A to Z

This week’s post will be a short one.

First order of business is that Tim Tebow won the Heisman Trophy last night. I don’t have any problem with that. Some of the arguments against him are that he was a system quarterback and his team didn’t win enough. To both of those I say, so what? Darren McFadden was basically a system running back with the strange Wildcat offense Arkansas ran and both Daniel and Brennan were in systems designed to allow them to get a ton of throwing yards. As far as wins, it wasn’t Tebow’s fault that Florida’s defense wasn’t very good at all. He put up incredible numbers. And the fact that some say he won’t be a good pro quarterback, again, so what? This award is about who had the best college season, not who projects better to the pros. Oh, and there was the notion that he shouldn’t win because he’s only a sophomore, that is ludicrously stupid. He deserved it.

Yesterday there were a lot of good basketball games. There were two good games between top 25 teams, BYU-Mich St and Wisconsin-Marquette. The higher ranked teams won both games but BYU and Wisconsin played formidably.  Like last year, this season is shaping up to have no guarantees. Unlike football, which is crazy because there’s so many mediocre teams, college basketball is crazy because most of the top 50 teams are solid and can play any other team in the top 50 tough. Pitt and UCLA had to survive tough games yesterday against Washington and Davidson. Also, with so many talented freshmen this year, there are a lot of younger teams which only stand to get better as the season goes on as those freshmen and other young players get used to the rigors of college. It’s going to be a fun ride from here on out and I’ll be here to blog about it.

Sorry for the long time between posts. I’m back, though, and just in time to discuss the mess that is the BCS. Let’s be serious, this whole crazy season has been leading up to this, a championship game which about 8 teams could make a claim to.

The most stunning aspect of all this for me was that Pitt beat WVU yesterday, even with the refs trying to give the game to the Mountaineers. I’ve told anyone who would listen last week that WVU would win by 40. Pitt’s not very good this year and WVU has owned them these past few years. Well for the first time in a long time Pitt manned up in a big game and came away with the victory. Although, it seems more than Pitt playing well, WVU put both hands firmly on its throat throughout the game. Pat Forde weighs in on WVU choking away their chance to make it to the national championship game. The column includes this great line about the ‘Eers: ” They were four quarters from the French Quarter, then they fought like France with it all on the line.”

So with WVU out of the picture it would seem Ohio State and Missouri would be playing in the title game. Well for that to happen, Missouri would have to go back in time and not be manhandled by Oklahoma last night. I contended for much of the early part of the season that the Sooners were the best team and I still stand by that. One of its losses was with Bradford hurt. If he wasn’t hurt that game, they would probably have one loss and be on their way to the title game. Either way, they were the much better team last night and knocked Mizzou out of the title game picture. Joe Posnanski at the KC Star contends that having a league championship game format allowed OU to play free and loose. While this may be the case, it seems clear after two games between the Sooners and Tigers that Oklahoma was the class of the Big 12.

So with Missouri and WVU losing that leaves the possibilities for the BCS title game up to much debate. Unfortunately, it seems Ohio State is pretty much in unless voters make drastic changes in how they vote this week. While I wouldn’t be excited for a title game involving OSU, I really don’t see why they wouldn’t be in the game. Yes, they haven’t played many good teams but every other BCS school has problems and at least one more loss, save for Kansas. Kansas and OSU have very similar resumes but Kansas didn’t make it to the Big 12 title game and so it’s tough to see how they could make the title game as technically the 3rd place finisher in the Big 12.

There is of course one undefeated team in D-1 college football and that team is Hawaii, which barely snuck past Washington last night. I don’t see them leaping from 12th to 2nd, though and so they will probably be in one of the other BCS bowls where they will try to duplicate Boise State’s feat last year of knocking off a heavily favored team from one of the big conferences. Which begs the question, if Hawaii wins do they have someone ready to propose, maybe Colt Brennan?

