This piece concerns tonight's National Championship game featuring Ohio State vs. LSU. It presents the Buckeyes with the opportunity to demonstrate last year's title bout with the Florida Gators was, indeed, an aberration.
I expect, in fact, that is what will transpire. There is an abundance of pre-game commentary available elsewhere, so I see no point in replicating it here, other than to say it figures to come down to which QB plays better.
Both OSU's Todd Boeckman and LSU's Matt Flynn are advanced-aged upperclassmen in their first years as starters. Neither has had to carry the load for their talent-laden rosters. Yet whichever one outperforms the other figures to emerge victorious. Having Jim Tressel to assist him should advantage Boeckman over Flynn.
Then again, it was thought to be the former Youngstown State head coach who held the edge over last year's rival coach, Gators' Urban Meyer, the Ashtabula-born former Bowling Green and Utah leader. Meyer out-coached Tressel, an extreme oddity in a big-game for the little man from Mentor. A confluence of elements conspired to doom the Buckeyes in the desert last January, but SEC speed or superiority was not among them. Those are both myths, at least when the encounter features just two of their respective conference's best ballclubs.
Nonetheless, it remains thusfar true that OSU is winless-for-eight against teams from that conference. Only a seriously lopsided OSU win over an outfit that, from the start of NCAA play this season, was considered one of the nation's elite squads, might alter national impressions of the Buckeyes, due largely to not only that stat but also to last winter's outcome.
Even that would likely be described as an aberration by SEC loyalists. Such is their right, much as this writer is exercising his.
Both teams can be expected to force the other into a one-dimensional attack by targetting the other's ground game, thereby forcing the opposing quarterback to demonstrate his ability to win a championship contest through the merits of his passing skills. Neither QB is quite the type to fear, especially by defenses the caliber of either OSU's or LSU's.
What OSU has going for itself, aside from the expectation of superior game-day coaching, is motivation, the chance to undo some of the damage it did to its reputation last time on the national stage. The Tigers have the home crowd.
Able to learn from its strategic and attitudinal mistakes, the Bucks should prevail.
It is generally not recommended to rely upon comparative scores, but LSU lost twice this year, both times to outfits less capable than the one team to defeat the Buckeyes. Kentucky and Arkansas are not premier entries, any more than were the Stanford Cardinal (who beat USC), Colorado or Texas Tech (who beat Oklahoma), Pittsburgh (who eliminated West Virginia) or Tennessee (who kept Georgia from the SEC title picture and narrowly defeated an ordinary Wisconsin collection last week.) It is all the more regrettable a genuine playoff system is not in place---or that Georgia didn't meet USC earlier this month in the Crescent City's Sugar Bowl---so more realistic comparisons could exist.
As far as tonight's contest is concerned, neither team should dominate the other, but the Ohio State team figures to have the better-balanced attack. That could account for the difference, something like 23-15.
But that is why they play the game---and why a real playoff arrangement should decide things. You already knew that.
Read the complete post at http://www.xanga.com/MALeonard/636215537/amending-the-aberration.html