Quality of Play in Bowl Games

[Stallion]

you never know if it is just quality defense, added preparation time or do some of you think the 4-5 week lay-off between the end of the regular season and the big bowl games affects the timimg and quality of play on offense. None of the offenses in these games were really hitting on all cynlinders-except maybe Mississippii which is predominately a run team. USC for a half but again they are a very well rounded team.

[Pony Soup]

Combination.

[huskerpony]

I agree.

The Big 12 defenses were clearly not as good as those in many of the other conferences. (I actually was particularly impressed with the ACC defenses I saw this year--they just have no offense!) Once you get past OU and UT, there isn't a team in the Big 12 that had much defense this year--and as we saw in the bowl games, UT and OU both still struggled against the run.

That being said, I have always felt that the--west coast/spread/NFL/whatever you want to call them--offenses take a while to get clicking at the beginning of the season. That is why in the NFL, you usually see defenses looking particularly good at the beginning of the season, and offenses start taking control about half way through the year. So, I think the layoff definitely hurts on two levels--your timing is off (hence why everyone seemed to struggle on offense in the first half of their bowl games) and the defenses have a month to prepare for whatever you might throw at them.

[Charleston Pony]

Big XII South certainly didn't show very well in their bowl games. Gotta hand it to the PAC-10 after they got kicked around in their regular season non-conference games.

[Pony Soup]

Big XII South certainly didn't show very well in their bowl games. Gotta hand it to the PAC-10 after they got kicked around in their regular season non-conference games.

Who did the Pac 10 teams play? It's pretty hard to judge conferences by bowl performance given the matchups.

[PoconoPony]

I think you can make some arguments that Big XII teams feature and face so many teams that are primarily passing attacks that they are vulnerable to to balanced or solid running attack teams. Defenses are built with speed for pass coverage/rush and have some trouble with straight on power and size. In bowl games with all the time off the running attacks are in sync. before the passing game gets into rhythm. Hence, it is frequently the second half before XII teams find their rhythm at which time they may be in trouble.