Why does Sam Bradford look so content? Because he's a great QB. And he knows the meaning of overrated.
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It’s been gone for a couple of weeks, I know. And you probably sat in front of your computer screen for hours on end, using your tears as keyboard lubricant. But it’s over now. The Mail Bag is back, and you can rest easy. After you read it.
This week, we’ve got the typical grammar and structure that usually accompany the emails featured here. You know, the kind of stuff that gets Shakespeare hard. And the content is, well, touching. I mean the fact that so many people who have either been stuck in third grade for seven years or are typing with hands mangled by a firecracker mishap take the time to tell me what an idiot I am is really touching. There are some depths being plumbed here.
We’ve got the guy who cried for an hour into his Michael Crabtree sweater cape when I didn’t rank Taylor Potts highly enough in my college fantasy quarterback article. Then there’s the fan who can’t seem to crack the Davinci Code surrounding the definition of the word “overrated.” He’s so close, too. And finally, a wonderful novel penned by Louis, who is incapable of understanding that my Roundtable answers on CFN.scout.com are listed under my name, not above it.
Enjoy. You won’t find genius like this anywhere else outside of Joe Biden’s speech writing room.
From: Sean
just read your most overrated bit and you , my friend, are overrated. most of those guys on there are good, some, maybe too much hype———-BUT YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT BRADFORD. not only was he great this year, but last year as a FRESHMAN, almost the same results( – a few yards and td’s). and for the other sooners QB’s, they were great as well. just becouse you were great in college doesnt mean you will be any good in the nfl, but BRADFORD will make you eat those words within the next few years. he wont be the best, but he will be damn good——SEAN
My Response:
Now, I know it wasn’t intentional because that would require common sense, but you actually paid me a great compliment. I mean, I didn’t even know I was “rated,” not to mention “overrated.” That’s great news! Somebody somewhere must think I’m pretty damn special. That’s an integral part of being overrated, so thank you Sean.
Even better, you go on to prove my argument and ruin your point in your second sentence. I’ll quote you here — “most of those guys on there are good, some, maybe too much hype.” That’s the point of the whole article. This goes back to your obviously misconceived definition of the word “overrated.” Basically, it means “too much undeserved hype.” So, congratulations, you accidentally figured out the whole article, and you don’t even realize that you agree with me.
About Bradford, I don’t think he’s awful… at all. I think he’s pretty damn good. You don’t do the things he’s done in only two years of college football without being an excellent player. But he’s not the number one overall pick he’s being made out to be. He’ll get scrutinized, criticized, and knocked down a peg by analysts and scouts all season long. He plays in a variation of the spread system, his arm is lacking prototypical strength, he plays against awful defenses, he has a funkier release than most people seem to notice, and he benefited from a super college O line. So, is he good? Yes. But will he be the top overall pick that most are projecting him to be at this point in time? No. That’s called overrated.
Now, hurry and get back to Mavis Beacon before your computer teacher comes over and catches you. You’ve got recess next period and you don’t want to miss that. Please no more emails from second graders.
From: Kevin
Dude, it’s a joke.
When has the TT QB EVER finished that low? Reesing ahead of Potts?
Sniff some more glue. TT QB has been the #1 BCS Fantasy QB 7 out of the last 8 years (and last year was the only year not #1, and yet it was #2 behind Bradford, and by less than 30 pts).
Why even put stuff out there? :Then again, thanks. I hope my league reads it.
Do yourself a big favor. Always list the TT QB your 1 or 2 BCS QB. Always. Anything less will be shunned aside and nobody will ever read your stuff again. I didn’t even read the other positions.. as soon as I read QBs, I moved on.
My Response:
It’s great to get an email that is in no way a simple cut of drivel from a homer. I mean, this may be the most unbiased thing I’ve ever read. No way you’re a Texas Tech fan, right? You’re just the damn champion of the College Fantasy Football Integrity cause.
Here’s the deal, Taylor Potts is a viable fantasy option at quarterback because he plays for Texas Tech. I don’t mind calling him viable, or serviceable, or not bad. But he’s not going to have the same kind of year that Todd Reesing will. Reesing’s got two years of great production under his belt, he’s got two receivers back that caught 90+ balls last season, and he’s got a better defense than the Red Raiders.
Potts, on the other hand, is replacing the biggest star QB in the history of TT. While the other guys that have been easily filled in for (like Sonny Cumbie, Kliff Kingsbury, etc) were pretty good, none were as big a star as Graham Harrell. That’s not an easy position to step into for a guy who has thrown less than 90 balls over two years. And then there’s that Crabtree guy who must be replaced. He was kind of important to Harrell’s success recently. I’m not sold on the replacements. Of their top four receivers, 171 catches and 28 receiving touchdowns have moved on from Lubbock, while only 111 catches and nine touchdowns return. It won’t be as easy as you think, but please by all means draft Potts over Reesing if it helps you feel better about the things you do with your Mike Leach poster in your bathroom.
And one more thing. It’s awesome when people make statements to me like your last paragraph. Stuff like, “I didn’t like it and that means there is absolutely no chance anyone will ever read anything you write ever again.” Tell you what, I’ll keep track of how many people read this mail bag, and I’ll send you the number. Should be a nice way to find out if you’re right. Don’t hold your breath.
From: Louis D.
With all due respect, I think your the classic my dick is biger than your dick kind of guy. I’ve been analyizing football for decades and found the fact that evryon thinks someoe else doesn’t belong. If you are open minded, well I might be able to persuade you differently. But if you are like the typical robot believer that allthings SEC or BIG-TEN or BIG-XII end all discussions then forget it. You are not willing to look far deeper into the world of iision 1 Football. I still find in interviews that people will say some of the stupidist stuff, thinkslik, “These guys are so much faster, bigger, stronger…bla bla bla.” That’s the week Michigan beats Florida….the same UM teamthat lost to Oio State with the same pack of numnutz pretzel eaters with 94 IQ’s that wrote how dump slow and fat Muichigan was after that game. Football I about matchups and some work, some don’t. Some mismatches are obvious and some not-so-much. Loo I don’t know how old you are and I really am not trying to insul you, but if hear one more fat slob with a typwriter say that this 6’2-225 lb guy that runs a 4.6 40 is so much better of an athlete than the plyer that is 6’4, 240 lb and runs a 4.55 but hailes from a WAC or MWCV school, I am going topuke my pizza on his penny loafers during the next interview.
The most common bullshit line is, these guys couldn’t play this schedul or that. Guess what, it goes both ways. Do you think Auburn could take their athletes from a few hundred fee above sea level and play a WAC or MWC schedule. NO! They would have a lot of difficulties. Their athletes are useto being within an arms length of mama’s tit. Auburn cunts frequent flyer miles on a napkin, not a Cray. Teams from the west face huge altitude swings, significant time zone changes, and rarely play as many as six home games unless they are a national program like a BYU where 65,000 fans gather for every game. That’s 5-20,000 more than most Big East Stadiums and a lot of ACC Stadiums. Lowly UTAH still playes in a stadium hat is comparable (size) to nearly half the BIG-East and ACC teams and two SEC teams.
What you have is an inbread prejudice, that same mentality that says California teams re not really playing football because they surf out there. Yeah, tell that to USC, CAL, Oregon, OSU or even Fresno State.
If you want to smack on the MAC, fine, it really doesn’t have much to complain about given the geography. But when ucla DEFEATS tENNESSEE AND THEN GETS HOSED OFF THE FIELD AGAINST utah AND byu in consecutive years, that’s teling you something. Those same MWC teams struggle against many in-conference foes. Frankly, the MWC went I believe 27-13 last year in OOC competition (or thereabouts) and finished as what was by most experts and computer analysis as the 4th best Divsion 1-A conference. Ite MWC di that in spite of the tremendously illegal BCS system that funnels capital using an ilegal trust to six conferences and more particularly to about programs at the expense of everyone else. No it isn’t legal (too many trust buster attorneys hve weighed in on this one behind the scenes) and the reason for the continued compromises is because the BCS knows it.
So you can bitch-slap me or Orrin Hatch, but the fact i, you really have this bias that says somehow team A’s athletes with all the press clippings simply has to be better than B’s from the sagebrush and cocoanut leagus. last time I checked however, the top third of prgrams from those leagues have been beating BCS schools including name programs for quite some time and long before the 10 year old BCS was invented by marking hacks and schills for the SEC. My word to the SEC….stop beating up on panseys in the OOC games and maybe we’ll take your glossy W/L records more seriously. In the meantime, the ten year moving average OOC ranking of 100 for SEC opponents and 59 for PAC-10 opponents tell me all really need to know about why myths about greatness get started, especially when the SEC has played 84 of those games at home and the PAC-10 less than 60.
The bottom line buddy, you are wrong about a lot of assumptions you’ve mde. Tell me you are from the east cast ot the south and at least I’ll know why…but in the meantime, don’t be surprised if I don’t believe that just because some athlete has SEC on his sleve, he’s no often over rated.
Urban Meyer said something interesting about UTAH’s recent teams. He said, heck UTAH could have beaten anyone in 2004 and last years team proved it was a fine match for Alabama and no less a match than us. We might go 3-4 players deep at Florida at bowl tim if everyone gets healthy, but UTAH was proably 2 players deep or more at most positions. You win games most often with your first 22 and UTAH was as good as anyone.”
