USC might be the hot team in the mix for the national title race, but where are the other great teams in the league? Right now the two teams tied for second are Washington State and UCLA as they challenge the ACC for being the two worst second and third teams of any BCS conference. There's parity, and then there's just plain rotten play. Arizona has been the poster child for futility this year, while a bad Stanford team beat a UCLA squad with no offense whatsoever. Arizona State has been one of the nation's biggest disappointment losing some of its momentum with an ankle injury to Andrew Walter and a blowout loss to Cal. Oregon State, Washington and Oregon can't seem to play a game without a ton of penalties and generally ugly play. On the plus side, give credit to Cal and Washington State for having solid seasons led by great coaching performances. as per CFN.com
You can make the same argument about the SEC. We have our bottom feeders in Vandy and MSU. Tenn has struggled and we'll see how bad Miami beats them. UGA has struggled its last 3 games. UF is playing much better, but has 3 losses. Ole Miss is undefeated in the league, but loss to Memphis and Texas Tech. Auburn has 3 lossses, as does Arkansas. I have no idea how you really compare conferences, but USC and LSU are clearly the top dog in their conference. I think the SEC is the best ... but I'm biased!
USC is better than most think. And while the argument can be successfully made that the Pac-10 is having a down year, the USC D is stalwart, and IMHO is as good if not slightly better than LSU's, due to their incredible depth. You are dead-on about Tedford's coaching performance this season. He has been absolutely masterful considering the talent level he's had to work with at Cal. It won't be long, max. two seasons, that Tedford and staff will be at a big-time program, perhaps in the SEC. Many insoiders consider him to be in their top 3 among HC's at tier-2, D-I programs.
Ex-squeeze me??? I think that our defensive depth matches up with any in the country. All those #1 recruiting classes have paid off. Go back and look at the LSU vs AU tape and tell me how many LSU defensive lineman played against AU in the first quarter? Then come back and tell us about USCs depth. Put USC in the SEC and they have 3 losses.
This same argument can be made in the Big East, ACC, and Big 12. There are only a couple of teams that are upper tier, and the rest begin to fall off exponentially. Of course, with the "merger" of the Big East powers and the ACC, you will see many more 1 and 2 loss teams from the ACC, and thus a lot less of these teams in the top 10. Once these teams have to start playing better competition year in and year out, you will see the difference
If I wasn't trying to show AU fans some love I would point out that you may be trying to make USC look so good because they beat you so badly. Seems like everyone else is not having any difficulty putting points on the board against them. Since the Auburn game, 8 opponents have scored 175 points against them, an average of 29.1 per game. That doesn't impress me as much as they've impressed you.
USC D better than LSU? Order me a bushel of whatever you are smoking. Do the link for statistical rankings. http://www.sportsline.com/collegefootball/stats/teamsort/NCAAF/TOTDEF?&print_rows=9999 Do you see LSU #4 and USC #39? And that poll is only a glimpse of what the overall statistics look like.
USC is the best team in the pac-10, their D Can't be better than ours since we're rated #1 in most categories n the Nation. Pac-10 is Overatted as usual. As for our bottom feeder teams: Vandy lost to Georgia Tech in Overtime 24-17 Miss St beat Vandy 30-21, Memphis 35-27 lost to might pac-10 Oregon 42-34 Get This: Ole Miss lost to Memphis 44-34 Ole miss beat Vandy 24-21 My point in all this is I think the SEC is as strong as ever, even thought a few teams are struggling, thosebottom feeder teams were competitive against some top SEC teams and would be more competitive playing out of conference.
I also see Auburn ranked at #5, just behind LSU which tells me your stats are not reflective of the quality of the teams on that list. C'mon, AU is a 3 loss team at this point. Not to mention, if either AU or LSU played in the PAC-10, there's just no way that you get away with giving up only 270 ypg. It's the Pac-10, west-coast style passing and defenses that are geared to bend-not-break, so you expect to see more yardage, especially passing. Another stat listing had UGA ranked ahead of LSU last week and UF bent them over this weekend. I actually believe that LSU's starting D is as good as USC's, and also believe that is why they are so highly ranked, deservedly so. But when you get into the alternate players, USC has Defensive quality that rivals any team in the nation. The front four of USC is the most dominating in all of football - not even up for discussion here. It's all irrelevant since the only thing that matters at this point is to win. UGA's NC hopes got crushed by UF. So did LSU's, I'm afraid. Like it or not, UF has played it's spoiler role to the hilt this season. JMHO, but if LSU and UF played again, I believe LSU wins. LSU needs to take care of business and WIN OUT.
The funny thing is that UF might have been the best SEC team to lose to this season. If UF and LSU run the table and LSU wins the SECC game, I think that we vault over anyone else to the #2 spot. Right now UF looks stronger than any other SEC team (besides LSU of course ) and that will help with the pollsters at the end of the season.