So who other than Ohio State and Kansas and even possibly Hawaii is being considered by pollsters and the BCS for the title game? (I can’t believe I just typed that sentence, just one of many this year) Well there’s Georgia and LSU out of the SEC, Va Tech, Southern Cal and even Oklahoma. If I had my druthers, I’d love to see an LSU-Oklahoma title game in which Les Miles gets completely outcoached by Bob Stoops. If I had to go with a gut feeling, I’m going to guess, like Dan Wetzel, that it will be LSU-OSU and probably another blowout.

Here’s some other thoughts on the BCS picture:

Ivan Maisel at ESPN

Don Borst at Fox Sports lays out each team’s arguments for and against making it 

Apparently this is BCS Armageddon 

Just a few quick basketball notes to end this week’s post. UNC is not playing like the top team in the nation right now. If I had to rank teams I’ve seen, I’d probably put UCLA at number 1. UNC, however has showed it can win tough games which they didn’t do last season. That’s gives me confidence that by the end of the season, they will be the best team. Also, I was wrong about Duke. I went into this season thinking they wouldn’t be very good and they’ve proven me wrong. I can’t wait for their game against Pitt in a couple of weeks, that should be a good test for both teams.

Ok, from here on out I will be posting every week again and once league play starts in basketball probably twice a week.

Ohio State keeps proving me wrong. I thought this week was a good possibility for them to lose their first game, but instead they went out and throughly outplayed Wisconsin. If they keep winning like this there’s no way they can be held out of the title game, even if they do play in a horrible conference. They have two games left to finish the season undefeated, Illinois and Michigan. The Illini could pull off the upset next week if OSU looks ahead to the Michigan game. If they win next week, it sets up a match-up in the Big House with a Big Ten outright title and a national champ. birth on the line.

One-loss teams were given even more hope yesterday with Arizona State and Boston College losing. The BC loss felt inevitable all season. They just weren’t nearly as good as their record. They couldn’t pull off the miracle comeback for a second straight week and lost to Florida State last night.

On the West Coast, Oregon continued to impress with a win over the Sun Devils. They have scored at least 24 points in every game this season, even in their 7-point loss to Cal. The Ducks offense is clearly good enough to compete for a championship, but there are still questions about their defense which has given up more than 20 points in 6 of their 9 games this season.

LSU came back to narrowly defeat Alabama and keep its title hopes alive yesterday. While LSU may be the most talented team in the nation, they continue to make big mistakes which are going to eventually cause them to lose a game they shouldn’t if it keeps up.

Now I switch gears, from the national championship hunt to programs completely in ruin. Nebraska and Notre Dame continued to embarrass their once proud programs yesterday. Nebraska’s famed black shirt defense will be renamed the pink shirts after yesterday’s atrocious display, which saw Kansas score touchdowns on 10 straight possessions. You read that right, that wasn’t a typo. The Jayhawks scored 76 points, the most EVER against Nebraska. AD Tom Osborne wants to wait until the end of the season to coach Bill Callahan, but it’s got to be getting more and more difficult to wait. This team is just awful and it seems they have quit on Callahan.

Then there’s Notre Dame. They lost yesterday in triple OT to Navy. That was Navy’s first win against the Golden Domers since 1963. That also wasn’t a typo. Notre Dame continues to make history this season, but not the kind they are used to making. This loss drops them to 1-8 and puts them last out of the 4 independent teams in college football behind Western Kentucky, Navy and Army. Granted, none of those teams play tough schedules, but Notre Dame’s played many beatable teams this year, and hasn’t even been close in most of those games. They play Air Force, Duke and Stanford to end the season. If Duke beats them, that would be the most embarrassing moment in a season full of them.

In really exciting news, college basketball season is going to begin soon. It’s my favorite season of the year so I will definitely begin blogging about that. My first post about it will probably some time around Thanksgiving and I will do both football and basketball until the bowl season ends.

If Ohio State continues to take care of its games and wins out they will be in the National Championship game. If that happens, like last year, they will get pounded in the National Championship game. The Big Ten is so down this year that even if they actually are really good, there would be no way to tell. The Michigan game at the end of the year could be the one that spoils their season.

