This week's roundtable is being hosted by SBN Nebraska Cornhusker blog, Corn Nation. Check out some of the other responses to the questions here. Enjoy.
1. We’re about half way through the season. Has your team met your expectations, wildly exceeded them, or are you about to light the torches and storm your athletic department demanding blood?
It's kind of hard to say. I think if you told the average Buff fan before the season that we would be sitting at 4-3 heading into the Missouri game they would tell you that that's exactly where they thought we would be. However, if you then proceeded to tell them exactly how we got to be 4-3 said fan would probably be disappointed. Let's break it down this way, Cody Hawkins and the Buffalo offense has been a wild disappointment, only being saved from the depths of pure mediocrity by the emergence of Rodney Stewart and to a lesser extent, Tyler Hansen. On the other hand the defense has actually been a bit of a surprise, especially the reworked secondary. Unfortunately the ineptness of the offense greatly outweighs the strides that the D has made.
2. In an election year, all sorts of promises will be made, few will be kept. What is one promise or item you thought you could count on that hasn’t come to pass yet this season? Is there still a chance?
After the growth that we saw in Cody Hawkins over the second half of last season I think that we all thought he would make an even bigger leap this year. At the very least we expected to see continual improvement and that hasn't been there at all. I do think there is a chance that Cody can improve on his first seven games of 2008 (not much room to go but up). He has been hamstrung by the injuries on the offensive line that have sent their vertically challenged quarterback running for his life and hopefully our makeshift line will continue to get better as the year goes by. Lost in all of the hoopla over Tyler Hansen's first action last week was how well Cody played at the end of the game. He was more poised than he has been all season and hopefully he uses that final drive and third down completion as a building block for the rest of 08.
See the rest of the questions after the jump...
3. Georgia #1... No, USC #1.… No, Oklahoma #1.… No, Texas #1! Who’s the real #1 team, and who do you think will make it to the big BCS National Title game?
I don't think anyone can really argue against Texas' resume right now. Their season is night and day better than all the rest (maybe you could argue Alabama, but they have had too many close wins over teams they should beat solidly) and as long as they continue to win they will stay right where they are. For all we know Oklahoma may be the nation's second best team and the Longhorns beat them by ten points. One more thing, I'm not saying that Texas is the best team in the country (I'm not saying they aren't either) but you asked who's the real #1 and it has to be UT.
4. In only a few weeks, college football fans get to be treated with the obligatory and annual “We Need a Playoff” screaming. Well, you don’t get a playoff, but I’ll let you make one change to the BCS (and no, you can’t cop out and have the BCS commit suicide) to make the world a better place. What is your change?
I love this question and it's an easy one to answer. I would force the Coaches to wait and release their first poll the week before the first BCS rankings are issued. Let's give the teams a chance to come out and play some games before we decide who is better than who. I don't like rewarding teams for hollow victories and that's exactly what these pre- and early season polls do. Take Alabama for example. Their victory over Clemson (who was in the top ten at the time) shot them up the polls like a bottle rocket, allowing them to climb up to #2 with the convincing win over Georgia. Now, if the voters were doing their first rankings 2 weeks ago don't you think that the win over the Tigers would have been viewed as an expected triumph over a below average ACC team?
5. Using this year ONLY - no historical references - respond to the statement “The Big 12 is a better conference than the SEC”. There’s nothing sillier than conference wars, but then again, there’s nothing sillier than how SEC fans respond to any challenge to their supremacy. Aim, Fire!
No one cares about the teams at the bottom of your conference, it's the teams at the top that play in the big money games that shape the quality of each conference and the Big 12's top 6 teams are stronger than any other conference in a long time. It's pretty hard to argue with exactly half of the top 8 belonging to the same division.