(12-31-2017 10:01 AM)Bearcats#1 Wrote:  The SEC was overrated this year. We all said this early on. I'm not sure why people are baffled at their bowl record.

In fairness, they've only played 4 of 9 bowl games, so best to wait until after tomorrow to draw conclusions. And two of their three losses are by Missouri and Kentucky, schools that have never coasted on name recognition in football.

I suspect the SEC will go 2-3 tomorrow (LSU and Georgia win, Alabama, Auburn, and SC lose), which will make for a bad overall bowl season, but we'll see.

(12-31-2017 09:41 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  B1G is 7-0, 3-0 in NY6 and on verge of finishing 8-0, historically good.

PAC has finished at 1-8, 0-2, historically bad.

ACC, last year's big bowl winner, is 4-5 but still has Clemson left to play playoff games.

Big 12 is surprisingly good at 5-2, with Oklahoma still in the mix.

SEC is 1-3, but amazingly still has 5 teams left to play, including three NY6 games, all on January 1st, and possibly a sixth overall/4th NY6 game if either UGA or Bama wins their playoff games, so their situation is up in the air.

AAC? We're sitting at 4-4. The AAC has had a losing bowl record all four years of our existence, so everything hinges on UCF vs Auburn.

Correction, the AAC is 3 and 3 this year so far. That said, the AAC does still have some work to do. I believe that the AAC is 0 and 6 versus the Big 12 this year (unless they picked up a win against Baylor or Kansas that I didn't remember). That record against a P5 conference is not acceptable.

But I still maintain the argument (win or lose) that bowl games absolutely do not tell the strength or weakness of a team or conference. Academic/disciplinary suspensions and players declaring early and deciding not play leaves some teams with less than what they had during the season. Injured players have time to heal. Lack of game time decisions during the break, rustiness, coaching changes all contribute to different team showing up for bowls versus regular season. Even the weather matters when cold weather teams are playing warm weather teams. The warm weather teams don't have as much bad weather to deal with even they played in real football weather.

USF beat Texas Tech.

(12-31-2017 01:31 PM)AusTxPony Wrote:  USF beat Texas Tech.

Not beating on USF, but beating Texas tech this year isn't much of an accomplishment, their head coach is nothing but a pretty face. The guy is meant to be an OC, not HC at this time in his career.

The problem with using bowl records is that it isn't always an even matchup - All of the big 10 was left out of the playoff so each team got pushed down a level which meant they had better teams in the bigger bowls while SEC has its top 2 teams in the Playoffs leaving mostly crappy teams for its higher bowls.

(12-31-2017 01:31 PM)AusTxPony Wrote:  USF beat Texas Tech.

Yep, I forgot to think about the bowl games and Tech did beat Houston early in the year.

(12-31-2017 01:17 PM)sfink16 Wrote:  

(12-31-2017 09:41 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  B1G is 7-0, 3-0 in NY6 and on verge of finishing 8-0, historically good.

PAC has finished at 1-8, 0-2, historically bad.

ACC, last year's big bowl winner, is 4-5 but still has Clemson left to play playoff games.

Big 12 is surprisingly good at 5-2, with Oklahoma still in the mix.

SEC is 1-3, but amazingly still has 5 teams left to play, including three NY6 games, all on January 1st, and possibly a sixth overall/4th NY6 game if either UGA or Bama wins their playoff games, so their situation is up in the air.

AAC? We're sitting at 4-4. The AAC has had a losing bowl record all four years of our existence, so everything hinges on UCF vs Auburn.

Correction, the AAC is 3 and 3 this year so far. That said, the AAC does still have some work to do. I believe that the AAC is 0 and 6 versus the Big 12 this year (unless they picked up a win against Baylor or Kansas that I didn't remember). That record against a P5 conference is not acceptable.

But I still maintain the argument (win or lose) that bowl games absolutely do not tell the strength or weakness of a team or conference.

Bowl games aren't perfect, but as a class they compare favorably to regular season games as a measure of conference strength. In contrast to regular season OOC matchups, which usually favor one team or the other thanks to home field advantage, often match teams that aren't apples to apples (e.g., one of our best teams vs one of the other conferences's worst, or vice-versa), and where teams may not be very motivated to play them because they are prepping for more important conference games .... bowl games are usually played on a neutral field by equally motivated teams and involving reasonably close like vs like (e.g, our #5 vs their #5) matchups, so add it all up and they are probably a more reasonable approximation of strength than regular season games.

bottom line, the SEC sucks this year

(12-29-2017 09:11 AM)Hurricane Drummer Wrote:  It looks like these guys are on it, as far as bowl records go.

https://wtop.com/ncaa-football/2017/12/2...records-8/

Btw, how has the SEC gone this long without playing a bowl game?

Is the PAC 12 trying to become G4?