CNNSI Stewart Mandel ranks the conferences....

[crambone]

w00t w00t

[twillybull]

I agree Professa.  The is no way the Big 10 (err 11) can be viewed as stronger than the Big East.

Didn't they get taken to the woodshed last bowl season?  

What about the Pac-10?  I don't deserve think they deserve the 2nd place spot outright either.  

[Guest JulmisteForPrez]

If we beat auburn, we should make the Journey song our new motto for the year.  

[highlight]"DON'T STOP BULL-IEVEING"[/highlight]

Yea, yea...corny, i know.

GO BULLS!!!

Yeah......super-corny.

Let's not and say we didn't.

[TyBull]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/stewart_mandel/05/16/mailbag/index.html

1) SEC: Simply put, this year's SEC could be the toughest conference in history. I'm not exaggerating. It's extremely rare for a league to not only boast so many quality teams at the top (LSU, Florida, Auburn, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee) but also so little dead weight at the bottom. Really, it's just Mississippi State. You've got two former national championship coaches, Steve Spurrier and Nick Saban, leading what may be only the seventh- or eighth-best teams in the league. Kentucky won eight games last year. And Vandy is no longer a gimme (just ask Georgia). It's a perfect storm for the SEC right now with so many accomplished coaches, so much elite talent and so many returning veterans all at once.

2) Pac-10: I've always felt one reason the Pac-10 doesn't get taken seriously by most of the country is that outside of USC, no one has been able to stay consistently good recently. At the same time, however, no one has been consistently bad, either. In other words, the league's image is a victim of its own balance. USC appears to be the cream of the crop again this year, but remember, the Trojans lost to two Pac-10 teams last year, UCLA and Oregon State, both of which return the vast majority of their starters. Cal is loaded on offense yet again. And I expect Oregon, Arizona State (which now has Dennis Erickson), Arizona and possibly Washington to all be factors as well.

3) Big Ten: Remember the 1990s and early 2000s? For the only time in its history, the Big Ten was actually fairly wide open, with everyone from Northwestern to Purdue to Illinois winning titles. Now, the league has gone back to being top-heavy. Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio State could all be top-10 teams, Penn State won't be far off, but then there's a pretty drastic drop-off. I do expect Iowa to do a bit of damage, but nearly half the teams the league (Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Illinois and Indiana) are basically irrelevant.

4) Big East: Obviously, it's impossible for the Big East to go as deep as the other leagues because it has so few teams, and thus its ranking suffers. The top four teams -- Louisville, West Virginia, Rutgers and USF -- stack up with any league outside of the SEC. All four are legitimate preseason top-25 teams in my mind, and three of them could be BCS-caliber. The Cardinals and Mountaineers have already shown their offenses are as explosive as any in the country, but I have a hunch Rutgers might wind up winning the title because it has a defense to go with its potential All-America running back.

5) Big 12: Earlier this decade, I really thought the Big 12 was going to emerge as the best conference in the country. But due in large part to Dennis Franchione's thus-far disappointing tenure at Texas A&M, the South Division has remained largely a two-team show (though Texas Tech is a consistent second-tier bowl team), and the North has yet to fully recover from its all-out implosion a few years ago. Nebraska should be a top-20 team, but I'm not convinced the Huskers are ready to contend nationally yet, Missouri should again be good but not great and the jury's still out on the likes of Kansas State and Kansas.

6) ACC: The conference will be better than it was last year due to several high-profile coaching changes and more experienced teams, but it is still probably a year away from becoming a true force nationally. Virginia Tech should be a top-10 team, but after that it's anyone's best guess who will emerge as legitimate top-20 teams and who will remain mired in mediocrity out of a pack that includes Wake Forest, Clemson, Boston College, Florida State, Miami, Georgia Tech and Maryland.

7) Mountain West: Utah, TCU and BYU have each produced nationally competitive teams over the past three seasons and all will likely be strong again this season. New Mexico is always in the postseason mix. Things are a little hazy after that, though I'm interested to see whether Colorado State can bounce back from an awful year and how much improvement San Diego State shows in Chuck Long's second year.

8) WAC: Despite losing several teams to Conference USA a few years ago, this league has actually gotten stronger. We all know about Boise State, but the emergence of Nevada, San Jose State and Hawaii has boosted the conference considerably. If anyone can dethrone the Broncos this year, it's Colt Brennan and the Warriors. And I think last year's 4-8 debacle will prove an aberration for Fresno State.

9) Conference USA: This league has become hard to watch since losing Louisville, Cincinnati and USF. I expect there will once again be several decent teams (Tulsa, Southern Miss, East Carolina, UCF) but none that approach top-25 status.

10) MAC: Where have you gone, Ben Roethlisberger? Or Byron Leftwich? Or even Bruce Gradkowski? It's been a few years now since the MAC produced any giant-killers, and I don't expect that to change this year. Even with the addition of Temple (as hard as that may be to believe).

11) Sun Belt: How the members of this conference continue to remain at the I-A level is one of the great mysteries of our time.

So there you have it, folks. Now comes the hard part. You can either fire off that nasty e-mail inquiring about the size of my brain ... or you can ask a question that might actually get published next week.

my goodness. does this picture sum up C-DOA?

