Suppose final 2 games: Florida 34 Okla. 24; Texas 21 Ohio St. 17, and given a vote in the AP, where would you put Utah? p.s. love that photo
Me too. 3. Utah didn't impress me too much. They simply beat a team that also didn't impress me too much. Florida, Texas, OU, probably PSU and USC as well would all beat Utah. Like what has been said: Utah is a good team, but in a real conference they don't do sh!t. Maybe, just maybe a play off system could sort this out.
It was very clear that Bama didn't come to play. They did all sorts of things that were very uncharacteristic (miss tackles, blow assignments, miss blocks) and it cost them against a very good team that would probably give fits to any team in the country. However, I feel very strongly that if Bama had been playing Utah for a National Title instead of a consolation prize, we would have seen very different results. Saban has a tendency of this kind of thing. There was UAB when he was our coach and ULM last year...even at Michigan State he was good for ONE loss to a clearly outmatched opponent every year (or so we were told by Sparty fans).
I think Bama's biggest problems were lack of QB protection and shoddy tackling. So I think we'd get waxed.
We wouldn't if we showed up and played like we did against GT. That was finally what our team was capable of--not the poor excuse for a season that we just endured.
Here's a little tidbit from the Outback Bowl program (page 57): "Over the past nine seasons, 60 of the 70 senior starters under Kirk Ferentz have been drafted or signed to a free agent contract." This year Iowa had eight players on our roster that were 4 Star recruits out of high school. South Carolina had 32. It's good to have 4 star recruits (or better), don't get me wrong, but what a kid looks like when he's 17 and being rated versus what they are when they're 22 and have been in a college program for four or five years are two different things. Utah was a senior-laden offensive team. Why couldn't they be more talented than Alabama?
Best gump excuse I've heard at work this morning. "Utah should have been in the National Championship Game" :lol: