2011 NCAA Football – FINAL Power 15

Finally! The FINAL POWER-15 for the 2011 NCAA football season. I reference my initial Power-15 rankings which I’ve linked in case you are interested about my thoughts before the season began. Unfortunately we now have to wait for April for spring football to commence and then September for the season to begin. Regardless of the outcome I always think each season is very special and 2011 was no different. What made this year so interesting to me was the lack of dominance across the country. In retrospect it really does look like Alabama & LSU were so far ahead of everyone else that putting anyone in their category seems disrespectful. At the same time, the only real legitimate dynamite opponent Alabama faced all season long might really have been LSU. They did play Arkansas, but oddly enough Alabama really didn’t play anyone outside of the SEC worth noting. They did beat Penn St., but the Nittany Lions weren’t that great. LSU on the other hand did beat West Virginia, Oregon, Alabama & Arkansas during the regular season. Still, neither Alabama or LSU played a legitimate quality team from the Big XII or the Big 10. It doesn’t matter too much, but I think it speaks to the oddity of the 2011 season. A strange on indeed in which the eventual national champions didn’t win their own conference. Heck, they didn’t even win their own division! I hate the idea of a college football playoff more than anything, but something rings hollow in college football when the eventual national champions couldn’t even win their own division let along their own conference. Make no mistake. I believe Alabama is the best team in the nation, but the path in which they were crowned as such was a very strange one. Welcome to the 2011 NCAA football season!

RANK	TEAM	COMMENTS
#1		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #1; Score one for yours truly as I accurately predicted the Crimson Tide would wind up becoming 2011 national champions! It wasn’t a stretch to think Alabama was going to win their 2nd national championship under Nick Saban. There were simply too many players returning on defense coupled with a solid QB in AJ McCarron and arguably the best RB in the nation in Trent Richardson. The story of the year obviously with Alabama is their incredible defense. Alabama’s “D” finished the season ranked #1 in scoring defense, rushing defense, passing defense & total defense! I’ve been following college football fairly closely now for 20 years and this is the best defense I’ve ever seen. Alabama had a total of 4 players that were 1st Team All-Americans including Outland Trophy winner OT Barrett Jones. The Tide put 2 more players on the 2nd team. The defense was incredible, but I want to make special mention of QB AJ McCarron. It would be easy for him to get lost in the shuffle given the immense talent playing on this team, but remember that McCarron completed 67% of his passes along with 16TD to just 5INT! The Tide passed the ball 41% of the time compared to the 59% they ran, but McCarron didn’t give up any games. That’s a lot more important that people realize. As for going forward in 2012, remember that Alabama only loses 5 players on defense: NT Josh Chapman, LB Courtney Upshaw, LB Dont’a Hightower, CB Dre Kirkpatrick and S Mark Barron. Hightower, Barron & Kirkpatrick were all All-Americans so the losses will hurt & losing Trent Richardson won’t be any fun, this team has an awful lot coming back to defend a title.
#2		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #7; I didn’t think LSU would be playing in the national championship at the beginning of the year, but I did say they’d probably have the most talent of any team they played except they’d be held back by the Jordan Jefferson experiment at QB. With Jefferson getting into trouble before the season started and being suspended, Les Miles turned the offense over to senior QB Jarrett Lee. Lee played well enough to lead LSU to wins over Oregon, West Virginia, Mississippi St. & Florida, but when LSU got into a little trouble in Tuscaloosa, Miles put Jefferson in and LSU ended up beating Alabama 9-6. Wrongly believing Jefferson was the key to that victory instead of Alabama missing way too many FGs, Miles stuck with Jefferson all the way through his laying an egg in the BCS Championship game where Alabama won convincingly. It was yet another bad move in Miles’s mind numbing devotion Jefferson who thankfully has graduated. I do want to point out how amazing LSU’s defense was. They ranked #2 in scoring defense, #5 in rush defense, #8 in pass defense & #2 in total defense. The difference between Alabama’s & LSU’s defense and the rest of the country was so stark you’d think they were playing in difference leagues. CBs Morris Clairborne & Tyrann Mathieu were both 1st Team All-Americans with Mathieu finishing 5th in the Heisman Voting! If it was up to me, Mathieu would have won the award as I thought he was the best player in college football. Despite not winning the national championship, LSU did finish 13-1 & were the 2nd best team in the nation by a considerable margin. LSU & Alabama were in a league of their own.
#3		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #13; Before the season I thought Oklahoma St. would have an EXPLOSIVE offense and explosive it indeed was. The Cowboys finished 2nd in the nation in scoring offense at 49ppg while also finished 3rd in total offense behind Houston & Baylor. I said before the season that Oklahoma St. had questions on defense, but the offense might score enough points to make the defense irrelevant. That is precisely what happened outside one pivotal loss to Iowa St. on the road coming on the heels of university tragedy. Whether or not OSU’s women’s basketball coaching staff dying in a plane crash had any affect on Oklahoma St. that night in Ames, IA is purely a guess, but we’ll never know and it certainly cost Oklahoma St. a chance to prove everyone wrong who says you can’t compete for national championships at Oklahoma St. I think Oklahoma St. makes a pretty good argument that it should have been playing LSU for the national championship. That would have left out the best team in the nation (Alabama) which would have been unfortunate, but if every week is a season in college football, then LSU beating Alabama already should have made that point moot. Granted, Alabama’s one loss came against LSU in an OT game that ended 9-6 while Oklahoma St. lost to Iowa St. In a weird way, Oklahoma St. losing to Iowa St. benefited Alabama most, but also realize that if Alabama beats LSU earlier in the season, maybe OSU would have had enough to jump past LSU avoiding a 2nd SEC Championship game? Finishing 12-1 & #3 isn’t awful. It would have been cool to see how OSU’s offense would have fared against LSU’s or Alabama’s defense.
#4		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #3; It’s weird to think this season had a tinge of disappointment attached to it, but after playing in the national championship game in 2010, maybe you can argue that for Oregon. Their opening season loss to LSU was gut-wrenching for the Quack Attack because at that point you had to assume they were out of the national championship race. Then Alabama lost to LSU & the Tigers were on a tear. Could Oregon win out & get a rematch with LSU for another shot at a national championship? The home loss to USC ended those dreams, but Oregon still went on to finish the season 12-2, win the Pac-12, win the first Pac-12 championship game, and win the Rose Bowl! Basically Oregon won everything they could possibly have won except the national championship! Oregon & Oklahoma St. were similar teams yet in different ways. Both were offense first teams with Oklahoma St. being more pass oriented while Chip Kelly prefers to run the ball down opposing defenses’ throats. There are plenty of things to discuss, but oddly enough what happened after the season was most newsworthy. Oregon QB Darron Thomas is entering the NFL Draft and forgoing his senior season which was somewhat of a shocking development. Even more shocking was the news that Chip Kelly had all but signed on the dotted line to become Tampa Bay’s next HC. That didn’t happen & Kelly is still in Eugene, but those rumors are going to abound every offseason now for Oregon. I don’t think Oregon will drop off because of player losses. Chip Kelly & De’Anthony Thomas will see to that.
