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The Southern Speed MythLSU isn't any faster than Ohio State. Why does everyone insist otherwise?

By Jonathan Chait
Posted Friday, Jan. 4, 2008, at 10:46 AM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Or consider high-school 100-meter dash times. I looked at the 10 fastest times posted by high-school runners over the last two years in two states, Michigan and Florida. The Florida average was slightly faster, 10.77 seconds versus 10.78. But the two fastest Michigan runners, Kelly Baraka and Charles Rogers, outpaced anybody from Florida. Both, by the way, play Big 10 football.

How, then, does the speed canard survive? Consider the ways the mythology is formed. In last week's Rose Bowl, for instance, Miami dominated Nebraska in several facets of the game. The massive Hurricane offensive line gave quarterback Ken Dorsey plenty of time to hit his receivers; Nebraska defenders missed several tackles; the Cornhuskers lost a couple of fumbles; and Miami's defensive line kept Nebraska from running up the middle, forcing Nebraska to rely almost exclusively on its quarterback Eric Crouch. None of these things have much to do with foot speed—on the contrary, Miami's proficient pass protection and run-stuffing indicate that the Hurricanes shoved the Huskers around. If you had reversed the jerseys, the story of the game would have been that Nebraska's massive offensive and defensive lines outmuscled Miami. Yet the media decided that Huskers lost because they couldn't keep up.

Part of the irony here is that, beginning in 1992, Nebraska made a concerted effort to recruit faster players, many of them from the state of Florida. Fans and reporters breathlessly reported the 40-yard dash times of the Nebraska defense, and when Nebraska rolled off convincing bowl victories over Miami, Florida, and Tennessee, held up the program as an example of how a Northern team learned to emulate the Southern style. In other words, if a Southern team beats Nebraska, it's because Nebraska couldn't match its Southern speed. If Nebraska beats a Florida team, it's because it imitated the Southern methodology. Either way, the Southern-speed view of college football is vindicated.

And like all irrational prejudices, the speed myth simply ignores contrary data. This year, Tennessee passed for nearly 400 yards in the Citrus Bowl against Michigan, dominating the Wolverine defensive backs. "Speed was the difference at the Citrus Bowl when Tennessee ran circles around Michigan," wrote one columnist, summarizing the conventional wisdom. But two years ago, when Michigan did the same thing to Alabama in the Orange Bowl, no broader conclusions were reached.

The speed myth also survives because its proponents use slippery definitions. This year, Maryland had an overachieving team that suffered a blowout Orange Bowl loss to far more talented Florida. The Post's Wilbon wrote that the game "illuminated the primary difference between Maryland, which essentially is a northern program, and any good program from the south: speed." Wait a second. Maryland lies south of the Mason-Dixon line. How is it a Northern team while, say, Tennessee is a Southern team? Simple. Because Maryland isn't fast. Of course, if Maryland starts recruiting more talented players, it will start winning bowl games. Eventually it may beat a high-profile team from the Midwest. If that happens, I can already tell you what the sportswriters and announcers will conclude: Maryland won due to its Southern speed advantage.

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Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at the New Republic and author of The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics.
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