Can someone explain why it’s so hard to beat a team twice in the same season? I’ve heard this mentioned dozens of times in previews for the National Title game, but the claim is without merit. It’s a lazy sports talk radio sound bite. Let’s take a look at SEC rematches from the regular season to the SEC Championship Game.
We’ve had a rematch of a regular season game a total of six times:
1999 – Alabama over Florida. Alabama beat Florida in the regular season.
2000 – Florida over Auburn. Florida won the regular season matchup.
2001 – LSU over Tennessee. I’ll get back to this game.
2003 – LSU over Georgia. LSU beat Georgia in the regular season.
2004 – Auburn over Tennessee. Auburn beat UT in the regular season.
2010 – Auburn over South Carolina. Auburn beat SC in the regular season.
The team winning the regular season game is 5-1 in the rematches. The exception being 2001 when LSU defeated #2 ranked Tennessee in the SEC Championship Game after losing in Knoxville in week three of the regular season. Now the coach of that 2001 LSU team was none other than Nick Saban.
So what does this tell us? At least in the SEC, beating a team twice in the same season is actually really easy. It happens over 80 percent of the time. But the only coach good enough to reverse the trend has been Nick Saban. In the game of the century in November we saw two evenly matched teams as far as athletes. I think the difference comes down to coaching, because of that, I think Bama wins Monday night. After all, it’s tough beating a team twice in the same season!
Penn State Moving Forward – Where have we seen this before? Storied program fires head football coach. Head coaching job gets turned down by first, second, third, fourth option. Program hires New England Patriots offensive coordinator who has exactly zero days of head coaching experience. New hire will try to finish the all-important recruiting season as he remains coordinator for the Patriots.
Penn State may have found a diamond in the rough with Bill O’Brien, but the overwhelming odds suggest they’ll be looking for a new head coach in four to five years. For one, there is no precedent of success for a Belichick assistant to succeed on his own. Weis, Crennel, Mangini, Josh McDaniel have all crashed and burned without Belichick. Even more troublesome for Penn State is the track record of coaches who have taken over a storied programs with no prior head coaching experience at any level.
On the recruiting front, Penn State has done itself no favors. Hiring a coach who at the earliest is 11 days away from being able to recruit is going to further cripple this recruiting class. If New England goes to the Super Bowl O’Brien will have missed out on the entire 2012 recruiting cycle which ends February 1. In effect, PSU is self-imposing a year sanction on their football program.
It’s always darkest before the dawn. For Penn State, dawn could be years and years away.
