Upsets the norm in college football's evolving landscape

05.10.2007 14:02 Sport and Travel - Source: USA Today

In 2002, when the Trojans finished in the top 10 of the national rankings — the first of five such finishes that included two national championships — they were joined by familiar teams such as Miami (Fla.), Iowa and Michigan. Of those today, only the No. 1-ranked Trojans are in the top 25.

With the dust still settling from one of college football's most topsy-turvy weekends ever, when five teams in the top 10 were upset, this weekend promises more drama and unpredictability from a schedule that includes seven matchups of top 25 teams. The parity that began creeping into college football in the early 1990s — when scholarships were limited to 25 a year and 85 total for teams in the NCAA's top competition group, Division I-A — has never been more evident.

The scholarship limits have helped spread talented players throughout college football, and limited perennial powerhouse teams' ability to stock up on players to the point of recruiting some just so they wouldn't go to a rival school. The limits — along with creative coaching, strategic recruiting, wider TV exposure for more schools and a longer season that makes it tougher to go undefeated — have changed the landscape of college football and made each weekend more of a free-for-all.

In a year that began with preseason No. 5 Michigan being shocked by Division I-AA Appalachian State (which is limited to 63 scholarships), a new set of ranked teams has emerged, including Cincinnati, South Florida, Kentucky and Hawaii.

And suddenly, many games that would have been yawners not so long ago are big games: Cincinnati, No. 24 in USA TODAY's top 25 after a 5-0 start, will try to stay in the rankings for two consecutive weeks for the first time in more than a half-century when it plays Saturday at No. 21 Rutgers.

A game between Southeastern Conference rivals Kentucky and South Carolina would have carried little national significance in previous years. Instead, their meeting Thursday became another upset of a top-10 team as Kentucky, ranked No. 8 after a surprising 5-0 start, lost to No. 18 South Carolina 38-23.

Meanwhile, games that would have been much-touted showdowns in previous years have lost some of their fizz: Notre Dame, still winless after five games, is at No. 25 UCLA, and No. 11 Georgia visits unranked Tennessee, which lost twice in September.

Even the two most highly anticipated games this weekend — Florida at No. 2 LSU and Oklahoma vs. Texas — were diminished last week when defending national champ Florida (now No. 7), Oklahoma (No. 10) and Texas (No. 16) lost.

Now, Southern California might not recognize some of its top-10 neighbors:

•California, at No. 3, holds its highest ranking in 55 years.

•Boston College, at No. 6, is in the top 10 for the first time since 1984, when Doug Flutie was the Eagles quarterback.

•No. 8 Kentucky is in the top 10 of the coaches' poll for the first time in 42 years. They'll drop, however, after Thursday's loss.

•South Florida is No. 9, and in the polls for the first time in a school football history that reaches all the way back to … 1997.

Repeating: South Florida is in the top 10.

Quick, everyone. Where is South Florida? Who is its coach? What is its nickname? (Answers: Tampa, Jim Leavitt, the Bulls.)

Whether such teams manage to stay in the top 25 neighborhood or prove to be living beyond their means remains to be seen.

But if they go away, many other upstarts are poised to move in. Last season, Boise State, Wake Forest and Rutgers rose to prominence, and at season's end Boise State upset Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.

This season, the top 25 is hardly recognizable. Notre Dame will fall to 0-6 — extending the worst start of its 119-season history — if it loses, as expected, to UCLA on Saturday at the Rose Bowl.

"As expected" — that phrase probably should be banned this season. Ditto for, "It'll never happen." As in, Michigan lose at home to Appalachian State? It'll never happen.

Except it did. And such things have kept happening, as the "have-nots" continue to stun the "haves."

Everyone's vulnerable

Not surprisingly, coaches have gotten tired of explaining how their team could lose to an Appalachian State in a home opener or how their team could lose to a Boise State in a bowl game.

"The media has not caught up to the fact there is a high level of parity in college football," Mississippi State coach Sylvester Croom says. "College football is not what it was 10, 15 years ago. Now everyone can be beat."

Consider the plight of UCLA, which entered the season ranked No. 17 and was widely thought to be one of the top three teams in the Pacific-10 Conference. In its third game, UCLA lost to previously winless Utah by 38 points. Utah lost to Air Force by eight. Air Force lost to Navy by 11. Navy lost to Ball State by three. Ball State lost to Miami (Ohio) by one. Miami (Ohio) lost to Minnesota by six. Minnesota lost to Florida Atlantic by three.

