College Football's 10 Dumbest Statements: 2010 Edition

Last year I wrote this same article and other than my loyal belief in USC, I was pretty much dead-on. See for yourself.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/179997-dumbest-statements-in-college-football-coming-into-the-2009-season

This year I have my new version. My track record is pretty good so far, so I thought I would try my hand again.

By the way Lou Holtz is the dumbest person commenting on college football, so I only found it appropriate for his picture as the main page.

Boise State is a National Championship Contender

Thank God I will be proven right early on with this one.

Boise State wins games because they play no one. The Broncos are a good team who beats up on bad teams, beat some middle-of-the-road BCS conference teams, and get jacked up and play well in a BCS bowl if they get there.

Good for them, but can they actually go head-to-head and win against someone without having to run trick plays?

As Howard Schnellenberger used to say, “They are running trick plays because they know they can’t beat you.”

I have no problem with running trick plays to beat someone you shouldn’t, but you can’t then come back and act like you are a big boy and can take on all comers. Hello! You have to resort to fake punts, hook and laterals, Statue of Liberty plays and the like to beat the big boys.

Again, this will be over soon, because Virginia Tech is going to crush this team. Boise will have not seen a defense near this good since TCU (who they didn’t move the ball against). VT is better; year-in and year-out the Hokies are the toughest team in college football, while Boise is a finesse team.

Arkansas is a Top 10-15 Team

Welcome to the club of overrated teams with no chance to live up to the hype brought upon you, Arkansas. My Clemson Tigers were there two years ago, and last year it was Ole Miss.

Arkansas fans, please don’t bombard the comments section with “that won’t happen to us” nonsense. Or at least before you do, go look at what Rebel fans were saying last year when I put this crown on them.

I know Arky has a great QB and great WRs, etc., but it’s not gonna happen. The defense was not any good last year (89th nationally) and only might get marginally better because they play weak teams such as Louisiana-Monroe and Tennessee Tech to start the year.

The four-game stretch that follows their pinata opening will end this team’s chances quickly: at UGA, Bama at home, TAMU in Jerry’s World, and Auburn on the Plains.

That gauntlet is enough to derail that preseason hype, but don’t forget LSU at the end the year and a trip to Williams-Brice to take on the Gamecocks. Hate to say it being a Clemson fan, but the Cocks seem to be the fraud meter for teams like this; UK a few years ago, and Ole Miss last year to name a couple.

So go ahead and flame on Arkansas fans. I can hear it now, “Mallett won’t fall apart.” Not saying that he will but, Rebel fans said that about Snead and Clemson fans said that about Cullen Harper.

North Carolina is a Top-10 Team

Another team that is getting just stupid hype coming into the year is UNC. Their defense is one of the best in the country, so I understand to a point why they are getting hyped up, but I have a few questions for people who think this team is gonna be great.

1. How are they going to win any games with an offense that barely resembles a Pop Warner team?

T.J. Yates is the worst QB in the ACC, and there is not even one running back who comes close to being a proven or valuable commodity. The wide receivers' talent is negated because they can’t get the ball from their terrible Ultimate Frisbee-playing quarterback.

2. This is more of an existential question: If the Tar Heels are great yet, the wine and cheese fan base is busy watching Midnight Madness basketball, does it really matter?

This is going to be the downfall of Butch Davis at UNC. No one cares. Nine out of 10 UNC fans are bandwagon-hopping basketball fans who pull for other teams during football season. They are just Duke fans with a larger base and a lighter shade of blue.

I saw this team in person at the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte last year, and they won’t win seven games with performances like that.

Hate to belabor a point, but T.J. Yates is the worst quarterback ever. And the only way that backup Bryn Renner (who is the second coming, just ask the nine UNC football fans) gets on the field is if Yates gets hurt. If Butch has stuck with him this long, he’s not just gonna pull him in his senior year.

His offense is going to be the most embarrassing thing to happen to UNC football since a certain Lawrence Taylor rendezvous a few months back. Don’t worry though, when they are at loss number three halfway through the year all you will hear about is Harrison Barnes and how basketball season is coming.

