The Eye Test: Week 2 Reaction

College football these days is all about perception.  Come the end of the season people will be asking things like how bad was that loss? And, how good was that win? A decision in the minds of the voters will have to be made as to which team “looks” the best and those perceptions are already being built in this young season. Thus, it is so incredibly important for conferences to perform well and for teams to win big and not struggle.  You have to pass the "eye test".

In this post, I’m not going to talk about how good Alabama or LSU or the SEC look, because they are already at the top of public perception.  Nor am I going to talk about how bad the Big East looks, because well everyone expects that.  I want to point out some trends that I think will be important to keep an eye on as time progresses. 

Looking up!

The ACC – Last year the ACC only won 33% of their regular season non-conference games against other BCS conferences.  This year, they are 4-3 so for.  Albeit, some of those game are against low-level Big East teams, but those were the teams they were losing to last year.  The three teams that beat the ACC were Tennessee, Kansas State, and Stanford (all of whom are currently ranked).  Additionally, the ACC hasn’t had any embarrassing moments this year, like losing to a FCS team.  The point I’m trying to make here is that the ACC is finally not looking like they don’t belong (pardon the double negative there).  They have yet to prove that they are anything special, but are finally not making it easy for others to dismiss them.  The goal for the ACC should be to separate themselves from the Big East and put up a fight against other BCS foes.  This will hopefully get them back into the discussion of being a “quality” football conference. 

FCS schools – Not only are FCS school making bank for playing big time programs (upwards of up tp $500K) but they are beating them in the process.  This year 8 FCS programs have beaten FBS schools; two of those have been teams in BCS conferences.  This is the most of wins for the FCS since 2007 when they won 9 games over FBS teams.   From 2004 – 2009 the FCS won just over 4 games per season.  Over the past three they have nearly doubled that to just under 8 games per season.  I say keep playing the so called cupcakes, because it supports their football programs and they aren’t all as “cupcakey” as some would say.

Falling Down…

The B1G – By the same standard used above with the ACC, the B1G (or Big 10 conference) is 2-6 against BCS conference foes, with their only two wins coming against Vanderbilt and Syracuse.  This year might be the first year since the 04-05 season that the B1G conference will not have two schools in BCS bowl games.

Long Road Trips – This past weekend, three ranked teams travelled west and lost; Oklahoma State, Wisconsin and Nebraska.  Duke also travelled far west and came up way short against Stanford.  Additionally, USC made the trip all the way to New York City to play Syracuse and didn’t look great in their performance.  Keep an eye on this as conferences get bigger and bigger and spread further and further across the US.  The games between Florida/Mizzou, Texas Tech/West Virginia, Miami/Syracuse, or the best one of all Boise State/South Florida will cause teams to take major road trips and worst of all will limit visiting fan attendance.  It is hard enough to play on the road in College Football, but will be even more difficult as this trend progresses.