College Football Week 14 (Rivalry Week) thread

Probably Bama by a good deal, high single digits or low double digits. They're the better team and they're also a public team.

 

I heard Alabama by 12-to-14 last night, but that was just an unofficial projection.

 

The level of competition each faced is a little bit different.

 

Take the Arena Bowl totals out of the equation. Let's see what we have.

Baylor defeats a 4-8 team (whose biggest win was against Kansas) by two points.

Alabama defeats an 8-4 team (with victories over Kansas State, LSU and Ole Miss) and the defending national finalist by 11 points.

 

Baylor wins after its starting quarterback is knocked out of the game. So did Ohio State. That's praiseworthy, not worthy of criticism.

 

Not criticizing them. Just saying what they did Saturday vis a vis what Alabama did are not comparable in any kind of favorable way.

Pretty much any ranked team should be able to beat Texas Tech by two points without its starting quarterback for a quarter and a half. Especially when given a 42-17 head start when the QB is injured.

A lot of ranked teams would have lost to Auburn yesterday.

Depth is important. As much a part of the game as blocking and tackling. Baylor showed an astounding lack of it. I'll praise a team who loses its QB and maintains its level of play to some degree. Not one who collapses and loses a 25-point lead in 18 minutes.

 

Auburn's offense would have scored a lot of points on a lot of ranked teams last night. Not sure the defense could've kept up its end any better than it did against Alabama.

 

Probably not.

But Auburn would have beaten Baylor.

 

If this were a game of Monopoly Florida State would always be pulling the wrong chance
cards. "QB steals crab legs drop 2 spots in ratings" " Only beat non ranked opponent by
10 points do not move up in rankings " "Get out of jail card free if star player is arrested"

 

I will say this. All the teams contending for the four playoff spots are in the same boat in that they all have one game left, and a loss would almost surely croak them. Of course, what if they all lose? Won't happen, but they could put the committee's final meeting on live TV and it'd have better ratings than the title game if it did.

 

What if Missouri wins?

 

I think Alabama is in no matter what. They're #1 now, assuming it's a fairly close loss they can say they're dropping them to #4 as punishment and it's still in the range. They're just not going to leave the SEC out in the first year, especially not with what their voting pattern has been.

(This has like a 1 percent chance of happening anyway. Missouri has a good D-line but a small one. And the quarterback just doesn't take care of the ball well enough.)