Oregon Ducks Need Love

Currently living in Spokane, WA, I was pleasantly surprised recently when I heard a friend of mine relating a story about running rapids in Southern Oregon on the Rogue River.  This wild and scenic part of the Rogue River remains my favorite white water rafting river that I've had the privilege to manipulate in my youth.  When Mat spoke about a very well known rapid, Blossom Bar, I knew exactly where he was referring to.  This particular place along the river wasn't always available as a river running possibility.  In the days when there was much mining and wood cutting in the area, the workers needed a pathway for the logs to flow down and not get hung up there.  Dynamite was necessary to create a small crease for logs, and later, rafters to flow through this scattering of large, house-sized rocks.  I recalled all the times we climbed the shear cliffs to scout the rapid before we plunged into unknown outcomes - whether we live another day or tip and drown or smash into one of the jagged rocks that infest this garden of boulders to puncture our raft and be left stranded.  The cliff that represented the bank of the river at this point was the final destiny of peace and calm before the terror and anxiety of this maneuvering challenge.  One last breath is always taken in the eddy on the left hand side of the river that leads the waters through the safest route of the first drop, then all chaos blurs the vision and intensity soars when you hope you remember the discussed oar strokes and shifting to point the front of the raft directly toward the next obstacle so you can use your power reverse stroke to pull you and your passengers away from the eminent danger of flipping - oh, and there's the next obstacle.  The adrenaline rushes just thinking about it!  My friend, Mat, probably had a different experience than all my trips because he wasn't in a cushy raft, but a small, vulnerable kayak.  At the time, his white water skills weren't equivalent to this real life test.  After a couple flips and a small delay, he was able to make it through to the end and have a story to tell about for years to come.  He wasn't sure whether he was wanting to continue this crazy trip or not, at one point or another.  He had a moment when he could have chose to get in the guide raft and just float the rest of Blossom Bar with the skilled guide, or get back in the water and brave the rest of the obstacle-laden rapid.  As the man that I've become to know, he chose the tougher decision and went for it.  Now, though he did not mention it, I know that he must have stopped at the lodge that rests a few kilometers down the river from Blossom Bar rapids called Paradise Lodge.  After surviving Blossom Bar, anything would be paradise.  Paradise Lodge is a nature feast with large fish swimming near the bank before climbing the trail to the building, and possibly seeing the black bear that they feed in the fenced area, and wandering deer passing through the property.  It's a thing of beauty - especially if you made it with all your gear intact and passengers in one piece and a raft that's not destroyed.  The Rogue River in Oregon is definitely my future destination spot some day where I would love to bring my kids along to show them, as I was shown, how wonderful it is.  Now, I don't want to take away any greatness from the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, because that is truly an amazing trip and quite overwhelming and intimidating, but the many little things in Oregon on the Rogue makes that place more special.

White water rafting is not the only special and meaningful thing in Oregon for me because I really enjoy college football from the small town of Eugene.  The Oregon Ducks have had quite a solid run, themselves.  Coach Mike Bellotti really got things started from an inconsistent program and worked many years into something more steady and dependable.  Then the four years with Chip Kelly saw all that potential really come together to find success in the Bowl Championship Series era.  Unfortunately, Oregon hasn't become the home of many elite athletes nationwide and missed out on big wins against significant teams.  Oregon's potential still looms and the football program has yet to peak.  Sure, the Ducks get the occasional star athlete that comes in and makes an impact, like Haloti Ngata and Dennis Dixon and Jonathan Stewart and T.J. Ward and Patrick Chung and Jairus Byrd and even back several years when Dan Fouts was the starting QB for Oregon.  Now we are seeing more and more Ducks being successful at the next level.  This shows that Oregon is really coaching up the talent they get from high schools.  Not so much now because the Ducks are able to recruit more highly skilled talent recently.

I have been studying the recruiting process more and more and have found many interesting trends that have happened in the past and what we find in today's recruiting practices.  The sure thing I found is that the Southeastern Conference definitely has the strong hold of elite talent every year.  I've said it once and I'll say it again, "The SEC should dominate every non-conference team they play every year and leave no doubts on the field who the better team is."  The non-conference games shouldn't ever be close, unless it's against USC or Ohio State or Florida State.  Based on recruiting and the pay that the coaches receive and the capacity of each stadium, the SEC schools are expected to dominate every facet of the game - in my eyes.  Luckily, they don't and I can find fault in their inadequacies and make claim that the conference is not as deep and powerful as advertised.  I can look at the previous decade of recruiting on scout.com and rivals.com and see exactly why the SEC has won the national championship game seven years running.  Anyone with a brain can figure this out and it can't be denied, but how can there be any team out there that can be competitive with an elite SEC squad?  Yet, a few years back when the undefeated Auburn Tigers played an inferior Oregon Duck team in the national title game and Auburn needed a last minute field goal to break the tie and win the game by three points.  How could that game have been so close?  Very improbable, was the thought prior to the game.  Interesting to note, that since that year, the head coach of Oregon has been promoted to be an NFL coach the same year that Auburn's head coach was fired.  It reminds me of that song from that 80's group C+C Music Factory, "Things That Make You Go, Hmmm."

So, why is it that according to rivals.com, that of the last 11 years, an SEC school was ranked #1 or #2 or both in 10 years?  To me, it's obvious, but it may have something to do with the schools' locations are considered to be in the best parts of the country and the coeds are prettier there than anywhere on earth.  I suppose I was just born in the wrong part of the country.  That's too bad!  There is talent galore in so many states in the south like Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.  Plus they can dip into Texas and the Carolinas for additional talent, but sometimes California kids are swept away to the East coast.  Who wouldn't want to?  They win championships over there, right?

The other research that I've been doing is trying to determine which schools are recruiting hot-beds and get athletes to flock there for football and determine why.  I wanted to know whether a winning tradition is a huge part, or whether it is the coaches that work so diligently for elite recruits, or if it is consistency and an upward trend to improve that has these kids picking one university over the others.  I looked up on stassen.com for some statistics that might enlighten me with a brilliant discovery, but found more confusion than anything else.  I also found that stassen.com is very up to date on its information because when I searched to find the highest winning percentages over the last 16 years, schools that were penalized with sanctions and had to vacate wins in the past, like USC, Alabama, Ohio State, North Carolina, and Penn State (hit the hardest) were already calculated in the percentages.  The 16 years represents the BCS era and seemed like a good starting point to search for consistency in a program.  Now, with Boise State at #1, TCU at #10 and Utah at #17, the rest were huge schools with a great winning tradition in the top 20.  I saw some surprises due to the current trend of winning or losing in recent years, for instance, Alabama was not found in the top 20, but probably would have been without the vacated wins that would have put them just above Utah.  Another example was Tennessee at #20.  With it's current state of winning, or rather, not winning, they didn't seem to be someone that would be found so high up in the rankings, but I reminded myself that there were a few years early on in the BCS era when they won a national title and came close a couple other years.  Another surprise was seeing Oregon all the way up at #8.  Even without the vacated wins, USC would still show more losses than Oregon during that span.  Interesting.

With this discovery of information that I have searched, pondered, and p... wait, that might be heading somewhere else.  Anyway, I find it very interesting that Oregon has fewer losses than USC during the BCS era; even fewer losses than Alabama and Michigan and FSU and LSU.  All those aforementioned schools, with exception to Michigan, have won the national title at least once during this span.  This is crazy!  So why is it that Oregon has only been able to break the top 20 in recruiting classes since 2003 only six times and the top ten only once according to rivals?  Over that span of recruiting for Oregon, the Ducks have never topped the conference in elite athletes.  The Ducks have had the second best recruiting efforts in the Pac-12 three times behind USC each time.  On average, Oregon places at fourth or fifth in conference in recruiting each year.  The recruiting dilemma is why so many SEC schools repeatedly have several schools out-recruiting Oregon every year - even, Tennessee, Ol' Miss, and Vanderbilt recruited better than the Ducks this year in 2012.  Vanderbilt?!?  Really?  Is Oregon that bad?  Maybe it's the thought of Chip Kelly leaving for the NFL that has gotten recruits nervous about the program, or the potential sanctions that may be coming to Eugene soon.  Maybe these high school athletes are feeling a little like Mat's kayak, vulnerable and not in a cushy place and afraid to tip over a couple times.  Or maybe they don't think they can work as hard in practice as the Ducks do when they get dozens of repetitions every practice.  Maybe they are just afraid to win lots of games in college and choose Mississippi (remember how good Jeremiah Masoli was at Oregon, then his stupid off-the-field acts got him kicked off the team and he transferred to Ol' Miss where he wasn't effective at all and appeared like he lacked quarterbacking skills).  These recruits shouldn't have any reservations about Oregon and the potential Paradise Lodge that draws near after the hard fought battle of Blossom Bar's rocky sanctions.  Maybe the athletes are up on that high cliff and looking down on Oregon and analyzing the future and what's in store.  When in reality, even if there are a couple of flips in the early rapids, all one needs to do is what Mat did, that is, get back in the water and finish the ride and set your sights on that Paradise Lodge to celebrate the victory.  Mike Bellotti blasted that place with dynamite many years ago and now the Ducks are in easier flowing waters now with Chip Kelly departing and now Mark Helfrich finds himself in the same position Coach Kelly was in four years ago - Chip had never been a head coach and merely an offensive coordinator.  The last 16 years should prove that Oregon is here to stay with its longevity and consistency.

The last couple years of recruiting for Oregon have been solid and saw a couple shining stars changing from one great university to decide on signing with the Ducks on National Letter of Intent day.  I feel that Oregon has been on the brink of recruiting greatness but hasn't found that last springboard to get to that level of recruiting that is found in the SEC.  Oregon has needs at certain positions that can get them to win those big games, especially defensive tackle.  Haloti Ngata was the last dominant DT Oregon has had that is big enough to plug the holes in the middle and strong enough to push the offensive line back to cause a large disruption in the backfield.  With the 3-4 scheme the Ducks use, it would be ideal to get that beast-like athlete in the center of the trenches because there is so much speed flying around everywhere else.  I feel that Oregon needs to go after more tackles similar to Ngata and get depth.

