The Panoptiblog

Last week the conversation around Iowa City was about whether the Hawkeyes were getting too little respect. Sitting at #6 in the BCS, and just inside the top ten in both human polls.

Now that they’re #4 in the BCS, behind only alleged superpowers Florida, Alabama, and Texas, the talk in the other 49 states is whether Iowa’s getting too much respect. Colin Cowherd has been particularly vocal, for weeks now, insisting that Iowa (along with fellow unbeatens Boise State, Cincy, and TCU) has no business in the BCS Championship Game even if two of the three teams ahead of them lose. “Put USC and Iowa on a neutral field, and USC is favored by 17,” he says. “I don’t care how many losses they have. They’re better than Iowa.”

I generally like Cowherd’s show, but he’s just dead wrong on this. He falls into the typical trap that national sports media fall into: USC is inherently good, they say.

If USC, or any other team wants to be in the Championship, it’s simple: win your games. The rap on Iowa is that they don’t have “style points.” That is, they don’t win their games by enough points. They don’t blow out the other teams. Okay, let’s consider both “style wins” and the quality of opponents in those wins. Let’s compare the games that weren’t close; say, wins by more than a touchdown. Note that in this comparison we are completely ignoring USC’s embarrassing loss to Washington.

USC has six wins. Three of them are by more than a TD. Two of the three were at home. The three teams were San Jose State (1-5), Washington State (1-6), and #24 Cal (5-2). The combined record of those teams is 7-13. Five of those wins belong to Cal. So USC has one quality style win: one win where they blew out a team with a winning record.

Iowa has eight wins. Four of them are by more than a TD. Three of the four were on the road. The four teams were Iowa State (5-3), #20 Arizona (5-2), #12 Penn State (7-1), and Wisconsin (5-2). The combined record of those teams is 22-8. So Iowa has four quality style wins.

Cowherd’s is a classic example of a circular argument. Why isn’t Iowa’s 8-0 record impressive? Because they’re in the Big Ten. How do we know USC is better? Because they’re USC. Nevermind that USC barely snuck by Notre Dame just like Michigan did. Nevermind that Iowa has also, in the last several years, beaten LSU, Florida, and South Carolina in bowl games. And again, all of this is ignoring the fact that USC lost to a 3-5 Washington team. It’s here that I can’t believe Cowherd is dumb enough to believe what he’s saying. Forced to defend his a priori beliefs about USC and the Big Ten, he reaches to other statistics: How many NFL players came out of their program last year? What were their recent recruiting classes ranked? Use any measure, so long as it isn’t wins and losses.

Another note on USC: A couple more years, and I wonder if people will be on to the fact that he’s a brilliant recruiter, and an overrated coach. Nice guy, and I like him, but how many years in a row does USC have to lose against bad teams, even with all those future pros? Can’t keep your teams paying attention week to week? That’s bad coaching, folks.