College football is funny...the spread has taken the nation by storm, but, what wins football games especially at the championship level is going back to the basics...run game + defense.
Focusing on defense for a bit...
Defensive line play is vital in college football. In nearly every game on any particular Saturday, the team with the better defensive line wins. In the college game, the DL, more than defending the run, is vital to PASS DEFENSE. It is funny that the SEC still prides itself off such a seemingly insignificant stat (yards per attempt defense) while the Big XII and Pac12 have all but abandon it (sans a team or two each year that jumps up). The Big XII with the bubble screen identity or the half assed pump n go once the safeties rotate up makes for great OVER plays but is laughable when it comes to competing with the big dogs of college football. The Pac10, too, but with more of a mixed identity, compounded with recent hires of RichRod, Mike Leach, and...Jim Mora.
What separates the SEC from those conferences is the SEC not only features the defensive lines that can get after you or contain (the lines are often jacked up with collegiate talent that is deep and versatile) which takes away from the lollipop quarterback play and mickey mouse gadget plays, but rugged old school style defensive backs that constantly deny the lollipop short stuff. What the SEC ends up being able to do is take away more than half the offense against teams from the Pac12 and Big XII. If you don't get the football across the first down marker, your offense is deemed immobile.
Last year, Alabama, LSU, South Carolina, and Georgia were at the top of that stat by year's end. One of the few outliers was the 2010 Auburn team that was very much an on-or-off defense.
This year...Alabama, LSU, and Florida are all currently in the Top 5 of the category nationally. Also, look at QBR as an indicator...all three teams lead the nation in QBR defense.
If there is a team at the top of that category to look at not in the SEC...Florida State. Also, Notre Dame, who is sitting right around the Top 10 nationally...the Oklahoma and USC games will end up being very telling if Notre Dame is legit or not...sounds like "no duh" talk, but if Notre Dame is going to win those two games, it'll be due to their ability to stop the short stuff that Oklahoma and USC often use in high volume with wide outs that often are near the top of the nation in YAC.
It is also a reason why I've been an advocate for matchups against the likes of Stanford (with Andrew Luck) or Boise State (with Kellen Moore) as those would have been the most intriguing matchups in any given BCS year. The complex passing schemes those teams run with QBs both savvy and accurate and passing trees more complex than the now-traditional lollipop dink and dunk stuff that is featured heavily in college football would have provided the SEC opponent with a real test (look at Boise State versus Georgia recently).
