Michigan overrated or USC underrated?

Answer 1

Neither. USC plays a wide-open, flexible and opportunistic style of football which triumphed over Lloyd Carr's rigidity. Michigan has better players with greater skills, but the coaching staff did not make the necessary adjustments to deploy them effectively. The old cliche rings true: In the Pac-10, coaches play to win; in the Big Ten, coaches play not to lose. The "trench" attitude did not serve Michigan's fans and athletes well. If I had been Henne, I would have been in the face of the offensive co-ordinator demanding that he make changes, tighten the o-line, give me two more seconds----just two more---to get my passes off, rather than being sacked so painfully, so many times. The receivers were in place and often wide open. Flexibility is crucial. Coaches marks: Carroll, A. Carr, D. End of story.

Answer 2

You can't underrate USC this year: they lost two games to unranked opponents that they should have beat, and they won too many close games that shouldn't have been that close. USC didn't get the results on the field for the quality of team they are.

As for Michigan, they played above themselves all year. Sure they were probably overrated at #2 but when a team keeps winning and then pushes the consensus #1 team to the limit at their home, you can't say they didn't deserve a high ranking.

I'd say maybe not playing since mid-November didn't help Michigan much in the Rose Bowl. But the Rose Bowl result was probably about right.

Answer 3

Neither. Remember Michigan soundly defeated Notre Dame and beat a good Wisconsin team. They also played a competitive game against Ohio State. Keep in mind that during the course of a season playing every week teams or players have off-weeks (i.e., USC losing to two unranked opponents). Also, momentum is more of a factor in college football as compared to the pros. So a good team can slip up occasionally and get beat. The surprise here is how badly Michigan was defeated. The saying goes 'On any given Saturday anything can happen in college football.' USC is one of those rare teams that when they get it going they can destroy their opponent and they had Michigan on their heels the entire game. Michigan was just not ready to play at the speed USC was dishing it out. It seemed as if Michigan had a let-down after the season ended for whatever reason.

Answer 4

Michigan by far. They had a very week schedule. They never really got tested and it showed in the Rose Bowl.

Sep 2 Vanderbilt W 27-7 ( Weak )
Sep 9 Central Michigan W 41-17 ( Weak )
Sep 16 at Notre Dame W 47-21
Sep 23 Wisconsin W 27-13 ( Decent win )
Sep 30 at Minnesota W 28-14
Oct 7 Michigan State W 31-13
Oct 14 at Penn State W 17-10 ( Barely )
Oct 21 Iowa W 20-6
Oct 28 Northwestern W 17-3
Nov 4 Ball State W 34-26 ( Why is this team on the schedule ? )
Nov 11 at Indiana W 34-3
Nov 18 at Ohio State L 39-42

Answer 5

Michigan was way overrated, especially coming out of a conference that overall was pretty bad this year (look beyond OSU annd Wisconsin and see how God awful Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Penn State, and Purdue were).

USC was underrated, if only for the fact that people thought they were done after the UCLA loss. But Pete Carroll may be one of the best coaches in figuring out what went wrong and correcting it, as he did when he rolled Booty out on a number of occasions vs. Michigan, which the screwups from Ann Arbor did nothing to counter. Given that, it was easy for Jarrett and Smith to carve up the Michigan secondary.

Answer 6

I would say Michigan was slightly overrated and got outplayed. USC would have been in the title game had they not lost to UCLA so they were not underrated just under achieved in a key game. Personally as an OSU fan USC scared me more than Florida just based on the explosiveness of the offense.

Answer 7

I don't think it will ever be valid to state that USC is underrated.

Michigan just didn't show up to play. They showed no emotion whatsoever especially when the voters ripped out their hopes of playing in a meaningful game.

Besides neither team wanted to play in this bowl in the first place and how would USC have fared had they played in cold weather.

Answer 8

Neither of the above. Both of these teams had excellent seasons and deserved to play each other in the Rose Bowl. USC just played the better game.

Answer 9

USC's good and people know it

now Michigan on the other hand is wayyyy overrated. Henne's a bum, that defense can't stop my grandmother...the only good player is Mike Hart, who would leave for the NFL if he was smart, but hes not obviously

Answer 10

They're both overrated, but Michigan is much more overrated than USC.