not hot from cfn:
Michigan defensive linemen
Alan Branch, likely the first tackle taken, ripped off an impressive 33 reps of 225 pound and ran a not-that-bad 5.08 40, but he appeared to be out of shape and didn't look agile. Even so, he's still a near-lock to go in the top ten, unlike Lamarr Woodley, who didn't do anything at the Combine outside of getting measured. Rumors swirled about horrendous individual workouts

lets hear it for the big 11 speed! After all that anti-smack talk last december about SEC speed. You're mistaken if you think we'll let this die.

In your excitement, gabe, you managed to ignore the good showing of Leon Hall and Dave Harris.

True, but if they didn't have those guys they'd be less talented than the defense at Ole Miss and Michigan is team "that got screwed out of the NC game"

All I wanna know is, can Laamar Woodly play football? Yes. Can Laamar Woodly play football well? Yes, very well. This doing stuff/not doing stuff at combines or other "individual" workouts is starting to get ridiculous now.

Hey CFR, when are you gonna do the OOC schedules for the other BCS conferences?

Gabe, my point was that you went from two guys not being awesome at the combine (which, as Paxil noted, isn't an unfallible measure of a player anyway) to making a broad judgment on the speed of the Big 10 -- but you did so by ignoring two other players who looked just fine at the combine.

my point was that michigan's defense SLOWER SLOWER SLOWER than some of the finer SEC defenses that weren't 10-0 and ranked #2 in the nation coming into the big OSU game.

leading up to "the game of the century" which was to make the BCS game a mere trivial anti-climatic formality...most of the anit-SEC crowd was yelling about how they didn't want to hear that the SEC defenses were faster, specifically the d-lineman LB's and DE's....they said michigan had the best D in the land...just reminding everyone how laughable that is now...guys like Patrick Willis at Ole Miss and yes Tray Blackmon are better athletes than the LB's in the Big 10...guys like Quentin Groves and Jarvis Moss are not to be found on the Big 10 rosters...

Of course the big 10 is still good and they have their share of great, great players...but you guys that adamantly claimed the Big 10 defensive front 7's were just as fast as LSU, Florida and Auburn ...were wrong...that also ain't to say that your teams couldn't beat a fast defense...it's just saying they better have a game plan for it(like Wisconsin)

What you're saying, gabe, is that you really didn't have a point at all. Besides a tired rant about speed, which, as you adequately noted, is prone to being outcoached, like any other team aspect. No team can just walk into a game and be fast and win; speed has to game plan for bulk, just as bulk has to game plan for speed. One attribute doesn't automatically win games.

The more you talk about speed, which is only one of many aspects of a football team, the more tired the rest of the nation grows of the speed talk. And the nation's reaction to the "WE'RE FAST!" mantra doesn't make you right or persecuted by the other conferences; it just makes you repetitive.