Where did the season go?

It's been an unusual season for me. At times, being in Asia during football season is a curse- it is really hard to watch games here without slingbox or some type of subscription, so I miss a lot of games. Even if I can get them via the internet, game times are at midnight, 7am Sunday morning or worse- 3:30am. If I stay up to watch the games, then my sleep schedule is totally messed up and it makes the workweek that much harder. However, being in Asia can also be a blessing, opting not to get up a 3:30 in the morning to watch 3+ hours of the Dogs suck against Florida becomes a really good decision and even better, unless you check the blogs and messages boards, it is easy to block out the frustration of your team's shortcomings. Nonetheless, I still miss college football.

I haven't seen that much, but looking back on what I have seen...

OU's performance against Texas Tech was about as dominate as I have seen this season. OU's offense looked quick and unstoppable and there defense might have been better. Right now, I think they and Florida are the top 2 teams in the nation. If they played... Boomer Sooner!

Texas and Bama are probably the next best teams and Texas Tech and USC are right behind them. Texas is probably more like OU, Florida and TxT with a high-powered offense. Bama and USC rely more on strong defense, but if their offenses get going they are pretty strong too.

The Big 12 is- without a doubt- the strongest conference in college football this year. The SEC, ACC, Pac10, Big Ten(11) and Big East are all down somewhat. With so many BCS conferences in a down year, the Mountain West has seized the opportunity to muscle in a bit.

No one in the ACC wants to take the lead. It seems like every week the ranked team chokes opening the door for the recent victor to become ranked and thus, lose the next week. It is probably the most intracompetitive conference in America, but not the most competitive.

Who would have guessed the freefall's of Auburn, Tennessee, Clemson and Wisconsin? Add in an Arizona State team that was supposed to be pretty good and a Michigan team in transition that both turned into disasters and you have a pretty jaw-dropping season. Oh, and the Irish still suck too! (insert evil laughter)

Finally, the Dogs...
I don't really know what to make of this team. They have tons of talent, but have also had more than their share of injuries, especially to key personnel. The patchwork OL has held up remarkably well in some ways, but they just aren't consistently good enough to make plays; rather they aren't so bad that Stafford and Moreno can't overcome the added pressure- most of the time. Lesser playmakers would have really struggled.

The defense is equally baffling. I suspect that our dominating run defense in the first half of the season was more the result of facing weaker offenses or poor running teams rather than our defense actually performing up to standard.

I think the playcalling at times has been a little suspect, but I think missing a TE has really hurt us, especially in the redzone. But I think the bigger problem is that we are finding ways to hurt ourselves more than other teams are hurting us. Don't get me wrong Bama and Florida are good, but we helped them out too. Plus, I can't count the number of times that we kept an opponent's drive alive with a penalty or something like that. Or the number of short fields we gave opponents to help feed them points. Or the number of times we drove down the field to: A) stall out of offense, B) miss a FG, C) take ourselves out of range with a mistake.

It has been frustrating, but as noted by the GeorgiaSports Blog, not "3-9 in cold Ann Arbor bad" or even "4-7 and out with the Krispy Kreme Killer in Knoxville bad". Finish with a win against Tech to shut them up and we are 10-2 going to a decent bowl.