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Overhyped: Tenn or Purdue?

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Tennessee.

Purdue had 11 returning defensive starters and a schedule that was absent Ohio State and Michigan. However, Purdue has a history of losing close games (they are the anti-Ohio State) and a question-mark at QB to begin this season. The loss to Minnesota derailed the season and they've never recovered, but outside of people suggesting they could compete for the Big-10 title, a BCS bowl, or even a national championship, nobody really took them so seriously as some idiots who had Louisville as a preseason #1.

Even with Purdue's schedule, most people seemed to agree that Michigan, Ohio State, and Iowa would again be the class of the Big-10.

Tennessee, on the other hand, is pretty lucky right now to not be 1-6. They were given a preseason rank of #3 despite 14 off-field arrests and one of the two starting QBs from 2004 transferring out of Knoxville. The Tennessee lovefest actually continues right now as the Vols somehow are still getting Top-25 votes, including getting 15-points worth of votes in our very own BP Poll this week, which was more than Minnesota, Arizona St., UTEP, Michigan St., Texas A&M, Oklahoma, or South Carolina, all of which at least have a reasonable case for being Top-25 teams since none of them are below .500.
 
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Dryden I think you hit upon a very interesting wrinkle to this question which is which team is unjustifiably receiving still too much love in the polls. Purdue's is done, hung drawn and quartered. The only means they have to put a positive exclamation point on their season is to play the role of upsetting a ranked opponent.

Tennessee gets huge credibility out of its one "good" win, against LSU. CFN's Fiutak was on the radio yesterday extolling the virtues of the Vol D - he's right they are pretty good and have the national rankings to back that up. However, he then talked about how the Vols came in on short notice and beat the Tigers in Baton Rouge. It apparently had escaped the mind of the normally reliable Fiutak that LSU was itself at the end of a very turbulent month. One in which they had not been able to get the expected number of scrimmage games under their belt. A month that had seen them doubting when and where games might be played, which thus placed them on the same field with the Vols who had 2 games to hone their skills versus LSU with only one - an emotional away win at Arizona State. Also forgotten is the fact that a deciding moment in that game was the lack of clock management by Les Miles at the end of the first half. The 3 points LSU lost as a result would have made all the difference in the world. Kudos to the Vols for sure for their comeback victory, but lets face it this was an unusual circumstance facing a young LSU squad. The Vols get altogether too much credit for that win. Were they to play the Tigers 3 more times in Baton Rouge now I am of the opinion they would win none of those contests.
 
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Purdon't and Louisville were both "schedule" picks in early season, pre-season polls; as much was said here on BP at the time. Many thought Purdon't would possibly run the table in b10 w/their veteran D. Again, shows how assinine pre-season polls are in predicting status of CF from 1Nov 'til end of season. Tennecheat is in full retreat down cycle as evidenced by resignation of OC a few days ago. Things there are, as they say, in turmoil.
 
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