Student Body Right » Conference USA

Spring football preview 2008

CommishRob — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:50:21 +0000

Now that we are past signing day and the NFL entry deadline, it’s time look forward to 2008. So it’s nice that Rivals.com has outlined every D-IA* team’s spring practice dates and their biggest question mark of the off-season.

SC starts March 25th and ends with the Spring Game April 19th. According to Rivals, the biggest SC question is QB (Scott Wolf’s boyfriend or Mark Sanchez), while the secondary story is the lack of defensive line studs. The latter is the bigger question in my opinion as they are the most important part of the Cover-Two SC runs.

* I still refuse to use the new name.

USC v. Notre Dame

Urban_Poet — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 06:20:57 +0000

2007 – USC 38, Notre Dame 0

After doing its best impression of the Marshall Thundering Herd, USC handed Notre Dame its worst loss in the rivalry, 8th worst loss in the history of the program, and the worst home loss since the Irish were topped by Boomer Sooner in 1956. Notre Dame attributed the loss to a series of coaching errors committed by Tyrone Willingham in 2003. When asked for comment, CommishRob replied, “Charlie ‘South Bend Smurf’ Weiss is not as tall as he is listed in the program.”

Enjoy the plane, err bus ride home fellas!

Today’s topic for debate

gpen — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:22:15 +0000

From the “thinking about the misfortune of others helps us feel better about our own” department comes today’s discussion question: When was the last time a so-called power had a season as awful* as Notre Dame’s currently having? (Their victory over UCLA notwithstanding.)

One proposal might be USC’s 3-8 in 1991, which included losing a nationally televised opener to the University Formerly Known As Memphis State. But Notre Dame’s no lock to get three wins this season, and did that 3-8 debacle manage zero offensive TDs through the first three weeks?

At any rate, ND very well could lose to the service academies, Duke, and, apparently, Stanford. So three wins is a possibility but my no means a slam dunk.

Other suggestions welcome in the comments …

* Not probation-related.

SEC apologist touts non-conference record

gpen — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:44:48 +0000

The Pac-10 vs. SEC feud rages unchecked over at Bleacher Report_beta, where Leon Wynn crunches a few numbers and comes to the conclusion that the SEC is truly THE powerhouse in college football. One of the stats he pulls out is the SEC’s non-conference record:

Since 2000, the SEC has the nation’s best nonconference record (including bowl games): 247-95, for a .722 winning percentage.

One thought here: maybe the SEC has such a good nonconference record because they schedule such “juggernauts” as Western Carolina, Western Kentucky, and Troy? In fact, the article Leon is responding to makes just this point:

Since 1990, the SEC records against rival conferences is not as impressive as the SEC diehards would lend you to believe: Big-12 (20-16), PAC-10 (10-9), Big East (15-20), Big-10 (30-23), ACC (65-50) and the old Southwest Conference (20-19). So against the BCS Conference members since 1990, the SEC has an overall mark of 160 – 127. While this is good, it isn’t exactly dominant. But what the SEC teams hang their hat on is their record against the non-BCS regime: BWest (30-0), Sun (43-3), MAC (33-5), WAC (32-6), CUSA (57-20) and MWest (9-4) for an overall mark of 204-38.

We rest our case.