knapplc

I hope he does well. The Bears have a history of good former Husker cornerbacks.

Yeah. I can't wait to see Suh go all "Little Hawk" on Reesing. }=) If they get their passing game going with Briscoe against our weak-ish secondary, and if they can sneak Sharp past the D Line a few times, I think we're in for a long day in Lawrence. But if our front four wins the line battle I think we'll have enough pressure on Reesing that he'll be running for his life more than picking apart our secondary. We gotta beat these guys. Enough is enough!

"Summer reports seem to indicate Turner’s totally back on track." Awesome. A healthy Turner on one side with an experienced Allen on the other, Suh in the middle with either B Stein or Crick helping out, sure sounds like a great front four to me.

Robsker, I'd take Reesing over Lee right now, too. I think most sane people would. But that's not what SkerChicago and I are discussing. He's saying there's no way Zac Lee can ever be the QB that Reesing is, and I'm saying we have zero info on which to base such an assumption. We know how good Reesing is, but we have no idea if Lee is good or bad. Unfortunately, your premise doesn't settle this. The only thing that will settle this is play on the field. Luckily, football is a team sport. As you said, our big advantage this year is our defense, which should be better than most any others out there, and certainly ought to be better than Kansas'. Reesing could be the second coming of Joe Montana but if he's running for his life and/or on his butt the whole time, we'll win the game.

Reesing is good, no doubt, but he hasn't set the bar so high that it's impossible to catch him. Again, you're dismissing even the possibility that Zac (not "Zach") could could be the equal of Reesing, and you have nothing to base that on. Lee could be the next Tommie Frazier or the next Harrison Beck. At this point we have zero idea which it'll be. Let's let the kid play for a while before making these judgments on him.

You have some kind of crystal ball that shows you Zac Lee's career? Because you're as far off base as all the folks calling for NU to go undefeated with this "will ever be" tangent. Reesing may end up better overall than ZLee, but let's let the guy start a few games before we dismiss him to the trash heap.

BOLD - Agreed. I help make a Top 25 for another site, and we do it for the traffic it generates and to have something to talk about, but I agree that we don't know squat about most (if any) of these teams at this point. UNDERLINE - You're probably right. Which is why I ranked the Huskers at #21. Right ahead of Kansas.

Of course. You don't want simply the current top 40 teams. You want programs that have proven over the course of time that they'll dedicate resources to making good football. Don't believe for a second that Notre Dame is going to stay down forever. They have too much pride and too many dollars from their alumni to be this bad for too long. Oklahoma did it. USC did it. Hopefully Nebraska is on their way to doing it. There's a big difference between schools that have a football team and Football Schools. Notre Dame is a Football School.

Can't argue with that. Any self-respecting rational football fan would have to give Reesing an emphatic nod at the QB position based on experience alone. And if you have any doubts, watch the symphony he conducted against Mizzery last season. 37/51 (72%) for 375 yards and four touchdowns. And it wasn't only the numbers; it was the broken play ability to make magic happen. All told, he's a very solid quarterback in a league full of them. Nobody knows where Lee will top out, but preseason hype means diddly next to Reesing's experience and stats. Boom and boom. Two very good posts here.

I don't suppose you've looked at the teams ranked in most polls between 10-25, have you? There are a TON of question marks on a ton of teams this year. Basically your top four should be Florida, Oklahoma, Texas and USC, and then it's pretty much a crap shoot from there. Remember 2007, when everyone lost all the time and we had like six different teams at #2? We stand a good chance of seeing that again this year.

Looks great. Now we just have to do enough on the field to make that thing light up all the time.

It would stop the pretending, because in the current system those teams that make a title run now don't have a real chance at the title. Boise State last year, TCU a couple years back, Kansas a couple years back, etc. Did any of these teams have a real shot at the title? Really? If they had been given an equal shoot at one yes. The size of the divisions have little to do with the system the teams play under. Utah by all rights should have played for the Nat. championship last season, but changing the size of the leagues wouldn't have changed the outcome. Only changes to the egregious BSC selection process will change that. And I don't think shrinking the playing field will do anything to help solve that mess. They would have an equal shot if they had been given an equal shot, but they weren't? Isn't that what I said? I'm not sure what you mean by "size of the leagues." If you're talking individual conferences, that's not what I'm saying. If you're talking Div 1A as a whole, yes, that's what I'm saying. Pare that down to a manageable level, and you won't need the BCS. But yes, I agree that the BCS has to go. It's a joke, and I've been saying that throughout this and other threads.

