Rivals was sold to Yahoo for around 100 million and Scout was sold to Fox for 60 million. Like it or not………keep swimming upstream if you wish……..but your recruiting impacts the preseason polls. Its always been big in the South and with the acquisition of these two sites by Yahoo and Fox, its huge everywhere and now, I believe, plays a roll in how your team is mentally slotted with the fans, pollsters, and media.

Having said that, it obviously isn’t impossible to win it all with lower rates classes. However, like everything else in society people respond to offense and they respond to either underdogs winning (which the Big 10 hasn’t been doing) or favorites blowing other teams out in Big Games (which the Big 10 hasn’t been doing). All this leads to a perception that is frankly hard to argue against given the statistics. The SEC is the King of college football and the Big 10 has a lot of work to do. Even when Ohio State plays in the “big games” they either get blown out or they have to go 3 OT’s to win. You can’t do that when a lot of the people watching you may have only heard how great you are all year long and then the first time they see you you look mediocre at best. That leads to………well……..they didn’t play anybody which translates to the Big 10 sucks which translates to Penn State is over-rated which is subsequently corroborated when people pay attention to the lack of “star system” power we tend to give scholarships too.

Again……..having said that…….I don’t have a problem being a top 10 program. However, I don’t like to watch us look bad when playing agains the elite teams either.

in fact I put OSU in the list of teams who get “passes”. And yes, there are teams in the SEC that would get similar treatment that PSU gets, I just felt it easier to list the conference than the 6 or so teams individually that get the benefit of the doubt.

But I think there is something to Penn State historically not getting the same level of respect as some of these other teams, even when they’ve proved to be just as good, or better. Both 1982 and 1986 Penn State was considered to be outclassed by their opponents. Neither year were they given a “chance”, and yet both times they won it all. Then there were the other years I pointed out that we were undefeated, and still got snubbed. I pointed out 2005 and 2008 just to show that even when we performed just as well in the regular season as the other teams, we still didn’t get considered for the MNC game (I made the assumption of being undefeated in 2005 still wouldn’t have gotten us in over USC or Texas just because those 2 programs were USC and Texas, and started out higher in the polls.)

As for PSU in 2008 in the Rose Bowl, yes they “blew us out”, and I’m not trying to make excuses or be like “if we throw out the 2nd quarter then we won that game” type of person, or “if Royster didn’t get knocked out of the game we might have won it”. But it is important to note that except for really just a couple plays in the second quarter we did hang with USC, and gave them as good as they gave us. We knew all year that our secondary was our weakness, and when you play a team like USC with tall, fast receivers, then they’ll be able to exploit that weakness. With that said, I don’t think any other team in the country, except Florida, would have done any better against USC. I think if we replayed the Rose Bowl 10 times, USC would probably win it 6 of those times, and Penn State would have won it 4. I still believe we were one of the best 3 teams in the country last year, and I’m satisfied with that. Would I have liked more? Of course, but we get what we get.

But, I wasn’t even trying to say any of that, I was just pointing out that Penn State could go undefeated every year, but as long as there are 2 more undefeated teams in the country, and those teams are USC, Oklahoma, Texas, Miami, or any “premier” SEC school (it would be impossible for OSU to also be undefeated, since we play them every year), then we will be relegated to 3rd place.