[crambone]

lol nice

[Joe]

How is the Big 10 over Big East? Your kidding right?

The Big East has 4 solid teams and then 4 very bad teams. That being said, none of the top 4 even had a highly challenging game on their schedule last year.

The Big 10 had 3 top 10 teams and Penn State (#25).

If the Big East had played a decent team (the best team our conference played was Wake Forest in a bowl game at that...) we might have gotten more love, but until we start playing the Notre Dames, Texas, California (teams that the Big 10 played in the regular season) we're not gonna get the love.

For now the Big East schedules have been lighter than a full meal at Natures Table. Once we start playing the big boys (and at least hanging) we'll get that respect.

For now, USF is the torch bearer this year. Auburn is the hardest game on any BE schedule and to prove we belong we NEED to at least hang. If not that we need to beat Maryland both times we play them.

[Jihme]

It looks like having less teams is hurting us.

[twillybull]

Are you kidding?  This has got name-recognition hype written all over it.  How is scheduling Notre Dame, Texas and California any better than Kansas, Maryland or Miami?  Don't let the school name (or tradition) dictate your impression of the current strength of their football team.  

The Big East enters the season with 3 legitamate top 15 teams and one legit top 25.  The Big East had a better OOC record and didn't loose a bowl game.  

How did the Big 10 top 3 fare in their bowl games?  Ohio State got completely embarassed by Florida (I guess they weren't ready for any kind of team speed with that soft Big 10 schedule).  Michigan got hammered (outplayed and outlasted) by a less than stellar USC and Wisconsin got lucky against Arkansas.  

[Joe]

Are you kidding?  This has got name-recognition hype written all over it.  How is scheduling Notre Dame, Texas and California any better than Kansas, Maryland or Miami?  Don't let the school name (or tradition) dictate your impression of the current strength of their football team.

Your freaking kidding right? Please. The 1st three you named (who played Big 10 teams) all won TEN games. The second three you named (who played the Big East teams) won 6, 9, and 7 games respectively.

I am not letting their name or tradition dictate my impression of their current strength I am using their records.

The Big East enters the season with 3 legitamate top 15 teams and one legit top 25.  The Big East had a better OOC record and didn't loose a bowl game.  

Yes I agree, but the Big 10 has 3 legit top 15 teams (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio State) and 2 legit top 25 (Iowa and Penn State). It is not like they are doo doo.

As for the BE bowl record, it was very nice and I am very excited about it. But we beat ECU, Western Michigan, Kansas State, Georgia Tech, and Wake Forest...only one was ranked.

How did the Big 10 top 3 fare in their bowl games?  Ohio State got completely embarassed by Florida (I guess they weren't ready for any kind of team speed with that soft Big 10 schedule).  Michigan got hammered (outplayed and outlasted) by a less than stellar USC and Wisconsin got lucky against Arkansas.  

And all three games were against teams far superior than any team the Big East played in their bowl games...

[Sunil]

Are you kidding?  This has got name-recognition hype written all over it.  How is scheduling Notre Dame, Texas and California any better than Kansas, Maryland or Miami?  Don't let the school name (or tradition) dictate your impression of the current strength of their football team.

Your freaking kidding right? Please. The 1st three you named (who played Big 10 teams) all won TEN games. The second three you named (who played the Big East teams) won 6, 9, and 7 games respectively.

I am not letting their name or tradition dictate my impression of their current strength I am using their records.

The Big East enters the season with 3 legitamate top 15 teams and one legit top 25.  The Big East had a better OOC record and didn't loose a bowl game.  

Yes I agree, but the Big 10 has 3 legit top 15 teams (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio State) and 2 legit top 25 (Iowa and Penn State). It is not like they are doo doo.

As for the BE bowl record, it was very nice and I am very excited about it. But we beat ECU, Western Michigan, Kansas State, Georgia Tech, and Wake Forest...only one was ranked.

How did the Big 10 top 3 fare in their bowl games?  Ohio State got completely embarassed by Florida (I guess they weren't ready for any kind of team speed with that soft Big 10 schedule).  Michigan got hammered (outplayed and outlasted) by a less than stellar USC and Wisconsin got lucky against Arkansas.  

And all three games were against teams far superior than any team the Big East played in their bowl games...

I think all of those are great points. As much progress as I think the Big east has made, we aren't yet a football power conference. Our best teams would probably be ranked 1 or 2 in every conference outside of the SEC, but the bottom of our conference would get trounced by bottom feeder schools from other conferences. (I have little doubt that Arizona/Washington from the PAC 10, Iowa/Michigan State from the Big 10 would have had much trouble handling Pitt/Syracuse/Uconn last year) Last year's Rutgers/USF/Cincinatti were middle of the pack in our conference...and I have my doubts how we'd stack up against the mid-road teams of other conferences (Whatever the reasons, we lost to Kansas afterall)

As Joe rightly pointed out..we had an undefeated bowl record, but against who? CUSA, MAC, Big 12, and 2 ACC schools. I realize things are cyclical...but there are few years where we need to beat our own chests about running that gauntlet. The future of the Big East will really hinge on tying into better bowls and scheduling competitive out of conference games. We have to prove it on the field against the SEC and Big Ten to end all discussion....