new top 25, plenty to complain about.. but no way louisville can beat a sec team

BCS standings have nothing to do with AP polls. Just saying.

 

I can think of another game that matched two totally shitty defenses. The teams combined for 79 points and 1,130 total yards, both exceeding the combined totals of WVU and Louisville.

It wasn't a very hyped game last season, I'm not even sure if you can catch a replay anywhere. But I hope someone on the board may have caught a peek at it ... it was the one in which the team with Longhorns on their helmets beat the team from Southern California ...

 

Well played sir.

 

your talking like you have one but then really you don't

 

You're ignoring the point that a team with a 28-0 lead is going to change how it plays. It no longer needs points to win. It needs time to run out. It's the same as in a basketball game, where the team up 20 stops shooting 3s and the team down 20 shoots nothing but. It's the inevitable result of the lopsided score. The fact remains that West Virginia was dominant enough to build a 28-0 lead, then merely was trying to get to the end of the game with more points than Georgia. Which it succeeded in doing.

 

it was 31-21 at halftime. does that mean they were still shooting 3s? it was 31-28 going into the fourth quarter.

what you're ignoring is that it was as game for the second half and the final margin of victory was 3 points

i know a lot of people turned it off after it was 28-0. hell, i was considering doing it as well. and i didn't. i watched the whole game.

rich rodeiguez isn't a guy to let up. georgia started stopping them. it was a good game and west virginia was the better team, but didn't 'blow them off the field' or 'embarrass' them

 

Either way, the Big East champ beat an SEC team in the Sugar Bowl last season. So yeah, there's good reason to believe that whoever the Big East champ -- in this case, maybe Louisville -- could beat a highly regarded SEC team again.

 

I'd like to point out the complete lunacy of attempting to justify the strength of an entire conference by referencing one game from last season -- a meaningless bowl, no less.

The idea that the Big East somehow gained credibility by WVa beating Georgia last season in the Sugar Bowl is absurd. Mostly because the SEC was not very damn good last year. For God's sakes, a Mike Shula-led SEC team won 10 games and had a shot at the conference title game in the final weeks. Georgia wasn't a bad team, don't get me wrong. But the Dawgs were nowhere close to the level of this year's Florida, Auburn, Tennessee and Arkansas teams.

WVa is a good team, as is Louisville. Could either beat the top-tier SEC squads? Maybe, maybe not. But one thing's for damn sure, neither of them play an SEC schedule. Never have they had to worry about preparing for an Arkansas-level team one week, a Florida-level team the next and an LSU-level team a couple of weeks later. And that's the point, I believe. A lot of good things can be accomplished if you've got a schedule filled with patsies and you can rest any player with even a minor injury for a week or two and not worry about losing a game.

Shit, UL is a perfect example of that. You drop a starting RB and a starting QB in the SEC, you're done. You do it in the Big East, there's a good chance you can skate by until one of them gets healthy.

That's also the reason so many SEC teams have shitty games against lesser opponents -- they're trying to sit as many injured players as possible and still get by. At least, most of the time. Sometimes, they just shit the bed.

And by the way, it doesn't just work like this in the SEC. It works this way in every decent conference. The SEC just happens to be the toughest this year and is rarely far from the top.

 

dog, the best way to settle these things are on the field, I've always believed that. Does it matter whether we reference a game from this season or last season? Probably not, because Louisville wouldn't have played in whatever game we chose to reference.

Big East is 11-7 against BCS-conference teams this season, best in the nation.

Big East is 6-2 in road games against BCS-conference teams this season, best in the nation.

Now, by no means does that make the Big East the best conference in the nation. But it sure all hell means that Louisville, should it run the table, ought to get the same benefit of the doubt if an SEC, Big 12 or whatever other conference team in the same situation.

p.s. Lord help the Big East if it's Rutgers, which wouldn't have the same numbers to force the issue.

 

On the other hand, dog, no SEC team has had to play West Virginia and Rutgers back to back, either.

Food for thought.

 

This isn't meant to support or contest either side of this, but I find it interesting and noteworthy: This is the first year in LSU football history the Tigers have played three games on the road against top-10 teams (at the time of the game): Auburn, Florida, Tennessee. If Arkansas keeps winning, it's likely LSU will play all four of its road games this year against top-10 teams. Even if Arkansas isn't in the top 10 but is still ranked, it would be LSU's first season in which all of its road games were against Top 25 teams. I wonder if that's equally rare for other major programs.

This is a team that is a handful of brain farts and questionable calls away from being in contention for the national championship. The way it's worked out for LSU the last few years, the road schedules in even-numbered years are much more difficult than in the odd-numbered years. That's why I think LSU shapes up as a top-five preseason team next year, considering what they'll have coming back and the toughest opponents figuring to be home games for the Tigers.

Now, back to the debate.

 

Methinks Louisville would be more respected had Brian Brohm not gotten injured at the end of last year because a Brohm-led Cardinals team would have beaten Va. Tech in the Gator Bowl.

A lot of what Louisville is getting in football is reminincent to what Florida was getting in emn's basketball last season. A good team in a so-so conference.

Where did those Gators end up last year?