What We Learned Yesterday

Yesterday confirmed what we already knew about this season.  College football remains the greatest sport around and the SEC is overrated.  Nobody knew who Johnny Manziel was three months ago and there he was outclassing Alabama last night.  Sure A&M is now part of the SEC but the same cannot be said of Louisiana-Lafayette.  And wasn't the SEC too powerful for a Big 12 team to come in and improve?  Meanwhile out west Oregon continued to lose guys to injury but never stopped scoring in routing Cal.  Kansas State won another game with toughness, while Notre Dame did little to impress voters who remember the Irish struggles a lot more than the good moments.
But let's get back to the SEC as voters have made it painfully clear that if either Georgia or Alabama win out they will be the next in line should two of the remaining three unbeatens lose.  No one else need apply even if another one-loss team has a better resume. With so much football remaining the pressure is on the top three.
Meanwhile, let's hear it for Kent State who is ranked for the first time since the 1973 squad (coached by Don James and featuring NFL picks Gerald Tinker on offense and Jack Lambert pacing the D).  Beat Bowling Green Saturday and a ticket to the MAC championship will be punched.

What We Learned Saturday

Once again, Saturday was an excellent day of football and to be honest not enough was said about it.  One of the many hurdles facing college football is that Sunday belongs to the pros.  And so a great day of action, from Missouri's near upset of Florida at noon to San Diego State's win on the blue field over Boise that kept me up until the wee hours of the morning, was largely pushed to the back burner once coverage of the NFL began.  I bet if you asked 100 random college football fans if they even knew Boise State lost less than half would truthfully say yes.  Another problem is that we now focus a huge percentage of cfb coverage on the race to the two spots in the BCS championship game and with all of the top four undefeated squads playing meaningful games there was not room on the coverage plate for great and meaningful games like, say, Nebraska versus Michigan State.
But let's not focus on problems.  The sport is too wonderful for that.  It was fascinating to watch the Alabama win over LSU and Oregon's win over USC at roughly the same time in that the two games were stunningly different.  One game featured defense versus defense, the other offense versus offense.  Not surprisingly the D game was the one that went down to the wire with the better offense pulling out the late win.  While both Alabama and Oregon stamped themselves as favorites for the title game--even with Oregon still third in the current BCS--they both displayed vulnerabilities.  Of course you may need LSU's front seven to hang with Bama and USC's wideouts to hang with the Ducks, but they both can be beaten.
Ditto Kansas State and Notre Dame.  The biggest problem facing these two squads is that being in the BCS race in November is new territory for the players.  Heck neither was considered top ten material in August.  Look at KSU's next game, this Saturday against TCU.  The Wildcats and Horned Frogs are not that far apart in terms of talent, especially with the game being played at TCU and with some question over the health of KSU QB Collin Klein.  The biggest equalizer for the home team is that all of the pressure is on the visitors.  All of it, and for a program that has never played in a national championship game, that pressure is immense.  We have seen plenty of teams lose in similar circumstances, like Oklahoma State lose to Iowa State last November, and coach Bill Snyder needs no reminder than his own 1998 squad that lost on the last day of the season to tumble from a possible BCS title game berth.  Both Notre Dame and Kansas State must prove that they can stay focused and continue to bring a top effort for the remainder of the season.
Meanwhile there are plenty of key games that have little effect on the BCS standings.  I'll break down the conferences during the week.

What We Learned Yesterday

That I am glad I did not bother going to Morgantown for the KState game
The SEC is vulnerable
The Heisman race is wide open
That LSU is still ranked too high as the highest 1-loss team?  And why are they ahead of Oregon State?
That West Virginia does not deserve to be ranked.  Two straight disastrous losses after five wins over mediocre competition=dropped from rankings
That it is hard to believe that Alabama had never gone eight straight weeks atop AP poll in history
That FSU beating Miami bodes well for the president as every Democratic contender since 1988 has won the presidency in the years that FSU beats Miami; the Bushes won in years that Miami won the rivalry game
That I still cannot believe that Florida scored 44 pts despite totalling just 183y

