I think you mean if they are playing a more irrelevant game like the Sugar Bowl vs. playing for the NC... to wit... rematch vs. LSU a couple of years ago. Like Ohio State experienced this year it's pretty damned hard to come down from playing for the national championship to playing for a bowl championship. Before the BCS and the Alliance we had a situation where subjectivity reigned and there could be 2 or 3 of the major bowls where winning the game could mean some votes for #1. All major conferences had tie-ins they were obligated to and couldn't get out of so the teams played who they played and hoped a win would garner them enough votes for the title. It did make for some serious attitudes in the bowl games vs. now sometimes you have to wonder. I know Louisville last year was fired up and ready to rock a Florida team that just didn't play with any fire and quickly became overwhelmed with the Cardinal's intensity. I think the same thing happened to Bama this year with OU imho.
Well there is no doubt that in the bowls frequently one team shows up on a mission and the other shows up to party and have a good time. Underdogs won quite a few bowl games this year. I have no doubt that OU is a team that showed up on a mission. Their bowl record recently includes big upset losses to WVA and Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl and a beat down by Johnny Football and Texas A&M in last years Cotton Bowl. I think Stoops was tired of all that and probably prepared this year with a strong purpose.
Don't tell Coach Saban about not being motivated. I don't think that was Alabama's problem. Alabama had 4 turnovers and wasn't good enough to overcome that against another good team. I've been saying that all season.
You certainly are right that 4 turnovers usually = Loss. But you have to admit the Sooners showed up and played like their hair was on fire. That was a different OU team than we saw during the season. Now it could be that they were finally 100% healthy. But even though they beat us in South Bend, on that day I don't think they were clearly the best team. We spotted them 14 points in the first two minutes and played them even the rest of the way.
If this were facebook I would "like" that comment. There may be some who disagree....but when a team gets beat up week after week during the course of the season the quality of play diminishes. When said team has 30 days to heal up there's a lot of bumps and bruises that go away and that team can play with a renewed vigor and energy level and that leads to some surprised favorites out there who as you say may have been hitting the party favors a little too hard and eating one or two many bowls of gumbo. :wink:
1. Bill, I was not talking to you or about you. The irony of reading your comment while watching some dipshit on ESPN talking about 'of course, the SEC will have 2 teams every year' is not lost on me. You can say the comment about entitlement is off-base, but you're wrong. Every single year under this current structure, we begin a season faced with certain assumptions. Those assumptions are almost always, wildly wrong. We covered in another topic with Dave that while the SEC has done remarkably well in the title game, they've been less than stellar in the other BCS games. That hardly is proof of an assured 'two spots' every year. Let us not forget that for a large part of the history of the BCS, the Big12 received so much GD entitlement that it's not even funny. Again, not everything is about you or your conference. The BCS sucked for a LOT of reasons and not all of the preference was shown to your conference.
2. Dave We still had that in the BCS and Bowl Alliance. The difference is, the BA and BCS basically said 'all those other numbers don't count, only ours do' and ran with that... often flying in the face of logic and on field results.
3. KP, you and I disagree at times about Alabama but you'd think people would take notice when we agree entirely about Alabama. This is one of those times. Folks here couldn't possibly understand that there is/was no way in hell motivation was an issue for Alabama. Alabama was pissed off and ready to prove something. They just didn't. That happens sometimes. But in Dave-world, the only SEC losses happen when they play each other or they just didn't take the game very seriously while the other team put forth a once-in-a-lifetime Herculean effort.
haha! Indeed you do, and kudos btw, for being the one person who continually saw the Achilles heel in the Tide this year. (something you'd probably give away in a second if you could) The rest of us were so blinded by the Tide's dominance the past few years that we didn't see the very things you kept pointing out to us.