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I thought it was pretty clear cut that the two best teams in college football this year were LSU and Oklahoma State.  That was really the case all year.  Oklahoma State consistently played top competition in the Big XII.  They beat all comers  Alabama played two of the top teams in college football in their own division.  They split.

Now, the important thing is we have a system that officially recognizes SEC champion LSU as the best team in the nation this season.  If we had stayed up all night arguing the injustice that is Alabama being ranked second overall in the nation, even though they are a clearly more qualified pick than Stanford, or Boise State, or Houston, or Oregon, we would have missed the fact that the BCS typically gets it right.  LSU is the best.  There’s no real competitor.  Having a championship game because of indecision is not necessary.  Everyone knows who no. 1 is.  They just happen to be contractually obligated to play it.

The game they got though is a particularly boring one.  LSU and Alabama play stylistically similar.  Both defenses are amongst the very best in the nation.  Alabama has one NFL starter among their skill positions, who is a true difference maker when he is in: Trent Richardson.  When he comes to the sideline, Alabama cannot move the ball.  They cannot kick the ball.  Their quarterback cannot run or throw the ball.  Alabama is a brutally efficient college team, they are not an interesting college team.  If LSU is any better, it’s because their dominance is almost artful in nature.  LSU has more talent at the receivers than in the backfield, and their offensive line is not great by SEC standards, but they choose to run it because it defines who they are as a team.  It doesn’t make LSU particularly interesting to watch, but they are an easy team to appreciate.

LSU-Oklahoma State might have been the best of all the BCS bowls.  As it is, LSU-Alabama will be the third best game of the series.  LSU should be expected to win comfortably.  They are the better team.  Furthermore, I don’t know how much Alabama can actually do to close the gap from last time, other than to run Trent Richardson on some type of Olympic distance running program so he never comes off the field.  Absent that, I think LSU wins very comfortably.

I feel like LSU would have won easily against Oklahoma State as well.  And no, I don’t think the score would have been 39-36.  I think LSU could have easily exposed Brandon Weeden in the first half, and in the second half would have dominated Oklahoma State with their depth.  I think OSU would have put up many touchdowns, but would have been chasing the whole game.  Alabama at least is unlikely to be put out to pasture int he second half.  Still, will the game be in doubt at any point?

More concerning to me is the fact that four of the top nine teams in the BCS standings will not play in BCS bowls.  What is the point of this charade?  One vs. Two?  I guess.  After doing an awful job of sorting out the top five teams, I’m not sure the BCS standings have a purpose.  Arkansas and South Carolina can’t make it by rule, which I suppose makes sense since if you are going to have automatic qualifiers, there has to be some system of making deep conferences ineligible past a point.  But the bigger issue is Boise State and Kansas State both didn’t make it.  Uh, what?  The B1G Ten and ACC both received at large berths?  REALLY?  A team that failed win the ACC is in the BCS?  I’ll go say the obvious: Virginia Tech is less qualified than Houston is to be in a BCS game this year.

The BCS failed to provide compelling or even fair match-ups in multiple games this year.  Is this specifically the fault of the BCS?  Perhaps not.  College football may be in danger of over-saturating the demand for its product in certain geographic regions of the United States.  They consistently must pander to the masses in order to defend the Bowl system.  Does that hurt the sport?  Probably.  Is that wrong? Unfortunately so.  Will any of this matter when LSU is holding the crystal ball?  The BCS executive committee is gambling that no, none of this will matter to anyone in a month.  Life will go on.  And history suggests: they are probably right.

I am someone who supported the BCS prior to the year 2006, and the genesis of the BCS National Championship Game.  Since then, I have become someone who advocates for the abolition of the system that the NCAA adopted to name its champion for college football in 1998.  To me, the BCS was something of a lateral move from the system we had prior to 1998 in college football.  College Football used to be special because there was no universally recognized “National Champion,” but rather a series of Bowl Game champions and a post-season AP poll vote to determine which school got rights to use the unofficial title “AP National Champion” for public events and for recruiting pitches.  This was always plenty adequate: for all the complaints about what computers and schedules would say, college programs pretty much got to control their own destiny, and the national champ was by definition a popular choice.

There was no requirement for consensus prior to 1998.  It was college football.  The goal was clear: schedule tough, win those tough games, get to a bowl, win the bowl.  Initially, I think the BCS may have added an element to that with their standings, because college football didn’t have inter-conference standings, and the Bowl Championship Series brought that, and plus with the proliferation of mid-tier bowl games as a revenue source, it did become relevant to differentiate between the prestige of certain bowls.  The BCS changed college football’s postseason forever.  But it wasn’t until 2006, and the advent of the college football playoff, that things got bad.

You may be wondering why I keep arguing that College Football has a playoff, but if you define playoffs as any postseason field where teams play for the exclusive right to eliminate one another on the playing field, this is exactly what the BCS National Championship Game is: a two team playoff.  And this is the worst possible ending to a college football season.  Prior to the BCS, it was obvious that playoffs were not necessary.  Just award the USA Today Coaches Poll National Championship to the team that finishes first overall in the BCS standings following the bowl games.  That would work great as a national champion.  In some years, I think the AP national champion could differ from the Coaches Poll champ.  But that, in my opinion would be a good thing.  You have standings and you have a poll, and because they use different methodology, they do not necessarily have to agree.  I think that makes perfect sense in the realm of college athletics.

The national championship worked great last year, as it pitted undefeated Oregon: the team with the most impressive regular season resume, against undefeated Auburn, who didn’t have quite the number of impressive wins, but had overcome the playoff field that was the SEC to get there.  That was a great match-up.  In any year, if you take the best undefeated team: the undefeated team that plays the toughest schedule (so either the SEC champ or the Big XII champ), and you pit them against the team with the largest margin of victory, so like an Oregon, Boise, TCU, or a Oklahoma/Oklahoma State type, I think having a BCS National Championship game makes great sense.

But in a year where the LSU Tigers so thoroughly dominated both criteria, there’s no point to even having the game.  You’ll either end up with a blowout (in all likelihood), or a close game where a far less qualified team can steal the title from LSU.  Such is the downside of having a playoff field at all, something the conference presidents are obviously trying to avoid.  LSU, Alabama, and Oklahoma State would all be playing in BCS bowls this year in any system, but the idea that two must play each other at the end of the season to have a satisfying end to the college football season is pure lunacy.  And its a logical fallacy based on an awful premise: the two team playoff field.

Really, with the unbalanced schedule in college football, any type of playoff would be based on a dumb premise, but at least opening up the field to eight teams gives considerable margin for error (instead of screwing over the third best team in Oklahoma State, you screw over the ninth best team in Arkansas, or Boise State if you’re in the business of giving automatic qualifying bids).  But a two team field, particularly this season, is pointless.

LSU is college footballs best team by any measure, but the one loss teams are pretty indistingulishable, as are the two loss teams.  The computers basically say that Alabama and Oklahoma State are equal teams.  The pollsters do not think so, but polls are notoriously fickle.  Stanford’s last game against Notre Dame was a seemingly more impressive and complete win than anything that either Oklahoma State or Alabama has done this year, but Stanford other opponents were so generally weak that we went to the last week of their season without a good idea as if they should be ranked second or twenty second.  Boise State is having another really impressive one loss season, but Boise plays in a stronger conference now, and the pollsters have yet to adjust to that.  Oregon may once again be the most impressive team in college football.  Houston hasn’t lost.