Also staying alive this week, in miraculous fashion was Boston College. I flipped to the game with about 3 minutes left, saw they were losing 10-0 and turned it off assuming they had lost. The next morning I was quite surprised to see that I was very wrong. They scored 14 points at the end of the game to keep their National Championship hopes alive.

This week was more normal than the rest of the season. Most of the teams who were supposed to win, did and kept their title hopes alive. Two teams that officially fell from the NC race were Florida and USC. USC’s game against Oregon was far from an upset, Oregon was the better team.

Coach Mark Richt and Georgia used some gamesmanship after their first touchdown against Florida. Richt told his players that he would be mad if they didn’t get a celebration penalty after their first touchdown. In a stunning display, about 70 Georgia players stormed the field and jumped up and down to celebrate the TD. The team was penalized and had to kick off from the 8 yard line. Despite that, the motivational ploy seemed to work as UGA went on to win in the match-up between the hedges.

Arizona State came back in the second half to beat Cal and set up a big match-up next week between ASU and Oregon. The winner has the inside track to the Pac-10 championship and keeps their national title hopes alive. This win validates ASU as being good. A win over Oregon would validate them as legit NC contenders. Either way, the Sun Devils haven’t had expectations like this since Jake Plummer led them to the Rose Bowl about 10 years ago.

Teams that fell out of championship contention: Florida, Virginia Tech, USC

Also, watch this play from a D-III football game if you haven’t already seen it. More than 10 laterals, reminiscent of the Cal-Stanford, band if out on the field, game.

You can’t. There’s absolutely no way anyone can predict the way the rest of this season will play out. Up until this point it’s been the craziest season in recent memory. That continued this week and started on Thursday night.

USF was everyone’s Cinderella and that included me. I don’t think I ever really believed they would go through the season undefeated, but I really wanted it to happen. It would have been great for South Florida to make the national championship game because 2 years ago it was unfathomable. Instead, they fell down to earth against a very good Rutgers team in Jersey. They had their chances, but they couldn’t capitalize and with the loss their title hopes vanished. That’s unfortunate since they still have one of the better resumes in the country. Their wins over Auburn and WVU are mighty impressive. They would have been ever more impressive if Auburn could have held on last night against LSU.

I thought LSU would roll at home at night coming after a loss. Instead, Auburn played them tough all game and LSU only won because of a perfect pass and catch with one second left on the clock. I think it’s safe to say, Les Miles has no clue what he’s doing as a coach, he just has superior players. The win ended an impressive road winning streak for Auburn.

There were two other big games in the SEC yesterday. One that was expected (Florida-Kentucky) and one that wasn’t (Vanderbilt-South Carolina). If Florida had any semblance of a defense they would probably be on the fast track to a second consecutive championship. Instead, they play close games which are really enjoyable to watch, so I’m not complaining. I’ve resisted it for a while but at this point I have to say, Tim Tebow really is that good, the whole offense runs through him and he’s handled it amazingly this year. Just one of his amazing stats: He’s rushed for a touchdown in 8 straight games. More praise for Tebow.

While Florida kept their slim title hopes alive (let’s be serious, every team could have at least 2 losses by the time this season is finished) South Carolina lost any hope of a championship this season with an embarrassing lost against Vanderbilt. It seems they were looking ahead to their last 4 games which were much tougher on paper, unfortunately for them these games aren’t played on paper.

And now, for some praise for Ohio State. I hate to do this because I still don’t believe they’re any good. However, unlike most teams, they’ve taken care of business against the teams they are supposed to beat. No other top tier team has done that this season. Even if they tried to choke away the game yesterday against Spartie they still won, and if they do that 4 more times they will be in the national championship game, only to be destroyed by a one/two loss team that plays actual competition.

I’m going to officially jump off the Oklahoma bandwagon. This means they will probably start playing up to their potential. They looked pitiful yesterday in their win against Iowa State. OU needs to stop playing down to its competition. If they keep doing it they will lose another game before the end of the season, and with that will go their national championship hopes.

The great part about this season is that there are still about 15 teams with legitimate chances at playing in the national championship game. It’s going to make for an exciting last 5 weeks of the regular season.

