Giving Up on Manning?

Peyton Manning is one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the National Football League.  Some argue that he hasn’t won the big games, but his statistics and impact on his team cannot be denied.  This past season the Indianapolis Colts finished 2-14 and are currently “on the clock” for the April draft.  The Colts are expected to draft Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck with the first pick leaving Manning’s future with the team in limbo.

In 2010 the Colts were 10-6 and 14-2 in 2009.  So even before Manning’s injury the Colts were in a bit of a decline.  Despite that decline experts and non-experts alike expected the Colts to have another successful season and make the playoffs provided Manning recovered and returned to the field.  In both 2009 and 2010 Manning was second in passing yards and tied for second in touchdown passes in the entire NFL.  With Peyton Manning the Colts are a perennial contender, despite having only won a single championship.  Apparently, without Manning the Colts are a 2-14 team.

The 2011 performance of the Indianapolis Colts had a lot to do with Peyton not being on the field.  It also had a lot to with his absence as a play caller had just as much of an impact on the Colts this season.  Think about it, when was the last time someone other than Peyton Manning was really doing the play calling for the Colts?  I know from being a high school play caller that going a long period of time (an offseason for example) without calling plays can lead to difficulties getting back into the flow.  If this is true after just an offseason imagine how it would be after a break of several years.  Let’s not kid ourselves, Peyton Manning had been calling the plays for Indianapolis for quite sometime.  Even when Tony Dungy was around there were times when Manning was really the one who decided if they were going for it on fourth and short.  Peyton has done a lot for the Indianapolis franchise.  A franchise that was once most well known for another quarterback and how he refused to play for them is now known for having one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the league.

That is why it is even more surprising the way he is being treated.  I believe even the firing of the Polians and Jim Caldwell were an insult to Manning.  These men helped build and keep Indianapolis as a contender.  The main piece of that contender was Peyton Manning.  It stands to reason that on the field success without Peyton would suffer.  The best I can figure it is the Polians were fired solely because they didn’t have the foresight to sign an adequate backup quarterback.  By the way this really would seem unnecessary since Manning had started 208 straight regular season games before this season.  To blame only the Polians and Caldwell for the unsuccessful season seems ridiculous.  I have and will continue to argue that with Peyton Manning the Colts would have been at very least a playoff contender this season.

I can completely understand if the Colts are weary of paying Peyton the large roster bonus he is owed without knowing how healthy he is going to be.  Some ESPN talking heads have stated they do not believe Manning will ever be healthy enough to play again.  With that being said, the Colts need to show Manning the respect he has earned and deserves.  Regardless of if Manning ever plays another down of football, I find it hard to believe that his impact on the NFL is done.  If I was a head coach or GM I would be making every effort possible to get him on my coaching staff.  His work ethic and knowledge of the game rivals many of the best coaches.  With some time to adjust and get used to coaching, I would wager he would be a pretty darn good coach.

If Peyton can play again and the Colts release him I have to believe there would be quite a few teams bidding for his services.  If Bret Favre at the end of his career and after a terrible season still has his name mentioned just about every time a QB gets hurt, I have to imagine a team would be willing to sign Manning.  Come to think of it he could be a QB/Offensive Coordinator.  Kind of like the player/managers that used to be a part of MLB.

MeloGate

As a Syracuse fan one of the most stressful, yet entertaining, situations in recent memory has been MeloGate.  Since I recruited some of my, what must be millions by now, of followers from syracusefan.com many of you have undoubtedly heard or seen the rumors.  I have decided to crown a champion of rumors.  Let it be said that I hope Fab Melo is back soon since Syracuse is a better team with him.  I don’t mean to take the situation lightly, but many of the rumors are pretty darn funny!  With that in mind I thought it would be fun(?) to vote on the “best” rumor.

Before we get into the final nominations for the best rumor, here are some of the rumors that have been swirling around (some I assume were meant as jokes originally, but one never knows for sure).  It should also be noted that some of these rumors have been “around” since the end of the first academic semester (roughly Christmas time).

