A scroll through ESPN.com last Saturday afternoon revealed a bit of a shocker. #6 Ole Miss had lost to unranked Kentucky, 20-17.
Trite as it sounds, muscle memory of sorts brought on the scroll of the scores in the first place. They’re not as meaningful as they used to be. Shock is the stuff of the old days when perfection or near-perfection was required for a team to be in the running for a national championship.
This meant two things: first off, teams were expected to be flawless within their conference in order to get the nod for the New Year’s Day bowl associated with their conference. Second, teams vying for championships needed to schedule high quality, out-of-conference opponents each year and beat them in order to earn the votes necessary to stake a claim to #1.
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