#5		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = NR; Wow. That’s all you can say about USC’s 2011 season. I didn’t even have the Trojans ranked in my Power-15, yet they had a season worthy of a top-5 ranking! Talk about outperforming your expectations. I thought USC kept getting better & better all season long. The loss to Arizona St. was brutal early on although at that point the Sun Devils were thought to be a dark horse candidate to win the Pac-12, but the wins over Cal & Notre Dame looked to galvanize this team. The win over Notre Dame was especially impressive given how USC simply dominated the Irish from start to finish in South Bend. USC lost a heart breaker in OT to Stanford, but followed it up 3 weeks later with a monumental win over Oregon in Autzen Stadium, where hardly anyone wins. QB Matt Barkley was a BEAST from start to finish completing 69% of his passes including 39TD to only 7INT! In his last 2 games against Oregon & UCLA, Barkley was 61 of 76 (80.3%) for 746 yards, 10TD & 1INT! RB Curtis McNeal ran for over 1,000 yards with a 6.9ypc! WR Robert Woods, WR Marqise Lee & TE Randall Telfer combined to catch 210 balls for 2,708 yards & 31TD! All 5 skill players will be back in 2012! USC will also return 9 of their top-12 tacklers from a season ago. Sure they’ll lose OT Matt Kalil and DE Nick Perry, but what a team returning. A tremendous year for USC and one to certainly build on in 2012, the first year USC will have of postseason play after their sanctions.
#6		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #5; It’s pretty amazing that the perception is that Andrew Luck’s junior season wasn’t as good as his sophomore year. All Luck did this season was complete 71% of his passes for 3,500 yards with 37TD to 10INT. His sophomore year he completed 71% of his passes for 3,300 yards with 32TD to 8INT. That looks like identical seasons to me. Stanford got a little unlucky this year as Luck’s worst game came against Oregon in a game Stanford needed to win if was to win the Pac-12 North and potentially play for a national championship. If Stanford wins that game then Luck wins the Heisman and Stanford plays LSU for the national championship which would have been fairly interesting. The one thing that was different about Stanford than it was with Oregon & Oklahoma St. is that the Cardinal really were built around defense and a one in a generation QB. Losing LB Shayne Skov was a lot bigger deal than people want to give credit for. Skov led the team in tackles the year before and was the QB of the defense at ILB. He was a beast at 6’3/250lbs & Stanford lost him in Game #4! That was a big loss where I’m standing. Stanford did get a shot at Oklahoma St. and fell short 41-38. Like Oregon it’s tough to fault Stanford for having a couple of losses to 2 of the best 5 teams in the nation. If Stanford could have won out & Skov would have stayed healthy, I think Stanford would have given Alabama or LSU a much better game than Oregon or Oklahoma St.
#7		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #14; I was really wrong about Wisconsin. Russell Wilson was more of a run first QB while he was at NC State and I didn’t think he translated very well to Wisconsin where the Badgers were more of a run first offense that asked their QB to manage games and not create turnovers. Instead Wilson was a BEAST who completed 73% of his passes and threw for 33TD to only 4INT! Wilson also passed for almost 3200 yards. If Wisconsin didn’t gag during a couple of mid-season games and Montee Ball didn’t run for almost 2,000 yards & 33TD, I think Wilson would have been an easy selection for the Heisman Trophy. Despite the 11-3 record, I believe Wisconsin could make a pretty good case for being the #3 or #4 team in the nation. Until they lost to Michigan St., Wisconsin had gone 6-0 & outscored their opponents 301-58! That’s almost a 50-9 margin on average & that included a win over a ranked Nebraska team. The loss to Sparty in East Lansing was an interesting one. Wisconsin got down early but took momentum back in the 2nd half. If not for the miracle Hail Mary from Kirk Cousins to Keith Nichol, I think Wisconsin wins the game in OT. Wisconsin lost the following week to Ohio St. which I thought was a residual loss. The Badgers go on to win out and finish 11-2 before losing to Oregon in the Rose Bowl, but despite the Big 10 championship, this season was a complete bust for the Badgers. If they go 13-0 they face LSU in the BCS Championship. Of all the teams that could matchup well against Alabama & LSU, I think Stanford & Wisconsin would have had the best chances. Going 11-3 is an incredible season, but the Big 10 isn’t getting any easier and this might have been “the year” Wisconsin could have played for a national championship.