*Fab Melo and Dion Waiters will both be ineligible to play once the second semester begins.

*Melo, Waiters and two other unnamed players will be academically ineligible.

*Melo is leaving college to go to a community college in Florida.

*Melo has already left college and is looking to play professionally outside the U.S.

*Melo is going back to Brazil to play professionally.

*Melo was caught cheating in a class and has been kicked out of college.

*Answers for an entire class’s final got out and Melo along with the class have to retake the final.

*Melo failed several courses because of lack of attendance.

*Melo is having trouble with the NCAA Clearing House.

*Bernie Fine was not around to make Melo’s professor(s) change his grades to passing.

*Melo was in Hancock International Airport and boarded a plane going to Brazil (after a quick stop at Chipotle for dinner). 

*Melo has a problem with his visa.

*Melo will be back against WVU.

*Melo will be back against SJU.

*Melo will be back against UConn.

*Melo will be back for the Big East Tournament.

*Melo won’t be back until next season.

*Melo won’t be back ever.

For the time being I do not want to use my supreme influence by commenting on any of these rumors or their stupidity.  However, for those of you interested I am planning on commenting on some of the more entertaining rumors after the voting has closed.

In order to compile a list of only four finalists I considered two factors.  First of all, how many times a rumor has popped up.  If a rumor only popped up once, it lost some luster.  Secondly, how entertaining a rumor and in some cases the subsequent responses have been.  Without further buildup here are my nominations for the “MeloGate Rumor of the Saga Award”:

The First Nominee

Fab Melo’s entire class has to retake a final exam. 

The Second Nominee

Fab Melo has already left Syracuse and gone back to Brazil to prepare for a professionally career.

The Third Nominee

Fab Melo was seen boarding a plane headed for Brazil at Hancock International Airport after attending practice and having dinner at Chipotle.

The Fourth Nominee

Fab Melo has a problem with his visa and may not be able to stay in the U.S.

Please take a moment to vote above or if you think I have unfairly overlooked a rumor please post about it in the comments below. 

New Alternate Uniforms

My Uncle is very opinionated when it comes to sports (among other things).  If he dislikes a player, regardless of the reason, he will cheer against that player's team without mercy.  Interestingly enough, many of his opinions are based on how a certain player acts.  Although his "wrath" goes far beyond the single player.  For example he is a UMass graduate, so you would think that he would love Victor Cruz (a fellow UMass grad).  Quite the opposite is true, my uncle despises Cruz.  This hatred is based on how Cruz acts, not how he plays.  Cruz dances around and celebrates almost every catch and my uncle, who I guess is "old school," doesn't like his behavior.
 

By now you are probably thinking, "What the heck does this clown's uncle have to do with our new uniforms?"  Here's why I mention my uncle.  Another one of my uncle's pet peeves is teams wearing uniforms that incorporate colors that are not "their" colors.  Up until recently this usually meant a team like Duke or Oregon wearing black when it really isn't one of their colors.  As a Syracuse fan we haven't had to deal with this...until yesterday.

I suppose we should be happy that we were able to skip the "black uniform craze" and go straight to the "platinum uniform movement."  If gray, yes gray, platinum is not a color it is a metal, was one of our colors I would actually really like the uniforms.  The "S" on the back is really pretty cool, I like the orange trim, and the "Cuse" on the front is a nice change of pace.  Even with these positives I still can't get past the GRAY!  Gray is not, nor will it ever be, one of our colors.  If we are using gray as an accent color (or in this case as a main color) why not go back to the pink and pea green.  At least pink and pea green have some historical reason to be a part of a Syracuse ORANGE uniform.  I would love to see the gray in this design replaced by white and these be used as home uniforms, but for now I am not a fan of us wearing these uniforms.  Even though I am not looking forward to seeing these uniforms worn during a game, I would think they look sharp on a fan as a fashion piece, much the way Nike made blue Carmelo Anthony "throwbacks" even though they were never worn during his time on the hill.