I will make the argument below that Kansas State deserves to be in the national championship game as much as any team.  They are sixth in the computer ranking.  They would be playing in the Big XII title game this week, except that the conference no longer has one.  They dominated the state of Texas this year.  Their losses look good in hindsight, and I’m not sure any team’s wins look as good as KSU’s this year, exception of LSU.  They will lose the Big XII championship on tiebreaker no matter what, but stand a decent shot at a BCS bid if Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma.

The biggest thing about Alabama this year is not that they aren’t a great program having a great year, but the LSU loss makes their resume totally indistinguishable from other programs having great, but not unblemished seasons.  If Oklahoma does go on the road and beat Oklahoma State (something I expect), no team is coming particularly close to Alabama in the BCS standings.  But I think that outcome flies in the face of the logic that the BCS was founded on.  It was founded to create and settle arguments at the top of the standings.  And the way things are calculated, unless the human, fallable polls have a significant change of heart, LSU and Alabama will play for the BCS national championship because they are the two best teams in college football.

I have no doubt that of all the random matchups of potential BCS pairings, LSU-Alabama remains more interesting and will be a higher level of football than Oregon-Michigan State, or Houston-Michigan, or Louisville-Virginia Tech, or Oklahoma-Stanford.  That’s not a particularly good draw of BCS games.  But don’t act like we couldn’t take those ten teams and create three or more compelling match-ups for generating bowl revenue simply by being willing to split up the deserving BCS teams.  I want to see Stanford-LSU, Alabama-Oregon, Michigan State-Virginia Tech, and Kansas State-Michigan.  Every one of those games is a more intriguing matchup than LSU-Alabama, which right now stands as the one BCS game to look forward to.

And the reasoning to justify this is incredibly specious.  The BCS is not helping college football, and that’s a shame because I think for five or six years after its inception, it did help college football.  But now, it’s combined with other well-funded ideals to become a highly-publicized justification for defending the continued dominance of certain conferences over other conferences, and if I’m not a Big Ten, Pac-12, or SEC fan, I can’t help but think that the BCS is hurting (both financially and competitively) the college football postseason.

In this January 28th article, I addressed the difference between the relative strengths of the upcoming quarterback classes.  I thought the 2011 QB class was one of the strongest in memory, but that perhaps there were some stronger, less-risky classes on the horizon to reward teams that waited on quarterbacks in 2010 and 2011 such as the Washington Redskins and Seattle Seahawks.  To quote myself from January:

2012 NFL Draft Quarterback Class

The names: Andrew Luck (Stanford), Terrelle Pryor (Ohio State), Ryan Lindley (SDSU), Nick Foles (Arizona), Ryan Tannehill (Texas A&M), Dominique Davis (ECU), Kirk Cousins (MSU), Stephen Garcia (South Carolina), Jacory Harris (Miami), Mike Paulus (William & Mary), Dan Persa (Northwestern).

This has all the makings of the strong class.  What it’s missing is a second big name QB prospect that scouts love that could get in line right behind Andrew Luck as a franchise type player worthy of top five consideration.  It could get that still from the ranks of the underclass (remember, even in 2012, Luck would be considered an underclassmen by draft standards — though he’ll be a Stanford graduate).  But even without another player worthy of top five consideration, this QB class offers plenty of depth.

You can toss Pryor out of this discussion now.  Mike Paulus is not having much of a season for DI-FCS William & Mary, so he’s out.  Ryan Lindley is falling at SD State.  Stephen Garcia was having an awful year and has been kicked off of the team at South Carolina.  He won’t be drafted.  But Jacory Harris is enjoying his best season under Al Golden and could be back into mid-round discussion.  Now we need to add projected first round senior Robert Griffin III of Baylor, even though like Luck, Barkley, and Jones, he has a year of eligibility left.  Russell Wilson has been so unreal for Wisconsin this year that he needs to be in the discussion.  And my list pretty egregiously left off Boise State senior Kellen Moore, who is going to get a big boost in his draft prospects thanks to the early success of Andy Dalton.  Another guy who should be added to this list is G.J. Kinne of Tulsa.  And finally, despite his advanced age, some team is going to draft Oklahoma State’s Brandon Weeden in the second or third round to be their starting quarterback.

So from the January discussion, five more names are in draft consideration, and three are out, a positive net gain.  Now, we need to address the possibility that Andrew Luck, Matt Barkley, Robert Griffin, and Landry Jones all stay in school through the 2012 college football season.  With Luck, this would obviously just be a power play based on a certain team holding the first overall pick: the fact that the Dolphins and the Colts have the best chance of getting the first overall pick makes it moot.  But even if Barkley, Jones, and Griffin all decide to stay in school, Luck headlines a very impressive class.  The remarkable thing is that all three of those underclassman would likely be first rounders if they come out (but not necessarily if they all come out, thanks to supply and demand).

Here are some early projections on the 2012 NFL Draft QB Class:

First Overall Types: Andrew Luck, Stanford; Matt Barkley, USC

It has been a long time since any draft has had a first overall type: Aaron Rodgers, Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, and Ben Roethlisberger being the last four quarterbacks worthy of justifying the first overall pick.  All of those guys came from the 2004 and 2005 drafts.   This draft could have two guys in it stronger as prospects than anyone taken in the last five drafts.

If we were to rank all quarterbacks drafted between 2006 and 2011 in terms of how they are perceived today nationally, we would probably get something like Cam Newton first, followed by Matt Ryan second, and then either Sam Bradford or Joe Flacco fourth, then Josh Freeman, then Matt Stafford or Colt McCoy or Jay Cutler, and then Kevin Kolb, Mark Sanchez, and Tim Tebow around guys such as Blaine Gabbert and Christian Ponder and Jake Locker (these aren’t my rankings, mind you).  On draft day, either Luck or Barkley would propel ahead of anyone except Newton and Ryan before they play a snap.  Which tells you that QB output over the last six drafts or so hasn’t been very good beyond the performance of first overall picks.  When we limit the sample to quarterbacks who aren’t the first guy taken in their draft after 2005, Matt Barkley is being compared to guys like Sanchez, Cutler, McCoy, Flacco, and Freeman.  You have to like those odds that if there’s a true “first-overall” type in that group, it’s Barkley.

Top 15 types: Landry Jones, Oklahoma; Nick Foles, Arizona

This is a class where, even after the first overall types, there are two “franchise” quarterback prospects out there to draft early with little chance of failure.  Foles has been a production machine ever since 2010, and although he’s a fifth year senior who will be a 23 year old rookie, he is physically as built for the position as for anyone in this class.  Jones is a top ten prospect in any year, whether he decides to come out in 2012 or 2013 will not change that.  He has already broken most of Sam Bradford’s records, and though he lacks the raw college efficiency of his predecessor, he has been running an offense that is specifically more rooted in pro style concepts than what Bradford was running three years ago.  He also comes to the NFL with a cleaner bill of health.

