Herbie and the SEC love bug: wrecked by false logic about UM vs the SEC

I'm still wondering whether or not I should throw my shoes through the wall. Seriously

i dont need tables and stats to prove anything.we and the Big Ten as a whole is average.and has been for 10 years. we will get better.

ps. last year was the 2011 season,not 2010

Could have totally made this a diary

I thought after the game, despite how awful things were, that we could make an argument as being the 2nd best team in the SEC.

I think Alabama is that much better than everyone else

They did mention that we had at least crossed the 50 (and scored) before half time something that LSU hadn't done in the national championship game. FWTW

I respect the effort, but that's a very questionable metric. For example, I'd have felt much better with a 10-3 loss last night, but I think you're saying that would have been a bigger blowout than 41-14.

The reality is that the elite Big Ten teams don't stack up to the elite SEC teams right now. As you go down the standings and compare (mid- and lower-level teams), I think the Big Ten is more competitive, but there's no real disputing the disparity up top.

I am all for giving Alabama their due -- they're an amazingly well coached and talented football team.  But, I cannot shake the feeling that they SHOULD be that good given the built in advantages that they have over the rest the other non-SEC schools.  In fairness, I won't even bring up the illicit advantages because I have no real proof that they occur -- although I believe that they do.

This is not "sour grapes" Bama is great, and Michigan is not even close to their caliber, and maybe never was nor will be.  But, just like I cannot take MLB pundits serious when the fawn over the NY Yankees who neglect to mention that TOTALLY unfair playing field the Yankees play on due to their wealth, I cannot take a CFB pundit serious when he fawns over Bama without mentioning oversigning.

On www.oversigning.com Alabama was +12, while Michigan was only +1 in their "Oversigning Cup Points."  I think this practice has been curbed significantly, which might help Michigan get back onto par with programs like Alabama, but the effects are quite obvious, though not talked about by the fawning commentators.  It's a lot easier to build that ever so valuable depth when your program effectively gets an extra full recruiting class every four years.  Compare that the horrible attrition that Michigan went through from 2005 until Hoke stopped the bleeding, and you see the disparity that was on display last night.  Again, cudos to Bama, you're bad ass.  But, why not discuss this as a factor?

The dominance of the SEC is really distorted by the fact that the best of the SEC is clearly better than the best of the rest.  Sure, Auburn won a title recently, but they would not be in the top 2 of the Big Ten this year.  Florida is the same too.  Arkansas has never won anything that I can remember as being significant, nor has South Carolina.  Georgia hasn't won anything either although their history makes me think they have been better than they have been recently.

If Alabama and LSU left and formed their own conference then they would be the ones chanting S-E-C and the former members of the conference would be relatively quiet.  

We'll get there with Hoke focusing on the Big Ten first and formost.   We need to become a consistent midwest power before we can expect to be title contenders year in and year out.  We even have an advantage in the midwest as there are now only two teams that can legitimately vie for the top recruits enmasse.  That is not the case in the south where there is FU, FSU, Miami, Ala, LSU, and Auburn to contend for the southeast recruits.

Wait so we would have beaten Mississippi State? Not sure about that...

Sort of taking this in a different direction and trying to build on it a little, using the 2011 schedules for Michigan and Alabama, I figured out the same ratio for each game in the schedule (using "0" for shutouts and losses, for purposes of this analysis), and got the average for each team. It comes to 0.46 for Michigan and 0.3 for Alabama. 

If you adjust the points against us downward to "simulate" the sort of luck teams had against Alabama offensively last year (34% less scoring on average), we actually still lose to MSU and the Iowa game becomes a statistical tossup. Conversely, if you "simulate" the sort of offense that Alabama's opponents put up against up (i.e., 0.46/0.3 this time), then Alabama's record is unaffected. That being said, we averaged 34 points per game last year, and Alabama average 36, so so it may stand to reason that records would remain largely untouched, but it's interesting to think about the sorts of margins both teams were winning by - we averaged 24 points, whereas Alabama averaged 30 points in their wins. 

Good post - thanks.  I had not realized their games vs. SEC opponents were that one-sided last year.  Takes away a small amount of the sting.

Lets be honest:

We aren't in the the same field with the likes of Alabama.  I somewhat expected the score last night, given our performance last year and given Nick Saban's propensity for having his teams coached extremely well...and to (cough) oversign with the best of them.

But I digress.  Making broad generalizations about the B1G and SEC from this 1 game is a little silly.  The SEC is a solid conference, but essentially boils down to two elite teams, a couple decent teams, and some perrenial bottom feeders.  I don't see how this is much different from the PAC-12.  Arguably, last year, the PAC-12 was a better conference (all around) with the likes of USC, Stanford, and Oregon, while the SEC had LSU and Alabama.

As for the B1G, I see us as having more solid teams, but no real elite teams, right now.

than the rest of the BIG . Just my opinion as I wear my Maize and Blue glasses.

The Big Ten is almost as deep as the SEC now, but Bama and LSU are still enjoying the advantages of five years of over-recruiting; that skews the relative strengths of the conferences.  Bama is going to do the same thing they did to Michigan to a lot of top-level SEC teams.  

As much as I hate to say it, we almost have to cheer for Sparty to remain a good team, becuase the NCAA gutted Penn State for the next ten years, and that negates the acquisition of Nebraska.  

Maybe the next time Alabama gets caught cheating, the NCAA will gut them for ten years instead of giving them "punishment" that amounts to fifteen minutes of "time out."