The top of each conference is (conf champ game participants):

ACC - Boston College and Virgina Tech
Big East - West Virginia and Connecticut
Big Ten  - Ohio State and Illinois
Big 12 - Mizzou and Oklahoma
Pac 10 - USC and ASU
SEC - LSU and Tenn

The Big East could just have easily been BC and VaTech until they bolted.  The only suprise top 25 teams (not seen every couple of years):

South Florida (big east)
Cincinnati (big east)
Illinois (big 10)
Kansas
Mizzou
Hawaii (wac)
Boise State (wac)

The big east sucks so some of the teams records look good.  

The big 10 is always going to have at least 3 in the mix.  

The final records for kansas and mizzou were shocking, but they replaced the normal stable of atm, neb, tech and sometimes osu

Small conferences traditionally get 2 or 3 spots because the big conferences knock each other off.  BYU and Hawaii are this years two with Boise St getting credit for last year.

Yes there were more upsets like app st v mich, but they also include games such as ark beating lsu and fl st beating bc.

Yes some traditional powers suffered, mich, neb, miami and of course nd.

But the usual suckiest schools (duke, baylor) still suck, the middle has just gotten a tiny bit bigger.

To me this year was remarkable in that NO 1 or 2 schools really stood out.  I wouldn't call this a trend.

Like you, BZ, my comment went long. Was gonna do a diary, but I think we're in the same neighborhood, just different ends of it.

I think Carolina March was exactly right.

Where have we seen this before?

While some of you are still wiping the amniotic fluid from your eyes, there was another event much like this. And on another thread here, but it concerned basketball, the NIT and the NCAA playoffs.

As a refresher, before the NCAA went to a 64-team (now 65 with play-in) bracket, it only hosted a 32-team playoff and that did not include independents, much less the mid-majors. Those wound up going to the NIT, which welcomed highly ranked teams like Notre Dame and Marquette and reserved spots for mid-major champions. And the NIT, set in NYC and famed Madison Square Garden, derived a good TV audience and ratings due to that wide and deep field of talent. That Texas win in 1978 delivered a lot more prestige than it would today.

The attitude embedded in the NCAA at the time was that the big conferences were the best and the talent thinned out over the rest of the field. Essentially, that's what the commenters above are saying and it is generally true. The Hawaii's of the world would go to the NIT because it was implicitly felt they couldn't play with the big boys in the NCAA. But after seeing the continued success of the NIT season-ending tourney, that attitude became more grounded. To consolidate the popularity, the NCAA and the TV venues, the NCAA changed and the end result was March Madness as we know it today, complete with balanced brackets, close analysis of teams and placement and a real attempt to include everyone possible.  

This football season was about speed, about getting more of it on the field all the time, on both sides of the ball. Coaches like speed not only because it can get you quick TDs but also because speed can "make up for mistakes." The truth is there was an abundance of speed and talent being wasted and was flowing downhill to smaller schools. Now with a range of passing offenses, the speed can be utilized all over the field on offense - and has to be matched on defense or disaster can ensue. Which it has this season.

The NFL already has speed everywhere; they are only marginally affected at this point. They will benefit in the long run because of newly revealed talent. Before they scouted like an SOB for those small school players, who have always played a great role in the NFL. This fact has long undercut the big school arrogance.

The implicit NCAA pre-64-team attitude, a certain arrogance of size, still is present in BCS football. Most of the time the big conferences can justify that attitude; the best of the bigs can normally whip the shit out of the smaller schools. And that worked right up to Boise State and OU last bowl season. That broke the water, so to speak. And something else was born. Not necessarily parity, but a sense of hope where there had only been hopelessness before - and increasing fewer dollars.

The BCS greviously, IMHO, discrimates against the mid-majors. Not directly per se but in terms of funneling the football dollar into the big schools, and general respect flows with those dollars.

But what occurred with basketball seems to be happening now: certain talented clubs get left in the cold. And the real football question - who can whip who's ass - seldom gets answered on the field. And there is really no NIT to run to.

