Speed kills...me

Speed. If I hear another football commentator say that word, I'm going to hurl.

It is officially the en vogue term in college football (only college and not the NFL, mind you). Speed is apparently the singular reason for victory and the lack of is the singular reason for defeat. Every one from Herbie to this dude on Fox is spouting off about SPEEEEEEED.

I was already sick of hearing about Ohio State's lack of speed, but when I heard the Fox commentators remarking about how Oklahoma couldn't handle WVU's speed, I reached my limit with all the talk. Sure, speed matters, but it isn't all that matters. Let's reason this out a little.

Using the thinking of commentators--that speed wins games--WVU is faster than Oklahoma but not faster than Pitt or South Florida. Pitt didn't make it to a bowl game and South Florida got shelled by Oregon. Oregon was faster than USC but didn't have as much speed as California (7-6), UCLA, Arizona, or Oregon State. Back to Oklahoma. The Sooners didn't have enough to match up with WVU but had MORE than enough to take Missouri to the woodshed. But while Mizzou was slow after the Big 12 championship game, the got amazingly fast in three weeks and beat down Arkansas, which GASP is a SEC team. And NO ONE is faster than a team from the SEC. Well, no one except Michigan, which beat Florida. But Michigan was so slow that it couldn't keep up with Division I-AA...excuse me, championship subdivision Appalachian State. Meechigan was also plodding compared to the Buckeyes. But the Buckeyes' speed was no match for the speed of Illinois, and despite racking up over 400 yards of offense, Illinois apparently had lead feet compared to USC...and that brings us full circle. Oh, I left out LSU. Well, LSU is obviously the slowest because they couldn't keep up with aforementioned Razorbacks and Kentucky, which couldn't handle the speed of Mississippi, which couldn't handle the speed of well, any one.

Whew. As you can see, if the only way you can analyze a game is by saying one team had more speed than the other, you just aren't very smart or analytical. It's pointless to compare one team to another based on SPEEEEEEED because it isn't just about SPEEEEEEEED. It's about so much more--so much more than you or I or any one knows. I'll leave it up to the coaching staffs and the players to analyze and understand wins and losses.

Speed matters, but not as much as "experts" want you to believe. Why do you think NFL scouts say time again that the 40 yard dash at the combine is way overblown, and that they'd take a "football player" over a speedster any day.

And with the speed talk comes all the pointless and talk of comparing conferences and dubbing one conference the greatest and of course, the speediest of them all. Really, there's no need. As we've seen from the bowls, some Big Ten teams looked good, others not so much. The SEC had some good ones, and a few bad ones. ACC, Big 12, Big East, all of them had some good performances and some stinkeroos. Just stop trying to compare because there is no clear way to do it. And please, stop mentioning speed.

On a side note, I just saw Jim Ross, famed WWE announcer, on the Oklahoma sideline. How the heck did he wrangle a sideline pass?