#8		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #22; If you go back to my original preseason Power-15 post then you’ll note that I wasn’t sure what to make of Arkansas seeing how they lost Ryan Mallett & Knile Davis and had just 2 returning offensive lineman. To me that felt like a ton to overcome in the SEC West, but Bobby Petrino is proving time & again that it simply doesn’t matter who he throws out there on offense. The Hogs still managed to rank #15 in scoring offense with 37ppg! Tyler Wilson wasn’t Ryan Mallet, but he wasn’t that far off either. Dennis Johnson & Ronnie Wingo weren’t Knile Davis, but the Arkansas running attack wasn’t that far off their 2010 mark either. I wasn’t sure what to make of Arkansas before the season began. I’m not sure I have a better idea now. They finished 11-2 with their only losses coming against LSU & Alabama. Is this the #3 team in the nation? I don’t know. What hurts them in my eyes is that wins over Mississippi St. and Texas A&M don’t look as good now as they did at the beginning of the season. They did beat South Carolina & Kansas St. so that is worth quite a bit, but I can’t put them higher than 8th. All they can do is play the games on the schedule. I would like it if they got one more difficult non-conference game especially if their SEC East slate is pretty soft the way it was this past season. Remember too that the games against Alabama & LSU were on the road, and the Hogs had an outside shot at a BCS Championship if they had beaten LSU late in the season. Going 11-2 is incredible, but also odd in Arkansas’s case since it only makes them the 3rd best team in their own division!
#9		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #21; I think Michigan St. proved a lot by beating Georgia in their bowl game. The Bulldogs were the SEC East champions which means they were at best the 4th best team in the SEC, but beating an SEC champion is still beating an SEC champion. One of the biggest debates in the Midwest is always hearing how great the SEC is & wondering how the Big 10 would stack up. I’m a Midwest guy and I believe the SEC is by far the best conference, but there is some truth to the argument. If you put Michigan St. or Wisconsin in the SEC, I don’t think they win the SEC, but I also don’t think Alabama or LSU comes in to East Lansing or Madison or possibly even Ann Arbor and blows out their Big 10 opponents. Does Alabama or LSU walk away with a Big 10 title? I think so, but remember that Alabama didn’t play back-to-back road games all season long. Wisconsin played back to back games in East Lansing & Columbus. Alabama’s toughest road game was what? Florida? Auburn? The SEC doesn’t have to deal with the cold weather either. SEC had the best teams at the top of the division but the Big 10 might have had better teams overall. As for Michigan St., this was their 2nd year in a row with 11-wins. Mark Dantonio has lead Michigan St. to a 22-5 record over the past 2 seasons & Sparty won the Legends Division in its inaugural year. This was a senior laden team & there will be no Kirk Cousins in 2012. Michigan St. now has to deal with the pressure of expectations while Ohio St. & Michigan are reloading. There was no shame in their 3 losses. They were road games to Notre Dame & Nebraska along with the loss to Wisconsin the Big 10 Championship game.
#10		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #15; For whatever strange reason, Steve Spurrier simply can’t get over the hump in Columbia. South Carolina had an incredible year going 11-2. That’s a fantastic year by any measure, but there were some regrets obviously. The Stephen Garcia experiment at QB is thankfully over. It never really worked out for him, and his horrific game against Auburn probably cost the Gamecocks a 5-0 start. Maybe SC still loses the Arkansas game later on in the season in Fayetteville, but the loss wouldn’t have mattered because SC’s 7-1 SEC record would have still been good enough to get to the SEC Championship game. By this time Connor Shaw had been playing extremely well & maybe SC gives LSU a game in Atlanta? Losing Marcus Lattimore didn’t help much either. Lost somewhat in all this drama surrounding the offense is how brilliant the defense was. South Carolina ranked 10th in scoring defense, 45th in rushing defense, 2nd in pass defense & 3rd in total defense. Only LSU & Alabama were better in total defense giving the SEC the best 3 defenses in the NATION! It’ll be interesting to see how South Carolina does now that DC Ellis Johnson takes over the Southern Miss program. Like Arkansas it’s a bit difficult to figure out where SC stands. They managed to avoid LSU & Alabama in conference play. The SEC East was brutally weak this year. Their non-conference games came against Navy, The Citadel, East Carolina & Clemson. The Clemson win looks nice, but SC & West Virginia exposed them at the end & the ACC was once again a very average conference. The defense was the real deal & I think this team was playing its best football by season’s end. The 11-2 record along with the bowl win over Nebraska demands a top-10 ranking.
