Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
scott@scottlongonline.com
I've been sitting on this Top 25 list for a couple weeks, planning on putting in detailed reasons behind my selections. I haven't found the time to do this, so here is an abbreviated version of my Top 25. A little background on how I come up with these rankings. This is not just based on power rankings, but how I actually see these teams winding up in the BCS. No sport has as big of a home field advantage as college football. Coaching is also a bigger element in the college game versus the professional ranks. Most NFL coaches know what they are doing, but there are some college head coaches where the game has passed them by. (See Bowden, Carr, Paterno, etc.)
Hard to see how USC will lose this year. If the Raiders would have taken OC Sarksian, this might have been enough to give them a loss, but Kiffin wasn't as big of a loss.
Oklahoma was incredibly unlucky last season and despite losing all-world runner Adrian Petersen, I think they will be undefeated going into the National Championship game.
LSU is as talented as SoCal, but their schedule and head coaching questions make me leary of putting them in the BCS championship.
West Virginia has an incredible offense, but I do think their defense is shaky enough that they are just below the Top 3.
Urban Meyer is a brilliant coach and even though they lost a lot of starters, the talent level is a case of reloading. I think Leak was underrated and I have a feeling QB Tebow will cost them one game.
Other Notes
The SEC and Pac-10 are the 2 best conferences. The best team in the Big 10 might wind up with 2 losses. There are more non BCS schools which have quality teams than any year I can remember. TCU has as good of a defense as there is in college football, while Hawaii's offense would put at least 4 TD's on any opponent there is.
I Should Mention
Some might question the validity of my list, considering I'm not putting it out until today. Understand that I always rate Michigan lower than pre-season expectations because I think Carr is the worst coach of any major university in America, with only Phil Fulmer close to as lousy. The Wolverines look to be worse than I even thought they would be, but don't be surprised if they win a 38-37 type game against Oregon this weekend.
Great job, though. I appreciate your insight on college football on The Toaster.
also i think oklahoma is overrated.
I'm a Pac 10 guy, but, with apologies to Jon Weisman, what more do the Stanford Cardinal need to do? I'd also need some selling on UCLA as a Top 10 team. They will be good, though.
In regards to Arizona, I believed they were going to be a surprise, but after the BYU showing...not so much. I'm just glad I didn't pull the trigger on them as a top 25 team, as that would have looked bad. Maybe not as bad as the 2 AP voters who picked Michigan number 1 at the beginning of the season.
By the way, Sagarin rates Appalachian State as number 38 of all college teams. While this might be a smidge high, I'm telling you, if you would saw the game you would believe this is a team that could beat half the teams in college football.
Rather AS gashed Michigan for several long gains and moved the ball easily...MI is always supposed to be a good defensive team.
So I'm comfortable with 16. I do believe Tedford is the best candidate to be a great pro coach in the colleges and that includes Carroll, Stoops, and Ferentz.
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