Teams that fell out of the Nat’l Title picture this week: Kentucky, Cal, USF and South Carolina.

Good reading:

Pat Forde on the SEC

Geoff Calkins, always great, on Tennessee getting outcoached

Some love to another blog, which is very funny

This has been the craziest college football team to date. We’re over halfway through the season and South Florida and Kansas are still undefeated and UCONN and Cincinnati just suffered their first losses. To make things more confusing LSU and Cal both lost on Saturday. And so, this week begins the same way most of the weeks began last year, with Ohio State in first. I don’t see that lasting very long, though. They haven’t played anyone good yet, although playing in the Big Eleven they may not play anyone of note the rest of the year.

My prediction of Oklahoma is looking better and better. They got their one loss out of the way early and are now in prime position to be the first one-loss team considered for the title game.

The first BCS rankings were released today with Ohio State and South Florida at the top. USF has a tough Thursday night game this week against Rutgers. It’ll be a chance for them to show they belong in the National Championship discussion in a nationally televised game. There are two big games in the SEC on Saturday with Kentucky and Florida playing, loser is officially eliminated from National Title contention. LSU gets to bounce back at home against Auburn…at night. Sorry Auburn, that one probably won’t be pretty. Although, the way this season is going, Notre Dame will probably beat USC instead of losing by 70 like they should.

Little did I know when I posted last night that the biggest upset of the season would occur.  I mentioned that Stanford was close, but never did I think it would stay that way.  Oh, and yes, I believe this is bigger than the Appy State win.  Stanford lost 41-3 to Arizona State last week.  They were playing at USC with a QB making his first start who had thrown 3 passes in his career and a first year head coach.  Well I guess Jim Harbaugh’s comeback days with the Colts rubbed off on his team as they won in the final minute.  Stanford has been awful for the last years and I think Appy State would be favored in a game between the two.  USC was a 41 point favorite, that type of spread is unheard of in an intraconference game.

LSU did not win in a rout as I predicted, but their close win makes them the clear cut top team to this point.  After that, though, this is one of the craziest college football seasons I can ever remember.  Nothing makes sense, and frankly that’s making things really fun.  Go USF!

Purdue, as I suspected, was not as good as their record showed and they were soundly beaten by Ohio State.

Mizzu, on the other hand, continues to impress with a big victory over Nebraska.  It’s looking like the Big 12 North is going to come down to Kansas-Mizzu.  Excuse me while I take shelter from the Apocalypse.  I’ll be very interested to see how they do against Oklahoma next week.

And the prize for the weeks most embarrassing loss goes to UCLA.  They lost by 14 to Notre Dame and ND played awful as usual.  UCLA just played worse, I didn’t think that was possible.  I’m angry, I really wanted to see a winless season for the Irish.

Here’s some columns from the country’s best about Saturday’s games:

Joe Posnanski in KC on Missouri.

TJ Simers in LA on the two bad losses out that way. 

Jason King at Yahoo! on LSU’s big win. 

Geoff Calkins, one of the most underrated columnists in the country, on Tennessee’s rout of Georgia. 

The great part about college football is that every week there are good games throughout the day.  The worst part is that sometimes you don’t get the game you want in your area.  For the second straight week I was deprived of seeing the best day game.  Last week it was Cal-Oregon and this week it was Oklahoma-Texas.  Oklahoma came out with the win and it’s very possible that they run the table the rest of the way.  If so, they could still end up in the national title game.

The other big games of the day were Kansas-Kansas State and Illinois-Wisconsin.  Illinois and Kansas both won and will make their season debuts in the top 25.  Kansas played its first tough game of the season and won, however since they play in the Big 12 North they could go undefeated the rest of the season and still not impress me.  Illinois, on the other hand, has impressed me all season.  Their only loss came against Missouri in the first game of the season and that doesn’t look too bad considering Mizzu is undefeated.  They have a night game against Michigan in a few weeks which is looming large.  The win over Wisconsin is a big step, but it’s not a surprise since Wisconsin is one of the worst teams ever to be ranked in the top 5.  They’re a top 20 team, but definitely not a top 5 team.

