[MyTurn2Raise]

arnold_O

you should know that the sagarin mechanism you are using is flawed when comparing teams across divisions. Severley flawed.

The worst big ten team should be about a 10 point favorite at home verse App St

It was an amazing upset and my hats off to app st. They still couldn't come close to competing week in and week out. They'd beat them every once in awhile, but the weak big11ten team would dominate.

Let's goto last year where there were a handful of relevant experiences.

2-6 Big11Ten team Iowa pummeled Montana (2nd highest Sagarin team at that level) 41-7
1-7 Big11Ten team Illinois pummeled Easter Illinois (coming off a 1-AA playoff appearance) 42-17
3-5 conf Minnesota squeaked by power ND St 10-9
1-7 Indiana did lose to SIU 35-28
2-6 Northwestern lost to New Hampshire 34-17

The big11ten was worse than it ever has been at the bottom last year. (*Note: This isn't some new opinion of mine, but is an opinion I posted to this forum over and over and over and over, usually in reference to Wisconsin, Michigan, and tO$U national love.) Yet, 5 of the bottom 6 in conference still took it to 1-AA when they are completely unmotivated and often underprepared.


but you're overlooking an even bigger point

those teams at the bottom of BCS conferences have enough skill, size, and talent to occassionally compete with the big schools. Small schools don't have near that much. Admittedly, the scholarship restrictions on bigger schools has caused more and more talent to filter down. It's still not enough. Being able to sometimes beat a team that can sometimes beat the behemoths of football is not the same as being able to beat the behemoths themselves.

APP St is better than about 10-15 teams of the 119 in the top level. I'd be very surprised if they could play a 7 game series against any team from the Big11Ten, Pac-10, BigXII, SEC, and ACC and pull off a winning record.

If Illinois lost to them, I'd expect Zook to get fired. I'd demand it.