Currently, Oregon has not offered scholarships to very many of the kids of the 2014 recruiting class that I feel they should be going after.  Coach Helfrich has decided to stay closer to home with most of the recruits and find the future starters in Washington and California.  California is an ocean of talent waiting to be discovered and Oregon has had much success with the players they pick up there.  The state of Oregon is not very helpful when it comes to elite high school talent that can demonstrate their skills at the next level from day one.  Arizona is another state that Oregon can tap into for many blue-chippers; however, I have noticed on scout.com that most Arizona kids who look at the schools in Oregon, seem to favor Oregon State and not even have the Ducks listed in their schools of interest.  I find that really strange.  I don't want to question Coach Helfrich and his tactics on recruiting ideas, but knowing that Oregon is #8 in average wins over the last 16 years tells me that it is time to expect the blue-chippers from all over the country to want to attend the University of Oregon and play football.  Don't undersell yourself, Coach!  It's a great university and it's in the Conference of Champions where football is gradually improving to be a consistent shareholder in the most anticipated BCS bowl games.  The facilities are in place to attract the best of the best.  It's time to be confident that Oregon will manipulate the obstacles and maneuver around the large boulders and get to Paradise Lodge, or that national title that has been elusive to the Ducks' consideration of being a powerhouse football program.

I can't compliment the perks of floating the Rogue River enough with mention of the Blossom Bar rapids and there's also a stop at Zane Grey's cabin, and touring the Rogue River Ranch is a must-see when you ascend to the lush, green field that you cross to reach the main house; however, I don't hear much about this river from river runners from most parts of the country and yet it remains this solid, technical river that should be ran by the best rafters.  Now, the same can go for Oregon Ducks and the nationwide blue-chip football players coming out of high school in 2014, where Oregon is solid and technical and should be getting those most elite players from anywhere.  Players like Da'Shawn Hand (DE from Virginia), Cameron Robinson (OT from Louisiana), Lorenzo Carter (DE from Georgia), Tony Brown (CB from Texas), Braden Smith (OT from Kansas), Leonard Fournette (RB from Louisiana), Jabrill Peppers (CB from New Jersey), Kain Daub (MLB from Florida), Khairi Clark (DT from Florida), Jamal Adams (S from Texas), Malik McDowell (DE from Michigan), Sam Mustipher (OG from Maryland), Elisha Shaw (DT from Georgia), and Deshaun Watson (QB from Georgia) should be giving Oregon a serious look because a combination of a few of them might make the difference between playing in a BCS bowl and playing in the BCS National Title game and winning it.  Oregon is now one of those programs that impact high school youth when they receive an offer in the mail.  The choices are difficult and the pressure is great for these young athletes to make such an enormous decision, but it seems that you can't go wrong with a solid, consistent program that has set the dynamite into the obstacles and blown the path to Paradise and will allow anyone a chance to start and play at any time, like Oregon has become.

So, to my friend, Mat, I thank you for your story of your experience on the Blossom Bar Rapids because of the fond memories that I have of that same place.  I am glad that your experience was similar to mine even though your trip was years after my most recent trip.  Like Oregon's football team over the years, the Rogue River has remained constant and solid.  As I am sure that Paradise Lodge was a welcomed sight for you and me both, Oregon is now ready to welcome those elite blue-chippers to get that elusive crystal ball that the BCS title games offer the winning team each year.

Analyzing the AP Poll

I remember way back in the eighties when the "parachute pants" were such a cool thing to wear.  Later, they were often referred to as "M.C. Hammer pants" (or just "Hammer" pants), for those are the type of pants he wore in his music videos that flooded MTV for about a year, solid.  They were made of a light material (parachute-like) that fit in the butt and then loosened up in the thighs with a zipper that revealed additional material (commonly a different color than the outside pant color) and slowly tapered down to hug the ankles.

As a youth, my single mom could not afford new clothing for the four of us children, so most of the time, my brother and I had to scrounge up odd jobs or paper routes to earn money to buy "special" clothing for ourselves.  I had done so the summer before seventh grade and purchased the sweetest pair of parachute pants.  They were a royal blue and instead of zippers, I had snaps on the sides that exposed a black material.  I just knew the chicks would flock to me the first day of school, which ultimately turned out to be the only day of school I wore my Hammer pants.  Middle school-aged kids are very cruel to begin with, but when you are a newer kid in town (one year) and not very popular and in a small town where Wranglers and Levi's are the norm (for decades), it was inevitable to get the non-parachute-donned, popular boys to tease in all ways imaginable to humiliate me in front of those potentially swarming girls that now wouldn't even look in my direction.  At the time, it was an awesome idea and I thought I could predict how people would react to wearing such sweet attire, but I was quickly put into reality when the test finally came.  I'm sure that there were some parts of the country that these Hammer pants were more accepted by peers in middle school, but in the rustic cowboy town in Central Oregon, it was not meant to be.

My optimistic view of parachute pants and the reality check I experienced in the seventh grade remind me of the grossly inconsistent adjustments made from week to week by the AP poll voters.  I feel like they are voting for teams like how I felt when purchasing those royal blue beauties.  It seems like a good idea at the time, but the real test hasn't occurred yet and reality hasn't hit.

First of all, those voters have a stewardship over their pre-season votes and have to stick with them, or do they?  They are responsible to provide accurate accounts of all the FBS schools in the nation.  All the teams must be monitored closely and fairly represented in the weekly top 25 with respect to the teams' success (or failure).  So, as I glance through the first couple weeks of the AP top 25, I see some accurate representation of some schools and others where they may seem to be way off due to how things have unfolded thus far.  It's like a work in progress for the voters.  They need to make necessary adjustments each week and fess-up when they don't make the wisest decision one week and change it immediately for the following week.

An obvious example that we witnessed already this season, is the pre-season #10 team, Arkansas.  Of course this is a pre-season #10 team!  The Hogs are in the SEC!  'Nuff said, right?  Well, for me, that's not good enough.  They just lost their offensive guru and head coach in the off season.  Arkansas was starting a new season with a new coach that hasn't really glistened with success, but with the talent that flows to the SEC, anybody would be successful, right?  Well, that #10 team jumped two spots by beating that hard-nosed, bruising team from Jacksonville State (yes, sarcasm was intended) with a score of 49-24, who put up 322 yards on an SEC defense.  Yikes!  The good thing was that Tyler Wilson, arguably the best QB in the conference, needed to play only two and a half quarters and Arkansas still put up 564 yards.  Jacksonville State had garbage points and yards in the second half while the starters were resting and letting the second and third stringers get some reps.  The following week is when the tragedy happened.  Louisiana-Monroe came to town and put up a real fight.  They hung in long enough to be able to get a last minute score to force overtime with 21 unanswered points.  Arkansas made a field goal in overtime.  Then the shocking thing happened when the Warhawks QB seemed to have muffed up a play but found himself with a huge amount of green in front of him to sprint into the endzone.  Ouch!  This is when Coach Smith should have put in his bankruptcy papers.  He'll be lucky to have a job by season's end.  Now, Arkansas may have started off ranked too high with a new coach, but the voters were seeing stars or unicorns chasing rainbows or something to advance Arkansas more than one spot to fill in the Michigan loss after the Razorbacks' initial win.  However, the voters got it right when they tucked in their pride and took Arkansas completely out of the top 25.  That's got to be hard for the voters to put a team at #8 one week and the next, leave that same team unranked.  Like my mom never told me, doing the right thing is not always easy.  So, Arkansas was definitely a pair of those parachute pants that made it to the second day of school and now is a nice, classic pair of Wranglers like everyone else that doesn't find themselves in the top 25.  Now if only that second game of the season would have been Alabama and the Tide would have slapped them around a few hours and humiliated them, that would have been expected and the Hogs would have dropped a few spots, but not completely out of the top 25.  Unfortunately, it happened to be a much, much lesser team.  This will not look good when conference play begins unless Coach Smith can make a total one-eighty and utilize the talent he has on this squad.

There are many questions I have for the voters besides, "How can I get your job?"  Some of the placements of rankings each week draw my finger to the temple of my head and make me say, "Hmmm."  Let me mention a few of those now.  The obvious one, is why would anybody vote USC at number one?  A great team? Yes!  (My favorite.)  However, with the NCAA sanctions, USC lacks the depth to make it a whole season without injuries in key areas that could potentially find them struggling to win games - especially with the increasingly competitive conference of the Pac-12 and the nine conference games that the conference schedules every year (of course, Colorado is developing into the Duke and Vanderbilt of the Pac-12 - a.k.a. "bye week").  A top ten ranking would suffice, but #1 is really pushing it.  Same with my second favorite Pac-12 team, Oregon - ranked too high.  Hello!  They lost the starting QB and have to start either a sophomore or a freshman, and they lost arguably the best running back the Ducks have ever had with Heisman finalist, LaMichael James.  Again, near the top ten is feasible, but top five?  C'mon!  Let the teams who lose personnel and star players prove themselves a few times first.  Another team is Florida.  Why are they ranked at all?  This is the same team that had Urban Meyer at the helm two seasons ago as one of the best recruiters, ever.  The cupboards were left full of talent, with some stored in the pantry, as well.  You just need to be a decent coach to win 10 games with all that talent.  Well, Will Muschamp's 7-6 record was a huge disappointment, and he does NOT recruit better than Coach Meyer, so I have no idea how Coach Muschamp will improve from the 7-6 record in his first year as a head coach and who he paid off to find the Gators in the top 25.  I hope they prove me wrong, but this trend doesn't bode well for the Florida faithful.