Tonight there’s a bunch of good games to watch.  USC is only up by 9 on Stanford with 4 minutes to go in the second quarter.  The Cincinnati-Rutgers game will go a long way in determining who wins the Big East.  Rutgers needs to win after their loss last week to Maryland.  Purdue has a chance to show that they are for real against Ohio State.  I doubt they are, but maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.  And the biggest game of the night is LSU-Florida which I predicted last week could be a blowout by LSU and I am standing by that prediction.

As of last week I thought I was finally getting a handle on this season. It seemed there were 5-7 really good teams and then it was a crapshoot after that. That theory has been shot completely to hell. Oklahoma, Florida, Rutgers, Texas and West Virginia all lost this weekend.

The most surprising one for me was Oklahoma. As recently as yesterday while watching the game I told some friends I thought they would win the national championship. They still could, but it is definitely less likely after yesterday’s loss to Colorado. It seems every year since 2001 the Sooners have lost a game which they should have won handily. I actually turned yesterday’s game off when OU was up 24-10 in the 4th quarter. When I checked the scores later I couldn’t believe it. I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised, since Colorado actually outplayed Oklahoma. They are no longer my top contender, but I’m still keeping an eye on them, especially with the Texas game coming up next week.

The Horns must have had an eye on the Sooners as well, because they looked terrible against Kansas State. They lost 41-21 and were thoroughly outplayed. To add injury to insult, Colt McCoy suffered a mild concussion. They probably need a win against OU next week just to keep hopes of a BCS bowl alive. The Big 12 is relatively week this year so they need to win the few statement games they have and next week is definitely one of them.

With Oklahoma losing, my new favorite to win the national championship is………………………………South Florida. Okay, so maybe that decision was made by my heart and not my head (if it was the other way around I’d probably pick LSU), but they turned in by far the most impressive performance of the week. Granted, Pat White was hurt for some of the game, but their back-up Jarrett Brown is no slouch. Even when White was in the game, the USF defense contained WVU in a way that no one has since, well, last year’s game between the two. If the Bulls can win out, I’d assume they would either be the only unbeaten or one of two which would get them into the National Championship game. Think about that for a second, South Florida, playing for the Nat’l Championship. Yea, I can’t believe it either. They still need to get through Rutgers, Louisville and Cincinnati. If they’re going to do it, their defense will lead them there. I honestly think Cincinnati-USF could determine the Big East. Cinci has one of the best defenses in the country. They get their first big test next week against Rutgers.

The least surprising upset for me this weekend was Auburn over Florida. I apparently wasn’t the only one, Florida’s had underlying problems all year. Auburn’s two losses this year were both tight, to South Florida by 3 and Mississippi State by 5. While the Miss St. loss is tough to swallow, USF has showed they are for real. Also, Auburn handed KSU they’re only loss and we saw what KSU did to Texas. On top of that, I’ve believed all season that Florida is overrated. I don’t think Tebow has the weapons around him for them to continue outscoring teams and they’re defense is going to allow other teams to score some points. Just a hunch, but I could see them losing by 20-30 points next week at LSU, at night. That is such a tough place to play and something Tebow’s never experienced before. I could be completely wrong and Florida will probably win because I said that, but it definitely wouldn’t surprise me to see them get handily beaten by the Tigers.

The best game of yesterday was Oregon-California. Cal came out with the win in the final seconds when a player for the Ducks fumbled the ball through the endzone while going in for what would have been the tying score. I’d like to comment more on this game, but for some reason it wasn’t a national game and it wasn’t on ABC in New York, instead we got Rutgers-Maryland. That was a good game, but come on, Oregon-Cal was the marquee game of the day. Cal is going to move up, probably to 3rd with Oklahoma, Florida and WVU all losing in front of them.

And now for your moment of zen. Notre Dame is still incredibly, amazingly bad. They missed the extra points after their first two touchdowns yesterday. That was after falling behind by 20 plus points to Purdue, which isn’t very good in its own right. I’m really rooting for a winless season, that would be awesome. Especially after Charlie Weis just got a 10-year contract extension last year. Their season is going so poorly that apparently yesterday’s loss was a step in the right direction. I wonder if they’re out of contention for a BCS bowl yet.

