Friday, May 18, 2007

Stewart Mandel needs a long vacation

Our good friend Run from RUTS points out that Stewart Mandel has gone a little on the nutty side (batshit insanity is one of the best tags, by the way) in his College Football Mailbag:

Mailbag: Stewart, you always say that conference strength is cyclical and always seem to defend easily bash-able conferences (i.e. the Pac-10, ACC). So let's see your rank all 11 Division I-A conferences.
SM: Big East: …The top four teams -- Louisville, West Virginia, Rutgers and USF -- stack up with any league outside of the SEC.

USF!?! Huh? I think Stewart has USF confused with USC, and Big East confused with Pac-10. Wow, do you think he re-read his response before hitting submit? Then he starts down the road that's going to make me puke before the season begins the "SEC is GOD" mantra:

1) SEC: Simply put, this year's SEC could be the toughest conference in history. I'm not exaggerating. It's extremely rare for a league to not only boast so many quality teams at the top (LSU, Florida, Auburn, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee) but also so little dead weight at the bottom. Really, it's just Mississippi State. You've got two former national championship coaches, Steve Spurrier and Nick Saban, leading what may be only the seventh- or eighth-best teams in the league.

SEC speed: faster than a speeding bullet

Jesus. Just shoot me now.

Well, that just makes me want to validate this statement, so I'm announcing a new segment: the TNL SEC watch. I'm going to keep a close eye on our conference to the south because after all, why not watch the toughest conference ever? It's going to be the best football ever, right? I'm not going to bother posting about inter-conference matchups, but I'm going to keep close tabs on how the SEC does out of conference, let's see if Mr. Mandel is right. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Stewart Mandel but asinine statements like this cannot be left unchecked, and who better to do that than a lazy, obnoxious blogger who can't write?

5 comments:

PSUgirl said...

so listen, there are only 8 teams in the Big East, and so yeah, USF is a top team in the league.

They went 9-4 last year, with a freshman quarterback and crap special teams. And even if it was a fluke, they did beat WVU last year. They have 16 returning starters and a WR/PR named Taurus (we so need a kid named Leo).

As for stacking up against anyone but the SEC - there won't be much chance to test this theory except for their non-conference game against unc - otherwise they play crap (elon & FL atl) and SEC (auburn).

How will they do in 2007? I have no idea - but they really aren't terrible.

Galen said...

PSUGirl,
Good points, but I respectfully disagree. I'm not saying they are as bad as Pitt but stack up against any league? Yeah it's a feather in the hat that they beat WVU but they also lost to Cincy & Kansas. Those two teams aren't exactly elite. Let’s put it this way, I wouldn’t give them a snowball's chance in Hell against Mich, OSU, Wisconsin, PSU, or Iowa. Besides WVU, they beat no other team with a winning record.

PSUgirl said...

They won their bowl game; for what it's worth, ECU did have a winning record.

Let's just see what happens - the South Florida team PSU played in 2005 was a lot tougher than we ever thought they'd be. I was cursing Michael Robinson and Joe - turns out, they were a pretty good team.

Galen said...

Yes, you are right ECU was 7-5 when USF beat them in the bowl game, but I meant during the regular season to get to that bowl game, but I guess I can't poo-poo the fact that they won their bowl.

Anonymous said...

can't wait to see the SEC dominate... again... At least THE Ohio State University kept it close this year... LOL!!! And Leak didn't even get drafted... wow. imagine what a GOOD QB would have done to that slooooooooooooooooooooow defense. They don't call it the BIG 10 for nothing... big and sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooow...