Defense doesn't win championships after all...

[vthokies4life 10]

Kevin Blackistone wrote an article for aol sports.com discussing this point (eventually). Usually I don't like what Blackistone has to say, but I think he has a point here. Here is the article.

 

http://sports.aol.com/ncaafb/story/_a/bbdp/texas-points-to-bcs-title/208258

 

DALLAS (Oct. 11) - The smoke billowing upward around the Cotton Bowl scoreboard on Saturday emanated from cannon fire signaling the end of yet another Red River Shootout, but it would not have been surprising to learn that it came from a burnout of the scoreboard's electronics.

 

Indeed, what was the 103rd renewal of the Texas-Oklahoma football series lived up to its moniker like few others. It was a shootout of instantly legendary proportions, with the fifth-ranked Longhorns coming from behind to beat to top-ranked Sooners 45-35. (It was the first time an upset was recorded in this series when both teams were ranked in the top five in 31 years.)

Speaking of history, however, it reminded that a long held theory about sports, at least when it comes to college football, may be all but shot down.

Offense doesn't just sell tickets in college football. It, and not defense, wins games too - big games, conference title games and, most important, national championship games.

Take a quick look back. LSU put up 38 in New Orleans last January to stop Ohio State. Florida, with Tim Tebow backing up Chris Leak, pasted 41 on the Buckeyes in 2007's final game. Vince Young led Texas' trampling of the Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush led Trojans in the 2006 title tilt at the Rose Bowl. That was the same Leinart and Bush-led USC team that in 2005 at the Orange Bowl won the national crown by scorching Oklahoma with 55.

"It's hard," Texas offensive coordinator Greg Davis said of winning without scoring in bunches these days. "In this league [big 12], you look at the number of quarterbacks that can light you up and you cannot win a game 17-14. I told Mack we got to put the ball in Colt's [Longhorns' quarterback Colt McCoy] hands to win."

McCoy was 28 of 35 for 277 yards and four touchdowns. He also ran 14 times for 59 yards in leading the Longhorns' offense to 438 total yards, or three more than Oklahoma's. Sooners' quarterback Sam Bradford completed 28 of 39 passes for 387 yards and five touchdowns.

It is against that backdrop -- or more pointedly the Cotton Bowl scoreboard I watched blink Saturday like an arcade game at the Texas State Fair surrounding the stadium -- that I am ready to award one ticket to this season's national championship game to the Longhorns. Texas coach Mack Brown refused to accept in the glow of victory.

"The people in front of us [in the polls] should be ahead of us if they continue to win," Brown said. "If we get through this stretch [three more ranked opponents in the next three weeks], then we'll talk."

There was some additional wonderment last week about whether the newest college football poll had it right with Oklahoma ranked first and Alabama slotted second. Both were undefeated but one of Alabama's victories was against then third-ranked Georgia in Athens, Ga. The Sooners didn't have such a lofty accomplishment. After Saturday, they still don't. Those polls were wrong. And any poll after this weekend that doesn't have Texas atop the heap will be wrong too.

The teams ahead of the Longhorns include another SEC team, LSU, which also is winning this season mostly the old-fashioned way. (What was LSU known for this week going into Florida? Defensive tackle Ricky Jean-Francois saying he and his teammates wanted to knock Florida quarterback Tebow from the game.) Then there is third-ranked Missouri, which travels to Texas next Saturday.

Heisman-candidate quarterback Chase Daniels' Tigers will be able to hang with the Longhorns and maybe even beat them, but scoring challenged SEC teams this season cannot. See once highly regarded Auburn, a 3-2 winner over Mississippi State last month. It looked early this season as if the SEC was again the conference to beat. We suggested it was so good it would wound itself severely enough to cost itself a berth in the national championship game.

The Big 12 should worry more.

"It's a shame that these two teams are in the same league, much less the same division and have to play this game early in the season," Brown said. "These are two of the best football teams in the country.

"These were really good offenses playing against really good defenses."

There isn't a team in the SEC with both. There certainly isn't an SEC team with a Big 12-like offense, Third Coast offense we'll call them.

And offense won. It's the new thing.