The Champs and 2010

Just a week ago, the Florida Gators once again won the college football national championship. It was a tense game, much more so than any of their three other championship game appearances. Florida was blown out by Nebraska in 1995, but won easily against FSU in 1996 and Ohio State in 2007. A couple of things really stood out from the game

Sam Bradford is the next Gino Toretta. I can't take credit for saying that. One of my friends made that claim while we were eating lunch on game day. Now given this guy is from Texas and is a huge Longhorn fan... But I think he has a point. Maybe saying Bradford is the next Matt Leinart would be just as accurate. He has really benefited from having amazing talent around him. He is not used to facing any pressure from a pass rush and he is used to throwing to receivers who dominate defensive backs. He faced pressure against Florida, but most of all, his receivers could not dominate Florida's DBs. He threw two picks, but neither were bad throws on his part. However his receivers were far from wide open and Florida's DBs made great plays. Toretta and Leinart suffered from the same "problem" and never adjusted in the NFL.

Urban Meyer is a great coach. The Gators were shaky in the first half. Maybe it was nerves, maybe it was rust, who knows. Their gameplan was sound, but it took two improbably defensive stands to keep the game tied going into halftime. Who knows what happens if the game would have been 21-7 in favor OU at half? Meyer showed his ability to communicate and motivate his players. They didn't come out in the second half and drastically change their gameplan. But they did execute much better.

Florida is really going to miss Percy Harvin. Does Florida win either of its two recent championships without Percy Harvin? I really don't know how things will turn out for him in the NFL. People talk about how Tebow isn't a traditional QB, but Harvin isn't a traditional WR. He was most productive at running the football in the BCS championship. He clearly can't be a RB in the NFL, but his height will be an issue at WR. A lot of people have described him as a "slot receiver" in the NFL, but do you really want him going over the middle and taking big hits? Anyways, he's always been a ticking bomb in his college career. Every time he touches the ball, there is a big play ready to happen. This year he averaged 1 TD for every 6.5 touches of the ball. He did this playing against the best defenses in the country. The only other recent college player who was as electrifying was Reggie Bush. Like Bush, it seems unlikely that Harvin's pro career can be anywhere close to his college career.

Speaking of players going pro... Obviously I was thrilled that Tebow is staying. I did not think he would leave, though. I was thrilled that Brandon Spikes is staying for his senior year. Honestly I don't know why. Everything I had seen indicated that Spikes would be a first round pick. Given his position (LB), it is hard to imagine him improving his pro stock. Whatever. With Spikes back, Florida is returning all of its defense. That's right, a defense that held the highest scoring team ever (OU) to 14 points will return all of its starters next year. Next year is going to be fun.

Going to other teams, I was absolutely shocked that Sam Bradford is returning. A lot of folks had him as the #1 pick overall and everybody had him as a top 10 lock. So why come back? There's no way their offense can be better than it was this year. A lot of things have to go you way to have a historical season. If throws in a couple of stinkers next year, then he could easily drop in the 2010 draft. And then there's "I" word, especially given his lean stature. Similarly I can't belive their TE Gresham is going back either. Maybe these guys think they have something to prove...

One player not going back is Mark Sanchez. I was pretty surprised to see Pete Carroll rip into Sanchez for leaving early for the NFL. You have to wonder if Bradford staying influenced this, as Sanchez may be the second QB taken now behind Georgia's Matthew Stafford. I am very happy to see Stafford go, as I think he will be great in the NFL. Plus he A.J. Green is an NFL caliber receiver, and the prospect of Green and Stafford was just scary. Green had a great year last year as a true freshman.

Weekly Football Musings

The BCS
Will this year be enough of a reason to unseat the Big 10's resistance to a playoff? I don't think so. They have such a $weet deal with ABC and the Rose Bowl. But could you just imagine if today would have been tournament seeding day, a la basketball, instead of bowl schedule day? Let's say we could do an eight team tourney (three weeks like the basketball tourney.) We would have

Ohio State vs. Kansas : This would be #1 vs. #8. Would Ohio State even be favored in this? Yeah probably, but not by a lot. This would theoretically be the most lopsided game, and it would still be very competitive.

LSU vs. USC : How awesome would this game be? I could imagine a lot of people predicting that the winner here wins the next two weeks as well. Also, would this be the first college football game ever where ever defensive starter would go on to start in the NFL one day?