Mid to Late First Rounders: Ryan Tannehill, Texas A&M; Robert Griffin III, Baylor; Kellen Moore, Boise State; Kirk Cousins, Michigan State

If you’ll count them up, that’s EIGHT guys I have a preliminary first round grade on.  There are not eight teams that would consider spending a first rounder on a quarterback, and it doesn’t consider another guy, Weeden, who performs like a first rounder at the college level, but is 28 years old. He’ll be in the NFL, but I don’t think he’ll be particularly successful there.  Tannehill has to be the most fascinating prospect in this draft, because he played receiver at Texas A&M for the first two years of his career.  That makes him really a four year player, but one who has only been playing the QB position for two seasons.  There are no comparables for that kind of career path, only in the other direction.  Griffin could stay in school or he could come out, either way, he’s one of an impressive class of quarterbacks the Big XII is producing at the current moment.

Second rounders: Jacory Harris, Miami (Fl.); Dominique Davis, ECU

I’m just helping to frame the depth of the class another way: with these two rising quarterbacks coming off of great seasons, the draft goes 10 players deep with potential starters.

Combined with the quality of the free agent class, any team that wants a quarterback will be able to get one cheaply.  This might be a year where the top names (non-Luck division) consider staying in school for promise of future riches.

I didn’t see more than a half of either the Oregon-LSU or the Notre Dame-USF games, but I was engaged enough to note that both Fightin’ Kelly’s suffered one of the more frustrating losses of their respective coaching careers.  The teams combined for 9 turnovers in 120 minutes of football.  I have that as “way too many.”

Oregon at least can step back, attribute the turnover silliness to injury, and move on.  This is a little more difficult for Notre Dame.  Weather was a factor for the Irish, sure, but their wounds were painfully self-inflicted.  The Notre Dame defense more or less stifled USF QB B.J. Daniels all game, and even given the fact that the Irish went into half down a fortunate 16-0, I still feel underwhelmed at the second half effort that saw them outscore the Bulls by a margin of 20-7 with two additional turnovers.  Even if you give Notre Dame a complete mulligan for the first half, 20-7 is probably not the margin at home they should be beating a team like USF by.  The offensive performance under Tommy Rees in the second half left plenty to be desired, which is something to keep in mind before Brian Kelly announces his quarterback for a really big game in his tenure at Michigan.  With that said, even an underwhelming performance as such should be enough for ND to win at least 75% of its games going forward.  Going 9-3 or better will require wholesale offensive improvement.

Notre Dame’s blessing is that they get another hyped, national game in just a Saturday.  Oregon won’t be so lucky.  Their next four opponents: Nevada, Missouri State, Arizona, California.  Then after a fairly interesting Pac-12 matchup with Arizona State, they get Colorado, Washington State, and Washington.  Oregon will not play another nationally ranked opponent (in all likelihood) until November 12th in Palo Alto, California, where Andrew Luck and the Stanford Cardinal play.  The Ducks will be punished by national pollsters for not running through this schedule in a series of blowouts leading to an 8-1 record.  Fortunately, they are more than capable of exactly this kind of run.  But there’s no question that Oregon’s season has a different feel if they had knocked off an LSU team that they certainly felt was inferior to them in many ways.

It’s never easy to stomach a loss in college football when the other team absolutely lacks the ability to attack you through the air, since FBS offenses have long played a schematic game well ahead of their defensive counterparts, a lot of guys who are just now catching up to the days of read option.  But Oregon and Notre Dame both gave their opponents enough short fields to make exactly this a reality.  But their ability to be stingy to opposing passing games is exactly why the Irish and Ducks merit belief going forward instead of scorn.  An offense that coughs up the ball too much is one of the easiest things to correct during the practice week, and it goes without saying that each team will make this a point of emphasis.  For Notre Dame, who only gave up 15 first downs, and Oregon, who gave up just 16, defensive strength must overshadow their offensive ineptitude going forward.

Notre Dame has a tough schedule the rest of the way, and a 10-1 finish will make this loss look more fluky than anything, but that’s the mentality they should take to Michigan next week.  Oregon plays a very soft Pac-12 schedule until they end with at Stanford, vs. USC in consecutive weeks.  10-2 or better should be the Ducks’ expectation at this point.  It would be easy to lose faith in a positive preseason prediction for either team after not just an upset loss to open the season, but one where neither team appeared to be impersonating a BCS-bound team, but upon a deeper examination of what went wrong in the opener for Notre Dame and for Oregon, it’s probably an overreaction to the first game to jump off the bandwagon right now.

The SEC is a power football conference.  Historically, draft picks out of the SEC have typically been good investments for NFL clubs.  The last five years, the college football title has been won by an SEC team.  To date, none of those programs have been caught breaking a rule that would jepordize their accomplishments.  It may just be a matter of time, but in the interim, it must be assumed that these programs are clean, however foolish that may sound.  To recap, SEC programs are, on average, great at football, and great at not being caught for expressly illegal NCAA violations.  They have also been good at putting their stars at the next level.

But are SEC players somehow less inclined to be superstars than players from the ACC or the Pac 10 12.  The SEC and the Big Ten, the historically dominant football conferences, didn’t place a whole bunch of players on the NFL players Top 100 list.  Just 13% of the list came out of the SEC, which is the exact same number that came out of the Big Ten.  I think it was assumed that the Big Ten has been down of recent, and that’s a conference that dominated the list of lineman (Jake Long, Nick Mangold, Joe Thomas…I didn’t put Carl Nicks of Nebraska on the Big Ten ledger, but I suppose you could…as long as you also give Mike Vick to the ACC), and lineman are generally underrepresented on this list.  This list could have included any of the following: David Diehl, Steve Hutchinson, Jeff Backus, Matt Light, Kareem McKenzie, Uche Nwaneri, etc, and the Big Ten would have had better representation on this list.

So this is pretty interesting, in the “rather unimportant” way.

The list is far from perfect, and thus this point is far from perfect — and I’ll poke a few holes in it in a minute — but lets put some context around how rough the SEC did.  Here is the entire list of players who made the NFL top 100 list and played in the SEC Conference:

Tennessee (6): Peyton Manning, Top 10; Arian Foster, 25; Jason Witten, 36;
Jerod Mayo, 62; Eric Berry, 93; Chad Clifton, 99
Mississippi (1): Patrick Willis, 23
LSU (1): Dwayne Bowe, 45
Georgia (2): Champ Bailey, 48; Richard Seymour, 66
South Carolina (1): John Abraham, 69
Auburn (1): Jay Ratliff, 75
Arkanas (1): Darren McFadden, 98
Total: 13

And here is complete list of just one team — the Miami Hurricanes — on the same list:

The University of Miami, Top Rated Players on NFL Top 100 List:

Andre Johnson, Top 10
Ray Lewis, Top 10
Ed Reed, Top 10
Reggie Wayne, 31
Devin Hester, 32
Vince Wilfork, 35
Jonathon Vilma, 37
Antrel Rolle, 68
Frank Gore, 94
Jon Beason, 95
Total: 10

Furthermore, the distribution of the list works against the SEC.  Here’s your comparison, which someone savvier than me would have put into a histogram:

• Top 10: ‘Canes 3, SEC 1*
• 11-25: SEC 2, ‘Canes 0
• 26-50: ‘Canes 4, SEC 3
• 51-75: SEC 4, ‘Canes 1
• 76-100: SEC 3, ‘Canes 2

*The SEC is likely to have the highest rated player in the comparison (Peyton Manning).

Maybe the most embarassing part for the SEC is that, very legitimately, if this had been a Top 50 NFL Players list, Miami actually does better in terms of both total number of occurances (7-6), and distribution (40% of occurances in the top 10).  Now, obviously, by increasing the sample size to be more meaningful, eventually 12 football powerhouses are going to dwarf the U in terms of NFL contribution, making this comparison relatively meaningless.

Then there’s the fact that Ray Lewis, who is still probably a top 100 player, is heavily overrated in the top 10.  Antrel Rolle shouldn’t be on a Top 500 list considering that he’s probably the third best safety on a team that had a weakness against the deep pass in 2010.  Vilma is a very good linebacker, though probably not a top 50 (or even top 100) NFL player.  There are better LBs than Jon Beason who didn’t make this list.  There would seemingly be a pro-Hurricane bias in the player voting.

The SEC is better than is represented here, and it’s certainly not the only large college conference that didn’t do as well as it would have hoped.  Outside of the ACC and Pac 12, I don’t know if any conference had a particularly impressive showing.  But it’s not just the bottom of the SEC that had the problem here (Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, Kentucky have no representation).  Alabama and Florida don’t have a player on the list.  LSU, who has been running a pro style scheme since the Saban days, has one player (Bowe), and he’s one of many questionable receiver picks.  I can’t even say with confidence that Dwayne Bowe is the best LSU player currently in the NFL (that’s probably LaRon Landry or Andrew Whitworth).  He’s just the only one on the list.

Florida, I believe, will be on the board within the next year or so as players like Aaron Hernandez and Joe Haden get more notoriety.  But basically, Phillip Fulmer is personally responsible for pretty much all of the SEC’s contribution to the NFL Top 100 list.  It’s hardly conclusive from this list, but despite the ability of SEC Coaches to recruit the best athletes in the world to play football for them, and their ability to prepare them to be solid NFL draft picks, it’s worth wondering if something in their college development is preventing the SEC from producing Patrick Willis’ and Jerod Mayo’s with regularity.  Because in the last ten years, Corey Webster and Carlos Rogers types have proved far more common for teams using high picks on SEC talents.

Two weeks ago, I evaluated a Big Ten quarterback who didn’t get taken in the first five rounds despite college passing statistics that looked pretty good overall, and particularly so in his era.  Yesterday, former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor signed with superagent Drew Rosenhaus, and will prepare for the NFL supplemental draft.  Most draft analysts have ripped Pryor’s NFL candidacy based on limitations that have showed up on film with regards to making certain throws that a NFL passer needs to have in his arsenal.

Taken at it’s most basic level, such scouting conclusions are valuable.  Pryor cannot be reasonably expected to succeed if he is thrown into a pro huddle on labor day weekend and told to run stuff he never did at Ohio State.  He’s going to be terrible of that’s what he’s being asked to do.  The tape bears this out.

But the numbers suggest that a team that adjusts similarly to how Ohio State adapted Terrelle Pryor’s skill set into their pro style system will get a very effective pocket passer.  If pro offense means the same thing to you that it means to me, that means that Pryor’s first couple of seasons, he should be utilized exclusively off of the run action and play action, selling a believable play action game, and using the intermediate and deep fields to attack.  Use of his athleticism should be reserved for trying to convert third downs through any means necessary.

If that sounds like a system quarterback who doesn’t deserved to be drafted with the elite, transcendental prospects such as Matt Ryan who can play in year one, then that’s exactly what I’m asserting.  No player taken in the top ten picks of the NFL draft to play the QB position, maybe not even Michael Vick, was as raw and unfinished a quarterback as Terrelle Pryor looks like.  A recent assertion by Rosenhaus that he expects Pryor to be picked in the first round seems preposterous on its face.

Except perhaps you weren’t paying attention to the NFL Draft from 2008 through 2011, when the first round became the round of the unpolished product.  From Joe Flacco to Mark Sanchez to Tim Tebow to Cam Newton, Jake Locker, Christian Ponder, and high second rounder Andy Dalton, there really isn’t such a thing as a traditional prospect anymore.  And Pryor fits in this mold of non-traditional passing NFL hopefuls.  He actually fits better than most.

Terrelle Pryor completed 62% of his college passes, which is really good when you figure his pro-gun offense and where that number was likely to be had he played his senior season.  Three years as the starter at Ohio State is nothing to spit on, leading a very successful program, and achieving plenty of personal success.  The differences between Pryor at Ohio State and some other *also* highly rated HS recruit at QB such as Jimmy Clausen at Notre Dame is hardly any difference at all.  It may just be the coaching, because that 28-4 TD/INT rate sported by Clausen (the only meaningful difference between the Pryor and Clausen stats in three years) looks a lot like numbers put up by Matt Cassel of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2010.

The problem with game film evaluations is that you get to see very little of what a player is not asked to do by his college offense, and saying that the player cannot make such plays is not a proper evaluation.  Pryor is getting dinged in scouting circles for bad decisions at critical moments in games, and perhaps rightfully so, because a lot of Pryor’s INTs have been of the unforced variety.  Concerns that he flushes the pocket before he has to are also legitimate.  He’s a lot like Blaine Gabbert in that sense.  Gabbert also went in the first round.  There are plenty of reasons to not like Terrelle Pryor’s opportunity for success in the pros, if your goal is to doubt Pryor’s ability to succeed in the pros.

For organizations that have the goal of winning football games, a more important task re: Pryor is to evaluate the man who helped create the mess that Ohio State is currently trying to keep from crushing the pride of the Buckeye program.  A first round pick at quarterback is almost NEVER saddled with the kind of off-field questions that surround Pryor and his inner circle right now.  The only thing scarier than a high-risk early round draft pick, is a high-risk early round pick when the organization cannot accurately assess the true level of risk.  Pryor is a major gamble, and it’s safe to say that teams aren’t going to gamble first or second round picks on him.

That doesn’t mean that Rosenhaus is off his rocker though in trying to market his client.  He may have just picked up a risk in taking on a client like Pryor, but that also gives the young quarterback a bit of legitimacy that a guy like Rosenhaus would represent him.  And while Rosenhaus’ rhetoric may not directly reflect the reality of the situation, he’s right that if there wasn’t a flaming landfill nearby — with Pryor’s steps easily traceable from it — that Pryor makes about as much sense in the first round as many of the guys who are actually picked there every year.  Who has more NFL type ability, 8th overall pick Jake Locker (a great kid), or supplemental draft prospect Pryor?  The college production suggests that it’s not close.  You always take Pryor and give yourself a fighting chance.

Ultimately, Pryor wasn’t going to get picked in the first round of the NFL Supplemental Draft.  Because it’s the Supplemental Draft.  It isn’t the amateur draft.  The demand for quarterbacks isn’t quite what it was before the draft, because a whole class of QBs just got drafted.  Pryor would have been well off throwing his hat into the ring earlier and trying to impress his way up to first round level then.  But that ship has sailed, and if Pryor’s playing the hand he’s been dealt, and that hand involves Rosenhaus’ support, then chances are that Pryor is going a lot higher than anyone is expecting.

There would be little argument that at any point in the next three years, we won’t see a quarterback prospect as strong as Stanford’s Andrew Luck when he comes out.  Luck has two more years of college eligibility at his fingertips, but his stated reasons for coming out, it seems safe to peg Luck as a member of the 2012 draft class, barring a change of heart.  And frankly, if Luck was going to do anything but stick to his plan for himself, he would have been in this year’s draft.

We’ll start deep in the future, and work our way back to the present to try and see if the future offers anything worth waiting for in terms of quarterbacks.

2013 NFL Draft Quarterback Class

The names: Matt Barkley (USC), Landry Jones (Oklahoma), Brock Osweiler (Arizona State), EJ Manuel (Florida State), Stephen Morris* (Miami), Nathan Scheelhaase (Illinois), Aaron Murray (Georgia), Tyler Bray (Tennessee).

A couple of players on this list would be leaving a year of eligibility on the table to enter the NFL draft, so do consider this to be merely a best guess at a ’13 class against something that any team with a quarterback need would be waiting for.  There are a number of flaws in this class: Osweiler is a highly touted prospect at Arizona State (mostly, for his 6′ 8″ frame), but he has yet to make a college start because Steven Threet, the Georgia Tech and Michigan transfer, is still in the picture.  Morris, Scheelhaase, Bray, and Murray all shined this year as first year passers, but will all be eligible collegiate passers through 2014.  Manuel split time with an injured Christian Ponder this year, and could achieve great things as Jimbo Fisher reaches year three at the helm of the Florida State offense.  His stock is the most volatile of this class.

But when we mention this class, we’re not yet impressed by it’s depth.  It’s headliners are two potential four year starters, Landry Jones of Oklahoma, and Matt Barkley of USC.  Both figure to be very highly rated players on draft day, even if that draft day comes a year sooner than predicted.  Make no mistake, this is serious one two punch, and none of the two classes prior to this figures to offer a year where two legitimate top five prospects enter the same class.

Although, that might be better news for the 2012 class.  Even though Andrew Luck is expected to be a consensus number one overall pick, the 2012 lacks depth, and it could be enticing for one or both of Jones or Barkley to make the leap with a year of eligibility left.  Just one of those guys leaving weakens the 2013 class much more than it strengthens the 2012 class.  We’ll see if these two passers understand that Andrew Luck’s presence atop more or less every draft board is sufficient enough to stick around and make the 2013 class one of the strongest QB classes in memory.

2012 NFL Draft Quarterback Class

The names: Andrew Luck (Stanford), Terrelle Pryor (Ohio State), Ryan Lindley (SDSU), Nick Foles (Arizona), Ryan Tannehill (Texas A&M), Dominique Davis (ECU), Kirk Cousins (MSU), Stephen Garcia (South Carolina), Jacory Harris (Miami), Mike Paulus (William & Mary), Dan Persa (Northwestern).

This has all the makings of the strong class.  What it’s missing is a second big name QB prospect that scouts love that could get in line right behind Andrew Luck as a franchise type player worthy of top five consideration.  It could get that still from the ranks of the underclass (remember, even in 2012, Luck would be considered an underclassmen by draft standards — though he’ll be a Stanford graduate).  But even without another player worthy of top five consideration, this QB class offers plenty of depth.

San Diego State’s Ryan Lindley is probably getting a lot of undeserved scouting love right now, he’s being floated around as a potential first rounder who will drop into the mid rounders after some of his numbers come back to the mid-major pack.  But Foles, going into his third year at Arizona, could be the real deal as a first round prospect.  Both Davis and Cousins have a first round ceiling (though they currently project as mid rounders).  And while I don’t pretend to know what will happen with Jacory Harris as a senior, his ability to make all the pro throws is unquestioned (he will need to learn to not lead safeties to the ball, however).

Paulus, Tannehill, and Persa are all fascinating prospects who will rise or fall in their senior seasons, and it wouldn’t shock me if one of the three became an NFL starter.  From this class, I think we are looking at 3 or 4 NFL starters, and that’s not including any underclassmen who may commit in this draft.  This is a clearly above average class, even before you consider that Luck should be an NFL superstar before too long.  This could easily be the strongest class since, well, the 2010 or 2008 drafts.

2011 NFL Draft Quarterback Class

The names: Blaine Gabbert (Missouri), Christian Ponder (FSU), Jake Locker (WAS), Ryan Mallett (Arkansas), Cam Newton (Auburn), Pat Devlin (Delaware), Andy Dalton (TCU), Scott Tolzien (Wisconsin), Colin Kaepernick (Nevada), Jerrod Johnson (Texas A&M), Tyrod Taylor (Virginia Tech), Ricky Stanzi (Iowa), Greg McElroy (Alabama).

The 2011 Quarterback class is getting a reputation as a weak class, though I’m not sure if that will be accurate when we look back on it.  In the last seven drafts, the worst QB draft was 2007, the JaMarcus Russell/Brady Quinn/Kevin Kolb draft.

The biggest criticism of this class is that there’s no clear cut number one guy.  The consensus number one is Blaine Gabbert.  Gabbert has his issues with pocket presence, but he’s the only guy in the class who can get drafted in the top five, and not land in a situation where he will be in over his head.  That would probably be overdrafting Gabbert based on need, but so be it.  He’s accurate, tough, makes aggressive throws down the field, and is advanced in his ability to move coverage.  He will need strong structure to make a quick jump that improves his footwork in the pocket, so as far as first year contribution, it’s buyer beware, but he’s the most talented prospect from day one, and has considerable upside.

Once Gabbert goes, you’re picking through a lot of scraps in terms of pro-ready prospects.  The next guys who are most ready for the pros are Christian Ponder and Ricky Stanzi, but Stanzi to me is not a guy who has very good staying power.  Most of his value will come from his ability to contribute immediately (think Trent Edwards, or more optimistically, Kyle Orton).  Ponder will survive in a far more varied and strenuous environment, and should be drafted higher based on that.  But after Gabbert, the best skill set in the entire class belongs, unquestionably in my mind, to Delaware’s Pat Devlin.

Devlin will be no more ready to take over a pro offense on day one than Joe Flacco was three years ago, but Flacco proved that could turn out alright.  Devlin’s skill set is similar to that of Ryan Mallett’s, but Devlin is a little bit more mobile, and has the ability to throw accurately from awkward body positions under duress is going to help him jump a lot of guys on draft boards.  Devlin is giving up a considerable amount of arm strength and downfield ability to Mallett, however, and doesn’t have Flacco’s arm to rifle balls to the sidelines on the move.  Devlin was a very mediocre college player when flushed from the pocket: he can get positive yards, but is not a creator with either his arm or his legs on the run from defenders.  He needs a strong pocket, and then he can deliver the ball to all fields.  Ryan Mallett is very much of the same player, but doesn’t have the functional mobility of Devlin, therefore a lot more can go wrong in Mallett’s development.

Above, I have named four guys who I would feel comfortable with as franchise-type first rounders (Gabbert, Devlin, Mallett, Ponder), which ignores two other guys who a majority of scouts see first round ability in (Auburn’s Cam Newton, and Washington’s Jake Locker).  I have both as midrounders: Locker’s problem being his accuracy, and Newton’s problem being experience with pro offense concepts.  Personally, I’d rather take the flyer on Newton that I could make him into a pro passer because he has a great ability to play from the pocket (accuracy and ball protection), and that’s the first thing I need from a QB in order to make him successful.  Newton, however, comes with little else, so a third round projection seems about right.  Locker can’t even be that high in my mind because he struggles so much with so much of his college offense.  When Locker is on, his passes can really get to a receiver’s hands in stride, but when Locker doesn’t trust his eyes, he can be every bit as wild as some of the worst passers I’ve ever seen.  I don’t know if I’d spend a draft pick on such a wildly inconsistent player, but he’ll gather some bonus points merely for showing the Matt Stafford-type intangibles of a first round pick.  The fact that the teams picking in the top five may not seriously consider Locker is as much of a red flag of his ability as anything, because separated from passing ability, he’s got everything else you’d want in a first round quarterback.  That ability happens to be sort of a big deal.

