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This is it. I remember listening to that game on the radio and texting my friend in the 3rd quarter that we were going to lose this game. No one: the crowd, the radio crew, the team sounded like they were in that game. That was when we had Major Applewhite as OC.
And I was at that game as well. A good example of the post 1st-year Saban team when upsets happen: opponent takes control in the 1st quarter and holds onto the lead the rest of the game (see Utah, South Carolina, and Texas A&M)
SEC defenses are a bit bigger and a bit stronger than ND's defense, yes. But more importantly, SEC offenses can actually move the ball (outside of garbage time) and keep their defenses off the field a little, giving them a better shot.
But the short answer, to the dismay of most of the anti-SEC folks here, is that yes, SEC teams are just that much more talented than ND. The Irish are a decent team that made a run through luck and weak scheduling.
I'd only quibble with this part of the statement. The SEC edge in team speed is quite apparent all over the defensive side of the ball, and the defensive fronts are head and shoulders better than any other league's fronts, but offensively, collectively the SEC offenses are in a spotty phase right now. Yeah, I get it when UF plays LSU, etc. it gets ugly and defense rules, but Much in the same way the XII is offense happy, the SEC (as a general matter, exceptions noted) has been a much more defensive dependent league. This is why A&M intrigues me (w/ Sumlin and of course Manziel).
Love it. We need a safety with Lester graduating, and he doesn't count against the 85 scholarship limit.
One is the speed (which is overstated by the media), but SEC speed does exist.
the other is the defensive line (and defensive line depth) that does not exist in other conferences.
I actually agree with this. The SEC's advantages are on the d-line and secondary. They're bigger and faster than any other conferences defenses, which negates some of Alabama's ground and pound style. But offensively they're hit and miss. I think the best offense in the conference is UGA, when Murray shows up to play, but that title may be handed off to Manziel and A&M next year.
The SEC advantage in major bowl games is almost always faster defenses than the competition's o-line has seen all year, and larger o-lines than the competition's defenses have seen all year.
There always seems to be this one coach team that makes them special. It was Meyer, then it was Saban. There's a reason the best coaches choose to coach in the SEC.
Dayn?
This is funny.
To be fair, an Alabama fan brought it up by implication.
Definitely ahead of TAMU. I'd call it a flip between UGA and Oregon. There is little doubt that UGA should have been invited to the Sugar Bowl ahead of UF though.
Actually, getting beat 35-7, including a 21-0 deficit in the first quarter, creates a great deal of doubt.
If the Sugar Bowl had been played on October 12, you might have a point.
The regular season stopped counting towards what bowl you play in?
Let me speaks slowly for you:
USCe beat UGA.
UF beat USCe.
UGA beat UF.
UF and UGA both ended the regular season with 1 loss. UF's loss was to UGA.
UGA then went on to lose the SEC Championship game to Alabama in a nailbiter. Not, mind you, what most would call the "regular season." That's the conference championship game. UF didn't have an opportunity to lose that second game because they lost to UGA and didn't make the SEC Championship.
At that point, you had two programs, one with 1 regular season loss (to UGA) and the other with 1 regular season loss (to USCe) and one post-season loss (to Alabama.)
The question is where to send those two programs. The mindless default is to send the "two loss team" to the Cap One bowl and the "one loss team" to the Sugar Bowl. I suggest, somewhat strongly, that that is an incorrect manner of thinking through the problem.
So you're suggesting that the At-Large teams be chosen before the conference championships?
The announcers were talking about how many more tackles ND missed than normal. But if you watched the game, a big reason why they were missed is because guys weren't getting off blocks, guys were having to shoot gaps in risky ways. So you're in a situation where you're not able to hit a guy clean but can only take a half-shot on him. With Lacy running, that's not going to be enough. I don't think the missed tackles were "bad luck". If they played again next week, I think there'd be just as many missed tackles.
Not sure, honestly. I think the UGA/UF situation was a bit unique and odd, in that they were ranked 3/4 before the championship game, and the team that got hung with the "second loss" was the team that won the head to head. I do think that generally speaking, losses in conference championships should be significantly discounted by bowl selection process. If you don't lose in the 13th game because you didn't qualify to play in it, that shouldn't help you in rankings against the team that beat you out for the opportunity to play in that 13th game.
Agreed. Bad tackling by a team that is coached well on the fundamentals (which ND certainly seems to be) is a product of design and dominance on the o-line. If the d-line beats the o-line, linebackers have clean angles to tackle the ball carrier for little gain. If the o-line beats the d-line, linebackers can't scrape into the gaps and have to take bad angles, or even worse, get caught behind the d-linemen who are being pushed backwards by the o-line.
Alabama's o-line dominated ND's d-line last night, which made their athletic linebackers a moot point. The linebackers then had to cheat in on the run, trying to get into gaps earlier by playing closer to the line to start, which opened up the passing lanes for big gashing gains.