Until next time….

Game of the Day: LSU 28-South Carolina 16

Apparently it didn’t matter that the game wasn’t played at night. Earlier this week LSU complained that they couldn’t host this week’s game at night (when they’re pretty much unbeatable) because CBS picked up the game. It didn’t matter as they controlled the last 3 quarters after SC jumped out by 7 on towards the end of the first quarter. The defining play of the game and one that will be replayed ad nauseum today was a fake field goal that resulted in a touchdown. On the play, holder Matt Flynn, the Tigers’ starting QB, took the snap as kicker Colt David veered to the right just before kicking the ball. Flynn threw a no-look pass over his head to David who ran it in easily to put LSU up 21-7. The trick play pretty much put the game away. The most surprising thing about it was that it didn’t come from South Carolina, coached by known trickster Steve Spurrier. Spurrier was impressed by the play as Roy Lang III of the Shreveport Times writes.

As it stands now, LSU will host Florida in a night game in 2 weeks. If both teams win their upcoming games that will be one of the most hyped games in years. I wouldn’t bet against LSU at Death Valley at night. Tim Tebow and the Gators better be more prepared than they were this week against Mississippi. They barely beat Ole Miss, 30-24.

Best of the Rest:

Staying in the SEC: Georgia 26-Alabama 23 (OT)

I Guess it’s time for Coach Saban to begin polishing his resume and to start looking for a new job. Saban and the Tide suffered their first setback since he left Miami for Tuscaloosa, after saying explicitly he wouldn’t. Saban gets some of the blame for their first loss as Alabama came out flat against the Bulldogs and played very poorly in the first half. They only sent it to OT by scoring 10 points in the final minutes of the game. Georgia gets Mississippi at home next week while Alabama plays out of conference against Florida State.

The Big East starts to shape up:

South Florida 37-UNC 10

Seriously, South Florida’s good. This isn’t some sort of random joke being perpetrated on the country, they’re actually good. They haven’t been in the Big East very long but they are one of the top 3 contenders for the league title this year. While their season has been impressive so far, next week will be big as John Romano of the St. Petersburg Times writes. It’ll be important for USF to legitimize itself to many people who don’t believe they’re actually this good and to help determine who wins the Big East this year.

Their opponent in that game, West Virginia, took care of business against East Carolina, 48-7. It is unfair how well they can run the ball. White, Slaton, Reynaud, Schmitt: they just keep coming at you. It’ll be interesting to see how USF attempts to stop their potent attack.

Other Top 25 Games:

Oklahoma and USC continued to roll this week. The top 10 seems to be pretty set for now. It’s after that that things get really confusing. Penn State lost, Nebraska almost lost to BALL STATE, seriously. There weren’t enough top teams playing other top teams this week to figure out who’s actually good and who’s a fraud.

The Just Plain Worst:

Syracuse 38-Louisville 35

I don’t know who this says more about. That Syracuse has fallen so far it’s now considered huge for them just to get a win, let alone beat a top 25 team, or that Louisville actually gave up 38 points to that very same team. I think Mt. Union could score 30 points on their defense. Brian Brohm’s numbers were video game worthy and they lost. I feel for him, he gets absolutely no blame for their season to date. At this point he probably should just sit out the season so he doesn’t get hurt before his big NFL payday.

Notre Dame (0-4)

This is great, I love seeing them lose every week. I was just shocked they scored 2 offensive touchdowns. I wasn’t even aware they had an offense. I don’t even watch their game anymore, I just check the score to see how badly they got beat. The Golden Boy, Jimmy Claussen was benched in the 4th quarter, I still think he’ll win 5 Heismans. I mean, Ron Powlus did… oh wait nevermind, well how about Rick Mirer….umm, okay maybe just 3 Heismans. At this point the Notre Dame faithful are looking for any sign that their team cares.

Well, that’s all for now, until next week…