Louisville's Cinderella story might not have fairy tale ending
By Mike Freeman | CBS SportsLine.com National Columnist Follow MikeDodd: Give Louisville credit
Poor Louisville. The team might go undefeated and schmoes like me are cracking on them like a helmet on Joe Paterno's shin.
I mean, what exactly about their schedule is not to like, a schedule that includes Kentucky, Temple and Middle Tennessee. Throw in Buffalo and Towson State and their strength of schedule might equal my high school's.
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| Does anyone want to see what Buckeye-induced tears will do to this makeup? (Getty Images) |
Don't get mad, Cardinals fans, because there is still a chance we might see Ohio State versus Louisville for the national championship or, as Buckeyes coaches are secretly calling the potential matchup: nap time.
Ohio State, with its 48 NFL Draft picks, would lose to the Oakland Raiders, 20-14. In overtime. They're that stacked. The Buckeyes would beat the Cardinals -- if I could borrow from Chad Johnson's mangled Spanish -- Ocho Cinco to seis.
The caca would hit the fan.
It would be 20-0 after the first half and millions of television viewers would be falling asleep faster than Terrell Owens in a team meeting.
I can see it now. Mr. Sweater Vest, in a corner of his office somewhere, the door closed, making sure no one is around to witness what was about to happen, and then suddenly, upon contemplating the thought of his Buckeyes against the Cardinals, breaks out into a bellyaching laugh. "Please, please, I can't take it," he might whoop, "Louisville against us in the national championship game? Bwaaaaa!"
Jim Tressel will not have laughed this hard since he saw Maurice Clarett's grades.
I love my man Dennis Dodd. He's the most talented male college football writer in the country. I keep telling him to stay away from sniffing glue. It kills brain cells, Doddsy. It makes you actually believe that Louisville, with its soft schedule and flaccid defense, deserves a shot at the national championship if the Cardinals go undefeated.
Louisville is the equivalent of the Detroit Tigers. They are impressive. Now. They look great. Now. They put beat-downs on teams like West Virginia, whose defense couldn't stop five chinchillas and a cocktail waitress.
But once the bright lights would flicker, and Ohio State started punching them in the mouth -- see, in the Big Ten, they, you know, tackle people -- they would begin making the football equivalent of routine throwing errors.
The pressure would swallow Louisville alive.
Put on Ohio State versus Florida or Michigan against Southern California or Auburn versus Texas or whatever. Just stop pulling my leg with this Louisville stuff.
The Louisville season is indeed a wonderful story. So is the other fairy tale come true in Rutgers University.
It's revenge of the nerds. Some of the little fellas that used to get their lunch money stolen by the powerhouses now have some clout and are puffing their chests.
Yet allowing Louisville or Rutgers to participate in a national championship game would be tantamount to affirmative action for the pee-wee conferences.
Louisville is an inspiring tale, and the Cardinals deserve numerous accolades for their season thus far, but not all undefeated seasons are created equal.
Louisville's strength of schedule will improve as they wrap up their season and the Big East is certainly not the lousy conference many thought it would be once power programs Virginia Tech and Miami departed.
Though I don't always buy into the hyperbole that the Big Ten and SEC are the greatest football conferences in the history of the world, they are still, week in and week out, the two toughest conferences around right now.
Every conference has its suckers and doormats. The SEC and Big Ten are no different. Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Illinois and Mississippi are examples of programs that should strongly consider some hearty steroid use.
So there are scrubs in every conference, as there are in the Big East, but the Cardinals still could not win the SEC or the Big Ten. They might finish second or third, at best.
Louisville supporters will point to two things. The Cardinals hammered a West Virginia team that last year beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
Then there is what happened in this past weekend's games. Both Ohio State and Michigan barely won over bottom feeders and Florida struggled against mighty Vanderbilt.
But we know why the Buckeyes and Wolverines stumbled. They were daydreaming about each other. We are also forgetting about the depth of the SEC versus the Big East. Look at what Arkansas is doing.
If Auburn emerges from the SEC with one loss and goes on to win the conference championship game, or Florida for that matter, such an achievement would far surpass Louisville's unbeaten record in a thin Big East.
So if you see the redoubtable Dodd and he is going on and on about Louisville, hit him with a couple of tranquilizer darts.
There is The U. Now there is The Lou. Good luck to the Cardinals. If they play Ohio State, they'll need it.