Agreed. It's WAY better than the NFL. But it could be better than it is, and I'm just tossing out ideas to make it better. 30-40-50 teams in 1A may not be the answer. But I'd like to see something change that would allow for better champions crowned. Without a real system that doesn't involve excluding teams that have legit arguments for being there (or a way to determine how "legit" that argument even is), we're one step above intramurals. Maybe even half a step. And for a sport we all love so much, I find that unpalatable. What's wrong with the current system? I think a better question would be, "What's right with this system?" Aside from the ridiculously bloated number of teams in 1A, you have vastly different budgets for these teams, no real method of determining a champion (or at least, no method used by any kind of organized sport in history other than Div 1A of NCAA football), out of control TV contracts being signed with specific conferences.... the list goes on and on.

Agreed. It's WAY better than the NFL. But it could be better than it is, and I'm just tossing out ideas to make it better. 30-40-50 teams in 1A may not be the answer. But I'd like to see something change that would allow for better champions crowned. Without a real system that doesn't involve excluding teams that have legit arguments for being there (or a way to determine how "legit" that argument even is), we're one step above intramurals. Maybe even half a step. And for a sport we all love so much, I find that unpalatable.

It would stop the pretending, because in the current system those teams that make a title run now don't have a real chance at the title. Boise State last year, TCU a couple years back, Kansas a couple years back, etc. Did any of these teams have a real shot at the title? Really?

That list does change over time, so the decision wouldn't be based on recent wins, but on the program as a whole over decades, fan support, economic viability, facilities, etc. There's a whole slew of factors to take into account. Teams like Michigan, Notre Dame, Miami, Oklahoma, USC, Texas, LSU, Florida, Florida State.... teams that have shown a commitment to top-tier football for a significant length of time would be in. The problem I'd solve with a much smaller 1A conference is that I'd have a true, unquestioned national champion. Nobody questions that the Steelers are the Champions of the NFL, or that the Phillies won the World Series. Right now there’s a lot of folks in Boise who question the legitimacy of the Gators’ win, just like there have been enough people in each of the dozen or so BCS years that have questioned the MNC winner that it’s a farce.

The great unknown heading into this season is, how much more will the Huskers develop with an entire season cycle with Bo under their belts? They were clearly not the same team at the end of the season as they were in the first several games. The VA Tech game would have been very different had we played them in November rather than September. Same for Missouri. We could take a HUGE leap forward this year, which is one of the reasons I'm so excited to see this team. We could take a step back, too, which is why we're all tempering our optimism quite a bit, but I'm expecting to see at least some improvement across the board. Couple that with a learning curve for the n00bs on offense, and we should be rounding into form just about when we head to Blacksburg. We could be in fine form when we head to Columbia. And then it's go time.

Don't sweat it, Hokieluv. I think we got a pretty good idea what you guys are like last year when you came over. Lots of good folks, really friendly and knowledgeable and gracious in victory. I expect to hear great things from friends going to Blacksburg this year. If I can win the lottery between now and then I'll be there.

I'd love to see them line up in that formation on the first play against OU, fake the pass, then dump it over the line to McNeill.

Oklahoma out of the top ten is ridiculous. OK State at #2 is ridiculous, too, but they bear watching. If their defense holds up they could be the South champs. They certainly ought to be scoring against everyone. I'll bet they beat Georgia. We'll see.

If Watson doesn't modify the offense for his personnel I'll eat my hat. The guy knows what kind of engine he has under that hood, and they'll be moving the ball.

What makes this one "real?"

By that logic, wouldn't we want to eliminate all divisions and have all 300-something teams play in one big division? We already have tiers in college football. This idea would simply acknowledge that there is a HUGE difference between schools. As a practical matter it's nearly impossible to have anything resembling a true champion with 120 schools in the mix. There's such a huge disparity in SOS that it creates problems every year. If we're not crowning a true champion, this becomes an overgrown intramural sport. And this ain't intramurals, brother.

Yep. And for the first time in too long, I'm pretty sure we'll be on that list at year's end. A whole slew of 9-4 teams were in the final Top 25 last year. Had we been ranked in years past we probably would have been ranked again last year, but that is what it is.

I've been saying this for years. 119/120 teams is WAAAAY too many for one division. Too bad it'll never happen.