SEC West pathetic record in bowl games this year

I agree, I don't think boredom was going on. Perhaps they weren't the best 1 loss team out there but reputation and winning a not-so-strong west division (with a few wins they were lucky to get) is what happened. Their QB is so-so but Kiffin did what Kiffin does and relied on ONE receiver all year. I don't think that or the conservative play calling in the 4th was going to get it done against a good team. Still their D was absent.

 

Tennessee needs to get better. Tired of Alabama's cross division rivalry not even put up a fight.

 

To further that, I posted a link a while back that showed the SEC teams were actually treated more harshly by the polls in regards to wins and losses. The appearance of an SEC bias was actually shown to be the other way around.

 

Auburn? Come on. The two teams who started the season ranked 1 and 2 went undefeated. Auburn started out at 18 and made their biggest jump, to #10, after a narrow win over LSU and.....The Citadel. Lol. Even a win over LaTech bumped them 2 spots. In today's world, they probably move past Oklahoma but back then, the human polls weren't enough. Strangely enough it was the lack of human poll differential that kept USC out in 2003, despite being ranked #1.

The early machinations of the BCS favored the SEC due to the quality win factor and the presence of a CCG. In effect, any other conference without a CCG was already in the shitter to an extent. Folks from other conferences saw SEC teams jump up in polls or stay put with losses or non-quality wins while their conference teams got moved down for wins.

We've had this discussion ad nauseum. I don't really want to re-hash, just sharing perceptions and noting that this bowl season has certainly provided a different landscape.

 

And fall when they didn't play at all, too. I remember Pete's brilliant play by moving the last USC game to the weekend that other conferences played championships. Not sure how much it helped in the end but it had to keep the PAC on the lips of the announcers.

 

You mean Pete "I don't pay attention to that kind of stuff" Carroll? Lol. I don't know if it helped but it certainly didn't hurt particularly if the year ended with national rival notre dame. IMO it was that night game against the irish in 2002 that won Carson Palmer the Heisman.

 

And we know that that means: not a damn thing.

Over the last ten years I'm guessing they finished outside the top 10 in recruiting class rankings twice, maybe three times. Even at their worst, their class was still in the top 15.

(I'd go look but don't feel like surfing through the composite rankings right now...)

 

Sorry for your loss man. Well not really, sorry I tried.

 

I was more ticked off about losing a C-note to a friend over the spread than I was losing the game. Seriously, I was over it quickly.

While the season did end on a disappointing note, in the end it was a good year.