as I stated in a different thread where I was accused of being Captain Obvious (and yet apparently it isn't)....
We can point to numbers all day long. People want to see good football. Two 9-3 teams can look entitrely different.
As a Florida fan, we won 10 games in 2015 and would have won 10 in 2016 if not for a cancellation of a cupcake game. And that sounds great. 10 win seasons. Awesome. But, when you see that it's a team so pitiful that crossing midfield at times in the last two seasons has been an epic struggle, a more sophisticated examination tells you that it's not close to looking the way it should. And that it is indeed mediocre football....as proven when stepping on the field with teams that are quality teams.
We can pretend all we want, but there was one giant killer on Tennessee's schedule, a few bad teams, and a handful of mediocre ones. So, a "contending" team on the rise and on the way to prominence shouldn't be a breath away from losing 6 with such a schedule.
I still submit to you and to everyone else that as a fan of a team in the East, none of us have any respect for one another. I'm not worried about Florida losing to Tennessee because of how good Tennessee is. I am worried about how good Florida isn't. I'm sure you're not worried about how good Florida is, but how good Tennessee may not be.
well, when you are still worried about how good you aren't....you're not contending yet
That wasn't math.
Heh, okay, a less snarky response.
There's an extent to which football is all relative. It can be very difficult to judge a team in isolation (how good were they really in spring camp? We won't know until they get on the field in real competition!) ... and yet judging the team on the field depends entirely on the RELATIVE quality of the opponent. Even a Little Sisters of the Poor can look awesome if they're playing East Middle School.
I don't want to make this case too absolutely. There is an extent to which you can see if a team is well-coached...do they have focus, discipline, avoid dumb mistakes, run crisp routes, hold blocks until the whistle sounds, etc.
But a whole lot of watching two teams contest a match is dependent on the
relative strengths of the two teams.
I suspect that the East was probably better than our collective dismal opinion of them looking back. But in the one way that mattered (winning games), they failed -- against the West, and against OOC Power 5 opponents. For that matter, the West failed OOC, too, in 2016, included vaunted Bama at the very end.
So the SEC had a down year, and is only the 3rd or 4th best of the Power 5 conferences. The East was even further down, and appeared weak as a kitten.
Those are facts that can't be denied. On-field results prove them.
But like an accordian, there's plenty of wiggle on the sizes of the gaps between teams and divisions/converences, even if you know what order they're in.
So I understand what you're saying. I'm just not sold on the "we so totally suck" angle you've been pursuing these past few weeks.
I think the truth is somewhere in the muddy middle of all that.
p.s. And leaving ALL that aside, 9 is still bigger than 5, even if we haven't yet found 15.
