Has College Football Gone Retro? You Bet!

By Nostradamus.

Put Week 12 in the books. And what did we learn?

It is becoming very apparent, that even with some new-fangled offenses that are prevalent in College Football today, the 2008 season has gone retro.

Retro, you ask? Yes, retro!

Alabama is partying as if it is 1992. USC has brought back the old days of "Student Body Right.”

Oklahoma State has a new version of the Triplets. Florida is looking more and more like my beloved 1995 Huskers as each week passes.

Good lord, is it 1992 all over again?

Just a few days ago, I was questioning Alabama's No. 1 ranking. However, after watching the game on Saturday night something became very realistic.

I was time-warped back to 1992. Gene Stallings was roaming the sideline. Jay Barker was doing just enough at QB to win games, and Derrick Lassic and Chris Anderson were a RB by committee.

Eric Curry and John Copeland up front, and two lock-down CB’s in the secondary in George Teague and Antonio Langham led the vaunted 3-4 defense. They also had a...

...slick punt/kick returner in David Palmer to create some Special Teams havoc.

Sound eerily similar to the 2008 Alabama Crimson Tide? You're damn right it does!

John Parker Wilson is leading his team by managing the game and handing the ball off to Glenn Coffee and Mark Ingram the majority of the time. But when it is time for him to make plays, he comes through.

The defense is led up front by a fearsome front three, including the anchor in Terrence Cody. In the secondary, Alabama has two lock-down CB's in Kareem Jackson and Javier Arenas.

And, oh by the way, Javier Arenas is a pretty decent return man as well.

What else do we have similar?

The Tide will be rolling into the SEC Championship game against Florida, and will be likely underdogs, even though they have a higher ranking.

If they win that one, they will be underdogs in the National Championship game, just like 1992 when they kicked in the teeth of the Miami Hurricanes 34-13.

So we can bag on these guys all we want, but all they do is keep winning. It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing, but it is effective. Will it be as effective as it was in 1992? That remains to be seen?

USC: No doubt about it, Student Body Right is back, and it is in style at USC this year. And with a bevy of RBs in the stable, why not? With a tie game of 17-17 deep into the third quarter, the Trojans didn't panic, and kept to the task at hand against a pesky Stanford squad.

What that meant was feeding the ball to Stafon Johnson, CJ Gable, and Joe McKnight. They didn't disappoint.

Johnson went for 115, Gable 85, and McKnight 72 yards rushing, respectively. With all the publicity surrounding the USC defense this year, it has instead been the running game that has steadied this team.

Was that John Robinson I saw on the sidelines? And maybe, just maybe, we are seeing the reincarnations of Charles White, OJ Simpson, and Marcus Allen in the Trojan backfield, all in the same year.

Bash on USC's schedule, and the lame Pac 10 conference this year, but this is still, without a doubt, one of the best teams in the country, and they are doing it the old fashioned way.......running it right down your throat.

Oklahoma State: The 'Triplets' are back in style in Stillwater, OK. Back in 1988, current head coach Mike Gundy teamed up with legends Barry Sanders and Hart Lee Dykes to form the '88 version of the Okie State Triplets.

Twenty years later, we have a newer and maybe even better version in Zac Robinson, Kendall Hunter, and Dez Bryant. Now, I'm not saying that Kendall Hunter is even in the same league as Barry Sanders, but Zac Robinson and Dez Bryant are likely very much better than their counterparts.

This Cowboys team is also the fifth-ranked rushing team in all the land, very similar to when Sanders was wreaking havoc on the Big 8.

What is also eerily similar is that this is one of the best teams in Okie State history, only to run into two or three teams in the conference that are better than them.

The 'Pokes need to start working on their schedule for the years they want to be great, and quit putting their "best ever" teams on the field when the rest of the conference is at its pinnacle.

Florida: After watching the Gators play on Saturday night against the Gamecocks, I came away with one feeling. Was that the 2008 version of my beloved 1995 Huskers? That was one flat-out scary performance by the Gators.

South Carolina isn't a bad football team. They also have a pretty damn good defense. What happened was a 56-6 slaughter. Included in that victory was some outstanding special-teams play, and a defense that is starting to become one of the nation's very best.

I can almost see the headlines like it is a Broadway show:  Tim Tebow starring as Tommie Frazier, Urban Meyer as Tom Osborne, Percy Harvin as Lawrence Phillips, Brandon Spikes as Terrell Farley, and Carlos Dunlap as Grant Wistrom.

This team looks to be simply playing at a different speed and a different level than anybody else in the country right now. (Maybe I will get my answer of who the better team was in the SEC Championship game this year: the 1992 Crimson Tide or the 1995 Huskers?)

ACC: Welcome to the conference of the cursed ranked teams. If you are looking to guarantee a loss, then become a ranked team in the ACC. For what seems like the...

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