Lane Kiffin is Good for USC

Second verse, same as the first.

Just like last year Lane Kiffin closed with a great recruiting class, and excitement was swirling around the new Kiffin regime in Trojan land. While the sanctions have quelled that excitement to a certain extent, I am still puzzled by this hire.

Now that USC is on probation for four years, it looks like an even more disconcerting hire.

While USC didn’t know the extent of the punishment, they had to know that something was coming. So why would you hire a guy that makes John Calipari look clean?

Four-year probation? I don’t think Kiffin can go four days without breaking NCAA rules. He and his staff had at least six secondary violations in less than a year at Tennessee, and it took him ten days as the coach at USC before he had his first.

Kiffin is a creep, and he will make sure that one of the greatest programs in college football will be tangled in the web of NCAA investigations until he is fired.

Notice how I didn’t even have to mention his still-unproven coaching ability.

All that being said, I will still root for a guy who, according to Chris Low, “told recruit Alshon Jeffrey that if he chose the Gamecocks he would end up pumping gas for the rest of his life like all the other players from that state who had gone to South Carolina.”

That is just good humor right there.

Terrell Pryor is the Next Vince Young

Oh are you kidding me? This guy had one good game in the Rose Bowl, so can we wait until he actually puts a season together before we crown him Lord of All? He completed 56 percent of his passes last year, had 18 TD and 11 INT, and only threw for 2,000 yards.

In his second year as a full-time starter Vince Young’s stats were a lot better. Young completed 65 percent of his passes, threw for 3,000 yards, had 26 TD and only 10 INT, and ran for 1,000 yards and won a National Championship against a team thought to be “unbeatable.”

Pryor can be a great player, but right now he is not even close to that. He is a good player who doesn't even dominate in his own league, where he is arguably faster than every other player on the field at all times.

Either way, he will never be as good as Vince Young was. Honestly I don’t think he is as good as the man who is about to come into his house early this season, Jacory Harris.

This is the Year Florida State is Back

This is starting to get easy, I can just use some more of my material from last year.

At least for FSU fans Bobby Bowden is gone, so the biggest chip is off of their shoulder. Now the question is, “Do you believe in Jimbo Fisher?”

This is a guy that has never been a head coach, never been that great of a coordinator, and has the pressure or bringing back one of the most prestigious programs in the last 30 years of college football.

Can he do that? I have my doubts. Most of the FSU fans I have talked to have pretty realistic expectations, but in the back of their minds they still have the delusion that they can get back to doing what FSU used to do; straight hammering everyone.

It will never be like that again, not just for them but for anyone. USC tried their damnedest to do it; they finished in the Top Five eight years in a row. That is halfway to what Free Shoes University did in the 80’s and 90’s.

Now year after year everyone in the country has to hear about FSU being back “this year,” but “this year” never seems to come.

Isn’t it about time we all just admit that FSU is a has-been? They might be really good every so often; maybe they win another National Championship soon (doubt it). Can we all finally come to the realization that past dominance doesn’t guarantee anything in the future, or the present?

Also did anyone see FSU’s defense last year? Greg Reid is the only constant on the D right now, Derrick Brooks and Deion Sanders are not walking through that door to strap it up. You don’t go from worst defense in the history of the school to waylaying people in the matter of a year, no matter how good of a defensive coordinator Mark Stoops is.

Anything Robert Marve

I had to hear how great this kid was going to be at Miami, and he sucked, and now it is Purdue. Even if this kid was good, what is it really gonna do? Purdue will always be number two in their own state, and won't be relevant in the Big Ten.

The Boilermakers have won one Big Ten championship in football in the last 40-plus years. But every time I pick up a preseason magazine, people say Robert Marve is the Big Ten newcomer and will bring stability to Purdue football.

Why? What has this guy ever done except be a flip-flopping, car-crashing, crybaby who looks like he is wearing eyeliner?

This is going to be the player that brings Purdue football back? Back to what I don’t know.

Texas Tech Will Improve under Tommy Tuberville

Great name hire, but this will come with middling results. Texas Tech is one of the harder jobs in the country. At least for one more year they are in, arguably, the hardest division in college football.

