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College Football
How Prognosticators Didn't See This Season Coming
Voters in the polls, projectors of the bowls and forecasters of the Heisman Trophy race should all tip their hats.
And be swatted on the head.
The collective preseason guesswork of 2007 was shoddy on an epic scale. We’d like to have told you that Kansas-Missouri on Nov. 24 looms as the college football game of the year. Or that Oregon quarterback Dennis Dixon would be the Heisman front-runner.
Or even that the Ducks, Jayhawks and Tigers, all absent from The Associated Press preseason poll, are at this moment clawing each other as top-six teams in The AP _ and top five in the BCS standings.
But the crystal ball relied too heavily on the checklist.
Start with the fattest budgets (Ohio State, Texas, Florida) and work down.
Identify the been there/done that coaches (Pete Carroll, Bob Stoops, Nick Saban) and give them the benefit of the doubt.
Favor the teams of top returning players, especially quarterbacks (Brian Brohm, John David Booty, Chad Henne).
These time-honored methods of breaking down a college autumn worked beautifully in recent years.
Last season, Ohio State had Troy Smith. In 2005, Texas rode Vince Young. In 2004, Southern California carved up the game with Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. These teams and players started at or stayed near the top without a glitch throughout the regular season.
This year has been about rebelling against predictability. Three weekends of the regular season remain, but we’re too far down the road to alter this year’s theme. The unexpected rules.
It is with perfect hindsight that we offer the 10 biggest miscalculations of 2007:
10. Louisville would edge West Virginia for the Big East title. The first sign of problems for the Cardinals came in the second week when they needed nearly all of their points to put away Middle Tennessee State 58-42.
9. The Nebraska-Missouri winner would take the Big 12 North. Well, this one could still be true, but in the same way the Missouri-Eastern Illinois survivor would win the division.
8. Connecticut. Who knew that the Huskies’ game on Oct. 13 at Virginia could be an Orange Bowl preview? UConn entered this season 3-11 in Big East play over the last two years. Only Syracuse was worse. Last weekend’s loss at Cincinnati, another surprise team, stung, but the Huskies should win at least nine this season.
7. Short-shrifting the any-given-Saturday idea. Head-spinners only happen on the NFL’s level playing fields, so we believed. But this season has produced the two biggest upsets by point spreads in history: Stanford over Southern California and Syracuse over Louisville; along with the first ranked I-A team (Michigan) to fall to a I-AA program (Appalachian State).
6. Chase Daniel. In the preseason he was just one of the quarterbacks, along with Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell, Texas’ Colt McCoy and Texas A&M’s Stephen McGee, but Missouri’s Daniel has separated himself from the pack .
5. Michigan was national championship material. Spread-option attacks doomed a rebuilding Wolverines defense early .
4. Southern California was the lead-pipe cinch to play for the national title. The Trojans’ biggest problem would be how to find snaps for their roster of prep All-Americans. Turned out the bigger problem was failing to defeat a Stanford team that had lost 16 of its last 18 games.
3. Booty. From Heisman favorite to also receiving votes on the All-Pacific-10 team. A broken finger didn’t help.
2. Kansas. Last undefeated team from a BCS conference standing. This was a pretty good program in the 19th century, used the 20th to rebuild, and now is reaping the benefits.
1. Notre Dame. The Irish don’t have a BCS rating, but an average of their computer standings, used as a BCS component, ranks the Irish No. 95, just ahead of Louisiana-Monroe, just behind San Jose State and Memphis. The anti-Domers are loving it, and the faithful are deeply wounded. The empire’s fall is college football’s most shocking development.
Other than that, we had college football nailed.
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(c) 2007, The Kansas City Star.
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