So, on a neutral field, would Florida Atlantic be favored over UCLA?

Maybe it should be. And this is a UCLA team that, at the end of 2006, beat USC to keep the Trojans out of the national title game.

Western Athletic Conference Commissioner Karl Benson chuckles about how it was considered an upset when Washington, a team that once routinely finished near the top of the Pac-10, defeated defending WAC champion Boise State this season.

"That's a good example of what's been happening," he says.

The reasons for the sport's increasing unpredictability vary.

Spread offenses, which stretch a defense from sideline to sideline and create a lot of one-on-one matchups, were instrumental in Boise State's victory against Oklahoma last year and in Appalachian State's win against Michigan.

"I think that's a factor," Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson says. "But the spread is not entirely new. … People see what you're doing, and they eventually catch up."

The regular season was extended from 11 to 12 games last year, and coaches say it's tough to avoid a letdown at some point.

Maybe that was part of what happened last weekend, when the top 25 basically exploded. Among top-10 teams, then-No. 4 Oklahoma lost to unranked Colorado; then-No. 3 Florida lost at home to Auburn, which had lost two of its previous three games; then-No. 5 West Virginia lost to then-No. 18 South Florida; then-No. 7 Texas lost at home to unranked Kansas State; and then-No. 10 Rutgers lost at home to Maryland, which was coming off two consecutive losses.

In addition, USC barely escaped with a 27-24 win against Washington and LSU led Tulane 10-9 at halftime before winning 34-9.

"Florida, Oklahoma … still are terrific teams," Carroll says. "They just got beat. It's really hard to win every week. You have to survive when things aren't quite right and the other team plays great."

When a 12th game was added, many Division I-A teams scheduled Division I-AA teams, and some of those have been more competitive than envisioned. Last week, Massachusetts trailed Boston College 17-14 late in the third quarter before losing by just 24-14.

Most coaches agree the parity era began when the NCAA limited the number of scholarships that programs could give out each year and capped the overall number. Today's limits were set in 1992.

"A lot of people are getting good players," Cal coach Jeff Tedford says. "There are a lot of coaches doing a good job. You'd better be ready every single week. Even if you're ready, really, anything can happen."

Finding gems in the rough

Former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer remembers the old days, before scholarship limits, when he used to recruit a player not because he thought he'd start for the Sooners one day but because he didn't want him at Oklahoma State.

Those days are gone.

"When you're taking only 19 or 20 kids a year," Switzer says, "you're leaving a lot of kids out there in the talent pool."

After scholarship limits were imposed, long-downtrodden Kansas State became a football power. "If it can happen at Kansas State, it can happen anywhere," Switzer says.

He says today's high school players often get more specialized coaching than in previous years and, if they don't get a scholarship to a prominent program, they're often still good enough to make an impact against good teams.

Smaller programs have become experts at finding gems among "leftover" players. They've been helped by a proliferation of sports cable TV channels, including five devoted to college sports. That has put more schools' games on national TV, a big selling point in the recruiting process and a way some players first get drawn to schools.

Erickson cites Kentucky's Rich Brooks, competing in the tough Southeastern Conference, and South Florida's Leavitt — who's in the same state as traditional powers Florida, Florida State and Miami — as coaches with a keen eye for finding players to fit their systems.

Kentucky's media guide says its star wide receiver-kickoff returner, senior Keenan Burton, chose the school over Northwestern, Indiana, Marshall, Louisville, Miami (Ohio) and Boston College. He has become an all-SEC player. Leavitt has said he views his main recruiting competitor to be Central Florida, not the state's big three.

Sometimes one player can make a big difference for an upstart. Cal junior wide receiver-punt returner DeSean Jackson has rushing and punt-return TDs of longer than 70 yards, plus two receiving TDs. Hawaii senior quarterback Colt Brennan was sixth in last year's Heisman Trophy voting and this season is second in the nation at 408 yards passing a game. Kentucky senior quarterback Andre Woodson has thrown 49 TD passes and just nine interceptions in his last 19 games.

This weekend, no one should really be shocked by any result.

Except this: USC's 35-game home winning streak, a Pac-10 record, will not end against Stanford, which has dropped 14 of its last 16 conference games and 18 of its last 21 games overall and will be without quarterback T.C. Ostrander, who suffered a seizure Sunday.

USC can't lose this one.

Right?

***

Contributing: Jack Carey, Craig Handel, Tom O'Toole

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