Recap of Saturday's Games

I, of course, had a good week of picking games since I neglected to post them.  And so the 7-3 record does not count.  It is all making sense however.
Once again LSU had a so-so effort and their spot as the second best team in the SEC remains in doubt. Georgia and South Carolina can, at times, look as good as anyone but need more consistent play.  A mini tournament between those three and Florida this upcoming Saturday should go a long way in determining these positions with LSU traveling to Gainesville and South Carolina hosting Georgia.
West Virginia won the barn-burner with Baylor as the Big 12 remained a gunslinger's conference.  If Texas can play good enough defense they may be able to hold on there but their team as a whole needs to play a little better than it did Saturday versus Okie State.  The upcoming West Virginia versus Texas match-up will tell us a lot about the conference as a whole with the winner claiming a spot as a national championship contender.
The Big Ten needs a legitimate team to hold off Ohio State as best in show.  Nebraska travels to Columbus this weekend.  Will they play as well as they did in the second half against Wisconsin or as poorly as they did in the first half?  The Leaders Division rep in the conference title game is going to be hard-pressed to whiff the rankings.  Hopefully it will be a club with a winning record.  Purdue?
Meanwhile the Big East, with Cincinnati beating Va Tech on last-second heroics, and the Sun Belt, with Middle Tennessee running all over Georgia Tech, claimed more pelts Saturday--both from the reeling ACC.    Sure Florida State has a shot at a national title, and it was good to see Duke go 4-1, but the conference as a whole is playing a lot of mediocre ball.  Can Miami upset Notre Dame in Chicago?

Reflections on Saturday

Alabama is trying its best to separate itself from the pack out of necessity.  Their schedule is so weak (no Florida, Georgia or South Carolina from East) apart from the LSU game that they are going to need to appear so much better than everyone that to deny them a national championship spot if they lose a game would be ridiculous.  It worked last year and the media are back on the case doing the Tide's PR for them.  If only they had scheduled Louisiana Monroe this season.
I have been saying for months that there was no way USC was going undefeated and they showed why last night.  They are just not tough enough on the lines.  Plus last year's second half run was fueled by the us-versus-the-world/this is our bowl game mentality that disappeared this off-season with every first place vote.   That was their edge last season.  The big problem, of course, is that they went all in for this season and the outlook for next year does not look too sunny.  Meanwhile UCLA just keeps rolling along.  Expected sanctions against Oregon may create a conference power vacuum up north although Stanford looks poised to keep on humming.  They may never beat USC on the recruiting trail for playmakers but they do know how to develop tough guys for the trenches.
Notre Dame displayed a great deal of young talent last night and is almost all the way back.  They really want revenge against Michigan next week too.  But October not only features Stanford and Oklahoma but a tough match-up against BYU right between the two powers.  You really want to play some team ranked 122nd in the country between those two big games the way Alabama does it.
I doubt anyone will give them any credit--and the biggest win was turned in by a team leaving next year--but let's hear it for the Big East.  Pitt looked dead in the water a week ago but was sparked by a return to full health by stud RB Ray Graham to stun Virginia Tech.  Louisville and Connecticut made it a clean sweep over the ACC by beating UNC and Maryland (take that Randy Edsall!) but, sadly, winning on the field never means anything in these wars between conferences.
The SEC East race should be a good one.  Florida had the big play on display in subduing Tennessee.  Georgia just needs to keep everyone healthy and off suspension while QB Connor Shaw needs to stay healthy (although sub Dylan Thompson can play). 

Week One Concludes

Two different ESPN commentators complained about boring college football games yesterday.  That drives me crazy.  If you cannot appreciate the importance of yesterday's Tech versus Tech ACC struggle then move on to another sport (because of course every other sport has exciting, multi-score games every time folks suit up).  The other complaint was about the Alabama rout, which is completely dumb because there was an exciting ACC-SEC tussle on another ESPN network.  When you have a clunker NFL prime-time game you are stuck.  With college you almost always have a choice.
And while yesterday's game pitted two teams not quite ready this season for prime time, it was a huge game for the Coastal Division and as such was compelling.  With UNC ineligible and Miami down a peg, the Coastal will be up for grabs between the two Techs and UVA.  Why this game was scheduled for yesterday and not November is beyond me.  But they played last night and the game went to OT.  Were there some missteps?  Sure.  Was it exciting at game's end?  Yes.
The biggest off-the-field news in the ACC yesterday was the announcement by Florida State that standout DE Brandon Jenkins (41 tackles, 8 sacks in '11) has been lost for the season with a Lisfranc injury to his left foot.  Normally I would feel bad for a program to lose a player of Jenkins's stature in a meaningless win but the third DE for the Noles is Tank Carradine, who contributed 5.5 sacks off the bench last season, and the 4th DE is probably Mario Edwards, the super recruit signed in February.  FSU was hoping to overwhelm opposing lines with a deadly combination of talent and depth and losing Jenkins hurts, but if one program could lose a stud DE it was this one.