Another SEC coach with MWC and PAC-10 history said, “There were several teams from the MWC last year that could have played and beaten our SEC teams, especially on THEIR home fields, just like we usually win on ours. UTAH essentially came to the south and won on our turf and there’s no getting arond that, no excuses. Alabama got whipped and that same UTAH team struggled in conference at times just like we do here.” Every region is different and it’s foolish and biased to think athletes geared to playing in one part of the country would automatically be capable of manning up in a completely different environment or climate. That’s why they call it a home field advantage. Travel out there is far tougher than in the SEC in terms of distance and physical challanges surrounding the game. You might have 102+ degree temperatures in Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, Fresno, Provo, Salt Lake or Las Legas w/high humidity at the start of the season or contend with travel from sea level to 4, 5 or even 6-7,000 feet elevation. You can have high wind, snow, it can be brutal to pay out there and people down here have no clue of how tough that is. We have heat and humidity for sure, but try playing when it’s 110 and so dry, you lungs feel like tey are on fire after three minutes like in Provo in September. But its a constant down here, you don’t have a mile of elevation changes to legs and lungs to contend with. The noton that SEC athletes would skate right through PAC-10 or even a WAC or MWC schedule is ridiculous, and no different from thinking one of us would skate through our own schedule down here.” Yes we recruit slightly better athletes, more 4-5* plater, but you know, by they time they take the field as sophmores and juniors, those fast developers often disappear among the normal developers. It’s not the number of stars an athlete has, but the quality of the development and coaching and there are some tremendous coaches out there. Football isn’t really all that much better in one place or another, just different. Sportswriters that never played the game don’t get that. They sit there jawboning over this or that and then get dumfounded when a 3-8 team knocks off someone in the top 10.”
When I asked him if the MWC deserved three ranked teams last year he responded, “Why were three MWC teams ranked last year? Because they are that good and their competition was worthy. I would’t have wanted to face Utah, TCU or BYU. Hell, BYU defeated UCLA something like 53-0 (59-0 actually).”
Now I doubt I’ve changed your mind, but I hope you get the message. Not everyone has this unirsal belief that ABC is better than XYZ and having covered this sport for 27 years, I can say that the worst myth of all is the “We can’t be beat myth.”
There are a boatload of guys like you and especially youn 30-something guys that think BYU for example was undeserving of their National Title in 1984. Yet 27 players from that team went on to play professional football. BYU pummelled runner-up Washngton 31-3 3 games into the followig season and the most important reason was, the people who liked OU watched them fall to a 3-8 Kansas (28-11) Team after rising to #1. OU was suppoe to beso great, hd the #1 rated pass defense in the nation. Well of course they did, KU was the only team in the Big-8 (back then) that threw the ball so OU was never tested. KU’s crapy team moved up and down the field and out to a 28-3 lead with 11 seconds remaining when OU scored to make it 28-11. But the fact is, the coaches and sportswriters looking at how lowely Kansas shredded that vaunted OU defense for over 400 yards and 4 TD’s and wonered, wat the heck would BYU have done to them? Grant Teaff (Baylor) and Foge Fazio (Pitt) whose teams played both and lost to both voted BYU#1 and publically stated it was no contest, BYU was that much better.
I get sick of the crappola about that year, mostly coming from young bucks who were crawling around on playgrounds but who grew up believing the myth that BYU didn’t belong. Dude, BYU was that good. TCU, UTAH, and get off the Falcons back buddy, they are 5-0-1 in major wars, what do you expect.
Nuff said, have some respect for theconferences you dare to drop-kick. If you relly don’t belive, stop watching them on TV ad get your ass on an airplane and visit Utah, BYU and Fresno…then tell us all how much bigger football is at Rutgers and est Virgini tan it is in those western venues.
My Response:
First of all, thanks for starting your email by referencing my johnson. That’s not strange.
Secondly, how did you find the time to write such a long email when you’re obviously busy flying around in Mountain West spandex crusading for the rights of the conference? Seriously, it’s like I opened my inbox and was greeted with a free copy of the worst book ever written.
Third, you again bring up my body in that last paragraph when you told me to get my “ass on a plane.” You could have worded that differently, but I’m starting to pick up on a trend here. Just to recap: you’ve mentioned my johnson, my ass, and how young I must be about twenty times. And you called me buddy. Is this President Clinton?
And finally, and definitely most importantly… THE ANSWER YOU READ ON CFN WAS NOT MY ANSWER. IT WAS THE ONE ABOVE MINE. So, and this goes for a lot of people that have emailed me lately, my answers on CFN are posted below my name. If you need visual proof, you can click here to see what I mean. Sorry though, there are no pictures of me getting on a plane on the site. You’ll just have to use your imagination.
6/29 Mail Bag — One Poor Ole Miss Fan
6/22 Mail Bag — The Big 12′s Best and Brightest
