Did You Believe…
…the Trojans were really the 5th best team in the nation? Or 4th, as the AP had them?
Credit to the BlogPoll that at least had them ranked 8th. We had them 11th here, but as resume rankers it wasn’t an estimation of their skill but our assessment of where they belonged based on their record. Also credit to the computer polls which had USC 9th and Oregon 6th. The machines were superior to the (heavily biased) humans here.
After giving up 36 points to Oregon State the week before, the USC defense folded and surrendered 47 points and 613 yards to the Ducks. If I had heard Herbstreit say that Oregon was “doing this against a USC defense” one more time I would have vomited”
I’m not sure where I’ll rank them this week, but there are nothing special among two loss teams at this point.
Oregon is going to be an interesting case for pollsters. The Ducks dominated USC, but lost to Boise State in a game Oregon had only 152 total yards and 6 first downs.
In other words, one would be hard pressed to rank Oregon ahead of Boise State. My guess is, based largely on the “reputation” of USC, many pollsters do it nonetheless, and rank the Ducks ahead of the Broncos. I won't.
Mentioned in Austin Murphy's book 
3 comments:
Depending on your methodology, it could be true that today Oregon is a better team than Boise.
Just because Boise was better the first game of the season does not mean they are better now.
Tim-
Absolutely true. But we don't have much evidence to support it given the limited games in a football season ( it ain't baseball). In a 12 game season, losses have to have consequences. Especially in head to head games. Boise dominated Oregon defensively. I suspect Boise would beat USC. (Picking Oregon over USC was a layup).
Time and time again the human pollsters show they are lousy at predicting who is better. (USC at 4? Please) I'll go with the head to head results.
At some point though (perhaps now, perhaps not), Oregon's overall SoS needs to trump Boise beating them and proceeding to go undefeated against delicious creampuffs. It's difficult for me to not take that head-to-head into account, but a difficult schedule should trump that. Head-to-head should definitely be in play when teams are seen as close to equal though.
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