#11		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = NR; I swing on Art Briles’s nuts as much if not more than his biggest fans do, but even I didn’t see Baylor being this strong! College football really had an odd year this past season if you really get down to it. The Pac 12 was odd because Oregon had a couple of losses but wound up winning the conference. Every Big 10 team had a couple of losses. The Big XII had Oklahoma St., but the oddity was that Nebraska was no longer around while Oklahoma & Texas weren’t dominating at all. The ACC is still waiting for Miami-FL & Florida St. to regain national prominence and the Big East is barely holding on to their spot at the BCS table. That really sets the stage for a team like Baylor with a talent like Robert Griffin to steal quite a bit of spotlight on the national stage which is exactly what happened. Robert Griffin had a great year winning the Heisman, but how good was Baylor really? I’m putting them this high on the strength of their offense, but to be honest, their defense was downright atrocious! They allowed 37.2ppg on the season which ranked 113th out of 120 teams! To put it into perspective, the team that ranked 114th in scoring defense was the 1-11 Indiana Hoosiers who allowed 37.3ppg! Baylor also highlights how critical close wins can be. After 7 games, Baylor was 4-3 with losses to Kansas St., Oklahoma St., and Texas A&M. Baylor beat Missouri & Kansas in their next two games by a combined 4 points & then got a miracle win over Oklahoma! That pushed them to 7-3. However, Baylor could have just as easily been 4-6! Going 10-3 with Briles as HC & Griffin as QB allows me to elevate Baylor to #11, but Baylor season is more about tons of small events needing to happen to get them here.
#12		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = NR; A few really interesting thoughts about Michigan. Even if they don’t lose to Iowa, they still lose the Legends division because of the loss to Michigan St. Still, going 11-1 instead of 10-2 would have been amazing especially considering the fact that the bowl win over Virginia Tech would have given them a 12-1 final record instead of 11-2. The biggest difference between Michigan in 2010 & 2011 is their defense. In 2010, Michigan ranked 107th in the nation in scoring defense allowing 35.2ppg. In 2010 the defense was insane ranking 6th in scoring defense allowing just 17.4ppg. Would the same have happened if Rich Rodriguez were coaching Michigan? I don’t know. Obviously Brady Hoke switched up Michigan’s defense from RichRod’s 3-2-5 hybrid to a more conventional 4-3. Michigan reaped the dividends. The offense was almost identical being run heavy and averaging 33ppg. I came away being impressed every time I saw Michigan this year. Denard Robinson is a beast. He might not be a fantastic passer, but he’s almost impossible to defend. Hoke is a helluva coach & he immediately stepped in and got a win over Ohio St. which is big even if the Buckeyes were going through a transition period from Jim Tressel to Urban Meyer. They avoided Wisconsin on the schedule, but I don’t think that hurts them too much. They also got a solid bowl win over Virginia Tech in the BCS. It’s hard to look at this season without thinking of Rich Rodriguez. As good as the season was for Brady Hoke, I have a hard time believing Rodriguez wouldn’t have had the same success. Now we’ll see what he can do at Arizona, but this time with Jeff Casteel not staying behind in Morgantown.