After week two of the 2012 season, I learned a few things in regards to how things are perceived by the voters in the AP poll.  First thing I learned was, I'm not the only person in the world that regrettably purchased a pair of parachute pants in middle school.  I saw four top 20 teams lose to unranked teams and found themselves on the outside looking in.  I mentioned Arkansas falling like the net worth of its coach, but then there was the offensively anemic Wisconsin team with the best returning running back in the nation ranked at #13, who couldn't score against a questionable Oregon State team until less than two minutes left in THE GAME.  Now the media wants to make a big stink about the call on the on-side kick?  Really?  Do you think the Badgers suddenly had super momentum to score a "quick one" in just over a minute left from the 50-yard line?  Please!!  Maybe the Beavers really played defense or Wisconsin needs to get rid of the offensive line coach (oh, wait!  The latter did occur), or maybe it was actually a combination of both.  With the game against Nichols State being postponed, Oregon State essentially had more than one week to prepare for the Badgers.  Is it really that far fetched?  The third team that lost was the #16 Nebraska squad that played in the Rose bowl against UCLA.  The Huskers left LA as losers by six, even with the huge 92-yard run by Martinez.  The Red Shirts defense didn't corral Johnathan Franklin and let him go on a 217 yard day.  The Husker defense kept Franklin out of the endzone until the short pass in the fourth quarter.  The fourth team that left their high-profile offense home was the Oklahoma State Cowboys when they traveled to the deserts of Arizona.  The Wildcats tried their best to give the Pokes a taste of their own medicine when Oklahoma State put up 84 points the week prior on the lowly Savannah State.  The Cowboys went from shutting out one team the first week to getting 59 pasted on them the next.  As a Pac-12 fan, the second week of the 2012 season went like a dream - of the four unranked Pac-12 teams playing ranked, non-conference foes, three came out winners (the only loss was Washington losing - badly - to the #3 ranked LSU Tigers).  So, besides Washington not showing up and Colorado looking like a community college and Utah losing their starting QB and a rare game to Utah State, the conference was well represented with wins against mostly BCS conference opponents.  So, keeping up with the annual standards of the AP poll, an SEC school loses its way out of the top 25 (although, replaced by Tennessee) while Pac-12 teams have to win their way in with the additions of UCLA at #22 and Arizona at #24.  It's weird not to see the other team, Oregon State, who had the biggest upset of the three to not break into the top 25.

In conclusion, the AP poll is very inconsistent with how they vote the weekly top 25.  Each time I look at a new week of the poll, I feel like I'm a Wrangler-wearing cool kid watching a parachute pants-wearing kid walking onto the playground at middle school and saying to myself, "What was that kid thinking when he bought those?"  I'm sure at the time the vote seemed like it made sense and would be popular with the ladies, but ultimately that will be the last time the vote will be like that again.  As long as the correct adjustments are made throughout the season, everything should all work out in the end, right?

There's A Lot of Good Out There

  A few days ago my family and I went for a bike ride to go get some ice cream.  We got ourselves all prepared and ready for a safe and fun ride.  We had two $2 gift cards to help with the cost of that yummy goodness that we were looking forward to on a warm summer day.  We all had our helmets on and my son even had elbow and knee pads donned.  The trip to Baskin Robbins is not quite two miles one way, so the kids would work up just enough sweat to earn their ice cream and be able to work it off with the ride back home.  When we arrived at the ice cream parlor there were only a few people inside getting their orders, including two attractive women with a cute, older teenager (maybe in her early 20's) tasting flavors and browsing a bit.  So, the young gal behind the counter finished with the departing couple to help me and my family.  Of course, my children either decide on something plain and boring or take forever deciding what special flavor they want to try.  My kids get their ice creams first and head outside so we don't leave a drippy mess on the floor of the shop.  My wife gets the ice cream that we will share and follows the children.  Then I'm left to pay the bill and open my wallet to get out my debit card when the young thing behind the counter tells me that they don't take any cards, only cash and check.  What?  Are you kidding me?  Are we living in the 80's?  I'm sure my face was priceless.  My head went wild thinking of alternatives of how to pay for this expensive treat.  I knew we didn't have the check book because my wife didn't want to bring her purse or wallet on a bike ride.  I knew that I hardly ever have cash in my wallet and if I did, it was for my pre-season college football magazines that I buy this time of year.  What the heck was I suppose to do?  So, with my best attempt of getting the retarded look off my face to try to save it, I hand over those two $2 gift cards and hope that the $4 will cover most of it.  The total now comes to $7.11.  As I slowly open my wallet, I offer a silent prayer that I had some cash in it.  I open to reveal a $5 bill and with a big sigh of relief, I draw the bills out to count the rest.  I count, five, six, seven....  Let me count again, five, six, seven....  Really?  I have $7 and knew that I don't have an ash tray on my bike where I keep loose change for parking meters, etc.  Crap!  To stall while I think of another solution to come up with $0.11, I check all 23 pockets of my khaki cargo shorts one at a time wishing I could gesture to my wife to come and help me out so I don't have to go through this humiliation alone.  I think my pathetic glance toward the window was too much to bare on one of those women, who was now finishing up their business, who said, "I think I have $0.11."  Oh, you wonderful woman!  I think I love you!  "Really?" I reply.  Then the girl behind the counter says that she has eleven cents too.  Now I'm rolling in it!  The lady next to me gets her wallet and shuffles through a bit and scares me for an instant when she says, "Nope."  Then quickly says, "Oh, here's some."  Phew!  I mention the extreme embarrassment of the situation and graciously thank this stranger.  She kindly shrugs it off as no big deal.  Well, yes, $0.11 doesn't seem like a big deal, but I went from thinking I had to march outside and take away my wife's ice cream and return it, to getting the whole bill paid for, it is a big deal (my wife would have killed me).  My gratitude for this kind act of service from a stranger made me wonder if I'm doing enough to help out people in need.  I questioned whether I'm being an example of good for those to see (and there were plenty of people to see this woman's kindness because the place was packed by the time I paid for the order).  Her small, simple act is what we are all capable of if we can stop long enough being self-consumed with our own daily problems and challenges and not being concerned whether someone is trying to take advantage of us or not.  I doubt this stranger will ever read this blog posted under the college football theme, but I will still say thank you, again, for showing me your kindness.  Even in a world of so much evil and extreme hatred that fills some people, I was reminded that there is a lot of good out there.

     I know you are wondering what this has got to do with college football, yet again.  The kind woman in Baskin Robbins showed me that there is good left in people, while observing a possible trend in college football recruiting shows me that there is good left in the Pacific 12 conference.  Well, as I browse through Scout.com (nearly) daily and seeing the latest on the college football recruiting scene, it has helped confirm what I feel is coming in the near future to change the outlook of NCAA football as we know it now. All the years that I've been following the recruiting process, the Southeastern conference has dominated like no other.  It is very clear that they have a strangle-hold on getting the top blue-chips in the country year after year.  Sure, occasionally there will be a Florida State, Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, USC, Oklahoma, or Notre Dame finding themselves at the top of the heap after the national letter of intent signing day in February; however, it is always the SEC schools jamming their football programs with excessive talent that carry two full teams of starters apiece that compete with elite teams across the nation.  When tallying the 4 and 5-star athletes each year, it is that conference that picks up roughly twice the number of elite athletes than the next best recruiting conference.  Double!  That is amazing!  The SEC is reaping the recruiting rewards by winning the championship annually for the past several years straight.  I don't believe anyone who claims that recruiting high school kids is not a big deal.  Just ask the SEC schools how they feel about the importance of recruiting.

Admittedly, I was disappointed by the elite talent that did not show interest in Oregon after they lost by three points to Auburn for the national title a couple years ago.  There was only a slight increase of 4 and 5-star players that had Oregon on their short list of schools they were interested in.  Only a small number of these great players ended up finally choosing Oregon to play for.  DeAnthony Thomas was a huge pick-up that year and was evident on the field where he demonstrated his electrifying speed and all-around talent with the ball.  USC has had to deal with players leaving and post season bans and now scholarship limitations due to some violations USC committed several years ago.  This has had an impact on how well USC has been able to draw in high-talented players to keep the program strong.  But it's still USC and some kids just want to go there.  There was a slight drop in quantity of talent with the fear of all the sanctions surrounding the program, but now the bowl ban is raised and USC will have a chance of increasing the amount of talent coming in, once again (except the limitations of 75 scholarships allowed in each of the next three years when it will then return to 85 again).  During the Jim Harbough days at Stanford, the recruiting efforts grew tremendously and saw the level of competitiveness jump up immensely.  There was fear of a drop-off in recruiting after Coach Harbough went off to the NFL, but David Shaw didn't miss a beat.  Stanford is still solid in the recruiting efforts.  Under Rick Neuheisel, the recruiting for UCLA was decent, but I think the high school kids noticed that those superstar athletes weren't getting on the field to play there in the Rose Bowl each Saturday.  I'm still asking myself where all those elite players went.  Now UCLA has Jim Mora who has come in with a winning attitude and will bring a "Harbough effect" on the program with better recruiting and ability to utilize the great talent to become great again.  The rest of the Pac 12 conference with respect to recruiting is just good to okay.

I predict that overall recruiting for the Pac 12 conference will improve dramatically over the next few years.  Not many people want to rush into programs that have new head coaches like Arizona, Arizona State, UCLA, and Washington State have all inherited this last off season.  These new coaches will have to prove themselves first before they can bring in some additional elite talent.  I feel that the offensively-minded athletes may lean a little toward Arizona and Washington State where Rich Rodriguez and Mike Leach have both excelled at with past coaching stops.  Rich Rodriguez will not have to chase off a Ryan Mallett-type talent at Arizona because the Wildcats will be better suited for his offensive needs.  Mike Leach has a great foundation, thanks to Paul Wolff and his recruiting efforts after he inherited a bare talent pool in Pullman (thanks to Bill Doba).  Mike Leach will be able to work around the talents of Jeff Tuel and Connor Halliday behind center and the superstar Marquess Wilson catching the majority of the passes thrown.  I've already mentioned UCLA and its immediate impact on recruiting, so that leaves Arizona State as the wild card and the unknown future of that program.  Todd Graham at ASU will have to earn his stripes in this conference with only a few significant coaching years in the Big East conference.

