Wake up, Bronco Nation: Boise State football links and things, 10-31-11

“Oh well, I guess I will go jump in the stands”. It was awesome! I hope to see many more TDs this year for Titus.

and some of the other schools you’ve mentioned. It’s really all about perception and name/ brand recognition.

but daddy18 is right…it is all about name recognition.

Oregon = inept against good run defenses, they are all hype all the time. If you can’t play run (like the entire PAC 12 it seems) you get demolished by them. If you can, you are almost guaranteed to win. Cal should have beat them last year (missed last second FG ftw) and they had zero offense.

WVU = I put them in the same bracket as Penn St. In other words, a nice name brand but really nothing to worry about

Penn St. = see above. They are nothing special

GT = A good filler team and I don’t mean that in a bad way. They are a good blue collar kind of team that helps fill out a schedule.

Clemson = There is no way anyone could convince me this Clemson team is anything but an imposter. Hype Hype Hype…I would count a 2 loss but improving TCU team as stiffer competition. I would strongly consider Toledo, Tulsa, and SMU to all be reasonable bets to beat Clemson head to head.

FSU = Athletic defense with great pressure, vanilla offense that can be game planned to the dirt.

BSU can’t get the competition it needs b/c everything revolves around Conf. Schedule these days, which I think is part of what you were getting at. The problem is that those conference schedules, especially outside the SEC West, are far more pathetic than people want to admit.

IMO, there are two great wrongs that are being played out in CFB.

1) BSU gets the SoS banhammer consistently but teams like Oregon, Wisconsin, and Stanford get praised for “gutsy wins” over “tougher than expected competition”. This is kind of like what I heard about the U.S. Tax Code one time. Since Al Capone was indicted on tax evasion, the U.S. Tax Code has been purposely complicated to the nth degree. This makes it near impossible to get everything right. For most people this is a non factor. But for those the government wants to go after, the Tax Code becomes a weapon of coercion. SoS is used against Boise St. and no one else as far as I can tell and it is used expressly for the singular purpose of locking them out of a NCG.

2) Similarly, but on a different level, there is the problem of perception. ’Bama beats Penn St. and it is considered a quality win. PSU remains ranked due to a preseason ranking that was based purely on conference affiliation (and expected finish in said conference) while being backed up with quality wins over nobody (a fact that was well known prior to the season).

Penn St. 20011 Schedule: Indiana St., Bama, @ Temple, Eastern Michigan, @ Indiana, Iowa, Purdue, @ Northwestern, Illinois

Meanwhile, Stanford has been the recipient of heaps of praise for their “gutsy” “championship spirit” defining win over a #22 team that took them to triple OT and should have won the game. USC exposed Stanford’s defense badly and, imo, showed a reason Stanford should be Top 10 but perhaps not Top 5. The overwhelming point though, is what if this were BSU and that 22nd ranked team were TCU or Nevada? It’s all over, BSU would drop like a rock. Not only did Stanford not drop, due to USC’s name recognition, but they actually skyrocketed in the polls…gaining enough points in all three polls to move ahead two spots in a poll where movement at the Top 5 is rare as long as you win…except for Boise St.

Sadly, after watching USC’s light-in-the-pants DL wreak havoc on Stanford with nothing more than a 4 man rush, I have no doubt BSU would wafflestomp this Stanford team. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the state of Div. I CFB…where prejudice, ignorance, assumption, and adherence to an archaic Caste System reign supreme. A true example of Draconian practices in a modern era.