Representatives and coaches from Oregon University, who is the king of Nike designed crazy uniforms, has been quoted as saying the uniforms are a recruiting tool.  Recruits and fans across the country instantly recognize the Oregon brand because of the "unique" uniforms.  On top of that, apparently high school kids love these type of wacky designs.  If we have to play a game in these Georgetown/Syracuse hybrid uniforms, I really hope it appeals to kids we are recruiting.

Thoughts on Cincy

After the debacle against Notre Dame, a team everyone expected to be able to beat without Fab Melo, I wasn't sure what to expect against a seemingly much stronger Cincinnati team.  The interior play in the absence of Melo was not very good, but there were plenty of other reasons why Notre Dame was able to defeat the Orange.  Syracuse shot poorly, didn't rebound very well, and settled for way too many jump shots.  For most of the game the players looked like they were pouting and mourning the loss of Melo.

This team looked like a completely different team against Cincinnati, despite the rough first few minutes.  Even the Bearcats making three pointers from an average distance of 24 feet didn't seem to faze the Orange.  While the 60-53 victory was not always pretty the Orange did "fix" some of the issues they displayed against Notre Dame.  Our slashers drove to the basket more in the last 10 minutes against Cincy than we did the entire game against Notre Dame.  This helped us set up open outside shots, even if we didn't make as many as we normally do.

Syracuse crashed the boards much better than they have in quite some time, perhaps all season.  Even when Cincy was getting rebounds they had to work for them.  Rarely did they get an easy rebound and put back that we, Syracuse fans, are accustomed to within the structure of the 2-3 zone.  Additionally, some of our players finally gained some sense.  Kris Joseph who has been colder than ice cube in Antarctica started to use, what I think is his best asset, his ability to drive to the basket.  Brandon Triche and Scoop Jardine also began to play like the war we know and expect them to play.  James Southerland gave some quality minutes on both offense and defense.  Michael Carter-Williams got into the action for a few minutes in the first half.  He wasn't stellar, but he was far from a liability on the court.

With that being said, the player who stepped it up the most Monday night was Rakeem Christmas.  Some fans have stated that having Christmas on the court is like playing 4 on 5.  This may be a little harsh, but in some situations hasn't been far from the truth.  Against Cincy Christmas was active on both ends of the court, making post players work underneath the hoop on defense and setting some very good screens on offense.  The highlights of his night were two assists to cutting players under the basket.

I am still hoping Fab is able to return to action, but if we can get these type of quality minutes from Christmas and get Keita back to playing like he did the first half of last season we are not in as bad shape as many originally feared.  On top of that, we beat a fairly good conference opponent on their home court with Dion Waiters, who many consider the best player on the team, playing his worst game of the year.

Weathermen?!?

I know I am not the first or the last to come to this conclusion, but holy cow, weathermen don't know anything!  If I went to my job and performed adequately roughly fifty percent of the time (and that is probably being generous) I would be fired!  And if for some reason my superiors didn't fire me I would quit on my own.  How can any self confidence be left for someone who is successful fifty percent of the time?

I have come to the conclusion that essentially any idiot can be a weathermen.  Some of these idiots are meteorologists, who apparently have more schooling in the science of weather than a simple forecaster.  I am not sure what is taught in these meteorology classes, but predicting the weather must not be a part of the curriculum.  I bet that meteorologists can do a great job explaining the weather after the fact, as could most scientists.  So instead of being forecaster they should be called storytellers.  Quite frankly, I think I do the same thing most of these professionals do when I want to know what is in store weatherwise, I go to weather.com or a similar site.  I would love to have a job where the only requirements I had was to visit a website and report on what the website says.



Another one of my weather pet peeves is the way the weather is forecasted on these websites.  When looking at the hourly forecast, which in my experience is more accurate than the weather forecaster, there are little pictures to represent what type of weather is going to occur each hour.  The part I find interesting is that the websites will show a little picture of a nasty snow storm, as a teacher this always piques my interest since there is nothing better than getting a phone call saying you can come to work late, or not at all, but when you look closer under the chance of precipitation it says 20%.  How stupid is that?!?  Shouldn't they instead show a picture of the sun or clouds since there is an 80% chance of that type of weather?  Instead, lets forecast snow to cause a panic or in the case of school children and teachers a sense of false hope.

