Friday, January 14, 2011

Mr. College Football has LSU and Alabama in his 2011 Top 5 but picks Oklahoma to win

Another columnist, another opinion on a college football season that's eight months away. Still, Tony Barnhart of the AJC and CBS is to be respected, so his Top 5 list gets a look here.

Soon, the SEC streak has to end, and Barnhart, an SEC guy, thinks 2011 could be the year. His top 2: Oklahoma and Oregon. Both play bigtime offensive football in leagues that don't play much defense. In the past, when teams like these burn through the regular season and meet an SEC defense, the results have been predictable. (Exhibit I, your honor, the last five championship games.)

The top two SEC teams in Barnhart's list, LSU and Alabama, both will have staunch defenses the coming season. Both have big questions to answer, and given the SEC, neither is guaranteed to get out of conference play alive. But if both get good quarterback play, they could be the best two teams in the country.

Funny to see an ACC team on the list. In fact, we're trying not to laugh so loud to wake up Mrs. EXPATS. Florida State is on the rise, head coach Jimbo Fisher is recruiting harder than an Amway exec, and his team did beat two Florida and South Carolina last year. Still, the Noles are breaking in a new quarterback and most of their offensive line.

And with the merciless gantlet FSU faces every year in the ACC . . .

Read on.

Update: Here's Barnhart's review of the season, which just appeared on the AJC's website.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The ACC was 2-0 against the SEC in bowl games this year. So that "gauntlet" may be tougher than you think

Michael said...

2-0 against the SEC East, bud. Two different worlds this year.