The BCS is a function of network control of football, something which has increased over the last two decades, during which the media flipped from being a neutral witness of a college event to a full-time promoter and agent of college events. (Go watch the '69 Tx-Arkansas or Michigan-Michigan State's tie game; it wasn't just production that changed but perspective and control.)

The college presidents, in their ivory tower wisdom, let their control slip away for the big bucks: they have privatized the football playoffs.

Do you ever hear about how much profit the networks make from this? Of course not. The old bowl structure itself was a privatized function for the most part, operating on a for-profit basis with a generous cut to the host conferences and schools. Considering there are 32 bowls with 64 teams this year alone, there is obviously money to still be made. Of course, the bottom quarter changes all the time, but that's true in most any business.

The real question is whether this is entertainment per se or eduction, some hybrid or some mongrel. How much total money is involved, including the networks' cut? What's the real share percentage for universities? How far does that trickle down to all schools and to education? How much does that benefit all collegiate sports programs, men and womens?

The hard truth is that the NCAA football season can not exist without the mid-majors. That they seldom excel enough to make the big time bowls is merely the club used to enforce a neo-plantation type of system. This is probably a billion-dollar enterprise, if not more, fueled by cheap athletes, relatively speaking, and scads of money to the most "important" schools.

That is the dark side which Hawaii represents amid the glitter and hoopla of bowl season. You could strike up the band but they don't even show half times anymore; just updates of the ever present scroll and plenty of commercials. ABC/ESPN/etc. control college football, not the collective universities of the NCAA. And the intent and the missions of the two differing entities are not the same. And the networks are working hard to institutionalize their control with long term contracts. Seeing how the schools graduate the lawyers, I'm sure, if the modern era of lawyers has proven anything, that those contracts can be broken easily.

I used to write a yearly column excoriating the ivory tower set. Why? To register my disgust and their blindness. Sorta. But really, all I want is more and better football. Not an eleventh or twelfth game against some pussy U but some real contests that pit the best against the best. The BCS attempts a financial approximation of that but is so flawed that it seldom hits the mark. 2005 will be considered the heyday.

We need two tournaments. One, about 16 teams, will cover everyone who can probably compete at the top level, some 13.4% of the teams. We need a second, NIT type bowl for mid-majors on down, no more than eight teams. That's 6.7% of the 1-A (nee, don't like new name) schools, right at 20% altogether. March Madness includes 65 of the 341 teams, some 19.06 %, very close. That's the upper standard deviation. And 10 games would be just fine; you'd see less injuries and, I suspect, better scheduling. Those playoffs would involve 22 games with 24 teams; that leaves a lot - 40 teams by this year's count - for various and sundry bowls.

The real key is for money to flow into the whole 1-A division because in the end that would foster much better overall football programs, players and games.  And that's what I want: better football.

Where is the obstruction? In the Ivory Towers and in Bristol and NY, in the network boardrooms. There is an on-going collusion where the rich get richer and in the end we, the ones who really love collegiate football, will all be poorer for it.

...as per my comment in the original thread.  Further, as I also comment above (or below, or to the left, as the case may be) the reason for all of the upsets this year in a result not only of the spread but also a general lack of excellence among the top teams.  Indeed at least two of the 3 biggest upsets this year had nothing to do with the spread.

Stanford was running no such thing and had a first time starter at QB but USC was just too arrogant and had to many injuries to prevail.  Sure JDB had the broken finger and literally threw the game away but the outstanding athletes on USC's defense were unable to shut down tha vastly inferior and unspread (as it were) Stanford O.  In WFV/Pitt it was the decent but not exceedingly talented Pitt D that stopped the very capable WFV spread and limited its opportunities with a very traditional and mundane but in the event effective running game.  WFV simply choked very badly.

Even the apathetic, arrogant, unprepared and legendarily slow Michigan D caught up with the ASU spread in less than a half and essentialy shut it down after that.  It was rather the failure of the Michigan offense, the linchipin of their expected run to the MNC (not expected by me mind, though I certainly expected much better from them) that failed to adequtely dominate the "inferior athletes" of ASU.