We return. We’ll start with college football, move to Iowa State football, move to Iowa State basketball, then zoom back out to college basketball. Ready?
The SEC Is That Good
There was a little run of takes after the SEC put two teams in the playoff again saying those teams didn’t deserve it. I’m not sure what the basis of those takes was. I suppose you could go back to résumé, but if the idea is that Georgia got the benefit of the doubt, having lost its conference title game, what more did you want them to do outside of SEC play? They beat multiple ACC teams, having scheduled a perennial power on opening weekend. Their Conference USA opponent was among that league’s best teams, and they beat them by 49. The whole thing was contrived, because while you can make a legitimate complaint that the College Football Playoff should feature the teams with the strongest résumés rather than the “best” teams, as the committee is told to do (it does a mixture, as we’ve seen), these résumés were pretty darn good. Who would you replace them with? Baylor? Who lost twice? And if it’s the best teams, well, we knew going in that Alabama and Georgia were the two best teams among those considered, and they then went and proved it, each rather comfortably covering a large spread. I’m not an SEC fan, or a fan of an SEC team, but they’re the best, and if you’re going to include them in your national championship, they’re going to supply the national champion and a plurality of contenders more often than not.
There’s a little run of takes now saying this somehow justifies playoff expansion. The logic seems to go, “Other teams can’t compete with the SEC teams in a four-team playoff, so we should expand the playoff to let more SEC teams and non-SEC teams in,” which…I don’t understand. If you want to expand the playoff, that’s great, but it’s not going to make the SEC suddenly less powerful. If anything, you’re risking a third and fourth SEC power rising and getting yourself a doomsday scenario where 1) the SEC is routinely putting three teams in the final four and 2) the SEC regular season becomes somewhat meaningless at the top, as the powers know they have little to lose but seeding and pride.
The real basis for both of these takes seems to be some sort of fear of the SEC. Which, ok, yes, the SEC is the best and has been the best for a while. But it hasn’t been a full-on monopoly. Ohio State has had its moments. Clemson has had plenty of its moments. And the SEC’s might has, with two Georgia teams and one LSU team added to the mix, come entirely from Alabama. Eventually, Alabama will slide. That’s what happens to kingdoms, and businesses, and college football dynasties. Eventually, more challengers will rise. What’s more? They already have. The playoff’s only been around for eight years now, and for a four-year stretch in the middle, Clemson had more playoff success than any other team in the country. Clemson, from the ACC (and aided in this quest by being in the ACC, where it’s magnitudes easier to make the playoff, but that’s tangential).
Anyway, the claims the SEC wasn’t that good were misplaced, the claims expansion will dramatically change the quality of the College Football Playoff are misplaced, and the root cause of each is misplaced. Alabama will not last forever. In the meantime, though, yes, it’s really freaking good.
Brock Purdy Died as He Lived
In a football sense. Sorry if that was misleading at all.
Iowa State played about the game we expected against Clemson. They showed some courage against a more talented foe. They kept the game tight until the end. They had a few disastrous mistakes, the final one of which was quite the microcosm of Brock Purdy’s incredible Iowa State career, in which Purdy made a game-saving play, scrambling for a first down on fourth and short, then got stripped and lost the ball.
I make a point to say Purdy’s career in Ames was incredible because it was. Purdy was not the quarterback he was often made out to be, but he was a great quarterback—probably Iowa State’s best ever, considering how well he played over such a long period of time (Seneca Wallace, Sage Rosenfels, and George Amundson all threw more interceptions than touchdowns over their careers). He also represented the program about as well as you could hope for a guy to do it. He was a victim, in a way, of his own hype, because while he was never a Heisman-quality player, that’s the wrong bar to use to measure a quarterback in Ames in this era.
Undefeated No More: Iowa State Basketball
Iowa State never really looked like they had a great chance against Baylor, but they did give the defending champions one of their two best games of the year so far, and they did it despite shooting a woeful one-for-fourteen from three, which is partially a product of Baylor’s defense and partially a bad day and partially a little bad luck. Make just a couple of those, and this might have been one heck of a finish.
The challenge, now that Iowa State’s lost, is to get in the Big 12 win column ASAP against a stretch of clear, as of now, NCAA Tournament teams. The next five go Texas Tech (H), Oklahoma (A), Kansas (A), Texas (H), Texas Tech (A). Wednesday is when the Red Raiders come to town. There’s a lot of looming pressure there for the Cyclones, if you look at it in context. Hopefully the locker room takes it one game at a time.
Undefeated Still: Those Who Remain
With Iowa State (and LSU) both out of the ranks of the unbeatens, it’s Baylor, USC, and Colorado State who remain undefeated, and none of those three is like the others. Baylor’s the defending champion and the best team in the country. USC’s a solid team in the Pac-12 that’s been largely untested. Colorado State’s a very good team by Mountain West standards but could easily end up in the NIT.
No really big games since we last spoke. Auburn and Alabama each held serve in their SEC openers at home (against LSU and Tennessee, respectively). UCF got a big win over Michigan at home, putting Johnny Dawkins’ team in the bubble conversation. Villanova isn’t at the top of the Big East yet but they’re getting closer. The Big Ten leads the way tonight with Wisconsin traveling to Purdue and Iowa hosting Maryland. Each should be businesslike, but this is college basketball, so business is always up for disruption, and if you want to watch, those are at 7:00 and 9:00 Eastern Time on Big Ten Network.
See you tomorrow (or so is the plan).