This is also a very deep class not just because I have first round grades on two guys who few others have in their top three rounds, but because of a class of second round quality passers unmatched in recent years: Nevada’s Colin Kaepernick, TCU’s Andy Dalton, and another guy I would absolutely throw up in this round, Wisconsin’s Scott Tolzien.  Each of the three is a project-able starter based on skill sets, and each has a skill set very different from someone else.  Tolzien offers unmatched efficiency at the college level, and would likely bring similar efficiency to the pros after having to take some lumps as a rookie starter.  Kaepernick is another guy with great intangibles who could play right away and absolutely lead an offense, but struggles at times with some throws that should be gimmies in the pros.  Dalton could be the best of the three, but never played with the precision of Tolzien, and doesn’t offer the project-able skill set of Kaepernick.

I want to at least mention two guys in Texas A&M’s Jerrod Johnson, and Virginia Tech’s Tyrod Taylor: these guys both have pro skill sets.  They are long shots to make it as NFL starters, and I like Johnson as a long-term project more than Taylor, who has to overcome his short-ness to play professional QB (he can make ALL the throws with accuracy).  But long-shots as they are, they deserve a mention in the depth of such a QB class.  They’ll go between the 6th round and undrafted, but would make great projects.

Here, at last, is my first QBs list of the 2011 draft, and some general notes about the three draft classes to come:

1. Blaine Gabbert, Missouri (Top 15)
2. Pat Devlin, Delaware (1st – 15-32)
3. Ryan Mallett, Arkansas (1st – 15-32)
4. Christian Ponder, Florida State (1st 15-32)
5. Colin Kaepernick, Nevada (2nd)
6. Scott Tolzien, Wisconsin (2nd)
7. Andy Dalton, TCU (2nd-3rd)
8. Cam Newton, Auburn (3rd)
9. Ricky Stanzi, Iowa (4th-5th)
10. Jake Locker, Washington (5th)
11. Blake Bolles, NW Missouri State (5th)
12. Greg McElroy, Alabama (6th)
13. TJ Yates, North Carolina (6th)
14. Alex Tanney, Monmouth (IL) (6th)
15. Mike Hartline, Kentucky (6th)
16. Jerrod Johnson, Texas A&M (7th)
17. Tyrod Taylor, Virginia Tech (undrafted)
18. Ben Chappell, Indiana (undrafted)
19. Troy Weatherhead, Hillsdale (undrafted)
20. Nathan Enderle, Idaho (undrafted)

As always, this is very early in the process for everyone, including me, and these rankings WILL change before draft day.

There are 15 or 16 guys in this class I think have, at least, the potential to achieve NFL starters.  We know from prior research that only about 1/3 actually have that ability, so it’s going to be about 5 or 6 players from this class who reach that level.  What that means is that this class is deep enough to meet demand for NFL QBs, barely.  But since the draft doesn’t occur with perfect information, and draft busts will occur, a couple of teams who take QBs high in this draft will be right back here in 2 years, with that 2013 class, looking for a different quarterback.

The supply of first rounders seems to get a little bit stronger in future years, with at least two per year compared to really, just one this year, and a cast of flawed characters.  The 2012 class has a good chance to offer the same type of depth that the 2011 class will, and looks like the best of the next three years.  Then again, if no one besides Andrew Luck commits early, the 2013 class would be the strongest class at the top.

Right now, it looks like the year to wait for is 2012 in terms of available quarterbacks.  There’s no reason to play the draft ultra-aggressively in 2011.  But with the potential best class being two years away, it may be smart for teams to roll the dice now in the first or second round and try to solve the position, instead of waiting for 2012, when only Andrew Luck qualifies as a currently established prospect in a class with plenty of talent underneath him.

This is a pretty fascinating QB draft class.  I’ll give you three reasons why — even though I’m sure that I’ve said that every year — this time, I’m right:

1. The NFL-NFLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement (or lack thereof) means that while the draft will progress as normal, there will be signing complications regarding the drafted players.
2. The senior class is very week in terms of well rounded prospects.
3. The young QB development in the NFL has been horrendous going back to 2006.

NFL teams aren’t developing their good, young quarterbacks anymore, not to mention that they aren’t even trying to find players playing in other leagues anymore.  With NFL Europe a thing of the past, and the UFL turning to re-treads to lead their teams, it’s on current franchises to make sure practice reps are had by promising players.  Instead, Derek Anderson, Bruce Gradkowski, and Charlie Whitehurst ended up starting for NFL teams who have or had legitimate playoff aspirations this year.  Those spots would have previously been used to discover QB talent like Jake Delhomme, Kurt Warner, Jeff Garcia etc.  Now, not only are franchise QBs not “found” by front offices, but even NFL first rounders are struggling to get a fair shake at development.

Three years ago, QB demand was at an all-time low.  Players like Jeff Garcia (Tampa Bay), Daunte Culpepper (Oakland), and Cleo Lemon (Miami) were fighting with prospective rookies such as Kevin Kolb, Troy Smith, Josh Johnson, Nate Davis, and Dennis Dixon for a roster opportunity.  Three years later, we know very little about those young players as NFL-level quarterbacks, while a retirement crunch of the old guard has created voids across the league at the QB position.  Once again, NFL passers are in great demand.

Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, Jake Delhomme, Marc Bulger, Garcia, Culpepper, Kerry Collins, Jon Kitna, Mark Brunell, Kyle Boller, David Carr, Patrick Ramsey, Chad Pennington, Chris Simms, Todd Collins, and Matt Hasselbeck will all be leaving the game within a year, making this a mass retirement crunch at the position.  While I propose that the pool of young QBs to choose from has never been deeper than it is currently, the lack of development at the position means that the draft value of a young quarterback is going to be driven up this coming April.

And right on cue, we have a Senior class of college quarterbacks that is…nothing to write home about.  There are two players at the top of the senior class, Delaware’s Pat Devlin and Florida State’s Christian Ponder, who could get first round grades from me.  Both, however, are too flawed to take in the top ten, and would probably be viewed as “system” players by NFL coaches.  What this class features in spades is an endless supply of intriguing prospects who badly need development that the NFL refuses to offer.  There are potential franchise players in Nevada’s Colin Kaepernick, Iowa’s Ricky Stanzi, Wisconsin’s Scott Tolzien, Alabama’s Greg McElroy, TCU’s Andy Dalton, and Virginia Tech’s Tyrod Taylor.  I’d also throw in much maligned college players Jerrod Johnson (Texas A&M), and T.J. Yates (North Carolina) to the same group.  Then there’s small school players such as Northwest Missouri State’s Blake Bolles, Hillsdale’s Troy Weatherhead, and Alex Tanney from Monmouth (IL).  It’s a banner year for small school QBs.  Adding in Washington’s Jake Locker, that’s 14 players from the senior class who deserve draft consideration, but only two who I’d feel comfortable recommending in the first round.