The Irish return a lot next year. I was just hoping for 9 wins this season so overall it was a pleasant surprise.
I gotta tip my cap to Alabama; that offensive line was ferocious.
how did the analysts overlook alabama being 10-15 percent bigger than their counterparts on the line?
They didn't. But ESPN wasn't going to put on-air talent on-air to point out the fact that their marquee, BCS Championship game matchup was going to be a snoozefest.
Good thing he's a senior. What? Well, at least Yeldon is gone. What?
how did the analysts overlook alabama being 10-15 percent bigger than their counterparts on the line?
ND starts three DLs over 300 pounds. I think the issue was that ND was in the unusual position of having to shoot gaps with their LBs because they couldn't neutralize Alabama's line with those three guys.
not here to dump on notre dame as i know last night for their fans.
suffice to say they looked physically overmatched and at this level you just don't expect that
It was most notable on Louis Nix. He has been doubled basically all year but Alabama just used Jones on him. Louis made a fair number of plays but not nearly enough to counter their strategy. Alabama's offensive line is exceptional and they leveraged it well.
Agreed.
Well, they *are* leprechauns.
Sure you did if thought ND was vastly overrated. And a lot of us did.
This is a good point, well phrased. Many people assume that I am an SEC fanboy who thinks the SEC can never be beaten, all evidence to the contrary. I'm not. I think the SEC is the best conference in college football, but that the XII is pretty close and a few teams, like Oregon, are in the top tier as well.
What I've never believed, and feel was confirmed solidly last night, was that Notre Dame was anywhere near that level of competition.
Just out of curiosity, at what rank do you think ND (which, after all, is Latin for "Our Lady," & god knows those guys played like a bunch of malnourished nuns) truly belongs in the Top 25? Do they belong in the Top 25, considering the problems they had with the likes of Pitt?
I think they're probably top 25, but not top 10. Maybe not top 15. I think ND is basically Vandy.
Let's be serious. How many teams in the country never lost a game by 3+ touchdowns?
EDIT:
From the BCS conferences (off the top of my head):
Oregon
Stanford
Ohio State
Florida State
Clemson
Alabama
Florida
LSU
Who am I missing?
Double EDIT: Texas A&M
Anybody can get punked on a travel date in mid October. It's a different sort of thing to have a month to prepare for the national friggin' championship and walk out there and have your ass handed to you before the first quarter was over.
I had it pegged something like 31-10. I thought it would be close in the first half, maybe 17-7 going in, and that Bama's line would wear them down in the second to pull away. I sort of assumed some of the hype about ND's defense was warranted. I didn't expect the Tide to just come out and donkey-punch them on the first three drives of the game.
wisconsin's largest margin of defeat this season was 7 points. wisky lost by 7 in overtime to osu and by 6 to stanford in the rose bowl
the remaining defeats were all by exactly 3 points.
It means the team you wanted to do well got beat handily.
It's French.
They looked pretty nervous and tentative in the first quarter.
It's not that Florida was a conference champion (they didn't even play in their conference championship game), it's that the BCS guarantees that the #3 and #4 teams are guaranteed berths, and Florida was #3.
The issue is that Florida wasn't punished enough by voters for failing to win their division, and thus, not reaching the SEC championship, so Georgia's loss there pushed them below the team they beat a few weeks earlier.
i mean, if the SEC swept the table and beat oregon, kansas state, and stanford, i'd be more than willing to declare that their teams deserve preference over every other team in college football, but they didn't do that. and they didn't do it last year, either.
you can say all you want that teams in the SEC are more athletic, more talented, just plain better than other teams in college football, but they haven't proven it on the field against the best non-conference competition.
So, in order for you to get pat your anti-SEC bias, SEC teams would have had to beat teams they were not paired against to play. I can see where you may never get past the bias, then.
Of course it is. Stupid moi.
There are probably quite a few. Harvey mentioned Wisconsin, and Northwestern's worst loss was by 11 points.
Northwestern finished 2-0 against the SEC.
Vandy and Miss State. That's about right for a top program in the B1G this season, yeah. I think Notre Dame is about as good as Northwestern, too.
and Notre Dame actually outgained tOSU by 220 yards by comparison, and both games were garbage time for much of the 2nd half.
Except that Northwestern was probably the 6th best team in the Big Ten this year. And Vanderbilt and Miss St are no slouches. They're in the SEC, remember?
Nobody out and out says they are.
Who, aside from AL, Oregon, and UGA should have been ranked ahead of FL?
But more than that, I just don't see how "SEC 4EVA!!!!" is supposed to make me proud or anything like it. Is Alabama winning the title supposed to make me feel better about UF losing the Sugar Bowl? About the whole of the season? OK, if you're an A&M fan than beating the eventually champs is a nice little bit of bragging rights, and long-term it helps the individual teams for the conference to look good. But that's not enough for me to get emotionally invested in the conference's performance.
