Recent Comments

Ahhh...the 4th Down QB

Whoever replaces AJ Hughes... Actually I really hope that kid never takes a snap.

Our offense will go as the QB goes. The most important player is the QB, which is currently TBD.

I personally think we will be fine with Evans or Motley. Fuente will tailor his approach to the strengths of which one ends up winning the starting job. Kind of tie, like "Most Important A" and "Most Important B".

McMillian is fantastic, but in this offense we will not rely on him to be the bell-cow. The ball will get spread around much more to other backs and receivers. If he goes down, we will have other options that will not be as great, but will be good enough within the system.

Motuapuaka. No better time to put it all together than this season. I would love for him to become a beast MLB and play an important role in shutting down opposing teams' running games.

ouch, really? I kinda expected you to say 15-0. I guess this means you must think we'll run the table, but then have to have a post season ban or something. /s

12 wins and no bowl game is pretty rough.

/duck from other thread

I mean, honestly, I think Best Case is 12-0. That's just me, though.

It's hard for me to see the OOC bias, because there are tons of factors going into the bowl game selection -- namely profitability, revenue, and matchup. And I don't think any conference is going to implement a rule that bowl selection is based off conference records, when you need the overall record to become eligible.

The main team I see benefiting from a weak OOC schedule is NC State. They have had back to back seasons of 4-0 OOC to go with 3-5 conference records. In 2014, they got the next to the last bowl (Pitt at 6-6 was the last team picked), but that also means that VT, UNC, and Miami at 6-6 all jumped them. In 2015, they somehow managed to jump Pitt to take the last tier 1 slot. But that's because the Belk Bowl is a mid-level bowl and had to weigh the possibilities -- they either take a slightly better Pitt team that might not have a well travelling fanbase, or a relatively local NC State team who will definitely travel due to the proximity.

NC State is clearly benefiting from the 1 game rule, but to an extent on the flip side, so is Pitt. If that rule wasn't in effect, then Pitt would probably just need to look at the last bowl game on the ACC list each year, because obviously, bowl organizers do not like them.

The thing is, UNC had a crap OOC schedule last year. The only decent game they scheduled was the one they lost. But they took care of business in conference, and were still three games ahead of the next closest ACC team in terms of overall record. A tougher OOC schedule, even with two more losses, still would have them taking the Russell Athletic Bowl.

But we can't be playing the "what if" game on Tech's 6-6 season, because that can apply to any of the 12 games they played. What if OT had gone differently last year? What if the team actually showed up to play Pitt?

I think if we refine this tough guy attitude we have you could be looking at a team with the steel of the Germans about a decade ago. I don't think we'll see the kind of brutal efficiency they played with, but we can get the toughness part.

on Alum07's comment: This week is the Bastard Bowl - I'm guessing the Lannister/Tyrell/Sparrow showdown will be next week

Individual slaughter this week with mass slaughter next week. The timing has some logic to it, but I wouldn't leave the queen of dragons versus the slavers until next season. We have enough mass slaughter plots available to have big battle scenes in both of the last two shows.

This is GoT we're talking about....

I appreciate the research. Your facts are correct, and I clearly sited the wrong examples. And I agree, falling to a bowl you can win can be a good thing for a program trying to get back on track. That does not change my opinion the the ACC rewards weak OCC scheduling with their bowl selection process. If we had OOC schedules like many other ACC teams instead of an OSU and ECU, the games would have sucked, but we would not have been 6-6, (Brewer may not have been hurt), and we may have been in a different bowl against someone else, likely a better destination, but may not have won. That is what I was trying to point out. If you play a hard OCC schedule in the ACC and get to a bowl game you are more likely to win it, though it is harder to get there.