After Midnight

For once this college football season, there was little drama after midnight.

Boise State more than took care of business at hapless Hawaii. Southern California had plenty of challenges in its home win over Oregon State, but really was never in danger in the second half.
The most notable late game probably was Stanford’s easy victory over Arizona State, now 4-3. The Cardinal, now sporting a 5-3 mark, used a balanced attack that included TB Toby Gerhart’s 127 yards rushing against ASU’s second-in-the-nation run defense. In leading 24-0 at the halftime break, Stanford played as termed by Fox Sports Network commentator Petros Papadakis “as nearly a perfect half as possible.”

In the fourth quarter (well after midnight in the East), Sun Devils fans got what they’ve been screaming for most of the season. Starting fifth-year-senior quarterback Danny Sullivan, who had opened the third quarter with a touchdown pass to WR Chris McGaha, went out with a twisted knee. In trotted freshman QB Brock Osweiler, one of the most renowned passers ever to leave high school from Montana.

The TV cameras revealed Osweiler to be a bit of a short-arm thrower, but he got no help from a case of the “drops” by his receivers. Osweiler’s tepid aerial debut went 1-for-7 for 18 yards.
If viewers wanted to see a sparkling frosh QB, they surely enjoyed the performance of Stanford’s Andrew Luck, who pitched 17-for-28 for 236 yards. Luck, the son of former West Virginia and Houston Oilers QB Oliver Luck, fakes sharply with the ball, throws well on the run, and showed excellent accuracy last night. Is their Heisman talk coming his way in about 2011?
--Bob Boyles

View From Bennett Avenue

Indiana was robbed on that call. The Hoosiers already had to fight any doubts they had about winning based on decades of failure against the Wolverines and when it seemed like they could overcome the odds, the refs stepped in. And the blown call, Michigan fans, did not make things “even” for calls that went against Michigan earlier in the game as this one basically ended matters. Sure, Indiana still had to move the ball into scoring position, but they had done so all game. By allowing 467y to IU, Michigan proved that they are not quite ready for re-elevation to the ranks of college football powers. That the Mississippi State Bulldogs failed to end a nine-game losing streak to LSU moments later by a matter of inches made it worse for fans of the true upset.

Despite the spin about yesterday being a day that shook up the rankings, the actual stunners were all of the garden variety. That Virginia Tech and Oregon won at home was no real surprise, although of course the ease of their respective victories was unexpected. And even though Iowa was a big dog on the road, their team’s success in the series against Penn State buoyed well for their chances. South Florida over Florida State on the road and with a back-up QB? A surprise, sure, but the Seminoles are too inconsistent to expect anything but upset wins followed by upset losses. The main reason that the rankings were shook up was that the rankings were incorrect. And the comparison so far is not to 2007, in which everyone continually was upset allowing a two-loss Louisiana State team to win the national title, but to 1983 when the top two teams in the country, Nebraska and Texas, were ranked 1-2 for most of the year while numbers 3 to 20 were continually jumbled. As long as Florida and Texas—or more accurately Florida, Texas and Alabama—remain unbeaten, the craziness of 2007 will remain unique. Of course both Nebraska and Texas lost their bowl games in 1983, which could not happen this year if they face off in the BCS title game. Not that I want to get ahead of myself.

One last note is to congratulate Oregon for getting off the mat from their week one loss to Boise State to become favorites, or at least co-favorites, for the Pac 10 crown. If they had lost to Purdue week two, their season may have spiraled out of control. Back-to-back nice wins however have the Ducks feeling good. And I do not expect coach Chip Kelly to have to offer any more refunds.

