Wilbon Is Wrong; Cowboys Not America's Most Overrated Team; Boise St. Is

Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon wrote this after the Dallas Cowboys' season opening loss at Washington on Sunday night:

"The Dallas Cowboys could be the single most overrated team in football ... maybe the single most overrated team in all of professional sports in America. The franchise has won one playoff game since 1996. Every acquisition they make, every game they win is overstated. Their players are overly praised. They haven't mattered in a decade nearly as much as the New England Patriots or Pittsburgh Steelers or Indianapolis Colts or even the New York Giants or Philadelphia Eagles in their own division.
Every single thing about the Cowboys, in recent years anyway, has been overdone. They come into every season being picked to win something between a division and the Super Bowl but limp out to great disappointment annually.
This season the hype has been attached, most specifically, to the Cowboys' offense, to the supposed damage Romo and Miles Austin, Dez Bryant and Felix Jones are going to do, blah, blah, blah. Yet, the Cowboys looked like a bunch of stumblebums in the preseason, and pretty much the same through three quarters of the regular season opener Sunday night."
"... this serves as a reminder why these Cowboys cannot be trusted, no matter how good they look on paper. ... These Cowboys aren't talented enough or resourceful enough to be a lock to win anything."

Wilbon is wrong; after James Madison took out Va Tech over the weekend the most overrated team in America is Boise State. There is the prevailing national thought that if you aren't in a BCS conference you're overrated, and that Va Tech's second loss damages Boise's win against the Hokies in Week 1. It will on the computer, but I'm not buying that argument. Not in this era. After watching the Big East and ACC see all of its "flag ship" programs such as Va Tech, Pitt, North Carolina, Fla State, Ga Tech all lose in the first two weeks it's hard to argue that these AQ conferences are any better than the MWC or CUSA.
Those latter conferences are top heavy, but their big hitters such as Boise, TCU or Utah are every bit as capable as the celebrity schools of the ACC or Big East.

- Mac Engel

Comments

[JimmiemacTCU]

Is there any team not in the top 10 or Top 5 that would beat Boise?

[sic'emchops]

So Boise beats TCU straight up in the Fiesta Bowl last year, loses less of its impact players than TCU did, goes all the way across the country to open the season against a Top 10 team in what amounted to a road game, wins that game, and they're overrated?

So what does that make TCU at #4? If they don't cover the 21 pt spread vs. Baylor before a sold out crowd at home, are they too, overrated? If Boise beats Oregon St by 3 TDs in 2 Saturdays, are they still overrated?

And why use the argument for the CUSA being equal to ACC or Big East?! None of your "top heavy teams" are even the CUSA, and one of your "top heavy teams" isn't in the MWC or CUSA.

[jackson5@yahoo.com]

Since when did Mac Engel decide to channel his Skip Bayless? Mac, you sure have turned into a hack.