Virginia Tech vs. Missouri : This game would be very interesting if for no other reason than the contrast in styles. You gotta think that Missouri would come into this game feeling very disrespected.

Oklahoma vs. Georgia : Wow, another slugfest. Georgia's offense really clicked down the stretch... Bob Stoops knows all about SEC football, but this might be a case of too much physical difference. Georgia is bigger and faster than Oklahoma at every position... Ok maybe not, but you know people would be making arguments like that.

That's the kind of amazing games we would see out of an eight team playoff. And of course West Virginia and Hawaii would both be freaking out that they are not part of the eight teams. You can just hear Hawaii complaining about going undefeated but not going to the big dance...

The Heisman
Let the buildup start. I am ridiculously biased, I know. But how can Tim Tebow not win this? If somebody told you last summer that a QB would throw for almost 3000 yards and 30 TDs and also ran for over 800 yards and 20 more TDs ... you would say that guy would win the Heisman. Somehow Tebow only being a sophomore and Florida not being in the BCS championship have decreased Tebow's amazing season. That is just crazy. Florida lost three games, in a year where everybody lost at least two. Anybody who watched Florida knows they lost games because of their completely inexperienced defense. The offense was much better than last year's national championship team, and Tebow was the biggest reason for that.

Tebow must win the Heisman. Chances are that this will be his best season, statistically. I think Coach Meyer would prefer to have more playmakers (not just Percy Harvin) around Tebow at WR/RB. If that is the case next year, Florida will run the ball a lot more. It will translate into less pass attempts for Tebow and less rushes for him, too. I think his efficiency will stay very high, and he will probably still score a lot of rushing TDs, but gross numbers will probably drop quite a bit.

41-14

What more can I say? I honestly feel bad for Ohio State. They are a great team that had a lot of bad luck and didn't know how to respond. It reminds me of when Florida got thumped by Nebraska in 1996.

But forget Ohio State. This is all about The Gators. Chris Leak goes out on top of a historic career. Who wants to claim that Michigan deserved to be there instead of Florida now? I had to listen to so much pre-game hype about how much better Ohio State was than Florida. This was supposed to be a coronation of King Troy Smith, and instead he got destroyed. The Florida pass rush was devastating. It seemed like Ohio State thought they would control the line of scrimmage (they're the bigger, stronger team, right?) and that Florida would have to blitz to get pressure. Wrong!

Florida's offense benefited from lots of great field position, but also from a tentative Ohio State defense that played a ton of zone. They were too obsessed with not giving up the big play that they let Florida do whatever they wanted to offensively. Maybe that could have worked if Florida would not have been playing on the Ohio State side of the field all night. I thought that Ohio State might be vulnerable because they would be overconfident and conservative on offense, but it was actually on defense where this happened.

So Florida reigns supreme, both in basketball and football. That's never happened before. I think it really shows the importance of coaching.

Finally, I hope that Ron Zook takes some pleasure in tonight's victory. A lot of The Gators were recruited by Zook, especially Chris Leak. The team definitely has a lot of guys recruited by Urban Meyer, and he deserves all the tremendous credit coming his way. But Zook was a great recruiter, and all the Gator Nation should feel a debt to him tonight.

Gator Day

Pardon the crazy colors on the blog. I had to change them for today, since this is Gator Day. My kids and I are all donned in Gator gear. I am planning on leaving work early so I can be home in time for the kickoff of tonight's Championship Game.

This will be the third time for Florida in a BCS Championship Game. I remember the other two times quite well. Actually this year is similar in many ways to their first title game against Nebraska in 1996. That game was also in Tempe, AZ and the Gators were playing a heavily favored midwest team with a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback ("Touchdown" Tommie Frazier.) Let's just hope that's where the similarities end and that this year has more in common with 1997, when the Gators won the BCS Championship in the Sugar Bowl by crushing Florida State.

So how can the Gators beat the heavily favored Ohio State Buckeyes? Well, first I'm hoping for a little help from Ohio State. I'm hoping they will be overconfident and play conservatively. They have a great running game and Jim Tressel has been known to lean on that running game heavily against teams that he thinks his team "should" beat. I'm hoping that he employs that strategy against Florida, because Florida can stop the run. Just ask Arkansas.

