I'm amazed at the parity of college football. Week in and week out, top 25, top 10, and top five teams are falling to teams they just shouldn't lose to on paper.
Sometimes the recruiting star system shudders, and every time an Oregon State takes down a USC, the gurus at Rivals and Scout take another hit to their credibility. They've taken so many cheap-shots in the past few seasons that I write off the stars and the blue chip label.
What Joe Blow recruiting expert doesn't factor in is heart. It doesn't have anything to do with how compatible players might be in an online dating service or how compassionate they are, but rather how they'll perform when given an impossible task.
When the number one team came rolling into Corvallis, they were coming off an easy win in the most monumental early season game college football has ever seen. USC crushed Ohio State, and Oregon State was just the next team on the Trojans' easy road to another BCS Championship game.
85,713 orange-clad Beaver fans had a different idea of what the college football landscape should look like, and their intensity fueled the home team to a decisisve upset victory of USC. Forget that USC is loaded with five-star recruits and future Sunday playing prospects.
Oregon State wanted it more, and that offsets any amount of stars a website can award for running a 4.40 and playing at California's best high school. Even though most every USC player would start at their position at Oregon State, the Beavers found a way to prove the paper wrong.
The USC/Oregon State situation is becoming the norm rather than the exception in college football. Nobody saw Ole Miss beating Florida, and on a similar level, Appalachian State surprising Michigan last season.
How do Utah and BYU assemble the teams they have now? The student athletes on those teams could just as easily be playing for a quality Big XII or Pac 10 team, but instead they play for the lesser Mountain West Conference. Thank the recruiting services for passing them all over.
Without the sketchy and biased recruiting ratings, we might not have as many upsets. Boise State wouldn't be able to sneak behind Washington's back and steal enough two and three stars to field a BCS winning team, and Utah wouldn't be the staple sleeper that seems to creep up on the big time every so often.
But that's the glory of a messed up system. Between the Coaches Poll, preseason rankings, the BCS "power conferences" and recruiting, college football is full of questionable practices.
While the experts try to fix those practices, I'll continue to enjoy the unpredictability of the world's best football league and keep rooting for the underdog. That is, if there's really such a thing.
4 comments Last one added 9 months ago — Leave a Comment
Daniel Howie 9 months ago
I had to check this out because it's a title that makes the reader do a double-take. What are you talking about? There's no dying art to an upset. Have you been watching college football these last few years? Those were my initial reactions to a title like that.
But then I read the article, and I get it. It's important to remember that these athletes have feelings and are also still 18-22 year old college students. They're going to make mistakes that didn't seem possible on paper. They are also going to do some extraordinary things. They're going to get ticked at comments degrading them by the media, the opposing team, or the opposing team's fans, and play with inspiration. They're going to get complacent with a lead, and let the other team come back into the game. A player who was slighted by the opponent in recruiting is going to play his career best against that team. They are going to become arrogant and think they are entitled to win a game. These things happen from time to time. It's part of the excitement of college football.
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Jonathan Lintner 9 months ago
You're exactly right, and by naming stars to a player things like heart and effort can't be measured correctly. Sure, a young man might be decent at football, but it doesn't say anything about whether he has a good head on his shoulders and a foundation for successful college life. It takes a lot to be a student athlete - not only on the field high school numbers.
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Tiger Histalmos 9 months ago
There is some correlation between all the factors you listed and how it affects the definition of an "upset." No one will ever be able to predict how players feed off of the crowd, the enthusiasm and momentum of the game, and determination of a team. That is what makes college football the way it is.
And for me, that's the way it should stay.
WAR EAGLE!
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Jonathan Lintner 9 months ago
Yes, and I really only went into upsets in the typical sense of an upset (high ranked vs. lower ranked). There are a lot of factors. Although a game might be considered an upset on paper, it does nothing to factor in game-day mentality, preparation or mental focus. Everyone has their bad days.
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