Kentucky's Rich Brooks just achieved the biggest win of his coaching career, knocking off No. 1 LSU. AP

MAILBAG Submit a question or an opinion to Stewart. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

Stewart, I enjoy your work. That said, I remember you ranking Rich Brooks the "second-worst coach" in college football back in 2005. Old man Brooks doesn't look half bad, does he?
--Justin, Cary, N.C.

Touche. This serves as another valuable lesson when it comes to evaluating coaches, one I myself failed to heed with Brooks: not jumping to premature conclusions. While I've been highly skeptical of Callahan since the day he was hired, even I was willing to give him four years to prove himself (hence, why he didn't actually make the list last summer). Considering that creed, I feel doubly dumb not just for having misjudged Brooks so badly but for violating my own golden rule of not including coaches on either the best or worst lists who haven't been with their current school at least three years. Kentucky was just so inept those first two seasons under Brooks (going 6-17) -- not to mention he seemed like such an awkward fit -- that I made a special exception just to include him, conveniently overlooking the fact that his program was still reeling from NCAA sanctions incurred under Hal Mumme.

Since then, I've learned my lesson. In fact, while it would have been easy to include Brooks again the next year after Kentucky once again finished at the bottom of the SEC East, bringing his three-year conference record to 4-20, I didn't. Plenty of other critics were calling for his head, but if you looked beyond the record, you could see signs of improvement even then, particularly when the Wildcats knocked off Jay Cutler-led Vanderbilt (which went on to beat Tennessee the next week), 48-43. Andre Woodson was just then emerging as a potential star of the future, and Kentucky had recruited unusually well that year. Two years and a current 11-2 stretch later, Kentucky just knocked off No. 1 LSU, once-vilified AD Mitch Barnhart is being lauded for his patience in Brooks and I'm eating crow.

Brooks, for his part, has managed to maintain a tremendous sense of humor throughout. The first words he said to reporters at SEC Media Days this summer (with a mischievous smile) were: "I'm back!"

Stewart, I couldn't help but notice vehement animosity toward the Buckeyes and their soft-schedule. Even if they do win out, how will fans across the nation react to Ohio State in the national championship game again after the result from last year?
--Zach G., Cincinnati

Zach: What animosity are you referring to?

Is Ohio State the worst No. 1 team in the history of the BCS? Would Ohio State even be .500 if it played an SEC schedule this year?
--Rich Stitt, East Lansing, Mich.

Oh, that

Well, I can't say that the backlash from last year's title game is surprising. We knew as soon as it happened that not only the Buckeyes, but any Big Ten team, would have to deal with significant skepticism come this year's national title race, and Michigan only compounded that stigma with the way it opened its season. What I didn't expect was for the backlash to become such a relevant issue so soon (I figured it would only be a problem if a Big Ten team found itself in another BCS argument come December, a la Michigan/Florida last year), but with Ohio State's unexpected rise to No. 1, that's exactly what's happening. Somebody asked me Tuesday how much hate mail I received from Columbus for voting USF No. 1. I received a few e-mails, but nowhere near as many as I did from people complaining about the Buckeyes' ascent in the overall poll.

Obviously, based on my vote, I share much of that skepticism, but it has little to do with the Florida game. Whatever perceptions and stigmas we formed last bowl season should have become irrelevant as soon as this season began. But when a Michigan team that got outclassed by both a I-AA foe and by the Pac-10's Oregon has reemerged as the league's second-best team, obviously that does not speak well for the Buckeyes' conference. Nor does Illinois' loss to Missouri, Penn State's losses to Michigan and Illinois, Wisconsin's close calls against UNLV and The Citadel, Northwestern's loss to Duke, Michigan State's loss to Northwestern ... and so on and so on. All of this makes it hard to truly gauge this year's Buckeyes. They may well be a better team than last year -- maybe even the best team in the country -- but it's impossible to tell when none of their 12 opponents (including Washington, which was 2-0 at the time OSU beat them but has not won a game since) are at all highly regarded.

Really, there's nothing Ohio State or any other Big Ten team can do to silence the critics until bowl season. But the good news for the Buckeyes is they've already put themselves in a position where, if they take care of business the rest of the way, they won't have to do any lobbying to reach the title game. If they do make it, I'm sure a whole lot of people will expect them to fall on their face. Of course, there were a lot of people that felt that way about the Gators going into last year's game.

I'm curious as to how deep the list of teams with legitimate national title aspirations goes. Which teams have a shot of making the title game and which ones are just on the outside looking in?
--Bennett Aikin, Pittsburgh

Good question. Normally by this point we're down to just a handful of legitimate aspirants, often as few as five or six. In fact, only once since the BCS' 1998 inception has a team ranked lower than sixth in the initial BCS standings wound up reaching the title game. That exception was No. 12 LSU in 2003. As I said on Sunday, this season reminds me of that one, and by no means do I think the recent rash of top 10 upsets is over. I will be surprised if even one team (besides Hawaii) finishes the season undefeated, and it's even conceivable that certain two-loss teams could work their way back in to the discussion.

Looking at Sunday's BCS standings, I see Florida at No. 15 and Auburn at No. 17. Both already have two losses; however, both are theoretically still in the picture. If the Gators were to run the table (no small feat, what with trips to both No. 8 Kentucky and No. 6 South Carolina) and win an SEC title-game rematch against an 11-1 LSU team, they'd almost certainly be in the mix. Similarly, if Auburn could add its own win over LSU this weekend to go with its previous victory over Florida, then beat another top 10 foe in Atlanta, it would make up a whole lot of ground. Obviously, both scenarios entail a whole lot of teams above them (including at least four of the five undefeated BCS-conference teams) losing another game; however, there are also several teams above them that I could see the Gators or Tigers passing if those teams had one loss.

So to answer your question, the list, at least on paper, still goes 17 deep at this point.

Wow, you were spot on with that Rich Brooks call, huh? Maybe you should try a different field of journalism?
--Jack, Louisville

OK, OK. I'm the idiot. I'll tell you, the Internet is a funny thing. Back when I wrote that piece some two-and-a-half years ago, I heard barely a peep of complaint out of the Bluegrass State. In fact, I'd completely forgotten about the whole thing ... until this past Sunday, when all of a sudden a whole bunch of e-mails like this one suddenly started showing up. So which of you guys dug up the old link and posted it on a message board? You win.

2 of 4