ACC Rocks! Orange Crush rules as SEC falls below .500, Big Ten stinks



.... parity, parity, parity

Clemson's win over the Crimson Tide for the national title put the icing on a tasty cake that satisfied many fans in the ACC.

The conference ended up the postseason with a 9-3 record [despite Pitt's woeful performance in the Big Apple] and easily outperformed everyone else in the Big 5 conferences.

The SEC fell to 5-6 with Alabama's loss, embarrassing itself. It would have been worse were it not for two cupcake wins in the bowls.

The major loser in all of this was the Big Ten. The 3-7 record is bad enough, but the vaunted Big Ten East going 0-5 demonstrates how weak they really were this year.

Clemson's 31-0 drubbing of Ohio State in the CFP semifinals demonstrates a number of things about the conference.

First, Ohio State should not have been in the CFP. Penn State, the conference champ, should have been. Second, the Big Ten is damn weak. One of Penn State's three losses was to an ACC competitor, Pitt, which lost five games. If you lose to a team like that, a mediocre ACC squad, you are not that strong.

Many will point to the Nittany Lions coming very close to USC in the Rose Bowl as an example of how strong the conference was. However, the truth is that the Pac-12 was also weak, going 3-3 in bowl games. The interesting number there is that only six teams in the conference made a bowl game. That is embarrassing.

In addition, USC was decimated by Alabama by a 52-6 margin. That was an opening game, but USC went 1-3 before starting full-time play in their weak conference.

In short, there were few strong conferences this year. The Big 12 did finish 4-2 in the bowls, which was positive, but again, only six teams competed in bowls.

Ohio State does not deserve to be in the final AP Top 10, but as I have noted before, the AP has a decided Big Ten bias. The Buckeyes will probably be in the top five in the AP preseason rankings last year. If you have a weak schedule and top national ranking early, you are going to be up there for most of the season if you play in a Big Ten that is very weak top-to-bottom.

Conclusion

Overall, this was not a great college football season in terms of quality teams. Other than Clemson and Alabama, I can name none. This was a season that the late NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle would have loved: Parity, parity, parity.

That results in boring, boring, boring play. I will not say that the season has been entirely boring, just that the number of good teams was lacking.

That means that the 2017 season could be interesting since many of those final top 10 teams this year may not be there next year.

We shall see.

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