A decade of greatness packed into six years

[TyBull]

Do not check your calendar. It is still 2006.

Fine, so you're still wondering why CBS SportsLine.com's preseason magazine has decided to assemble an All-Decade Team, more or less halfway through the decade.

The question should be, why not?

This is not a golden age of college football, it is the golden age. Move over Knute and Grantland. We are living in revolutionary times, an era of unprecedented growth, popularity and innovation. The best players, best teams and best coaches of a generation have combined in this short period to give us things we thought we would never see.

A legitimate national championship: As much as you might dislike the BCS, it has accomplished what it set out to do -- most of the time. That is, match the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in a winner-take-all national championship game. In the 69-year history of the Associated Press poll, No. 1 and No. 2 have met in a bowl game only 16 times. Five of those have come in the eight-year history of the BCS title game. Four of those five have been played this decade.

Offensive explosion: Since the beginning of the 2000 season, all-time highs have been established in 10 of the 14 offensive categories tracked annually by the NCAA. In that period, the Division I-A records for average passing yards in a game ('03, '05) and cumulative completion percentage ('04, '05) have been broken twice.

Technology: What used to take days now takes seconds. There is no more game "film." Game plans can be assembled on a laptop. Players are given DVDs to take home to study.

Don't call them kids: What was once taboo in the sport, playing raw freshman, is now a must. Because of modern nutrition and weight training, freshmen are more able physically to compete at an early age.

Southern California coach Pete Carroll estimated he used 40 freshmen over a three-year period. A 19-year-old (Adrian Peterson in 2004) finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting before his first spring practice. Players from the same school (USC) won back-to-back trophies for only the fourth time.

Excellence: The sixth-longest winning streak in history has been tied twice since 2003. Miami (2000-03) and USC (2003-06) each won 34 games in a row. The last time two teams had major winning streaks that close together was Miami (29) and Alabama (28). Both streaks ended in 1993.

The trends have reflected society. In this digital age, everybody wants it now. For that, you can thank Oklahoma's Bob Stoops and Ohio State's Jim Tressel. Each won a national championship in his second year on the job.

"Stoops basically got John Cooper and several other coaches fired," CBS college football analyst Spencer Tillman said. "The standard became: If you couldn't get it done in that time frame then it was, 'Why could Oklahoma do it?' It was three years, see ya. Everything changed."

Things certainly changed at Notre Dame. The school went against its age-old habit of allowing a coach to finish out his contract. Whether you agree or not with Tyrone Willingham being let go in 2004, it was a symptom of the digital age.

Since the end of the 1999 season, 82 schools (69 percent of I-A) have changed coaches at least once. In the hyper-competitive SEC, nine of the 12 schools have changed coaches in that period. In a sport known for its conservatism and glacial change, recruiting visits are now recorded on the Internet literally within seconds of a coach leaving a prospect's home.

CBS SPORTSLINE.COM'S

ALL-DECADE TEAM

First Team

QB Matt Leinart, USC

RB Reggie Bush, USC

RB LaDainian Tomlinson, TCU

WR Larry Fitzgerald, Pitt

WR Mike Williams, USC

TE Kellen Winslow, Miami (Fla.)

OL Shawn Andrews, Arkansas

OL Jammal Brown, Oklahoma

OL Robert Gallery, Iowa

OL Bryant McKinnie, Miami (Fla.)

C Jake Grove, Va. Tech

DL Dwight Freeney, Syracuse

DL Mathias Kiwanuka, B. College

DL Julius Peppers, N. Carolina

DL Terrell Suggs, Arizona St.

LB Rocky Calmus, Oklahoma

LB A.J. Hawk, Ohio State

LB Dan Morgan, Miami (Fla.)

DB Quentin Jammer, Texas

DB Terence Newman, Kansas St.

DB Ed Reed, Miami (Fla.)

DB Roy Williams, Oklahoma

P Daniel Sepulveda, Baylor

PK Mike Nugent, Ohio State

RET Antonio Perkins, Oklahoma

Coach Pete Carroll, USC

Second Team

QB Jason White, Oklahoma

RB Larry Johnson, Penn State

RB Willis McGahee, Miami (Fla.)

WR Braylon Edwards, Mich.

WR Charles Rogers, Mich. St.

TE Heath Miller, Virginia

OL Alex Barron, Florida St.

OL Steve Hutchinson, Michi.

OL Stephen Peterman, LSU

OL Alex Stepanovich, Ohio St.

C Greg Eslinger, Minnesota

DL Elvis Dumervil, Louisville

DL Tamba Hali, Penn State

DL Tommie Harris, Oklahoma

DL David Pollack, Georgia

LB Karlos Dansby, Auburn

LB Derrick Johnson, Texas

LB Jonathan Vilma, Miami (Fla.)

DB Jamar Fletcher, Wisconsin

DB Carlos Rogers, Auburn

DB Derrick Strait, Oklahoma

DB Sean Taylor, Miami (Fla.)

P Ryan Plackemeier, Wake

PK Nate Kaeding, Iowa

RET Maurice Drew, UCLA

Coach Bob Stoops, Oklahoma

Voters: Dennis Dodd, CBS SportsLine Senior Writer; J. Darin Darst, CBS SportsLine College Producer; Dan Dobish, CBS SportsLine Senior Fantasy Writer; Spencer Tillman, CBS Sports; David Cohen, CSTV.com Senior Editor

Those coaches get around NCAA phone call limitations by wearing out their thumbs text messaging. With PDAs, cell phones and private planes, coaches are never out of touch. In one not-so-rare week in the spring, Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville says he made 24 recruiting stops.

A few years ago Joe Paterno was chasing Big Ten officials out of Beaver Stadium. That started the drumbeat, first in the Big Ten and now nationally, for instant replay. Closer to the NFL, but thankfully, not there yet.

The all-time victory record will be retired before Paterno and Bobby Bowden will. The sport still holds enough charm that two senior citizens can coach against each other near Miami Beach while their peers are retiring on it.

It is fitting that in the year of the 100th anniversary of the NCAA we have gone retro. The hot offense -- the spread -- incorporates elements that are decades old. Old timers could easily watch Vince Young last year and envision Dave Nelson's old Wing-T at Delaware.

Nelson last coached in 1966 and died in 1991, but his legacy remains. Utah broke the BCS stranglehold in 2004 with Alex Smith running a variation of Nelson's old offense. West Virginia finished in the top five in rushing last year running the zone-read option. No Mountaineers offensive lineman weighed more than 290 pounds.

Nelson got his master's degree from Michigan in 1946. Sixty years later can it be that Lloyd Carr -- builder of beasts and brawn -- is channeling the legendary coach? Carr actually wanted his offensive linemen to lose weight in the offseason.

The game has never been more popular.

The Texas-USC Rose Bowl drew a 21.7 rating, the highest for a college football game in 18 years. The ratings for the four BCS bowls were up 30 percent over the previous season.

The argument was that the BCS would devalue the second-tier bowls. What's that you say? The NCAA approved four new bowls for 2006, bringing the total to a postseason-record 31 (32 if the Houston Bowl is approved by Sept. 1).

Somebody is watching this stuff, mostly in the SEC, where the league pulls the most fans and most revenue.

Elsewhere this decade, the game survived the latest conference upheaval. The Big East got winged but looks like it will survive.

The expanded ACC, that basketball league, is pushing not only for football respect but its own members. Florida State and Miami are no longer grandfathered conference titles, largely because they are now conference rivals.

Don't forget about the players who have brought us to this point. No matter what the Houston Texans might think, Reggie Bush was/is a back for the ages. Is there a bigger dichotomy than Hawkeyes all-timer Robert Gallery coming off an Iowa farm to go to the Raiders?

Miami's Kellen Winslow had a game that matched his mouth. Well, almost. Matt Leinart and the Trojans brought Hollywood into our living rooms. Please, Matt, just leave Paris out of it.

What's next? Charlie Weis coaching his 13th career game armed with a 10-year contract. The next Utah. The first TCU. Better weather, hopefully, for the Gulf. More of USC? Maybe a playoff?

After this six-year decade, how can it get any better?

[bulls96go]

fluff!