College football previews are rolling out, and one aspect of Athlon's otherwise forgettable coverage is a mock college football fantasy draft. Why it's only a "mock," we don't know; they might as well hang onto a draft like this if they're--as is apparent--only doing one a year. But whatever.
At any rate, the draft is here: 18 rounds, 12 participants. And you'll have to scroll down to Round 10 to find the first defenses picked. When you do, however:
Did we only go all the way left to pick #116 only because that guy's name is I. Pead? Yes, absolutely.
Originally, we were thinking "hooray hooray best 2010 defense ever," but since it's a snake draft, as you can see, OSU gets picked one spot before Iowa. So, second-best, but by a thin margin, considering Alabama doesn't go third until pick 128, then it's another 25 picks before Boise State's D goes next.
Now, look. Subjectivity all over the place here--it's just a mock draft, and the drafter (some guy named Brian McDonald) likely knows less about the Iowa defense than the average poster here at BHGP. But at the same time, he probably knows more about, say, Boise or Bama than we do.
Further, there isn't even a scoring baseline on which to judge predicted performance handy. With one, we could say that although the system is arbitrary, it's applied uniformly to every defense and without the predetermined intent of proving one defense better than the other. Give us one of those and something approaching a consensus among those drafters that Iowa's a top two or three defense, and we'll feel a little bit better about reading anything into this draft. Otherwise we're falling back on our "Phil Steele says it or bullshit" philosophy when it comes to college football predictions.
Oh, and other than the defense, the only Hawkeye to go in the draft is Jewel Hampton in the 15th round. Hampton is the 60th running back taken. Hey, you look at Iowa's offensive line and loaded backfield and tell me Hampton's not high enough.