I'd love to see Chris Leak get a chance to really do what he does best -- throw the ball all over the place. However, Chris has not had his best games against tough defenses. The Ohio State - Michigan game showed that you can run against Ohio State if you have speed. So I expect to see a lot of Deshawn Wynn and lots of running plays or screens to the wide receivers. Ohio State will be paranoid about Percy Harvin, so don't be surprised if Bubba Caldwell has some opportunities on reverses and screens. Harvin is going to get the ball, though. It doesn't matter that Ohio State may be the first team this year to gameplan specifically for him. I expect to see some kind of trick play involving him catching the ball deep. Maybe from Tim Tebow?

Florida hasn't blown out too many teams this year, and they're not going to start with Ohio State. If Ohio State plays conservatively, I think the game will stay close and that Florida has the advantage in such a game. I'm most worried about Ohio State coming out like they did against Michigan, spreading the field and throwing the ball a lot. Florida's strategy against that kind of offense this year has been to say "you may make some big plays against us, but we'll force some negative ones too." I think they would play the same way against Ohio State, I'm just not sure if they could cause enough negative plays to negate the big plays that Ohio State is capable of. I'm also worried that Ohio State could actually run the ball in that scenario.

BCS -- The Final Chapter

So it was a good weekend for the Gator Nation. I was surprised to see USC fall, though they've really been pretty shaky at many time this year. I was pleased to see how well Florida played against Arkansas, particularly the Florida defense holding Arkansas to 130 yards total on the ground. I still thought that there was a very good chance that Michigan would get a re-match with Ohio State for the BCS Championship.

Then I saw a lot of people lobbying for Florida on Saturday nigth and in the papers on Sunday morning. I think the thing that held weight for a lot of people was that a team playing for the national title should have won it's conference. A Big 10 vs. SEC championship just made a lot of sense to people, so even though they may not have liked Florida, they moved them up to #2 in the polls. That turned out to be enough, and now Florida will play Ohio State on January 8.

I'll be the first to admit that Florida may not be as good as Michigan. However, I don't think Michigan could do any better the second time against Ohio State than they did the first. It is usually harder to beat a team twice, but Michigan was lucky to be within 3 points at the end of that game. A neutral field would help them, no doubt, but I think Ohio State would have won by double digits. Maybe Florida doesn't have a chance either, but I think their defense will give Ohio State some problems. Ohio State has not played against any team with anywhere near the speed of Florida's. But whatever. Florida deserves a shot at the title more than Michigan, who has already had their chance to beat #1. We all know that a playoff is needed, and now they'll be a lot of people from Michigan behind that idea. The entire SEC has been behind the idea ever since what happened to Auburn a few years ago.

This Week's BCS Musings

I have to admit, I was more relieved that Florida beat FSU than thrilled. It wasn't because I'm getting caught up in the hopes of a national championship for the Gators, it's just because it was so obvious that Florida was a much better team, yet the game almost got away. The Seminole defense really rallied at halftime and the team played with a lot of emotion. That was scary. Having two drives deep into FSU territory that resulted in zero points in the first half was scary. Picking off FSU three times in the third quarter and getting nothing from it was even scarier. Losing Deshawn Wynn and Percy Harvin (Harvin's injury particularly scary) was even scarier. So it was a relief to watch Chris Leak being allowed to just drop back and throw the ball down the field and put up a go-ahead TD in the fourth quarter. Coach Meyer let Leak do what he does best, and Leak responded with a huge day overall and a clutch performance in the fourth quarter.

Once the feeling of relief was over then it became a thrill to have beaten FSU three years in a row. Then it was time to start thinking about the BCS. The big game was Notre Dame at USC, of course. The "smart" thinking is that USC needed to knock off Notre Dame and then lost to UCLA if Florida was to have a chance of going to the BCS title game. Well USC took care of Notre Dame. Yay.

There were a lot of other BCS storylines this weekend though. First, LSU knocking off Arkansas was probably a bad thing for Florida. It means that beating Arkansas next week (big assumption there by the way) will not boost Florida's BCS standing as much as it would have if Arkansas had beaten LSU. Of course it shouldn't matter if Team A beats Team B, as long as Team C beats them both, right?

