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 The 2000 Season In ReviewTime to wrap up the 2000 season. For posterity's sake, I'm going to include my awards and comments on the 2000 season in a commentary, as well as say a few things about the Picks Contest. The Conferences Looking over my final rankings for 2000 , it is hard to ignore what the Pac Ten did this season. To be sure, the conference suffered from low preseason expectations, but the impressive play particularly of #2 Washington, #4 Oregon State, and #6 Oregon cannot be overlooked. Futhermore, the conference scored some big victories in interconference play (UCLA over Michingan and Alabama, USC over Penn State), and the dogs (Washington State and California) are no worse than the dogs of the SEC or Big Twelve.The SEC, always expected to be good, would have to be considered to have a down year-- if a conference that places 9 teams in bowl games can be said to be down. But the SEC went just 4-5 in bowls, and looked awfully bad in some of those losses. Probably the only conference more impressive than the Pac Ten was the Big Twelve. Not only #1 Oklahoma, but #7 Nebraska and #9 Kansas State were very impressive in the bowls, and the middle-division Big Twelve teams (#16 Texas, #19 Iowa State, #30 Texas A&M) are better than their Pac Ten and arguably SEC counterparts. With that in mind, my final conference strength rankings are:
The Coaches The SJS Coach of the Year is Oklahoma's Bobby Stoops. Stoops was impossible to ignore, based mostly on the poise the Sooners displayed against a verteran Florida State team in the national championship game. The ease of this selection, however, obscures the number of other top-notch nominees: Dennis Erickson of Oregon State, Mike Belotti of Oregon, Rick Neuheisel of Washington, Lou Holtz of South Carolina, Bobby Bowden of Florida State, Frank Beamer of Virginia Tech, Butch Davis of Miami, and George O'Leary of Georgia Tech. The Players The SJS Player of the Year is Florida State's Chris Weinke. Weinke put up phenomenal numbers in FSU's passing game, without the benefit this year of a particularly strong running attack. Josh Heupel is your runner up, but even as Weinke struggled in the Orange Bowl thanks to a great defense and inconsistency from his wide receiver, so too did Heupel struggle (with similar obstacles). Looking at the season as a whole, and with all respect to Drew Brees, Weinke was clearly the class of the drop-back passers. An incomplete all-SJS team is as follows: Quarterback: Chris Weinke, FSU An uneven list, but the best I could do. Picks Contest... Random Thoughts Take a look at these stats lines:
Players 1 and 2 look like the same guy, and 3 and 4 the same guy. In fact, Player 1 is ROBERT (1999) and Player 2 is Master O (1999). Player 3 is Master O (2000) and Player 4 is ROBERT (2000). These two were the biggest rags to riches and riches to rags stories of the past two years; it is almost like they switched places. This season was by far the biggest ever. Not only did we pick 331 games-- 51 more than last season, which had been the most ever-- but the number of picks submitted by experts this year was 6274, shattering the old record of 4638. Thus, Oz's acheivement may be the greatest ever to win in such a long season and against such competition. |
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