(05-16-2017 09:53 AM)YNot Wrote:  

(05-16-2017 08:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  Wow ... I detail specific facts that negated the cherry-pick games you cited, and you reply by lecturing me about "strawmen" and "facts being stubborn things"?

That's pretty astonishing when the facts I marshaled were far more relevant and to the point of Aresco's claims.

Aresco is pretty clear. At 32:25 of your podcast, he says "the weaker halves of those (P5) leagues wouldn't do any better in our league than they would do in theirs, I'm totally convinced, and our top teams would do just as well in those leagues as they do in our league".

That's equating the on-field level of AAC football with that of P5 football, and the facts just do not support that in any way.

Actually, I would posit that the recent facts and technicalities do support the argument that the AAC "top teams would do just as well in those leagues as they do in our league." Not definitive, but the facts do lend support to Aresco's assertion.

Would Houston have gone 9-4 last year in the Big 12 or ACC? There is no definitive way to answer this question, but it is highly likely that Houston would have done as well in the Big 12 or ACC as it did in the AAC last year. They beat the Big 12 champ and a 7-1 ACC divisional runner-up. That's 2 wins against top Big 12 and ACC teams. 9-4 would have been a realistic finish for Houston in either the Big 12 or ACC.

Would Navy have gone 9-5 in the Big 12 or ACC? Again, no definitive answer available, but Navy beat Houston (9-4), Memphis (8-5, who annihilated the last-place B12 team), and Notre Dame (4-8, but beat 9-4 Miami and played competitively against bowl-eligible ACC and PAC schools - including 10-win Stanford[by 7] and Virginia Tech[by 3]).

What about 10-4 Temple? They lost to top-5 Penn St. by just 7 points in Beaver Stadium. Temple would not have won the Big Ten championship, but a 10-win season in a P5 conference isn't infeasible.

This so much. The whole premise that G5 teams can't compete against P5 teams consistently is like when the world thought black people could not compete against white people in the Olympics.

It's easy to say someone can't do something when you are not allowing them to.