Still the LSU win was part of several wins that show just how tough Florida's schedule has been. LSU, a team Florida beat, is a top ten team and they beat another top ten team. South Carolina, another team Florida beat, defeated a top 25 team in Clemson. Georgia, another victim of Florida, beat another top 25 team, Georgia Tech. Tennessee, a team Florida beat on the road, beat a seven-win team in Kentucky. Altogether, teams that lost to Florida earlier in the season knocked off four teams with a combined record of 33-10. Interestingly, 33-10 is also the combined record of LSU, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia if you leave out their losses to Florida.

So what was I saying about not getting caught up in the BCS madness? I'm really not. Numbers are just interesting to me. Florida has very little chance of playing Ohio State. I will be happy if they just beat Arkansas next week. Arkansas's McFadden is the scariest player the Gators have faced this year, and that's saying a lot. Hopefully the Gators can force Arkansas into passing, because that's obviously a weakness for them. If so, it will be Florida's first SEC championship since Spurrier left, and that's a big deal.

I really think that Florida's offense is two (no, not one) years away from being the explosive offense that Meyer can produce. Chris Leak is a great quarterback, but he is a bad fit for Meyer. I think that Meyer has done a poor job of making use of Leak, Dallas Baker, and Andre Caldwell. They aren't his kind of players (Caldwell can fit into his offense, but it's not a great fit) and he hasn't done a good job of adjusting to them. Next year he will have Tim Tebow in there, but I really think it will be 2008, with Tebow as a junior, that the offense will put up huge numbers.

The defense is championship caliber this year, though. People love offense though, hence all the talk of "style points" and Florida's lack of them. Could Florida run the tables in a playoff? It's hard to say. The defense has been great, but in all fairness, they haven't played any really elite offenses. Tennessee is the best offense they've played, and they were very good against them. LSU is also a good offense. They will be tested next week against Arkansas, but it's hard to say if they could shutdown an elite offense like Ohio State, Michigan, USC, or Notre Dame. Maybe we'll get to find out in the Sugar Bowl...

Another Year, Another BCS Controversy

I wasn't too worried about the "what if Rutgers goes undefeated" talk and how they would "deserve" a shot at the BCS title. However, as I suspected, Michigan's loss to Ohio State only dropped them to #2 in the BCS standings.This has caused Urban Meyer to go crazy about the possibility of a rematch between these two teams.

First off, I don't think Michigan should be #2 in the BCS. They only lost by a field goal, but the game really was not that close. They stayed in the game because of Ohio State turnovers, and they were lucky to get two of those three turnovers. They had luck on their side and they still needed a late TD + 2pt conversion to get within a field goal. If it wasn't for the turnovers, they would have been blown out. Ohio State was clearly the better team. If the two teams do play again in January, there is no question that Ohio State will win by double digits.

That being said, Michigan is probably just as deserving as anybody else out there, where anybody else is USC, Florida, Arkansas, and Notre Dame. I would love for Florida to play Ohio State, even though I would also be very nervous that they too would get blown out. However, USC has the inside track, current BCS standings be damned. Michigan is done. USC's ranking will go up if they beat Notre Dame and UCLA, and they don't have go up much to put them ahead of Michigan. They control their destiny.

Things only get crazy if USC loses. I don't think Notre Dame will go ahead of Michigan or the SEC champion. It seems very unlikely that The Irish will play Ohio State. It seems like the SEC champion should move up to pass Michigan, but it's a little bit of a crap shoot. Certainly if something bizarre happened like Florida lost to FSU, but then beat Arkansas would lead to the Big 10 rematch.

I still think it's unfair to Ohio State that they would have to beat Michigan twice, but Michigan would only have to split with them to win the national championship. However, I think Ohio State would handle Michigan easily, but who knows. Many people have pointed that Florida State faced a similar situation in 1996 when they had to play Florida again the Sugar Bowl. That was probably unfair for FSU, but that was also one of the "problems" that the BCS was supposed to solve. That year, FSU was #1 and Ohio State was #2, but they did not play because the Big 10 did not participate in the BCS at the time. So Ohio State went to the Rose Bowl and was upset by the Jake Plummer lead Arizona State. The next day, FSU played #3 Florida in the Sugar Bowl, and was completely crushed by the Gators. It only became a national championship game because of Ohio State's loss. If Ohio State had won the Rose Bowl, then they would have been national champions without having to beat the #1 team, FSU. So a lot of things were messed up then.