Is Oregon the 2nd Most Underrated Team in the Last 20 Years?
Posted on 12. Apr, 2010 at 6:51 pm by bbryan in Football, NCAA Football, Oregon Ducks Football, PAC-10 Football
According to Scott Cushing of the Seattle PI they are. Pretty interesting article, check it out for yourself. Whether or not you agree with his findings you have to admire his work. According to his findings Oregon is the second most underrated football program (Boise State was first) in the last 20 years.
Finally someone has put a formula to what we already knew, that Oregon doesn’t get nearly enough respect. We all remember how the BCS robbed the Ducks from a chance at the National title in 2001-2002. In 1999 Oregon started unranked and finished 19th (with 5 teams with worse records still ahead of them); in 2000 Oregon started unranked again only to finish 7th; in 2005 unranked to 13th (and 5th in the final BSC ranking); in 2007 unranked to 23rd; in 2008 21st to 10th.
The most egregious of those is the unranking to start 2000. They returned a solid team including their QB from the previous year where they won their last 6 games of the year, including their bowl game.
I’m not sure why Oregon gets such a lack of respect. Under Bellotti they turned out solid year after solid year, and even mixed in some spectacular years. Being in the Northwest obviously doesn’t help as Boise State, Oregon and Washington State are 1,2,3 respectively as being the most underrated. Sure seems like a west coast bias to me. But that doesn’t explain the Huskies being the 12 most overrated. Although that can easily be explained away by the fact the Huskies haven’t been good at football for the last 8 years or so. Look for them to add to their overrated ranking this year as I’m sure they will start out the season ranked after their highly successful season last year.
What this really shows is that pre-season polls suck and are should be pointless. Unfortunately it actually matters where you start the season ranked in college football. One more reason there needs to be a playoff system with a mixture of division winners and at large teams picked by a committee, not some mumbo jumbo formula. At least for now, we can take solace in the fact the Ducks continually rise above the bias and turn out solid seasons.
Mick
13. Apr, 2010
Good call on the article. Although he does state the most obvious conclusion: teams east of the Rockies are ranked higher in preseason polls (other than USC) because of bias voters. USC is an exception to the rule based upon their massive media market that they dominate and the fact that they play the majority of their games on ABC during primetime in the eastern time zones…
Interesting how he found Florida to be overrated, but still recognizes that they finish pretty damn well too.
Any possible way that you Duck fans and SEC haters respect that fact in the article?
bbryan
13. Apr, 2010
Yeah that is the main thing to take from the article, that the voters have a massive east coast bias, outside of USC and UW.
As for the SEC, I don’t argue that they aren’t the best conference, because they are on a pretty consistant basis. But they are severly overrated at times, espeically their middle of the pack teams.
Mick
13. Apr, 2010
I love how Tennesse South Carolina, Kentucky, Ole Miss, and Miss State are talked about like they’re worth a shit. They are the epitome of east coast bias. You’re telling me that BSU, Oregon, and even WSU would mop the floor with these teams? Shit, Hawaii would mop these schools the past few years…. The only three legt schools in the SEC are ‘Bama, Florida, and LSU.
The only way to get bias out of any equation is to change the euqation. Therefore, remove voting all together. How cool would it be to have three weeks of football Pasedena to decide the national champ just like we have the baseball tourney in Omaha? Tell me that wouldn’t be cool as all get out…
P.S. The world may end today seeing as how you and I agree B….
bbryan
13. Apr, 2010
It was bound to happen sometime Mick, we’ll go back to hating on eachother soon enough.