BCS or Tournament?

Many sports fans do not like the way college football determines their national champion.  Football is my favorite sport and, in most cases, I tend to like college better than professional.  Something I like about the BCS format is that, as a college football fan, you are guaranteed to have two of the top teams play for the championship.  It is hard to point to a year and say a team that played in the BCS Championship Game was not worthy.  There have been some years when an equally worthy team gets snubbed, but never a game without two teams that were worthy.  A matchup of two of the best teams would not always be the result of a tournament format.  Upsets would occur and the hottest teams would advance, just like in the other sports.

In college football the regular season matters.  The complete body of work throughout the season is considered when determining the champion.  Why should a team that lost three games to begin the season have the same chance of winning a championship as a team that lost a game at the tail end of their season?  That is what would occur with a tournament.  I have heard over and over again how a team is now playing like a championship team.  So that means we just forget the beginning of the season when they weren’t playing like a championship team?

In any sport that uses a “one and done” tournament format you are not guaranteed to see two of the best teams play for the championship.  In some cases sports that use a series format will weed out the teams that are getting “hot at the right time,” but this isn’t always the case.  Here are some examples of this “getting hot at the right time” phenomena:

• New York Giants 2012 (NFL)
• Green Bay Packers 2011 (NFL)
• Arizona Cardinals 2009 (NFL)
• New York Giants 2007 (NFL)
• Connecticut Huskies 2010-11 (NCB)
• Syracuse Orangeman 2002-03 (NCB) 
• Villanova Wildcats 1984-85 (NCB) 
•  NC State Wolfpack 1982-83 (NCB) 
•  Houston Rockets 1994-95 (NBA)* 
• Washington Bullets 1977-78 (NBA)* 
• St. Louis Cardinals 2011 (MLB)* 
• Boston Red Sox 2004 (MLB)* 
• Florida Marlins 2003 (MLB)* 
• Anaheim Angels 2002 (MLB)* 
• Florida Marlins 1997 (MLB)*

This is by no means an exhaustive list and for some sports it was much easier to weed through history and pick out champions that were not the best team throughout the season.  With the exception of the New York Giants from this year, all of these teams won their respective championships, despite, in many cases, multiple teams being better throughout the season.

There are arguments to be made on both sides; some people love to enter a postseason with uncertainty and the thought that any team can win the championship.  Others would rather see the teams that have proven they are the best throughout the entire season battle it out for the title.  Personally, I love the story of an underdog, except of course when I have a rooting interest in the game.  However, there is definitely some merit to a system that ensures the championship game is played between two of the very best teams in the sport.

How things can change...

Over the past 24 hours Syracuse fans have had their outlook on the rest of the season rocked.  Fab Melo's, who has been an integral part of our success, future is uncertain.  The most optimistic fans believe he will be back for the West Virginia game on Saturday.  The most pessimistic fans don't expect to see him suit up for the Orange ever again.  I suspect most fans are in the middle hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

Fab has made huge improvements since last season and I will be the first to point out for some stretches he has gone into "beast mode," mostly on defense, but every now and then on offense as well.  With that being said there are times when he plays like he did last season; picking up silly fouls, missing close range shots and being out of position on defense.  He is still a work in progress in regards to consistency, but even as a work in progress his presence on the court has been huge for us.

There is no point in analyzing the best case scenario, since if that is the case all this will turn out to be is a starter missing two games.  The worst case scenario is where I am interested.  As stated before the worst case scenario would be the rest of the season without Fab.

To do this I want to compare our team this year to our team last season.  Last year we lost in the second round, due in part to officials not knowing the proper back court violation rules.  Even with that unfortunate blown call, I don't think we were a Final Four team.  We would have had to play very well to beat UNC in the next round.  So the question becomes are we better this year than we were last season when we had a Sweet 16 caliber team.

2010-11 vs. 2011-12 (w/o Melo)
PG- Scoop Jardine vs. Scoop Jardine
SG- Brandon Triche vs. Brandon Triche
SF- Kris Joseph vs. Kris Joseph
PF- Rick Jackson vs. C.J. Fair
C- Fab Melo vs. Rakeem Christmas

Bench- Dion Waiters, Baye Keita, C.J. Fair, James Southerland vs. Dion Waiters, Baye Keita, James Southerland, Michael Carter-Williams

STARTERS Analysis
I believe Jardine and Joseph are very much the same players they were last season.  They have the ability to look excellent at times and the ability to completely disappear at times.  I think Triche has improved marginally.  The main difference is last year he was a liability at times on the court, while this season there has not been a time when I thought he needed to be off the court based only on his play.  (A few times I thought he needed to be subbed for chemistry and/or excitement changes.)  Rick Jackson was a much better post player than C.J. Fair.  However, C.J. Fair is much more athletic and has the ability to handle the ball and stretch the defense with his shooting.  Melo (last year) and Christmas are essentially the same player.  They both show signs of loads of potential, but then do something that leaves you scratching your head.


Overall I believe our starters without Fab match up well with our starters from last season.  With that being said we lost in the second round last season and at best were only going to make it to the Sweet 16.  I would call the comparison a wash.

BENCH Analysis
Dion Waiters is significantly better this season as compared to last season.  He understands and has accepted his role on the team and his decision making is much better.  I also believe James Southerland has accepted his role and is using his athleticism much more this season.  Baye Keita this season is the same player he was post-hand/wrist injury last season.  He will give us some minutes, but isn't a threat to score and isn't a great defender.  With Fab out we miss C.J. coming off the bench.  Since it isn't fair (pun intended) to compare Fair to Carter-Williams I will compare Fair ('10-11) to Southerland ('11-12).  Southerland is more athletic and is a better shooter.  Southerland's rebounds come from his athleticism while Fair is more of a banger inside getting tough offensive rebounds and put backs.  Carter-Williams is a nice addition to this season who can go in and get few minutes here and there.  His role is similar to Southerlands from last season.  Some games he gets quality minutes and other games he gets little or no minutes.  The difference, of course, is the positions they play.


OVERALL
I think this year's team even without Fab is better than last year's team. However we would really need a favorable tournament draw for me to feel good about making it much further than last year.  I can see this team making it to the Sweet 16 without much trouble, but then facing tough games that could easily go either way.

CHALLENGES/OUTLOOK
The biggest challenge is going to be adjusting to the absence of Fab.  Given practice time I think the adjustment(s) can be made.  I don't think I need to post this, but we are not as good without Fab.  I am not trying to downplay his importance to this team, but I refuse to panic and jump off the bridge when we have a very good team without him.  With Fab I thought we were a lock for the Final Four, if we could avoid a complete meltdown.  Without Fab I think, with a favorable draw, we can still go far in the tournament, but the "lock" status is off the table.

Do we have/need a go to guy?

Some of the Syracuse non-believers have been making statements as to why Syracuse will/can not win a championship with their current team.  For many Syracuse fans these questions have become a major stressor.  I can not count the number of message board posts I have seen attacking ESPN and similar analysts for not giving credit to Syracuse. 

Personally, while I do find it annoying, I do not spend much time worrying about what some "has been" or "never was" on television says about my team.  With the exception of some local media who cover all the Syracuse games, I consider myself more of an expert than these talking heads on television.   On top of that there are only two sports, in perhaps the world, where public opinion actually impacts who wins championships; college football and boxing.  In both college football and boxing the contenders are chosen based on the polls.  In probably 99.9 percent of all other sports, including college basketball, the champions and contenders prove themselves by competing in the sport, not by competing in the poll of public opinion. 

It seems the most popular reason among analysts as to why Syracuse won’t win a championship has to do with “star power.”  That leads me to the question:  Does a team need to have a “go to” guy (or dude as some analysts have been saying) to win a championship?

Given the chance I would respond to this question with a question of my own:  Why does a team have to have the same go to guy for every game?

My definition of a go to guy is a player who can take over the game at any given time.  This leads to stretches where the said player scores three, four or five baskets in a row.  A go to guy can come up with steals, blocks or other big defensive plays.  A go to guy is also the guy you want taking the last shot at the buzzer or going to the foul line when there is a chance to ice a game.

Based purely on the first 20 games of this season I have seen a number of Syracuse players fit my definition of a go to guy during different games.  Dion Waiters has looked like a go to guy on numerous occasions.  Scoop Jardine has fit the bill several times.  Kris Joseph, Fab Melo and Brandon Triche have looked like go to guys at times throughout this season.  For short stretches C.J. Fair and James Southerland have looked like go to guys.  For those of you not counting I have named seven of the ten regulars.

I would rather have a team where any number of players could be the go to guy than a team with one go to guy.  It is easier to defend one go to guy.  Defenses can be designed to key on one go to guy.  If a team has a court full of potential go to guys, who do you key on? 

The one area that I don’t believe I can judge our players on is clutch play.  This is because of the simple reason that we haven’t been in a late game situation where we really needed a clutch play.  I would completely understand if analysts began asking:  Does Syracuse have a clutch player who can sink the big time pressure shot?  We, as fans, don’t really know if we have a clutch player.  Many times even a team doesn’t know if they have clutch player until they need one.  I am hoping we are in a situation at some point where we get to see if we have a clutch player.  However, I would be just as happy if we won every game by 8+ points on the way to a second championship.

Not having a single go to guy seems to be a big deal to some analysts.  To me if this is their biggest concern with our team I am pretty happy!  Since as a self proclaimed “expert” [see second paragraph] I am much more concerned with our half court offense execution, but I guess that is a good topic for another post.

Winners, Losers and Treaders in the Football Conference Movement

Over the past few years one of the liveliest topics in college sports has been the ever-changing look of conferences.  It has long been commonplace for supporters of a conference to declare their conference the best.  I decided to take an in depth look at future football changes in the BCS conferences.  (At some point in the future I will look take an in depth look at the changes in college basketball).

                 

I recognize that any analysis of these changes is subjective (an opinion), however I tried to be as objective as a lifelong Syracuse and Big East (and, I guess, now future ACC) fan could be.  I tried to use as much data to come to my conclusion as possible.  I will explain the method of my madness later on.

               

So without further delay the conference that I believe made out the best with the latest round of conference switching is….wait for it…wait for it…the Big 12, followed by the SEC, ACC and Big East.

                

Since average college football fans put much more importance on the now rather than history I tried to do the same in my analysis.  The first thing I did was to compile the win-loss record of each of the ten teams moving among BCS conferences.  Here are some of the things I found interesting from this data:

• Boise St. has won the most games in the last ten years by a long shot.  They have won 118 the second most among the ten teams was TCU with 103.  West Virginia has won 95 and then there is another big drop off to Missouri with 81.
• SMU has won the least games, winning only 42.  Coming in just above SMU with 43 wins was Syracuse (very painful to see that in writing).
• Boise State has won 10 or more games in 9 of the last 10 seasons.

After compiling the year by year records of each team I looked at the bowl results for each team over the past ten years.  This also provided some interesting data:

•  Boise State and West Virginia have been to bowl games each of the last ten years.  TCU missed only once, in 2004. 
• Missouri has been to bowl games 8.
• TCU has a 7-2 record in bowl games.
• Boise State is 4-6.
• Texas A&M is 1-5 and Houston is 2-5.

 Since to many people all that matters is BCS bowls I also looked at those results among the ten teams:

• West Virginia, Pittsburgh, TCU and Boise State have all been to BCS games in last 10 years.
• West Virginia (3), Boise St. (2) and TCU (1) have all won a BCS bowl.

