how you practice for it.  I do think that coaches and players should take extra care to have the right equipment on.  Football players aren't babies...they should be able to play in the cold.

Personally, I think it's less a problem of weather for us and more a problem with road games in general.

It should be noted that UF practically never plays in significant cold.  They might see a road game @ South Carolina or something.  However, that happens every other year and SC isn't even always cold.

How does a kid get an offer from USF, Louisiana-Lafayette and FIU, it just does not make sense, is this kid not good enough to get offers from other BE schools and other major programs, this happens in BBALL also we sign kids who got offers from schools that are not in our league. Can someone please provide some explanation.

Answer:  Who wins those recruiting battles between us and FIU/ULL?  USF.  Who wins those recruiting battles between USF and UT/Southern Cal/Mighigan?  Not the Bulls just yet.  You ever try recruiting only 5 star players as a 2 or 3 star program in the video game?  I'll tell you what happens.  You get nobody.

The hit on Johnson was as clean as they come. It was a great hit. Julmiste threw the ball too late.

If the nfl can call penalties for sacking the qb while he still has the ball, there should be penalties in place to protect everyone.  Let's add some padding too.  Everything has to be covered, and pads are required to be at least 2 inches thick.