What exactly do you get out of Alabama running roughshod over the rest of college football? All a Saban-run Alabama team means for you is that it's that much harder to even get to a BCS game.
I agree with the first part.
The problem with saying Florida is overrated is that they beat just about everyone else in the conference (USCe, A&M, LSU plus FSU) and only lost to Georgia because they turned the ball over 6 times. I guess they caught A&M at the perfect time, but otherwise, it's hard to discount those wins, even if those teams are #10-20 quality teams (which I think is likely) instead of #4-10 quality teams.
I think at the end of the season, it was Bama and A&M, with everyone else in the conference well behind, with Georgia probably still a top ten team. I would have loved to see the top of the Pac-12 take on those two squads.
And isn't it just perfect that the SEC happens to add A&M on the ground level of what could be an historic run of success for the program.
Who, aside from AL, Oregon, and UGA should have been ranked ahead of FL?
This is a good point. There were very few one loss teams from BCS conferences this year. I think, much like the term ace, we all have an idealized idea of what a top ten squad should look like, but that doesn't always play out when it's a thin year at the top. UF definitely deserved to be ranked in the top five at the end of the year, even though they should have lost to Mizzou and almost lost to ULL.
A function of opportunities. Since the beginning of 2008, Alabama is 38-6 against the SEC, and 8-1 against major OOC foes (includes Utah, but not Duke). 86% of the time vs 89% of the time, negligible.
EDIT: adjusted to fix math.
Well, ND wasn't that good, but they were undefeated.
Stanford had an extra loss, but certainly appeared to be a much better team. Clemson. Possibly Louisville, who certainly appeared to be much better when they went head-to-head.
UGA wasn't that hot, either. The distance between Alabama and the rest of the conference has only grown.
Clemson? They lost by a bunch of points to FSU, who Florida beat, and USCe, who Florida beat. I can think of no reasonable argument for ranking Clemson ahead of UF. Louisville lost to UConn (granted, without Bridgewater), and beat...Cincinnati? UNC? Rutgers? there was zero reason to look at them as a top ten team before they did what they did to UF (which was awesome).
Stanford would require some serious eye test adjustments. They did lose to a lousy Washington team, but that was before they switched QBs. Sure, they ended the season much stronger than UF, but the rankings are supposed to measure the full body of work over the season.
8-0 current streak against your "major OOC" over the last 4 seasons (2009-12). 27-5 SEC during that span.
EDIT - 31-5 including 3 SEC CG, 1 MNC
And that they would have been left out of most major playoff arguments? Sure. And I think Texas A&M was playing some of the best football in the country at the end of the season. But the only playoffs they would have made would have been one with like 10+ teams in it.
3291 - Did your team get better recruits and up its talent level when Meyer/Tebow made Florida the team to beat? Is your team doing so now that its Saban at Alabama? Do Big Ten teams feel a camaraderie about making more money than anyone else?
Right, Stanford at six in the BCS is the better argument (assuming that a playoff isn't just simply conference champions).
December 01, 2012 - Bama 32, UGA 28. Time expired with UGA four yards from a game winning TD.
January 07, 2013 - Bama 42, ND 14. Time expired on the Irish's chances of winning the game in the first quarter.
This is amazing cognitive dissonance. If there is one team we KNOW had no business being in the top 5 going into bowl season, it was ND. If there's one team we KNOW could play Bama to a standstill competitively, during bowl season, it was UGA.
UF getting smacked around in the Sugar Bowl means they were ranked too high, "obviously," but ND being crushed like bugs by a team that was played to a deadlock by UGA a month earlier simply means Alabama is just light years better than the rest of the SEC and UGA wasn't "that hot" at all.
Let me state this clearly for you. Any of the top five SEC teams would have beaten holy hell out of ND last night. There is one team that I can think of - Oregon - who may have hung in against either Alabama, Georgia or TAMU.
I was just spitballing teams that were obviously better than Florida to my eye. It doesn't take much adjustment to put Stanford over UF, really -- UF wasn't materially different to Notre Dame: terrible offense, pretty good defense, a fair amount of luck.
I don't deny that ND would have finished fifth or sixth in the SEC. They're not very good. But the fact that UGA played its best game, Alabama one of its worst, and Alabama still won isn't any kind of argument for Georgia being an elite program.
Is there some reason, aside from the common misconception that I'm Bulldog fan and the general distaste that most around here seem to have agreeing with me on anything, that everyone here is so unwilling to acknowledge that UGA was one of the best programs in football last year?
Because outside of the Alabama game, they didn't look like one? And in that game, Alabama, with the best rush defense in the nation, was getting gashed pretty good. I think it's more than fair to assume something was up with Alabama that game.
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