That’s because the strength of this group comes from the underclassmen, where up to FIVE guys can come out with first round grades.  The problem is, it’s likely you’ll get just two of them to come out, in my opinion.  The guy who every NFL GM is salivating over being able to choose is Stanford’s Andrew Luck, who may be as close to a sure thing as I’ve ever seen in all my years of draft preparation (no, I wasn’t around for the Peyton Manning draft).  Luck, as Adam Schefter has pointed out on Twitter, is unlikely to leave Stanford before his fourth year, and nothing he’s said or done indicates that either head coach Jim Harbaugh or Luck is going to leave Stanford prior to 2011.  Sorry, personnel guys.

It’s very likely that two underclassmen will go draft eligible this year: Auburn’s Cameron Newton and Arkansas’ Ryan Mallett.  I’ll throw in Missouri’s Blaine Gabbert and Arizona’s Nick Foles as two guys who might go pro on a whim, but likely will be sticking around one more year in college.  If Terrelle Pryor (Ohio State) took it to the next level after the Sugar Bowl, that would be a stunner.  He’s eligible to do so.

Newton and Mallett can be safely put into the draft class, I believe, but at this poing what we are really dealing with is a big supply-demand logic puzzle.  Mallett is a solid first rounder, likely to be the first quarterback off the board.  Newton could go anywhere between the first overall pick and the fourth round.  I have no feel for how he’s perceived in NFL circles.  Either way, we’re looking at a max of four players (more likely three) who are capable of fulfilling first round draft promise on a reasonable time table.

Newton is a statistically similar college quarterback to Mark Sanchez, an observation first made by Football Outsiders’ Bill Barnwell.  Sanchez rocketed up draft boards all the way to no. 5 overall.  It would have helped Newton had former college teammate Tim Tebow enjoyed some success as a rookie.  As far as Gus Malzahn quarterbacks go, we have no meaningful record to fall back on.  Maybe our best indication to date of his impact on passers is how spectacularly disappointing they’ve been at the next level without him: Mitch Mustain (Springdale (AR) HS) at Arkansas then USC, and then the failure of either Paul Smith or David Johnson (Tulsa) to make an NFL roster, even as a third quarterback with spectacular passing numbers.  Malzahn may simply be one more in the line of elite college coaches that can shred defenses with unspectacular talent.  Malzahn’s offense added 2.2 yards per attempt to Chris Todd’s college numbers before he could have even made a dent in terms of recruiting.

Along with the college starts, none of that really shapes out in Newton’s favor at the pro level.  Mark Sanchez played most of his college snaps with Steve Sarkisian bringing in the plays.  One criticism that absolutely will not hold up about Newton at the next level is that he’s just a runner.  This guy, from his community college days on, was a passing oriented player.  His running this year on his Heisman trophy campaign was likely out of necessity, which is also what made it a lethal weapon.  I project success for Cam Newton at the next level, but only relative success.  He’s not the next Eli Manning or Matt Ryan, and with that in mind, I think that there is a part of the draft where it will be too high to take Newton.

Complications of Quarterbacking

The NFC West race is going to have a significant outcome on who is positioned to land a quarterback in the upcoming draft.  Division winners, even bad ones, are playoff teams.  And playoff teams, even ones with poor records, don’t pick in the top half of the draft.  If St. Louis wins the NFC West, both San Francisco and Seattle will be in position to take a quarterback, and then it’s the team that has the higher draft selection that can get all the spoils, leaving scraps for the other.  But if St. Louis doesn’t win it, we’re looking at one of the two other contenders, San Francisco and Seattle, one of them being completely out of position in the draft to land the player that they want (although if the player they want is Pat Devlin or Christian Ponder, they might get lucky).  The other one is going to be likely up drafting inside the top ten picks, and could be in position to target the passer they want.

There are simply too many teams who will be drafting in the top ten this year who are going to go for a quarterback for teams who have 7 or more wins to be in position.  One of the reasons that I feel, ultimately, that Foles or Gabbert might declare for the draft leaving an excellent opportunity at a conference championship as a senior on the table is that both of those guys might go in the first ten picks if they come out this year.  Right now, the top ten picks in the NFL draft are as follows:

1. Carolina
2. Cincinnati
3. Denver
4. Buffalo
5. Detroit
6. Arizona
7. Dallas
8. San Francisco
9. Minnesota
10. Tennessee

All of that is subject to change.  Carolina could choose to stick with Jimmy Clausen for his second year, but the timing is bad: how often do you actually get to pick first overall.  Heck, the last time Carolina finished with one win they got to pick second because Houston was an expansion team.  Cincinnati is bound to start over if the guy they want is available at quarterback (for that offense, seems like that would be Mallett).  Denver is fine one way or another at the position.  Buffalo is the other team likely to take a guy they like if he’s there, but they are not a danger to reach for one of the seniors with Ryan Fitzpatrick playing more than adequately.  Detroit isn’t taking a quarterback in this draft, not to mention that they are likely to get to 4 or 5 wins.  Arizona’s need at the position probably trumps everything else, and at no. 6 (more likely no. 4 or 5), they become a likely candidate to trade up to no. 1 especially if Carolina is willing to stick with Clausen.  Dallas is fine, obviously.

San Francisco has a great need, but now at this point, may not have a choice.  No players who are graded as top five players are going to slide out of the top five, so either San Francisco would have to avoid the position until the second round, reach for the next best guy, or make someone like Buffalo an offer they can’t refuse to trade up (read: 2012 first rounder).  And if Andrew Luck really does stay in school, every team without legitimate playoff aspirations wants to closely clutch that 2012 lottery ticket.  Carolina wins that lottery this year if he comes out, but in 2012, he becomes that much more valuable.

There may be nothing but scraps left for the Titans when they pick: a re-tread like Carson Palmer, Byron Leftwich, or Brady Quinn could be the best option there if they cannot mend fences with Vince Young.  Which is one of the many reasons that firing Jeff Fisher and handing the team back to Young could be a far superior option to letting Fisher win his standoff with the franchise’s quarterback.

I think ultimately, this quarterback class will be defined by how the late rounders do, and the strength at the top defined by whether Luck, Gabbert, and Foles commit.  If none of them commit, we’re looking at 2012 being an all-time great quarterback draft class.  Here’s the problem (and for Jake Locker, the thing that justifies waiting a year): those teams need those quarterbacks right now.  Patience may be the greatest virtue, but in the NFL, it can get you fired.

Expecting Arkansas to have actually competed in the brutal SEC West this year given the stature of that program and the type of competition they faced on a week-in, week-out basis was predictive folly at the beginning of this season.  It wasn’t smart.  Alabama, Auburn, LSU: these are all stronger programs than Arkansas, and while Ryan Mallett was expected to earn his high first round NFL draft projection over the course of these four games, there wasn’t great evidence that he could be a great college quarterback in the SEC.

So perhaps the biggest surprise of the SEC West this season isn’t that Cam Newton is superman, or that Alabama’s defense struggled at times, or that Mississippi tanked and lost to a Jacksonville State team that isn’t among the ten best teams in it’s own subdivision.  The biggest surprise of all may be…that Arkansas was as good or better than they were expected to be.

In fact, the Razorbacks are just a Cam Newton ineligibility ruling from being the best team in the SEC this season.

It’s a remarkable accomplishment against the schedule they played, and you could make the argument that Arkansas’ 10-2 record is more impressive than Auburn’s 12-0.  The Auburn-Arkansas game was both the most impressive win that Auburn had this season and the most deflating loss that Arkansas took, but it’s college football and the way the scoring was run up at the end of that game, Auburn might have come up on the short end had they not knocked Mallett from the game.

