Saw*Kick Media

With South Florida’s loss last night to Rutgers, it has never been more evident that we are full swing in the era of parity in college football. USC losing to Stanford? Appalachian State being Michigan? What is going on here!?! Florida State, Miami (Florida) and Notre Dame are once proud powers who have fallen on hard times, while South Florida, Boise State, Rutgers, Cincinnati, and many others are just flourishing. And even though they lost last night, let’s stop for a second on South Florida. They are currently the second ranked team in the country and they moved to D-1A football in 2001. In 2001 I was still in high school on suicide watch during the Bob Davie era. How are Nebraska, UCLA, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M getting ready to hop on the coaching carousel when Hawaii is undefeated?

One of the biggest reasons this is happening are the advances in both physical and media technology. Today’s athletes are bigger, faster, and stronger than ever before. Basically, we have the best athletes science can create. High school players are hiring personal trainers and taking legal over-the-counter supplements, which they weren’t even when I was playing in high school. My senior year in high school, I heard of a couple of guys talking about how great creatine was, and how revolutionary it is. Now, a lot of larger high schools have sponsorship deals with some of these companies and are handing these guys protein shakes during their morning film sessions. We have also made astounding strides in personal fitness training, stressing core strength and flexibility, which has made the game for guys who can fly around the field.

With the flourishing of the internet, recruiting sites began to spring up and introduce the country to the stars of high school football before they set foot on the college campus. For example, West Virginia freshman tailback Noel Devine’s sophomore year highlight tape was a viral video on YouTube. We knew about how disgustingly gifted Devine was before he could legally drive a car. Previously we would read about top players once a week in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd” section. That was how we previously got our recruiting news. Currently there are the two biggies of recruiting sites, Rivals and Scout, but there are hundreds of blogs, message boards, and other sites tracking the every move of these high school players, who are creepily referred to as “studs”.

All of these recruiting sites, and videos getting posted on the internet, it has led to an unprecedented level of talent discovery in college football today. Every major college program, and even the minor ones, has summer “camps” where coaches can legally work out and recruit student-athletes. At a lot of these camps, they even build in combines for high school athletes to work out at. Just like the pro scouts before them, college assistants are drooling over the forty times of 17 year-old kids, raving about the shuttle time of a 15 year-old sophomore standout. Great players simply aren’t being hid that well anymore. In our age of instant recognition and gratification, message boards will be flooded with videos of potential recruits for your school, while 40 year-old men pin their hopes to a “stud” recruit. The culmination of all of these web sites and blogs are the all-star games at the end of the season. The biggest of these is the Army All-American High School game, where usually a dozen or more of the top players in the country make their college announcement live on NBC. High school players are now holding press conferences to announce their top three schools. Not commitments, but what schools they have narrowed it down to. Bottom line, there are no well kept secrets in recruiting today.

Finally, and most importantly the coaching is superb in today’s game. This era of successful coaches is all from the “new” era of modern football. I doubt any of them played or coached in the single wing formation, or wore leather helmets. This is why we are seeing Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno struggling so much as of late. The advances and breakthroughs in today’s game are changing every single day, and these dinosaurs are unwilling and unable to keep up with the times. The key innovation we have seen over the last five years is the proliferation of the spread offense. The spread offense neutralizes the size advantage that was keeping the likes of Nebraska and Notre Dame on top, and maximizes the importance of speed in the college game. Trust me, as a former college coach; it is nearly impossible to find enough good cover corners to effectively cover a spread offense. The spread offense, if well executed with the right players, is unstoppable. Size doesn’t matter in the spread as much as speed and this is what we are seeing with South Florida, Hawaii, Texas Tech, Boise State, and others. You can find five fast skill guys for every major college football program. There are 120 D-1A programs and there are 600 fast athletes out there in America (100 each in Florida, Texas, and California alone).

Finally, the future of coaching is going to be very exciting. Major Applewhite is the first member of the “Video Game” generation to land a major college coaching job (Offensive Coordinator at Alabama). The wunderkind is only 29 years old, and is already being talked about for head coaching jobs due to his innovative and intricate offensive play-calling. When I tell a lot of current coaches about this future trend, they laugh, but let’s take a step back and think about this. In playing the football video games, you are virtually coaching hundreds of games before you get to college, and thousands by the time you leave. How many times have you ran the two-minute drill, or switched up your coaching styles to attack the defense your buddy is running. Trust me, in the booth; you are doing the same things, only with real players instead of a controller. I know of one college that actually encourages their team to play the video games, the GA’s will tell the players something like, “Play Against West Virginia’s defense, because we will see the 3-3-5 this weekend.” Also, how many times have you played a game saying, “Man, I wish I could do (fill in the blank).” This generation of coaches is going to be the Dr. Frankenstein’s in their lab of offensive ingenuity.

On to the picks, as always, the home team is in caps.

NOTRE DAME (Home Team) over USC

Big 10
OHIO STATE over Michigan State
Michigan over ILLINOIS
Iowa over PURDUE
WISCONSIN over Northern Illinois
Northwestern over EASTERN MICHIGAN
Penn State over INDIANA
MINNESOTA over North Dakota State

SEC
ALABAMA over Tennessee
SOUTH CAROLINA over Vanderbilt
Arkansas over MISSISSIPPI
Florida over KENTUCKY
WEST VIRGINIA over Mississippi State
LSU over Auburn

Pac 10
California over UCLA
ARIZONA over Stanford
Oregon over WASHINGTON

Big 12
Oklahoma over IOWA STATE
Texas over BAYLOR
NEBRASKA over Texas A&M
Texas Tech over MISSOURI
Kansas over COLORADO
OKLAHOMA STATE over Kansas State

ACC
GEORGIA TECH over Army
CLEMSON over Central Michigan
Wake Forest over NAVY
Miami (FL) over FLORIDA STATE
North Carolina State over EAST CAROLINA
Virginia over MARYLAND

Big East
CONNECTICUT over Louisville
Cincinnati over PITTSBURGH
Buffalo over SYRACUSE

Conference-USA
Memphis over RICE
Tulsa over UCF
Houston over UAB
Tulane over SMU

MAC
Miami (OH) over TEMPLE
Ball State over WESTERN MICHIGAN
KENT STATE over Bowling Green
Ohio over TOLEDO

Mountain West Conference
AIR FORCE over Wyoming
BYU over Eastern Washington
New Mexico over SAN DIEGO STATE
UNLV over Colorado State

Sun Belt Conference
Arkansas State over MIDDLE TENNESSEE
TROY over North Texas
Florida Atlantic over LA-LAFAYETTE
Florida International over LA-MONROE

WAC
Nevada over UTAH STATE
FRESNO STATE over San Jose State
Boise State over LA-TECH
NEW MEXICO STATE over Idaho

Independents
Western Kentucky over INDIANA STATE

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