There are five schools I have not mentioned yet in regards to recruiting because you have the four universities that are holding their own with USC, Stanford, UCLA, and Oregon, while Arizona, Arizona State, and Washington State had question marks even before they brought in first-year head coaches, so that leaves California, Colorado, Oregon State, Utah, and Washington.  Jeff Tedford of Cal, Mike Riley of OSU, and Kyle Whittingham of Utah are each starting their eighth year or more at their designated universities (Tedford is the most senior in the conference with 2012 being his 12th year).  These three coaches are all settled and steady and consistent with what they bring to the table.  The Golden Bears have had some very successful years of recruiting under Tedford with some big names now in the NFL and having success at the toughest level.  Oregon State is a difficult place to recruit to.  Corvallis is not a big city with overwhelming social outlets for these young kids to flock to, but Portland is a couple hours' drive away from campus; however, Riley really knows how to get the best out of his athletes and makes me wonder what he could do if he ever did get a top ten recruiting class.  Now with UofO having a ton of success recently, most elite athletes in Oregon will go to Eugene instead of Corvallis.  This makes the hard for Oregon State even harder to recruit great prospects.  As far as the Utes are concerned, the move from the Mountain West conference to the Pac12 may have given them a recruiting advantage.  The automatic qualifying conference will lead some of the fence riders in Utah to choose red over the independent blue of BYU.

Just recently, USC picked up their final commitment that will be allotted them in 2013.  It is because they committed only 13 players in 2012, that they were able to get 18 commits for the following year and it seemed like almost a race at the end who would be the last athlete to pledge himself to the Trojans.  This is very cool and exciting!  According to Scout.com, USC has an oral commitment from only one single 3-star athlete; although, that player is rated #2 at his position.  The rest are 4 and 5-star athletes leaving the Trojans with an astounding 4.28-star average with its 18 commits.  If the top recruiting university is based on the star average, then Southern California would win 2013 with ease.  However, the lack of quantity will not allow USC to tackle the number one position in February (if all commitments stay firm).  This point system gives quantity a way of topping those who have better quality recruits overall.  The best part about the 18 athletes that have pledged to USC is that the Trojans didn't just pick up these young men from California.  Coach Kiffin was able to stretch out to Texas, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Maryland.  These are top athletes that are NOT choosing the SEC and being closer to home; but they want to be Trojans and play in the Pac 12 conference.

Last year's recruiting class from Stanford was an initial sign of what the Pac 12 has potential of doing, or taking away from other conferences.  Stanford pulled in top talent from places like Oklahoma, Minnesota, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida.  Even Oregon pulled guys from Colorado, Texas, and Ohio.  New Jersey and Pennsylvania were a couple other states that had top talent that chose the Pac-12 as well.  This is not a fluke!  I say that there is a trend that has begun and the Pac 12 conference will be able to reap the rewards of future talent that will flock from all over the country and be able to keep most of the local talent in the process.  Sure, the SEC will be keeping a lot of the talent in the Southeastern part of the US, but will see more and more of their targets heading West.  Now, with USC unable to pick up any more recruits, the benefactors should be the Pac 12 teams that are at or nearing the top of the conference, including Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, and Washington.  I would love to see more of the conference schools getting the blue-chip talent too, but these four programs will most likely be the top choices of the high school football players everywhere.

I can hear it now.  "The SEC rules and will never let go."  "The Pac 12 is the 5th best conference, at best."  "The SEC is so dominant that no other conference will come close to its worst teams."  Blah, blah, blah.  Uh huh!  Anyway, back to reality.  College football, like most things in life, is cyclical - meaning, there is a cycle that it will follow.  Even the BCS era has proven to be cyclical starting with the Bowden bowl (or Bowden Championship Series) each of the first three years, then it was the Big XII that couldn't be denied for a few years (or the Big XII Championship Series), then the USC era, and since it's been the SEC.  It's not to last forever (sorry SEC lovers).  It is a tremendous run (and I'm not sure if it's over yet) and will always be compared to from now on, but change is eminent.  I'm telling you now that there are signs on the wall - if you look hard enough.  I'm not saying that USC having six pledges from the top 19 athletes is the only sign, though a really big one, but that it is still early for the 2013 graduates to select their university of choice.  A game for the 2012 season hasn't been played yet and there is still over six months left before national letter of intent signing day and a lot of things can change in that time, but I am predicting more very highly touted athletes will make the choice to play in the Pac 12 conference when they also have offers from some SEC schools in the other hand.  I can see that there is a lot of good out there, like my experience at Baskin Robbins.

What Are We Listening To Anyway?

One morning, my youngest daughter was outside "helping" me in the garage when she began singing the One Republic song, "Apologize". The tune was very distinct and I immediately, with clarity knew the song she was singing. Then I listened more intently on what she was saying. She sang the chorus, "...it's too late to call the judge... it's too late...". I went to gently correct her by telling her the title of the song and the "call the judge" was actually "apologize", when she firmly disagreed because "that's what I heard them say". I just left it at that. My four year-old had told me what-for about a song that I knew better than she does, but yet I had to succumb to what she "heard them say". It reminds me of the T-Mobile commercial where the husband is singing in the car and his wife here's him verbalize the lyrics, "Pour some shook up Ramen". She obviously knew the real lyrics but had to call the local library for verification. How can some of us get so far off the actual words? Is there something in our head that we are subliminally thinking about and "want" to hear when we get a particular message? I understand a little bit of Spanish and have some Hispanic CD's that I enjoy. It is tough enough to try to understand the words in Spanish songs, let alone try to interpret the meaning of each line. I mean, maybe there are combinations of words put together that means something unrelated to the actual words that only a native Spanish speaker would know. For example, if someone heard the words, "making out" in a song, most Americans would know exactly what it's talking about. In Central America, I know of at least one country who describes "making out" in the literal translation, "sucking the pineapple". Song lyrics can be difficult and the degree of difficulty can change depending on the genre of music and the quality of recording.

So, what is it that we're listening to anyway? When I hear people in the media talking about the "Dumb Ducks" have gotten themselves into some trouble with recruiting and have a paper trail to prove it, do I hear the word "trouble" or the words "paper trail" and come up with my own conclusions to the rest of the story. Something about that article doesn't make sense. If Coach Chip Kelly was doing something wrong and unethical, why would he or any part of the university staff send thank you cards to prove that there was wrongdoing? Nobody in that kind of business is that stupid! What guy sends thank you's anyway? Softy! Even though I tend to lean toward Jason Whitlock's article, "Lyle's tale shows the rat he is", I should be careful not to read too much into it because Willie Lyle will be nothing but a slimy rat. Let me back-track, in case you haven't heard, University of Oregon paid a recruiting service (owned by Willie Lyle) a lump sum of $25,000 for highlight reels and tapes of several high school football players in Texas and vicinity. Recently, it has been discovered that other schools, such as California and LSU, have used Mr. Lyle for high school players' information. Mr. Whitlock describes Lyle as an attention seeker and someone who doesn't care who he hurts on his way to get fame, so Lyle has interviewed with media people and has expressed some damaging information that may ruin the lives of current Oregon football players and their future in football and may jeopardize the employment of the current head coach, just to grab some attention and make some headlines. No matter the true business deal that was made between Lyle and any university, all ties should be cut immediately from the scumbag.

One of the football players in question is 2010's national leading rusher, 2010 Doak Walker Award winner, and third place in the 2010 Heisman balloting, LaMichael James. Based on what LaMichael has accomplished the last couple years at Oregon, I can see how he can be seen as something extraordinary and a skilled athlete; however, coming out of high school with all the allegations of Oregon paying to get James, he was merely a top 3-star running back according to scout.com and a 4-star running back barely in the top 20 according to rivals.com. If Oregon was forking over that kind of dough for a superstar running back, wouldn't they have gone for one of the 5-star recruits like Darrell Scott or Jermie Calhoun? Why settle for a borderline 3/4-star athlete? That would be stupid! It doesn't make sense! How was Chip Kelly or Mike Bellotti to know that LaMichael would be a Heisman trophy candidate? Not likely! Heck! We might as well go back to the days of Jonathan Stewart to investigate why he went to Oregon; or even Haloti Ngata, what drew him to Eugene? Why would Oregon have success with any player? Of course I'm being sinacle, but I'm trying to make a point about what we hear in the media about hundreds of student athletes is often taken litteral and hardly ever questioned. I'm guilty of it as much as the next guy, so this post is more for me than anyone.

Seems that I have already mentioned LaMichael James and his accomplishments and explained his importance to the Oregon football team, I would like to make the bold statement that as good as LaMichael is, he could arguably be the third best running back on the team in the fall. LaMichael and fellow junior, Kenjon Barner fill the top two spots on the current depth chart. However, since James became the starter, Lache Seastruck came in the fall of 2010 and redshirted and DeAnthony Thomas comes to Oregon this year's fall camp. By no means am I trying to belittle the abilities and accomplishments of LaMichael James. On the contrary, I am celebrating his skills and achievements as last year's top rusher in the country and saluting his coaching staff who helped James develop his way to the Heisman race after only two years - being recruited as a "mere" 3-star running back coming out of high school. Now, those same coaches who had such success with the 3-star athlete, will have the "challenge" of coaching, additionally, two 5-star and one 4-star running backs.

Tra Carson is the incoming freshman that was rated a 4-star running back, #22 overall among all RB's in the nation. He will be the only back with his size at Oregon standing at 6'1" and weighing 218 pounds. He runs the 40 a little slower than the rest, clocking it at 4.60 seconds. It will be interesting to see where the coaches fit him in - whether as a 3rd down back or put him in more as a fullback and let him plow holes against linebackers for the smaller, shiftier backs.