And if that result was different, Arkansas is potentially knocking on the door of a national championship where at one loss, they are dangerously close to overtaking TCU in the BCS standings and probably would with a victory in the SEC title game.  Arkansas couldn’t stop Auburn’s ground attack in that game, so who knows if a healthy Mallett would have made any difference?  My points are that: it was a close outcome game until the very end, and in hindsight, that was the biggest college football game of the year.

How easy would it have been at 4-2, and no chance to play for the SEC title because of head to head losses to the two frontrunners for Arkansas to fold at that point and limp to 7-5 and a forgettable bowl bid?  Really easy, I imagine.  Instead, they will wait on Auburn to go in and beat South Carolina, and then, just maybe, Arkansas will be heading to the Sugar Bowl as an at large team in the BCS.

I think it will be very well deserved.  They clearly aren’t ahead in the at large pecking order of undefeated TCU (automatic), and one-losses Stanford or Ohio State, but the BCS is ten teams.  The Big Ten can’t send it’s third one loss team as another at large, per BCS mandate.  That means, competing with Arkansas for that last at large bid are: Boise State, Oklahoma State, Nevada, and Missouri.  Anyone else who could possibly attain that at large bid is going to be playing this week in a conference championship match, where a loss would send them to three losses (out of the BCS running), and a win sends them to the BCS.

The ONLY team playing a conference championship this week that could lose the game and still make the BCS is the Auburn Tigers.  An Auburn loss to South Carolina puts the Gamecocks in, and drops the Razorbacks out of the BCS.  But when you look at the competition: Boise, Nevada, OSU, Missouri, consider that by-and-large voters are a “what have you done for me lately” group.  All Arkansas has done lately is win their last six games putting up 30 or more points in each game, and by an average margin of about 3 TDs per game.

I think that feat alone makes them more BCS-deserving than every available option this side of Boise State, and Boise cannot overcome the financial discrepancy between having two SEC teams and one SEC team in the BCS.  Pending the South Carolina-Auburn outcome, Bobby Petrino’s team is headed for the Sugar Bowl because they’ve been college football’s best team since the middle of October.  TCU and Arkansas would be a Sugar Bowl dream match-up.

This article is about Cameron Newton and the Auburn Tigers, but with all the investigative press swirling around Newton like vultures, it’s not really about Newton at all.  It’s about his team, and about the BCS, and the way that SEC teams aren’t held to the same standard as teams elsewhere in the nation.

The BCS works for the SEC.  In that conference, the system is essentially a season-long playoff, or a season-long survivorship.  You can make a coherent argument that the SEC is the strongest conference in college football, and the voters themselves enable this argument every single season.  Look around.  Right now it’s Auburn that has survived the SEC through 75% of the season.  They are the only team without a loss.  It’s accepted that this makes them the front runner to represent the SEC in the BCS Championship game.

Are they appreciably better than LSU, Arkansas, or Alabama?  Probably not, but they survived the best punches of LSU and Arkansas at home, and are at least 50-50 to beat two loss Alabama in this years iron bowl.  If they do, they will have the best resume of any SEC team this year, and provided they survive the SEC championship, they are likely either no. 1 or no. 2 in the nation.

Progressively more, however, the BCS isn’t about picking out the best teams for number one or number two.  This goes back to the SEC survivorship bias.  There’s a really good probability that every season some team will come out of the SEC without a loss, but there’s a really low probability that YOUR favorite SEC team can do it in any given year, which is the strength of schedule element.  It’s one of the reasons that Alabama can still claim to be the elite SEC program: they’ve lost two games, but because they have such a strong strength of schedule rating, they can argue that they are as good as any team they’ve lost to in the SEC.  It’s the transitive property: they may not have beaten LSU or South Carolina, but they beat Arkansas.  Arkansas beat South Carolina and Georgia.  Auburn is immune from the transitive property…until they lose, then every team in the SEC has a “we’re better” argument.

Auburn fans certainly are familiar with the 2004 season, when a 12-0 AU team led by Jason Campbell, Ronnie Brown, and Cadillac Williams finished third in the nation and missed the title game.  I think that definitely factors in here.  However, according to the rule of the law in the BCS, if Auburn isn’t the most impressive or second most impressive team in college football, they’re not supposed to be deserving of consideration at no. 1 or no. 2 in the polls.

Frankly, that’s the case here: I’m not sure what the argument here for Auburn is vs. teams like Oregon, TCU, and Boise State, the other undefeated teams.  When you look at Auburns season, and look at their key games, you find the following facts:

• 3 point road win at Mississippi State
• 3 point OT win at home vs Clemson
• 7 point home win vs South Carolina
• 3 point road win at Kentucky
• 22 point home win vs. Arkansas*
• 7 point home win vs. LSU

Auburn has played in a lot of big games with a lot of media coverage.  That 22 point home win against Arkansas should be asterix’d because while the Tigers showed they were the better team, the point differential was a function of multiple defensive TDs scored against Arkansas’ backup quarterback.  The story of Auburn’s season has been relatively unimpressive home wins against quality opponents.  Would they win a bowl game against TCU, Boise, Oregon, or even Ohio State?  Based on their resume, you would expect the answer to be “no.”  Auburn doesn’t win by comfortable margins against good teams.  They’ve merely survived every test.

That’s essentially what a playoff system does, is it not?  If the BCS formula was that any team that is undefeated in the SEC conference automatically gets to play for the BCS title, Auburn clearly has qualified to this point, and is just three tests away from automatic qualification in the title game.  That’s not officially the BCS position however.  The official position is that the three most impressive teams, clearly the ones who beat opponents consistently by multiple TD margins, should be the top three in the polls.  That’s Boise, TCU, and Oregon right now.  Then you can consider other really impressive one loss teams who have run through their schedules for the most part with only losses to top ten teams before considering the first SEC team this year.  I’d say the resume of Ohio State, and of Stanford is just as impressive as Auburn’s this year.  That doesn’t mean I don’t think Auburn is entitled to be ranked above these one-loss teams: if they beat Alaabama, they certainly will have done more against a more difficult schedule.  But I mean, to honestly make a case for undefeated Auburn over Oregon or TCU or Boise, don’t they need to beat Alabama by more than a score?  Is that not what those other undefeateds have been doing all year?

That’s essentially privilege in the SEC.  In no other conference would a team receive an automatic berth for merely surviving the SEC gauntlet.  Style points are supposed to and need to matter.  Well, except for the computer average, but thats a different story entirely.  Auburn’s chances of winning the SEC as an undefeated team are somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2, which is a realistic possibility.  Their chances of being so impressive in their last four games that we glance at what TCU and Boise have done all season and think, “you know, those teams are certainly no…Auburn?”  That’s not a realistic possibility, I don’t think.

It’s in a bout of irony that this injustice will likely be rectified, as the wolves surround Auburn and Cam Newton’s status as an eligible amateur athlete.  If Auburn loses, either in the court of the NCAA or on the field, it’s unlikely that any SEC team is going to one-loss its way to the national championship (considering that LSU is the only other team with just one loss…to Auburn).  At that point, we probably would get the two most deserving teams in college football playing for the championship, even if **gasp** none of them play in the SEC.