#13		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = NR; I should have seen this one coming. West Virginia went through a mini-drama before the season began with their ousting of Bill Stewart as HC and the implementation of Dana Holgorsen a year earlier than expected. Holgorsen is an offensive guru and West Virginia didn’t disappoint as the offense exploded for almost 40ppg under his guidance which resulted in a 10-3 record, a Big East championship and a BCS bowl victory over ACC Champion Clemson in which the Mountaineers put up a SEVENTY BURGER, beating the Tigers 70-33! WVU actually gave LSU a game early on in the season before LSU pulled away in the 2nd half. The losses to Syracuse & Louisville were awful in retrospect, but WVU still did everything they set out to do which is win a Big East title & get to a BCS game. That’s quite an accomplishment given the suddenness of Holgorsen’s elevation. Geno Smith was a beast under center & probably should have gotten more Heisman consideration. Stedman Bailey & Tavon Austin were beats at the skill positions which means only good things ahead for the Mountaineers. The Big XII can’t be happy about West Virginia’s entrance into the conference. It’s interesting that Holgorsen left the Big XII to become a HC and now he’s right back in the conference as a HC anyway. The defense wasn’t fantastic in Morgantown, but the offense was and this is why WVU is at #13. Their end of year schedule with the close wins mirror’s Baylor’s season just a bit. If we could replay the season starting today I think WVU still probably loses to LSU, but they win out otherwise. Holgorsen is going to be great.
#14		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #4; I’m killing my predictive value here by dropping Boise St. to #4. The Broncos did wind up an impressive 12-1 and the Coaches rewarded them with a final ranking of #6 while the AP put them at #8. I dropped them to #14 because while I think they deserve to be in the Power-15, I’m not exactly sure how committed I am to them being there. They didn’t win their own conference thanks to a 1-point home loss to TCU and they drew a horrible bowl in which they beat a .500 Arizona St. squad 56-24. It was somewhat of a deflating way to end the incredible career of QB Kellen Moore. Next year we’ll get more of the same. The Mountain West looks positively dreadful next season without TCU. Boise St. does play Michigan St. & Southern Miss on the road with BYU in Boise, but that is a pretty thin schedule when you consider some of the losses those teams are taking on personnel wise. It’ll be interesting to see how Boise St. fares without Moore playing QB, but the system with HC Chris Petersen is solid enough for Boise to be expected to win MWC hands down. I do think this past year was the year of opportunity for Boise St. If they had beaten TCU, it would have been hard to keep the Broncos at 12-0 from playing a 13-0 LSU squad in the BCS championship game given the landscape of college football in 2011. With everyone having a loss, nobody could really argue Boise’s merits on finally getting a chance to prove they could win a national championship & in the process most likely blow up the BCS and implement a playoff system in college football. None of it happened because of a last second FG by TCU to beat Boise St. 35-34 on the blue turf.
#15		PRESEASON POWER-15 RANK = #2; Wow. Most pundits predicted Oklahoma to be the team playing Alabama in the BCS Championship game & for good reason. The offense lost DeMarco Murray from 2010 but returned pretty much everyone else. The defense returned 12 of their top-15 tacklers from 2010. Did I mention that the 2010 version finished the season 12-2 & Oklahoma was returning QB Landry Jones and All-American WR Ryan Broyles? The Sooners looked like the #1 team in the nation through their first 6 games going 6-0 including a 55-17 POUNDING of arch rival Texas. That all came to a screeching halt when Texas Tech came to town & gave Oklahoma 41-38 loss in Norman. Oklahoma would rebound to beat Kansas St. & Texas A&M, but a miracle drive by Baylor & Robert Griffin would give Oklahoma their 2nd loss. Losing in Stillwater to end the season put Oklahoma at 9-3. A bowl win over Iowa gave them double digit victories to end the season. A lot of things went wrong for Oklahoma this season. Landry Jones simply wasn’t as good as we thought he’d be. Losing DeMarco Murray shifted the offense from being run heavy to pass heavy. The defense certainly didn’t play like it was returning a boatload of star players. By all accounts this season was a massive disappointment for the Sooners, but they get Landry Jones back next season while Oklahoma St. loses Brandon Weeden & Justin Blackmon. Maybe Oklahoma loses to Oklahoma St. anyway even if they enter the game 11-0, but it’s still disappointing because a 12-0 season puts them in the BCS Championship game while an 11-1 season puts them in the BCS. Just an odd season all the way around.