The Oregon coaches have to be excited about the ex-USC commit, DeAnthony Thomas. He comes to Eugene as the #1 overall cornerback in the nation. When scout.com first listed him, he was the #1 recruit overall in all positions and was pinned as a running back. So, not only is he a 5-star, #1 overall CB, but initially the 5-star, #1 overall RB. Phil Steele has him as the #2 RB in the nation. Apparently he's suppose to be pretty good. With his skills and athleticism, CB and RB are probably not the only two positions that he could play and start at right away. It will be interesting to see where the coaches end up using him; whatever position, the opposing teams will need to know where he's at on every play - offensively AND defensively.

Another 5-star recruit who has already spent a year on Oregon's campus, Lache Seastruck, could be a household name within the next two years - if not by the end of November. He came out of high school as the #4 overall running back in the nation in 2010 and redshirted right away to give him more time with the football team to continue a Duck rushing attack that has been steady and consistent. The three other RB's that were listed ahead of Seastruck in 2010 were Malcolm Jones, Michael Dyer, and Marcus Lattimore. Lattimore (#1) and Dyer (#2) were off to the Southeastern Conference as starters and setting freshman rushing records at their appointed schools - South Carolina and Auburn, respectively. As for Jones, who knows what UCLA does with its great talent? Obviously UCLA is not getting those players on the field playing in the games. So, if Seastruck is anywhere near the talent of the South Carolina and Auburn recruits, then Oregon has another potent weapon for their offensive arsenal. It's gotta be good to be the quarterback, Darron Thomas!

I love the excitement that LaMichael brings to each offensive play that Oregon hustles to the line of scrimmage for ten seconds after the previous play had been ruled dead. He uses his speed to the outside and makes a move or two and gets past people, or he drives into the middle of the field in a huge scrum of linemen and just when you think the play is over, he pops out the other end and hits turbo to the endzone. His electrifying skills seem to be a glimpse of what the future has in store for the RB position at Oregon. If a borderline 3/4-star player can blossom into a super star at Oregon, think of the potential and possibilities that two 5-star recruits can do to the offense. This is why I think that LaMichael James could be arguably the 3rd best RB on the team in the fall and yet, all the pre-season magazines tell me that he is still the starter. If the 5-stars are as good as advertised, how many snaps will LaMichael lose to underclassmen? I'm drooling just thinking about Saturdays in the fall watching Oregon's offense with one more year of experience under Chip Kelly's blur attack.

Last year we saw LaMichael James with the bulk of the carries with his own showcase of highlight footage. In relief, Kenjon Barner showed very little decline in talent and productivity. When games were really far out of reach for their opponents, another slight drop in talent was brought in with true freshman, Josh Huff. This year, the backfield with James, Barner, and Huff could get really crowded - depending on the side of the ball Oregon puts DeAnthony and whether Tra is redshirted. There will be no surprise what Oregon's intentions will be in the fall. With all that said, because that's what the media wants us to hear about, I firmly believe that Oregon's secret weapon in the fall may come in the form of freshmen wide receivers that bring a lot of speed to the sidelines with 6'1" Devon Blackmon running a 4.43 40; the 6' junior college transfer, Rahsaan Vaughn clocking a 4.37 40; and the speedster, Tacoi Sumler standing at 5'9" and hustling the 40 at 4.33 speed! Oh, to be the offensive coordinator! To put some kind of combination of those guys on the field with some kind of combination of all those running backs on the field - at the same time - would be quite a dream job for somebody.

So, the media wants us to know about LaMichael James and Lache Seastruck and their thousands of dollars that they were given by Willie Lyle via University of Oregon to attend the U of O. It wants us to know that Chip Kelly is about to lose his job by sending thank you cards to a car salesman... oops! I mean, street agent... oops! That was Jason Whitlock's description. I mean, recruiting agent. These are a few things that the media wants the public to hear about in the plastering of sports news regarding the national champ runner-ups. At least the "scandal" occurred after the season and not during, much like that other team that played for the national championship game in January. So, if Scam... oops! Why do my fingers type such mistakes? If Cam Newton can get cleared so quickly and Terrelle Pryor can get eligibility to play in their bowl games for what they may have done (or whatever the media wants us to hear what they've done), then the Willie story should pass through like water over glass. Is what we're hearing, really what is being said? Or is what is being said, what we're really hearing? Do we just come up with our own lyrics to songs because that's what our ears put into our brains? What makes us get it wrong? I guess I thought that Shawn Cassidy was a runner when I heard him sing, "A do run, run, run... a do run, run" when all I needed to do is see the title of the song to know I was wrong. (Google it if you're too young to know who Shawn Cassidy is!) How many years went by thinking I knew that popular song?

In conclusion, I finally sat my daughter down and played the One Republic song for her. I again asked her what they were saying in the chorus. She replied again, "it's too late to call the judge... it's too late...". As the song played, I gently said the words as it was being sung and she realized that it was definitely "apologize". Phew! I got her back on track and now it's on to the next learning moment that daddy can teach his kid. Then she said to me, "They say 'apologize' first and then 'call the judge' second." How many of us are like my four year-old?

The Voice of Reason

Recently I had an experience that I would like to forget happened, but I know that it was something that I had to go through and seek the reasoning and learn from it so I can grow as I plunge forward into more experiences. During the winter months, a local mountain with cross country skiing access has a group of adults that organize a wonderful program that helps young children learn how to cross country ski, called Nordic Kids. It is well organized and well attended each Saturday for a couple months with strictly volunteers helping the success of the program to where it is common to see 12 year-olds skate-skiing up slopes as quickly as it takes me to go down those same slopes.

As I said, this program functions off of volunteers who instruct or coach the children in small groups to teach them basic skills of cross country skiing or Nordic skiing. As a child, I had the privilege to learn to do such things with my father and my older brother many years ago. Since being married, my wife and I have taken the common interest and I took my early years of learning to get her started. Now with children and wanting them to come to enjoy it, too, we have enrolled them, as they approach 5 or 6 years of age, in this Nordic Kids group to have these very experienced volunteers professionally teach our kids how to get down the trails and back and giving them the skills to do it gracefully and somewhat pain free. Well, this year went a little differently when my wonderful wife decided to take action when she found out that our 6 year-old son did not have a designated instructor for each week. So, based on the volunteer policy, she volunteered me to be his coach along with the other 8 or 9 children of approximately the same age as our son. I've never taught anything about skiing before. Let's say that I felt a little overwhelmed with the task.

The first week as the "official" instructor was abound and I was sure to try to prepare myself by getting a little orientation from the guy who organizes the Nordic Kids program about an hour before my first lesson. I was quickly relieved to find out that another gentleman, Mike, was going to be with me for the day, who happens to have much more experience at this stuff than I. For the first part of the two hour class, Mike took over and got the kids doing little exercises and activities to help them improve their skills. It was fun! It was the last hour that things turned sour. Mike sent me up a trail a ways to place some little flags in the middle of the trail to work on turning by making a slalom-type of activity while he stayed in the junction area to feed the kids some M&M's. So, I finished and headed back down the trail to meet up with the group at the junction to see if I could get M&M's too, but they were all gone by the time I got back. I met some of the kids coming up the trail while I was on my way down and I told them to head up to the cones and stop. Then a couple more kids went by and then finally I reached Mike. I tried to tally all the kids and make sure we had them all when I asked Mike where this particular boy was. Mike thought he headed up the trail with some of the other kids. I didn't recall this boy passing by me to go to the cones. We looked around and didn't see any stragglers, so we headed up the trail to find one child missing at the cones. Dang! My first day of teaching these young kids and I lose one! I was shocked, in a sense, that I lost a kid, but not so much that it was this certain boy that happened to be missing. The whole time, he was not really a part of the group and wandering off here and there as if he thought that the group was not advanced enough for him. He knew his stuff because when asked to do the activities, he could do them with skill and ease. Maybe his advanced level of skiing put his head in the clouds and got him a little distracted and wasn't able to hear the other instructor give him instructions to follow the right path. The boy was eventually found when he skied into a group where his parents were. They were concerned that he wasn't with his group and didn't know where to send him back to, so he stayed with them the rest of the time. The boy's father made him apologize to both Mike and myself for not following instructions and staying with the group. He was just too distracted and didn't listen to instructions and missed the voice of reason. I'll never forget my first day teaching ski class when I lost a kid.

It's a couple weeks out past the National Letter of Intent (NLI) day of February 2nd, and I can say that the Pac-12 had a pretty good year, overall. I would like to congratulate USC for bringing in a top 5 class - even with all the sanctions and other disciplinary distractions around the football program. Of course, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) dominated again for the 374th time in a row, so congratulations to that conference. I have been focused on the top 300 athletes according to Scout.com for the past year and have noticed common trends and realized that there seem to be many informed high school seniors out there that have had some guidance and direction to help them out with this very huge decision, and there seems to be a few high school kids that just don't get it and don't seem to be paying attention to what is going on out there in the world of NCAA football. Maybe they lack or missed the voice of reason by someone who may have been there trying to tell them all along. I will touch on a few individuals in both categories and explain why I feel they belong there.

I will first start off with those who I don't feel they put much time and effort into selecting the proper university to follow their dreams of becoming a great football player as someone who is deemed as a very special player that stands out above the rest throughout the entire country. The first name that comes to mind is the 4-star quarterback (QB), Jacoby Brissett, who seemed pretty smart waiting a few days after NLI day, until he made his decision to enroll at Florida where the top, 5-star QB, Jeff Driskel, has already committed for next year. All I need to say is, Tim Tebow and Cam Newton. Where was Newton his first year or so? A little mop-up duty and practice field behind Tebow. If that's Brissett's highest goal in life, to be the backup to the guy who is winning the national title, by all means, you made an excellent choice. However, as the #9 QB in the nation of thousands of QB's, maybe you should get your transfer papers ready right away. He should have listened to his disappointed mother who wanted him to attend another school (I believe it was Miami). Like my little lost skier, he didn't heed the voice of reason.

The next name that I feel that should have chosen differently is the #10 defensive end (DE), Stephon Tuitt. This 5-star commit to Notre Dame came two days after the Irish received three of the five DE commitments in four days; including the #2 DE, 5-star commit, Aaron Lynch and #4 DE, 5-star commit, Ishaq Williams. How many defensive ends are allowed on the field at one time? How many defensive ends rotate in and out throughout the games? How many classes of players are allowed to play college football? I have no doubt that Mr. Tuitt is a very special player; however, the questions posed are legitimate and I am concerned how Coach Brian Kelly addressed those concerns to be able to get another 5-star DE commit. Stephon would be a very smart kid if Notre Dame football only played freshman in games and rotated 10 defensive ends every other play and had five DE's on the field at one time during each play, but I know a little more about football than that to know that it wasn't very smart - especially from a kid that is coming from Georgia!

Two more names, to conclude the "lost" children that believe their talents are better than the people around them who get distracted and the voice of reason fades, belong to the two 4-star talents, #12 tight end (TE), Dillon van der Wal and #38 wide receiver (WR), Lafonte Thourogood. I mention these two names strictly because both committed to Vanderbilt and lost all sense of working real hard to have your efforts pay off to get you places that ordinary people can't get to. Vanderbilt? Really? Why play football at a place that all the other teams in the same conference will call you "bye week" and treat you like a practice squad that has the actual scoreboard lit up to show you exactly how horrible your team is. No matter how easy the four non-conference games are for Vandy, they struggle every year to win two conference games to make them bowl eligible (if they actually win all four non-conference games). Does Dillon and Lafonte realize that Jay Cutler has been in the NFL for a few years now? Quarterbacks at Vanderbilt are not exactly the Heisman front runners every year. Plus, if Vandy had a decent QB, they would be on their backs too quickly to get a throw off due to the offensive line that has to go up against some really good defensive lines throughout the season. All I have to say about those two fellas is, some coach at Vanderbilt really knows how to recruit (two guys) - I can't imagine what was promised to the parents on those visits! If it's academics, I know of a school that has excellent academics and actually played in a bowl game in January - well, it was actually a BCS bowl game that they happened to dominate to end the season with one loss (for those who didn't quite pay attention this last season, it's Stanford). Vanderbilt? Hmmm.

Now, I would love to change gears and focus on those kids who actually thought things through and had the right people around them to guide them properly to find the right fit for their talents and be able to make a positive impact to their future team and university. There were some schools that came out very successful at the end of the day on February 2nd who deserve great athletes because of the excellent facilities, coaches, and programs that play great games each year. Some of the teams that won big this year were; Florida State (obviously with the #1 recruiting class this year), Georgia, Clemson, and Oregon. Both Georgia and Clemson had down years, but finished strong with great recruiting classes to help out their young teams next year. Florida State got just about anybody they tried for. Oregon rarely gets a top 15 recruiting class, but with an appearance in the BCS Championship game in January, it may have helped a little with some TV time and lots of viewers. I'm actually a little shocked that Oregon didn't do a little better due to the exposure they received this year. The #3 defensive tackle (DT), Delvon Simmons may have made a mistake by not going with the Ducks to bolster up a defensive line that needs some size. The choice Simmons made to attend North Carolina may be a little scary after what the Tar Heels went through during this last season and losing some quality defensive players. Can you say, "red flag"? Should have stuck with Oregon, Delvon!

Speaking of Oregon commits, DeAnthony Thomas, the #1 corner back (CB) in the nation took his 5-star talent to Eugene after committing to USC for a long time when he changed his mind and showed up on NLI day in a Ducks shirt that read, "12-0" on the front. Smart kid! DeAnthony doesn't necessarily need to play defense (although that would bolster the defensive backfield nicely with Cliff Harris at the opposite side) because he may be even a better running back. I'm sure Thomas did his research and concluded (maybe with some help) that he would probably get a little lost amongst so many blue-chippers at USC and not get to play as much if he went to the young Ducks team that just went undefeated in regular season and lost by a last second field goal to the national champs in the final game with Chip Kelly who took his first year as a head coach to a Rose Bowl birth and to the national title his second year. With DeAnthony and other superstars that Oregon hasn't been able to recruit consistently over the years like... say... Auburn, may turn Oregon into a powerhouse year-in and year-out. Oh, did you catch that minor slam on Auburn from the last sentence? Figuratively speaking, Auburn, with its ability to recruit much better than "measly" little Oregon, should have lit up the scoreboard so high and blown the young Ducks team away. The size and talent that the Tigers bring in, year-in and year-out recruiting, should drive any non-SEC school back to the 80's to make them sing, "Don't Dream, It's Over" every game - including the championship game.

I can't believe how enormous recruiting is for a program and how dominant one conference can be each year and never exploit it on the field, but consider only words being enough to satisfy the college football fanatics. How disappointing it must be to live in the Southeast and be a huge fan of some SEC school or two and never see their team play legitimate competition every week prior to conference games! There are four chances each year where the SEC schools have to show off their dominant recruiting skills and put those premiere athletes on the field against powerhouses from other automatic qualifying (AQ) conferences and squish them into the turf to prove to the nation the major prowess that the SEC has a reputation for. Instead, they justify the conference slate as so difficult that they need to take on opponents such as: Utah State, Florida Atlantic, Samford (Auburn); Kent State, North Texas, Georgia Southern (Alabama); Florida Atlantic, Alabama-Birmingham, Furman (Florida); Missouri State, New Mexico, Troy (Arkansas); Memphis, Louisiana Tech, Alabama-Birmingham, Tennessee-Martin (Mississippi State); East Carolina, The Citadel (South Carolina); Western Kentucky, Central Michigan, Jacksonville State (Kentucky) - to name a few. Can I just say that the expansion of the Pacific 10 (Pac-10) to the Pac-12 has not made them "sell-out" by stopping the nine conference games like the other 12-team conferences. Instead, they set the bar high, again, and keep the nine conference games and the competitive, three non-conference games. Why don't the other conferences take note? Are they afraid that they won't actually get 80% of their conference bowl eligible every year? Pity!

Back to the smart athletes that were recruited this year, I have to mention Cyrus Kouandjio, the #1 offensive (OT) player overall and #2 overall. Even initially, when he chose Auburn, he would have surrounded himself with a bunch of other freshman talent with 5-star OG, Christian Westerman, 4-star OG, Greg Robinson, and 4-star center, Reese Dismukes. Now that's a solid future that could have taken Auburn really far for a long time. However, the decision to commit to Auburn and not FAX in the letter of intent immediately was very commendable. I'm impressed with that - especially with the end result. It took some serious... uh... "guts" to change from Auburn to their hated rival, Alabama. Cyrus eventually went with his heart and hopefully no regrets.

The same can go with the #1 talent in the nation, DE, Jadeveon Clowney, who took nearly a full two weeks after the NLI day to announce on Valentine's Day - and his birthday, which school he finally selected. Choosing the South Carolina Gamecocks was a wise choice for Jadeveon and his family. The campus is only 30 miles from his home so his family and friends won't need to travel far to watch him play - and he WILL play. He is nearly guaranteed to make an instant impact on Coach Spurrier's defensive line. I'm excited to watch South Carolina finally grow under Spurrier. The only thing that would have made me happier about Jadeveon's decision is if he would have selected a Pac-12 school instead (like USC, Oregon, Oregon State, or Washington), but that wouldn't make much sense for a kid from South Carolina.

So, with Cyrus and Jadeveon heading to SEC schools, according to Scout.com, that gives that conference 26 of the top 100 athletes in the nation and 61 of the top 200 and 94 of the top 300 athletes. Those are huge percentages, especially considering those 26 athletes are split amongst nine of the 12 schools - Kentucky, Mississippi State, and Vanderbilt did not get any of the top 100 athletes this year. As I said earlier, those twelve schools who recruited such great athletes, should display all that talent on the field against weightier opponents. Even with the weightier opponents, those twelve teams should demolish anybody in non-conference play; and I am shocked that the SEC commissioner has not learned from the new Pac-12 commissioner how to bolster up a non-conference slate and requiring more competition at a higher level of play during that part of the season to prove to the nation what it already knows - how dominant the SEC is at football, or at least recruiting.

As they say in betting, "put your money where your mouth is". I want to see better non-conference games from the NCAA's most admired conference. I want to see the SEC drop a non-conference game to add an additional conference match-up like the 2011 fall schedule of the Pac-12 has. I want the SEC to drop those games against Kent State, Georgia Southern, Missouri State, Troy, Samford, Northwestern State, Western Kentucky, Tennessee Martin, Southern Illinois, Furman, Coastal Carolina, Jacksonville State, The Citadel, Buffalo, Elon, and any former Division II (Football Championship Subdivision - FCS) games that are or will be scheduled. You recruit almost 1/3 of the entire top 300 athletes in the country every year! The nation deserves better games from you! You are the SEC! Prove it on the field, not by the jabbering of your jaw! Post season bowl games should not be merely gifts given freely to those who won 2 or 3 conference games, but earned by hard work on and off the field against the better teams out there to prove that you are one of those elite programs that can handle the "big boys". Until you do, you are just a hypocrite who is too afraid to play a full season of football and risk not going to one of the superfluous bowls that have flooded the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS - former Division I) where over half of the entire FBS is invited to play in a post season game (way to really point out the losers) - there's no feeling of success and accomplishment in that.