The View From Bennett Avenue

Not much was expected of the second weekend of college football. If you had to see the in-laws or put away the patio furniture, this was the weekend to do it. Sure there was hype for the Ohio State-Southern California match-up, but that was an uncompetitive clunker a year ago. Notre Dame versus Michigan? Yeah, both teams look to be back from recently painful seasons, but this is not the clash of Top Ten teams we have seen from this series in years past. Overall, there was not too much excitement expected for the average fan, especially in light of the build-up for the opening games of the NFL.

But that is the beauty of the sport. There is great competition and excitement in the least likely of sources. Just bouncing around the ESPN channels for the early games produced down-to-the wire finishes for Connecticut-North Carolina, Fresno State-Wisconsin and Central Michigan-Michigan State with the Chippewas needing a touchdown, successful on-side kick, penalty on the Spartans to nullify a missed field goal and then a winning field goal—all in the final minute of play. Then in the afternoon, the Irish and Wolverines offered a very entertaining contest that showcased a great deal of talent from both squads, Houston stunned no. 5-ranked Oklahoma State and UCLA and Tennessee knocked heads the entire game before the Bruins pulled out the victory. And then in the evening, who could have expected that Georgia and South Carolina would give us a barn-burner of a game featuring 78 points? Crazy. Meanwhile, the Trojans and Buckeyes spent most of the evening feeling each other out before the visitors prevailed. Most of that game was not pretty, but the same can be said for the Pittsburgh-Tennessee and Green Bay-Chicago pro games too.

All in all, it was a great day even if the nation’s media did not seem to care. Without potential BCS implications, the majority of the games do not really matter in their eyes. They can talk about which teams are in the running for the national title until they are blue in the face, but celebrating the joy of the Central Michigan kids after pulling off that stunner or explaining the implications of Fresno’s narrow loss in the race for spots in the BCS are beyond them.

Change we can believe in...maybe.

Several college teams put up surprisingly resurgent performances this opening weekend: Michigan, Syracuse, Washington, and Army led the way after poor 2008 seasons. Are these clues to a turnaround year for each team? Perhaps, but it is too soon to tell.

Michigan 31 Western Michigan 7
Wolverines coach Rich Rodriguez ended his hell week with a resounding victory over a decent Western Michigan team. The jury is still out, but we’ll know about Michigan by mid-season after a visit from Notre Dame this coming Saturday and trips to Michigan State and Iowa. If the Wolverines are 5-1 in October, nobody will ever mention over-the-limit practice time again.

Minnesota 23 Syracuse 20
A lot of people felt the installation of former Duke point guard Greg Paulus as Syracuse’s new starting quarterback was simply a desperate act to create buzz about a formerly fine football program that had stumbled into the gutter. Paulus played reasonably well against Minnesota, rallying the Orange as he doled out short passes as if he were a point guard. His one blunder was an end zone interception in overtime that ruined any chance at victory.

LSU 31 Washington 23
In a weekend full of terrible analysis by almost every broadcaster, ESPN’s Bob Davie hit it square when he suggested the Huskies had playmakers on offense but that it would take time for new coach Steve Sarkisian to find defenders who could match the flyers at wide receiver on a team like LSU. Still, as the newly-enthused Seattle fans, many wearing “I Bark for Sark” tee shirts, will attest, Washington’s offense put on a good show and kept the Huskies in the game Saturday night. Washington welcomed back quarterback Jake Locker and running back Chris Polk from last year’s injury list. Sarkasian is an offensive specialist so it figures that sophomore Johri Fogerson, a real flyer in his own right, was moved from free safety to offense.

Army 27 Eastern Michigan 14
Flying far under the radar was Saturday night’s Army coaching debut of Rich Ellerson. Ellerson, the son of a career military officer and younger brother of West Point’s 1962 football captain and a successful advocate of an option run attack, might be the perfect man to resurrect Black Knights football. Beating Eastern Michigan is no great accomplishment, but it occurred on the road by a team that arrived with only 20 wins this decade. Popping off the stat sheet was six sacks by the Army defense.