Running bowl thread

If you consider only the top pair, the SEC can still make an argument for 1st place in the mythical "top conference" argument. No group has a better duo than 'bama and Florida. Beyond that, though, nothing special about the league this season. It's all historically cyclical, but this was far from a vintage year for the SEC.

Hard to see the league improving much, overall, next season. Both Florida and 'bama will continue to be strong...but lose a lot. Don't really see anyone else making a huge stride forward.

 

All you need to know about the SEC this year is that Kentucky was five yards away from finishing second in the East. And Kentucky played most of the season without its two All-Americans on defense (one was suspended prior to the year, the other was hurt), and had a trio of quarterbacks that couldn't complete a pass longer than six yards. Yet UK won on the plains and in Athens, and easily could have been 10-2 going into the bowls. And trust me, this Kentucky team was not that good.

The SEC this year was Florida and Alabama, nine mediocre teams and Vanderbilt.

 

My point is simple - to hear some of the Big Ten fans around here and on other message boards, you'd think the conference was 6-0 and rolling though their schedule. But that's just not the case.

 

Unless you've won all your bowl games or lost them all - no conference should be doing much chest thumping. The matchups and intangibles make it difficult to quantify.
Though if you take the records of just the top 3 teams in each conference:
Mountain West 2-0 (with one to play)
Big 10: 2-0 (1)
Big 12: 2-0 (1)
ACC: 2-0 (1)
SEC: 1-1 (1)
Big East: 1-2
Pac 10: 0-3

 

Nobody's claiming greatness -- but I know too many nosepicking morons who wondered why the Big Ten was even going to show up for most of their bowl games.

I was in an establishment during
the early stages of Auburn / NU,
and one guy was mouth-breathing
"blowout, blowout" when it was
21-7.

Lot of notorious national touts
went swirling down the crapper on that one.

 

Auburn may have been in that game, but only because the A.D. made a better marketing/fans pitch to Outback Bowl people. It's not like Northwestern was hanging toe-to-toe with one of the SEC's best.

 

No.....a mediocre SEC team was hanging about equal w/ a mediocre Big Te-leven team. As for the marketing pitch, most B 10 folks expected Wisconsin in this game. Outback made a couple of interesting shoices, got a pretty good match up out of it....

 

all hail east texas baptist university and eastfield community college!

 

At one time, Missouri had the corners covered with Northeast, Northwest, Southwest and Southeast Missouri states.
But SMSU went all uppity and became Missouri State and one of the northern corners became Truman State.

 

So, TCU waxes Boise tomorrow evening?
Is that the consensus?

 

Seeing "Southwest Missouri State" and uppity in the same sentence made me smile.

Yes, I've been to Springfield, Mo.

 

Oklahoma has East Central University, Northeastern State University, Northwestern Oklahoma State University, Southeatern Oklahoma State University, Southwestern Oklahoma State University, and University of Central Oklahoma.