And again, absolutely unfair to use five years ago as meaning anything about their worthiness this year. I'm putting them top 10 because they do seem to be that good, but if we use five years ago then we're just giving all kinds of benefit of the doubt to teams like Texas who have clearly slipped a bit. Of course, we only ever get to find out about the fact that Texas has slipped a bit the past two years because they play a real schedule. If Texas went on playing WAC/MWC every year, we'd have no idea until they entered a BCS bowl and got slaughtered.

That's a fair comparison to draw, isn't it?

not really. texas hasn't shown voters that they can execute the fake punt hook and ladder.

Looking at the past few years where theyve had the same coach and qb and other players seems reasonable. Are you telling me that if a team was 2-10 last year and then started this year 5-0 you wouldnt be a bit more skeptical than if they were 11-1?

yes. lsu got outgained at home. boise also rocked oregon the past two times theyve played once on the road.

right now sagarin predictor has boise 2.5 points below lsu.

you two are admitted casual fans and might want to take a step back here.

this 5 year window crap is a slippery slope. how do we heavily do we weigh 2007 relative to 2009? this season? does a two-loss auburn have a better claim to a bowl game than a 1 loss LSU because of auburn's success last season?

we're casual fans but i don't think we need to be experts for this topic. whether i watch 4 games today or 16 games today doesn't really change my views on what should be considered in polls, does it?

all I was addressing is you claiming that "nobody has any idea" how well they would play since that is obviously false. we do have an idea based on what this coach and some of these players have done before

Im saying the past results provide SOME information to us about how good a team is. we arent starting from scratch every season where each team has a 1/120 shot at being the best, we have a really strong idea of who will and will not be good.

No. No. I'm not a casual fan. I watch closely every Saturday and read columns probably every day of the week from Monday through Friday.

Do not, I repeat do NOT jump to the incorrect conclusion that you know significantly more than me about college ball.

your idea is based on stuff like:

"boise passed for 450 yards on team X who lost to team Y by 17 but LSU only passed for 250 yards on team X; also, team Y lost to nevada by 47 but only lost to LSU by 35!!!"

call me oldfashioned but i'm more persuaded by "alabama beat LSU, florida on the road and arkansas. boise beat [team ranked 15th-25th] and a bunch of schools nobody has heard of"

i'm not an expert but i know what i see on the field. boise has certainly shown me that they are better than mediocre teams but have given me ZERO reason to believe they can hang with a top 5 team. if you have to go back to 2006 for evidence that boise can beat a top team then something is very wrong.

Certainly I would. That is why I'm buying Boise as a top ten team. Meanwhile, I see Houston as a team that should break into the bottom of the top 25 this week. In terms of accomplishments this season alone, Boise is barely ahead. So I do trust in them more, yes. I'm not 100% discounting that.

However, if we're talking in terms of a national title game berth, that is a HUGE standard to prove worthy to. Benefit of the doubt based on trust in a coach (QB doesn't really apply if we're going a full five years back obviously) and a program in general isn't good enough. As I said, during Texas's decline of the past two years, do you not think they would have continued to blow the Mountain West's doors off and none of us would be any the wiser until they played in a BCS bowl and flopped?

And even if we're somehow giving away benefit of the doubt for past years (again, I disagree with weighting this so strongly, but again you're partially doing it based on personal bias and almighty pride), I don't know who Boise has beaten that shows that they can hang with the truly elite. They can hang with good teams, yes. Are we really going to give the Oklahoma win from four years ago credit enough to tell me that they can hang with LSU this year?

And again, maybe they can. MAYBE. I sure can't be confident in that though. A spot like that needs to be earned and not guessed at.

well at least youve made some progress from

In terms of talking about a national championship spot, I stand by that 100%.

Now stop cherry-picking and tell me what's wrong with the Texas example.

The overrun from a previous game that runs over into the beginning of your own team's game is one of the most ridiculous excruciating things ever. Especially when it's a blowout. GET THIS **** OVER WITH, BAYLOR.

I actually believed the hype for FSU at the beginning of the season lol

what are your expectations for WSU this season? .500? i like em tonight.

i really wish i went to a UG that had a football program (or any sports for that matter). saturdays are pretty dull for me. but i prefer WSU over every PAC12 team other than stanford and maybe oregon st

.500 was the goal before the season. I like the coach and don't want to see him fired even if we come up short of .500. If we were a total greasefire I'd feel differently, but the progress is obvious.

If they win tonight we should certainly be able to pull off the minimum 2-5 the rest of the way to get a bowl. But tonight marks the end of the easiest stretch of schedule all year. Stanford will undoubtedly beat us into reality next week; really need this win.

But I'm just happy at this point that we've gone from complete and total joke, undoubted worst team in a BCS conference, to basic respectability where any team at least has to mildly fear that we'll upset them.

Thankfully we'll still finish ahead of SCar even though they're prolly better. Also, thankful that most of the top-tier SEC teams are in the West this year. What a difference 5 years makes lol

edit: Georgia shoulda won that game but we suck. At least we played alright last night from what my drunken mind can remember.

Why are you so confidently saying that you'll finish ahead of South Carolina when you think that they're better? (I agree that they're better, from what I've seen at least.) Their remaining schedule looks a little tougher than yours, but not overly so. And they have the head-to-head tiebreak.

amirite?

Pretty jacked for this MIL-STL series. Game 5 might have been the best baseball game I've ever watched.

If we can beat auburn, which seems fairly (not superconfident tho) do-able, we'll finish ahead of them. Arkansas is going to whip their ass.

needless to say I'm a huge mississippi state fan next week.

You both have Florida too though. I can see South Carolina beating them and Georgia losing to them. I'm not saying you won't do it; I'm just surprised at the confidence in the prediction.

panthers are playing so well but losing every week due to sheer stupidity. without exaggeration that was the worst timeout called in the history of football

What was the timeout situation?

Thing is, the Panthers are in a good spot because they've got their QB but aren't quite good enough to make a deep playoff run yet, so this is like year one of Manning where they improved noticeably but still got a nice draft pick that turned into Edgerrin James. Sucks to lose now, but it's probably just as well.

saints have the ball at the end of the half with no timeouts, brees throws a pass caught in the middle of the field with about 7 seconds left. players are running on and off the field, clock hits zero before a kick gets off and players start heading off, then the refs says butnahhhhhhhhhh rivera called a timeout. saints make the fg and win the game by 3.