The talent in this year's recruiting class won't be completely fulfilled for another two or three years and we all shall see whether the voice of reason was heeded or ignored while the promises from the coaches to the players will be exposed for the country to see on the big stages of the BCS bowl games. We will see if the athletes were focused on improvement and getting to a better place and following their correct path, or if they were focused on how good they thought their talent was and how they didn't belong amongst the inferior players around them to cloud their perception of where they should be and eventually get lost - like my little skier. I hope that all the top athletes made the best decisions they could and really took the time to make such an important decision. I also hope that the SEC commissioner will listen to the voice of reason, too, in expecting more from each of the conference's universities in regards to their football schedules. To toot your own horn over five games the past five seasons is merely a reflection of the annual dominance in recruiting; however, to really appear impressive and worthy to be called the number one conference, you have to step up to the plate at some point and really challenge yourself or you will never stretch your limits and grow. You will remain at that particular level of play while the rest of the world is getting better and improving themselves each year and will eventually surpass you and your sub-par standards of scheduling.

Boise State Versus the Nation

This is the title of a post that I was thinking about back in May of this year and forgot that I had wanted to start it - and now I find it in the "draft" phase of my list of posts.

An adventure I recommend all should take, is one that my wife and I took with a good friend in search of hidden treasures and trinkets, which is world-wide known as "geocaching". If you've never heard of the term, it is where you need a GPS (Global Positioning System) to help you find the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of where a small container has been hidden that may contain many little obscure things or just a piece of paper to write down your geocaching "code" name. Once discovered, you check the contents of the container and may "swap" an item for something left behind and write your name on the log, and then place the container back to its exact location in the same manner as you found it. There are people who actually maintain these containers that could be located anywhere in the world in cities, parks, rural sites, and many public areas of towns that are common place where most non-geocaching people would not even know of the existence of such things. All the information can be found online at geocaching.com for a free membership, so it is available as you travel for work or vacation or for sporting events.

A few things I learned from my friend while geocaching that may help you in your first time at going: 1) you never know what kind of container you will find and how it will be hidden, 2) you can never assume the type of booty that will be left behind in larger containers, 3) you have to have actual positional sense when finding your location and shifting positions, 4) an accurate GPS is the most valuable tool you could have with you for accuracy, and 5) nothing appears as it seems until you look closely to the details of the overall picture. I hope that you either have fun continuing in your cache hunting, or finally go out and try it with these helpful hints, or have learned something new to try and plan an outing. It's fun!

Something I speculated back in May, months before the 2010 season began, regarding Boise State and their uphill climb for perfection and a BCS (Bowl Championship Series) National Championship bowl game bid was confirmed by a recent article written by the well known, ex-Sports Illustrated writer, Rick Reilly titled, "Broncos Can't Buck This Trend". It all started at the end of the '08 season when Boise State lost a tight game to TCU (Texas Christian University) in the Poinsettia Bowl by 1 point. This would be, as of today and for a few more days (at least), the last time that the Broncos would lose. They began their '09 campaign beating an Oregon Ducks team that would end up winning the Pacific-10 (Pac-10) Conference and earning a berth to the Rose Bowl. Boise State would go on the rest of the season undefeated and deserving a shot for the national title, but was left out because two automatic qualifying teams went undefeated, as well (Alabama and Texas). So as a consolation prize and getting to play in a BCS bowl, they were paired up with TCU, again. To me, that was a huge slap in the face - not to downplay the strength of a very good TCU squad (who got the slap too), but in reference to these two non-automatic qualifying teams that went undefeated to earn a BCS bowl bid never got the shot at playing one of the "big boys" in the nation. It's like the BCS didn't want any problems, so they simply "swept" these two teams under the rug by pinning them together for the second time in one year. Lame! The BCS is lame! So, Boise beats TCU by seven to end a perfect season.

Before the start of the 2010 season, media writers gave Boise State a lot of love and had them ranked in the top 10, all the way up to #3 by some. Given huge expectations and the SI curse by being on the cover and tons of national attention and scrutiny, the Broncos have done nothing but prove to the country who they are and where they want to be - they are undefeated and want to play for the national title. Boise is #2 in all the polls except the BCS - which, unfortunately, is the one that counts at the end of the season - where they find themselves at #3, currently. In order to get to #1 or #2, they need some help from other teams while they dominate and win out the rest of the year. Currently, it is Auburn and Oregon at #1 and #2, respectively, and there is no guarantee that either of those two will win out (especially Oregon with the toughest stretch of their schedule ahead of them starting with their visit to USC). Auburn is favored by the computers while being #3 in all the other polls. The good thing about the computers for Boise State is that they love the Broncos more than Oregon. Unless the computers begin to like Oregon some time soon, Boise may maintain this particular lead and hope that Oregon and Auburn lose a game or two apiece, along with Missouri, TCU, and Michigan State in order to keep them from sneaking up from behind on BSU. If those teams lose and Boise State wins out, that might bring them up to the #2 ranking in the BCS, which is good enough to play for the title in Glendale, AZ, on January 10th.

So, Rick Reilly brings up some really good points on the legitimacy of the Boise State program and the consistency it plays with week in and week out with its 21 game win streak (longest in the nation). Mr. Reilly mentions that the head coach, Chris Peterson, is 56-4 at Boise. His program, under his direction, has lost only FOUR games! Are you kidding me? However, we have this wonderful system called the BCS that tells Boise that they are at the zenith of their BCS progression and can't go any further and will not play for the national championship until they join the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and go undefeated there - then, and only then, will Boise get their day in the sun to prove to the whole country that they belong. Well, Boise should never try to join the Pac-10 because they never get the respect they deserve and wouldn't change Boise's predicament, so they may consider making a run to the Big XII Conference and continue beating Oklahoma each year... then maybe... Anyway, some comparisons with opponents of Boise State this year that Mr. Reilly states in his article were: 1) the Broncos smashed San Jose State 48-0, and the Spartans have lost a lot of games, but one was to Wisconsin, in Madison, where the Badgers beat them by only 13 points - the same Wisconsin that beat #1 Ohio State and #15 Iowa; 2) the Broncos pounded Wyoming 51-6, and Wyoming nearly beat Air Force who nearly beat Oklahoma who we know Boise State CAN beat; and 3) the Broncos beat Virginia Tech on the road, who is currently undefeated in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), so why wouldn't Boise State perform just as well in that conference? Interesting, no? Rick Reilly, who writes for ESPN.com now, says that "the BCS computers TKO Boise State. Why keep punching when it's not a fair fight?"

Top Conference: The SEC?

I recall my rugby days at Southern Oregon University (formerly known as Southern Oregon State College, when I attended), when I felt that our little club of about 20 men could take on or compete with anybody. The games we played at home were dominated by us with our massive Samoans in the scrum and our head-strong white guys flanking out as the backs who could run north/south pretty well. My first game, our coaches words echoing in my head "follow the ball", helped me communicate to a co-captain who was ahead of everyone but the three defenders who he was dragging with him to toss the ball to the outside, so when he turned to back his way into the defenders, I was right there for relief and snagging the perfect toss, I ran the remaining 15 yards or so to score my first "try". Yes, I "Zulued" that day. What an awesome feeling! One game, I actually scored twice, the first was on a 70 yard bolt down the sideline - and I was the rookie. We traveled to Eugene, Oregon to play their 'A' squad, for they had three separate squads at the University of Oregon. The 'B' and 'C' squads were equivalent to JV and freshman squads, I suppose. We barely lost to the Ducks by 3 points. We were just a little club, they were a huge program with 3 squads! We nearly took them with a limited traveling team that had to fork over money from their own pockets for the trip. We had the best team around. We beat Bend and OIT, Reed College and many others. As rugby goes, there is always the celebrations afterward that last late into the night that includes both teams. The sportsmanship between the two teams was like it is when I see two men bow at and hug each other after a brutal MMA match. There is respect and love of the sport that binds the two teams or individuals together. I love rugby! The Southern Oregon Fighting Cocks were the toughest team to beat with the reputation to prove it.

My feelings about my old rugby team in the early '90's reminds me of a recent article written in the October 19, 2009, issue of Sports Illustrated, by John Ed Bradley, speaking of his team that he played for in the late '70's and the conference that it participates in now. Mr. Bradley celebrates the recent accomplishments of his alma mater, LSU, and looks back at his playing days with tender fondness. He is definitely proud to be a Bengal Tiger who currently resides in Louisiana to this day. He's still tucked into the heart of the SEC, who Mr. Bradley boldly claims to be the best conference top to bottom with depth all over. That's great and gives me some warm fuzzies and all; however, I don't see any respect of other teams portrayed in this article that would show any sportsmanship and admit to the love of the game; even as the SI cover suggests, "SEC Football: Nobody Does It Better, The Nation's Toughest Conference". So, when my buddy, Shannon, handed me this Tim Tebow clad SI, he knew from his Florida State devotion that this would cause a rise in my Pac-10-minded ideals. He was absolutely correct in his assumptions and caused me to write this blog the very next day.

I think the mentality of the SEC and its players and its fans is all summed up by the words of Roy Kramer, who was the SEC commissioner for 12 years before retiring in 2002, when he was quoted in this article, "... SEC schools have had an 'us against the nation' attitude since 1926". This shows a huge flaw in the SEC who claims to love football more than anything else in life, growing up knowing the head coaches of the universities better than the political leaders of their particular states. They seem to be saying that it is the SEC way or no way at all. The fans and media have a tendency to slip into that skid and can't find their way out of the irrational thinking of pure dominance of the "best" conference in the nation. I think that true fans of the game would show respect toward other programs that may settle in different parts of the country, including teams on the west side of the Mississippi River. Yes, there is life existing and going on in these parts of the woods. To show true sportsmanship you must be able to see the big picture and not have your face in the magnifying lens all year long.

I would agree that there are a lot of athletes that come out of the state of Florida, when Mississippi head coach speaks of the 335 average amount of young men signing on to Division I schools. I also think there are a lot of talented young men coming from the state of Texas, as well. I have heard from one of the coaches at UTEP when he went on the recruiting trail that there was so much talent in particular areas of Texas that it was difficult to focus in on just individual players. He told me that the speed on the East side of the state; however, really had top notch speed in comparison to the West side of the state. With all the talent in Texas, it would seem easy to get a decent team built up, but for teams like UTEP, it is actually very difficult with so many other bigger schools vying for the same kids. Texas is the hot bed of talent snatchers that gets more early commitments than any other program out there. Then you have other schools like Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Houston, Rice, and then UTEP. This doesn't include the talons that swoop in from Oklahoma and Louisiana State. Another state that has a decent talent pool is California. There are only 4 major colleges in the state to choose from with all that talent, so many of them are swept away to distant schools.

A couple years ago, I calculated the amount of all the 3, 4, and 5-star athletes, according to Scouts.com, and put them with their perspective conferences. It showed that the SEC, as a whole, dominates the recruiting of prep super stars every year. The next best conference was around half of the amount of highly touted talent that fed into the SEC. That is incredible! The SEC does an amazing job at recruiting, as a conference whole. With that said, I would like to see the SEC schools prove their talent level with other teams than just their own. How selfish to play 4 games that you know don't have a chance at scoring against your first team defense, let alone winning the game (with few exceptions a year)! I would love to see Houston Nutt do exactly what he was quoted in this article by saying, "I watch the other conferences all the time and I think, Boy, I'd like to play them." Perfect! Schedule a game with Oklahoma or Texas or Texas Tech. Travel up north, for once, and play in the cold against Penn State or Michigan or Ohio State. Visit the Pacific Ocean side of the country, for once, and play Oregon or Oregon State or USC or California or even a Boise State or Utah. I challenge you, Coach Nutt, to make it happen. Show off your coaching skills and trickery skills and huge talent-laden team that draws from the "best" conference in the nation. Prove it to America! Put your money where your mouth is! I guarantee, that if you feel a little frightened of flying such a distance, that ANY Pac-10 team would be delighted to travel to Oxford to play the Rebels there first - even the basement-ridden Washington State - that should be an easy win for you. Wait! Don't let me limit my challenge to Coach Nutt, but to the rest of the coaches in the SEC. I tip my hat to Georgia for taking on a Pac-10 foe. I tip my hat to Tennessee, too. Even though those two games were at home for the SEC, the Pac-10 did come off with one win, and nearly a second. I even tip my hat, slightly, to LSU for actually making the trip to the Pacific Northwest to play the Pac-10 team with the longest losing streak of 14 games. I'm sure that when the game was actually scheduled, Washington was still winning 3-5 games a season, so good job LSU (slight sarcasm there). Les Miles seems to avoid the better teams of the other conferences for some reason. I'm confused how that consistently happens. Weird! With all the talent that LSU and Florida and Alabama and Auburn and Tennessee and Georgia bring in each year, there should be no fear whatsoever playing elite teams of other conferences. Those teams should be so bold to the nation and deliberately play tough games each and every week. Why not? They have the talent. They have the depth. They have the money. They have the stadium capacity. They have everything. Do it! Or are there underlying issues to suggest that maybe the "best" conference is just hype to justify the over-rated rankings each week. Which is it? Don't just make claims without actually backing it up on the field. When the naive tight end for LSU, Richard Dickson, says, "Your USCs, your Ohio States, sure, they're all great teams, but as far as a league, I don't think you can compete with the guys we have to go against each week." Really? Does he know anything about USC? What is said from LSU Belles? "The Pac-10? Isn't that a convenience store out on Highland Road?" When was the last time you, Mr. Dickson, have played "your USCs? Or an actual legitimate team from another conference since your win over Ohio State? Hmm. You may be thinking hard for a long time, buddy. It just doesn't happen. Play USC someday! I know Pete Carroll would love it! USC doesn't back down from heavy competition. Look at their opponents over the last 10 years. Notre Dame every year is a far cry from the annual Tulane hiccup you have each year. LSU doesn't even play the whole conference every year like USC does. Sure, USC gets its conference "bye" week by playing WSU, but LSU gets theirs with Vanderbilt who went to their first bowl game last year since 1982. At least WSU had 3 consecutive 10 win seasons within the last decade or so. When has Vandy ever done that? Or Kentucky? Or Mississippi State? Or Ole Miss? Don't just talk about it! I want to see it on the field! You can make all the claims in the world you want, but until I see you SEC coaches going after the big teams of other conferences and dominating them, I'm not going to be a believer - especially when the Pac-10 has a winning record over the SEC since the year 2000. These games are NOT against the easy shoe-ins for a win against opponents like Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Mississippi State, etc. The most recent wins are against Arkansas, Tennessee, and Auburn. I understand that maybe a hand full of people will actually read this, but I stand by my challenge to all the SEC coaches to step up and show off all their talent pool of young, strong, fast football players. Oregon would be a great team to go up against now with their very average 3-star athletes that have no speed like that of any SEC school, who took it to USC recently (sorry, some more sarcasm - I can't help it).

There is one thing I'm trying to figure out this season. There is this game in Knoxville that was played earlier in the season against UCLA. Well, UCLA started off with a easy opponent in San Diego State and then traveled to Knoxville to beat Tennessee two years straight and then played Kansas State (who is now atop the Big XII North). Since those three (actually two) impressive wins, UCLA has yet to win a Pac-10 game and hasn't even played USC yet. What's that say about the Pac-10? Well, let's look at the other side. Tennessee started off with a scrimmage against Western Kentucky and then lost to UCLA by 4, then a week later, lost by 10 to the #1 team in the nation, Florida. Beat an Ohio team, then lost to Auburn (shouldn't have) by 4. Then the Vols beat up Georgia by a whole bunch and lost by 2 to the #2 team in the nation, Alabama (only because the last minute field goal attempt was blocked by Alabama). Their Halloween showdown proved a dominant performance over the #22 ranked South Carolina. What's that say about the SEC? Let me think aloud for a moment when I say that UCLA was starting a freshman QB for his second game as a starter in Knoxville, who seats over 100,000 people and came off a win over an SEC school that started a veteran senior QB... hmmm... now I'm thinking to myself - maybe you might put the same 2+2 together. The answer I get is maybe John Ed Bradley of the LSU squad of several years ago may be off a bit in his assumption that the SEC is the "nation's toughest conference" by seeing how the season is getting played out. So, the question remains, which conference has more quality teams from top to bottom? Of the six major conferences, there are points to make with each conference; however, the major media will always say that the SEC is the best, but I think the facts and head-to-head statistics should have a lot more to say about it - especially when the SEC has a winning record against all the major conferences since 2000 except for the Pac-10. I feel that this is the most impressive fact that people like, Mr. Bradley will not fess up to and show good sportsmanship to recongnize all the facts before stating how inferior all other conferences are.

So, I enjoyed the article in Sports Illustrated by Mr. Bradley, but I don't think he loves the game outside of Louisiana. True fans follow more than one team or one conference because they respect the other programs and they just love the game. This is what I want to hear from someone devoted to the Southeast.

Where's The Southern Love?

I have to admit, I'm a little shocked with the latest polls of week 4 of this 2009 college football season. There was a little bit of some shaking up in the top 10 from the week before, and I was expecting some teams to enter into the top 25 this week that never ended up happening. We had the #4 team in the nation, Ole Miss, losing to a 3-1 South Carolina, whose only loss was to Georgia. Now, Georgia, who has the same record as the Gamecocks, are ranked in the top 20 playing a difficult non-conference schedule (especially for an SEC team). They traveled to Oklahoma State and gave up their only loss, and they played a tight one at home against Arizona State; nevertheless, they still have Georgia Tech to play for a non-conference game. Similarly, South Carolina has chosen to play another BCS school besides their annual match-up against Clemson, by starting the season against North Carolina State. Of their four games, half of them were ranked. They lost to Georgia, but beat Mississippi. I figured, unless your record is below .500, you should be put in the top 25 after beating the #4 team in the nation. This brings up some questions about the voters. Did they realize that Ole Miss was extremely over-rated, or do they still really like Ole Miss that much better than South Carolina (even though the Rebels have played such a horrible schedule so far)? The Rebels are still ranked in the top 20, yet South Carolina is not yet ranked and not considered a better team than that one they just beat a week ago on a Thursday night with the same amount of losses. Am I the only person scracthing their head after these facts have pooled around for a while?

On another note, a 4-0 Auburn team isn't ranked either. What if Auburn goes 13-0 this season, along with Texas and a 12-0 Michigan team? Will Auburn re-live their last undefeated season and not get a chance to play in the national title game because they were so far back in the rankings that they couldn't catch up to the other undefeated teams? Of course, right now, it doesn't seem possible; however, it IS college football.

Another Southern team that isn't getting any love right now, who I feel deserves a little, is the South Florida Bulls. They came into Florida State after their huge win over then ranked #7 BYU, and stunned the Seminoles 17-7 without their starting quarterback who has been the starter for what seems like 6 years now. With Matt Grothe on the bench, the back-up, B.J. Daniels comes in and makes Bulls' fans forget about the injury to Grothe. That shows great depth and coaching! I don't know how voters can overlook that. I'm just blown away.

It seems that Oregon has gotten the better end of the deal than South Carolina. Two very similar situations with each having one loss to a ranked team coming into week 4 as an unranked team, then beating a top 10 team; however, that's where the similarities end. Oregon is now in the top 20 and the Gamecocks are not ranked at all. This just seems really backwards to me. I'm not sure if it's because Oregon beat the crap out of Cal and South Carolina squeaked one out or what, but it sure seems that by history's sake, the rankings of the two teams would have been flipped. Trust me, I love how it looks now, but I have my suspicions about the voters. Are they really paying attention to the whole nation? So, the love that I'm familiar with that hovers over the Southeastern part of the nation is eluded for a week and it has me freaking out a bit. How is the Pac-10 suppose to "earn" its way into the rankings if the South isn't getting that love? Well, I don't have to look far - I just think about a good friend's alma mater, UCLA, who is 3-0 and traveled a long ways to play an SEC team to beat them. They have yet to be ranked. Oh well, not all can be perfect in a week with West Coast love.