What will the Florida St vs Ohio St National Championship game line be?

Ohio State shares many similarities to Notre Dame.  The main thing they share is their incredible weak schedule - weaker than even Notre Dame played in 2012.  I consider this to be one of, if not the biggest factor in the game.  Let me explain it this way.

Basketball is a good example because it is a smaller sample size.  You don't become a better basketball player by playing against people who are not as good as you.  You get better by playing guys who are better than you.  Playing against better competition will cause you to raise your play to the level of those you are playing against.  Having to fight tooth and nail for everything you get makes you better.  I makes you tougher.  It makes you battled hardened.  That doesn't (can't) happen when you play soft competition.

This is the dynamic at play when teams like Notre Dame and Ohio State have to play the Alabama's of the world.  Alabama is a team who has faced 3 or 4 teams this season that are as good or better than Ohio State, while Ohio State has not play a single team that is even the same universe as Alabama.  The same thing could be said about Notre Dame in 2012.

This has nothing to do with talent.  It has nothing to do with how many 4 or 5 star recruits a team has.  It has everything to do with being battle-tested and battle-hardened.  If the two teams swapped schedules, then Alabama would be the team at a huge disadvantage.  In other words, it's not that the Ohio State players are not capable of attaining that higher plane, it's just that their weak schedule has not provided them with the avenue to get there.

You frequently hear pundits talk about how Big 10 teams can't match the speed of the SEC teams.  That's not exactly accurate.  The problem is not that the Big 10 teams can't match the "speed," it's that they can't match the "speed of the game."  The game is just too fast for them.  It's too intense for them.  That's why they appear slow.  They are simply not accustomed to playing at that level.

No where was that more evident than the Alabama/Notre Dame national championship game.  You could clearly see Notre Dame simply wasn't on Alabama's level.  It was obvious. They were shell-shocked.  All that preparation time could not prepare the Notre Dame players for the intensity of the game they found themselves in the middle of.  Geez, even Brian Kelly admitted as much in his halftime interview.  Go back and watch that 1st half again.

In the 2nd half the Notre Dame players started to settle in and become more acclimated to Alabama's level of play, but by that time it was way too late.  The game was already over.  Go back and watch when Ohio State played Florida in the national championship game.  Same exact thing.

In my Notre Dame write up I said that unless Notre Dame was going to scrimmage the Chicago Bears, they would not be prepared to match Alabama's intensity (something like that anyhow).

Ohio State doesn't lack talent.  They have SEC talent.  What they don't have is battle-hardened SEC talent.  When you watch the Alabama/Ohio State game harken back to this post.  Watch carefully.  If Ohio State goes into that Notre Dame shell-shocked mode, you'll understand the dynamic at play.

Just like the Notre Dame game, Alabama will own the 1st half of this game.  The smartest bet on the board will be Alabama minus whatever 1st half.

First of all I never said Sims is better than McCarron, but because you raise the issue, I'll address it.

I said Sims was better than McCarron, but that's actually meaningless. I think Bama has the ability to score more points with Sims than McCarron, for whatever reason.

This is really more of an offensive coordinator issue than a QB issue.  I have been saying for several years now that Alabama has some of the best and deepest offensive talent in the country and, accordingly, should be one of the best offenses in the nation.  Prior to last season I said that I expected Alabama's offense to be the best in school history.

At no time during the Saban era has Alabama's offense ever lived up to expectations which has led me to lament on more than one occasion that no one in the country gets less out of their talent than Alabama offensive coordinators (Jim McElwain & Doug Nussmeier).  I was ecstatic when both left the program.  Lane Kiffin is the first Alabama offensive coordinator under Nick Saban that has effectively utilized all the weapons at his disposal.

AJ McCarron is a better pure QB than Blake Sims.  He's taller, more experienced, and more accurate on intermediate throws.  He also had a much better ability to read defenses and go through his progressions.  The knocks on McCarron are he is arrogant so most of his teammates didn't care for him much, he doesn't know how to step up in the pocket, he's slow, he's un-athletic, and if you flush him out of the pocket, the play is dead because he has zero playmaking ability.

Sims is very athletic and is almost impossible to sack, but really struggles with the intermediate passing game.  He is also not very good at reading defenses and going through his progressions.  Kiffin has masked some of Sims' deficiencies by essentially reading defenses for him from the sideline.

This is actually the best offense, IMHO, Alabama has ever had because they actually have a major league arm under center and the top WR, hands down, in the country. Bama hasn't even needed a passing game to win their national championships. Running game and D were enough. Now they have the Sims to Cooper hookup, and a football genius on the offensive side of the sidelines, and have put up un-bama like offensive numbers. I've been on most of their overs. VS auburn was taking candy from a baby. Vs missouri a tougher cover but a win is a win.

The sims mccarron argument is really pointless but sims can throw it farther and if Cooper is 5 yards open, it makes sims the better QB when they want to throw deep.

If you want to throw intermediate you want mccarron. Leave that Lane and watch the fireworks imo.

Bama TTo large?