 From this data I created a formula to rank the teams from 1-10.  In addition to the data above I ranked the teams by strength of schedule and history.  Here are the rankings I compiled.  A team got 10 for being #1 in a category and 1 for being #10 in a category.  If there was a tie I divided the points and split them between the two teams:

	Team	Wins	Pct.	Bowls	Bowl Wins	BCS App.	Sch. Strength	History	TOTAL	New Conference
1	West Virginia	8	8	9	7.5	4	8	7	51.5	Big 12
2	Boise State	10	10	9	9	2.5	5	4	49.5	Big East
3	TCU	9	9	8	10	2.5	4	5	47.5	Big 12
4	Missouri	7	7	7	7.5	-	9	6	43.5	SEC
5	Pittsburgh	5	6	6	6	1	7	9	40	ACC
6	Texas A&M	4	4	4.5	2	-	10	10	34.5	SEC
7	Houston	6	5	4.5	4.5	-	3	3	26	Big East
8	Syracuse	2	2	1.5	2	-	6	8	21.5	ACC
9	SMU	1	1	3	4.5	-	2	2	13.5	Big East
10	San Diego St.	3	3	1.5	2	-	1	1	11.5	Big East

As you can see the two teams that are being added to the Big 12, West Virginia and TCU, come in at numbers one and three respectively in my power rankings.  The two teams they are replacing, Missouri and Texas A&M, come in at numbers four and six.  Additionally West Virginia and TCU have a combined four BCS bowl victories, while Texas A&M and Missouri do not even have a BCS appearance between them.

You could argue that West Virginia and TCU have been competing against weaker competition, which is probably true, but their on the field success cannot be ignored.  In most years I would put West Virginia up against Texas A&M and Missouri and think they would win more times than not.  (Unless of course the Mountaineers play like they did against my boys in orange this year).  I would not hesitate to put TCU up against those two teams either. 

I think that the SEC, Big East and ACC are treading water with their additions.  I don’t think Texas A&M and Missouri will be more than middle of the pack SEC teams most years.  Sure, some years they may have teams that compete near the top, but it I don’t think it will be on a consistent basis.  Essentially, I think money was the only reason the SEC added these two teams.  It allows the SEC to expand into a few new areas, but doesn’t add much to the on the field product.

                As, what I think is, an objective Big East fan I never held onto delusions of grandeur.  I knew the Big East was at the bottom of the BCS conferences in most years.  However, I also believe the ACC was right by us.  The ACC may have more late 1990’s brand awareness (FSU, Miami) than the Big East, but the on the field product is very similar.  The only difference is each year the pre-season pollsters and ESPN “experts” for some reason think that the ACC has a national title contender.  This year I think the Big East was probably better than the ACC, not just at the top as West Virginia proved against Clemson.

I don’t think the additions of Syracuse and Pittsburgh made the ACC weaker, since most years I don’t think these two teams will be at the bottom of the league.  Instead, I think two more teams have been added to the middle of the pack.

The Big East lost the most teams.  However, with the exception of West Virginia, I do not believe the teams will be tough to replace.  Syracuse and Pitt have been hovering around the middle and bottom of the Big East in recent history.  Just when they seem to have had a breakout season they fall back to reality.  The only thing that kept Syracuse (my team and alma mater) from coming in last in my power rankings was schedule strength and history. 

The additions to the Big East together equal out the losses in my mind.  In fact, if anything, the Big East has probably gotten stronger overall.  Boise State doesn’t have quite the track record of West Virginia, but in recent history they compare very well with the Mountaineers.  SMU, San Diego St. and Houston all should fit in nicely toward the bottom middle of the Big East pecking order, precisely where Pitt and Syracuse have been recently.

Many analysts and coaches have stated that football is driving these conference moves.  It is tough to argue that since football does bring the most revenue to these institutions.  However, if this is true, it is really just greed driving these moves, since only the Big 12 has, more than minutely, improved their on the field product.