Now they have to go about the gauntlet of the Big 12 South with a guy who knows nothing about the league, division, or state.

Tuberville did a great job at Auburn and got the hose when he got fired. He says that he is going to keep the “Air Raid” offense going, but how?

Say what you want about Mike Leach, but he was an offensive mastermind, and if it wasn’t for Craig James and his crybaby son he would still be there to throw up 40 points a game.

The SEC is a defensive conference, and the Big 12 is an offensive one, but does Tuberville plan to stop Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, TAMU, and even a Robert Griffin-led Baylor offense, yet continue to put up points with an offense he knows nothing about?

He tried to run the spread at Auburn and that was a dumpster fire for sure, but now he is trying to continue the offensive production that led the Red Raiders for years without its mad scientist at the helm. This is a recipe for disaster.

The SEC is Vastly Superior to Every Other Conference

The SEC is the best conference in football, no doubt, no argument. My qualms aren’t with who is the best in the land, but the SEC fans arrogance of by how much.

SEC fans talk about how any one of their members could win every other league, but let's get real for a second: Half of the SEC is a joke. Mississippi State, Vandy, Kentucky, South Carolina, Ole Miss, and Arkansas have never done anything in the SEC, ever. They could not outright win any conference in America.

Cue South Carolina fans talking about how they beat my Clemson Tigers last year when we were on our way to the ACC Championship Game, and how UGA beat GT as well. SEC fans will jump on that bandwagon and start chanting, "SEC! SEC! SEC!"

But the real logic doesn’t bear that out. South Carolina for example has been consistently dominated by Clemson for 100-plus years, SEC member or not.

GT should lose to UGA almost every year conference affiliation not withstanding. They are just a better program, and will always get the best players in the state.

The SEC has great programs at the top like Bama and Florida. LSU, UGA, Auburn, and Tennessee are consistently good not because they are in the SEC; it’s because they are great programs.

This stupid “all our teams could play anywhere” argument has to stop. The bad teams argue that they aren’t good because they have to play in the SEC. That is stupid. Win or go home, and stop crying about how hard it is and do something.

That argument doesn't hold up for those teams anyways. Teams like Arkansas will play that "woe is me" game, but it is a logical fallacy. A few years ago they opened the season with a home-and-home with the USC, before they got into the meat of conference play mind you.

In 2005 they were 1-1 with a loss to Vandy, and got drilled by the Trojans 70-17. The next year they opened up with the Trojans at home and made it a little more respectable, 50-14. Those were the teams with Darren McFadden and Felix Jones. Mind you that the 2006 game McFadden was hurt but that was a USC team without Leinart, Bush, and co.

There are plenty of examples of things like this, but that doesn’t mean that the SEC isn’t the best conference in the nation. What it does show is how their also-rans have no leg to stand on with the stupid, “we’re in the SEC we can play with anyone” garbage.

Yes Arkansas fans, I know that 2005 is now vacated, but we all saw it happen.

USC 120, Arky 31.

SEC! SEC! SEC!

We Need a Playoff

I will stop talking about this when people shut up about it. Just like I said last year, if you don’t like the BCS, don’t watch it. Money rules all and when the BCS sees a drop in viewership and attendance that is when they will change.

I am a proponent of the plus-one; that would be nice. But no team ranked fifth in the BCS has ever deserved to play for a national championship. If we go to some stupid 16-team loserfest like I-FCS, the regular season is useless.

Just like the NFL, games such as Michigan-Ohio State, Auburn-Alabama, USC-UCLA etc. will mean nothing because teams will rest players.

Example: Ohio State is Number One in the BCS, and there is no way they fall out of the top 16 (or even top 8), so they can just rest their best players and Rich Rod might actually beat them.

But it won’t matter because the Buckeyes are still going to play for the crown. Michigan doesn’t get the pride of beating a real Ohio State squad, and keeping them from a chance to win the whole thing.

They only get to join the SEC also-rans and teams like Northwestern in being “Kevin Bacon” champions. We beat them, who beat them, who are the National Champs, so we are by proxy are the National Champs.

Let’s tweak the BCS not dump the whole thing.