Five thoughts on College Football to start your Monday off…
1. One Burning Question: Does Va. Tech’s loss kill Boise’s chances of making the BCS title game?
Yes & no. Picture this: an undefeated SEC team, an undefeated Big 10 team, and an undefeated Boise St. all waltz in December. Guess what, one of these teams has absolutely no shot at playing for a national title. Hope you Boise fans didn’t book hotel reservations for Tempe during the second week of January, because you won’t need ‘em. If you play in a less than stellar conference (and yes I’m talking to teams in the Big East, ACC, WAC & Mountain West) you can’t expect me to be as impressed with your going undefeated as with a team from the SEC, Big 10, or even the Big 12 or Pac-10 going undefeated.
Having said all this I do think the opening couple weeks of the season call for some suspension of judgment. Hey, I would love to jump into all the debates that are raging right now about Boise St., VT, strength of schedule, the horror of the BCS and all the rest, but the fact is we just don’t know enough yet to make any sort of judgment about how good many of these teams really are. The best test of how good a college football team is remains whether or not they can run the table from August to December. Do that and at the very least you’re good…maybe even great. Sadly for Boise, strength of schedule does matter and so if they have any chance of being in the national title game they need to be the only team in college football who is undefeated at the end of the year. And from here on out style points are going to count big time.
At the end of the day though, this is hardly a different situation than the one facing Boise at the start of the season. Yes, the loss hurts public perception in the short term, but Boise was always going to have to run the table in impressive style and probably be the only undefeated left on the board to even have a greater than 50% chance of playing for the title.
2. If you want my advice… Steve Spurrier, if you are ever going to beat Florida and win the SEC East at South Carolina do it now…but don’t count on it. South Carolina is good. How good you ask? Well that is still to be determined. But with Lamarcus Lattimore, Steven Garcia, some athletic skill players and a reputable defense I feel comfortable right now saying that S.C. could win 5 conference games which would be impressive. Oh, and did I mention that Florida looks less than impressive at the moment. This, however, is where the good news ends for Spurrier and the Gamecocks because they have some huge disadvantages chief among them is their schedule. S.C. has to play Auburn, Bama & Arkansas from the SEC West. The bad news, is that the most winnable game (Auburn) is an away game, meaning they could easily go 0-3 against the West division. This will put a lot of pressure on them to take care of business against some very mediocre SEC East teams (Tenn, UK, & Vandy). Assuming they win all three of those games S.C.’s chances of winning the SEC East will likely come down to their head-to-head against Florida and that game isn’t going to take place until Nov 13th…in the Swamp, which means John Brantley should have had time to figure out how to run an offense for four quarters. At least South Carolina fans can take comfort in being the best S.C. team in college football for a year…
3. Battleship hit and sunk…The ACC has now lost all credibility to me. Your three big name teams just got humiliated, and Georgia Tech got beat by a Kansas team who lost last week to North Dakota State. Florida St. was supposed to be returning to prominence. Instead they served as Oklahoma’s punching bag as the Sooners worked out their frustrations from last week’s embarrassing win over Utah St. on the poor Seminoles who had to slink back to Tallahassee. The good news for the ‘Noles is that they weren’t the only Florida team slinking back to the Sunshine State on Sunday. The Miami Hurricanes attempted to make landfall in Ohio but by the time they got there could hardly be called a tropical depression. OSU flexed it muscles and solidified their spot as the best team in the Big 10 and the second best team in the country by dismantling a Miami of FL. team that was searching for validation and respect. But of course the biggest loss for the ACC has come courtesy of Virginia Tech, who last week managed to lose to Boise St. (WAC champion > ACC champion…no the equation you want as a BCS conference) but then managed to lose to an FCS school, James Madison. This is one of the worst openings to a Top 10 season I’ve seen in a while. It may rank up there with that year everyone thought Georgia was going to win the national championship, and it certainly surpasses OU’s massively disappointing opening from last year.
4. One of these is not like the other…One of those top 10 teams is a faker and for now I’m going with the obvious choice of Florida. Sure they’re probably still the best team in Florida (and yes that used to mean something) but it doesn’t mean much right now. Florida isn’t so much a bad team as they are a team that seems to have no identity and struggles to really do anything consistent other than be mediocre on offense for most of a game. Thankfully Florida still has some time to figure things out and put together a good season but that needs to happen soon or Florida will jump into contention for the most disappointing team of the year along with Virginia Tech. An ignominious race if ever there was one…
5. Five things to look forward to…Because the start of the work week demands some ray of hope to fuel long hours of darkness here are five things you can look forward to next Saturday.
Texas at Texas Tech/Florida at Tennessee. These are basically the same game. Both Texas and Florida have had lackluster performances against overmatched foes the first couple weeks. Now they both go on the road to visit divisional foes who would love to exploit some apparent weaknesses in both teams. It will be the first true road test for both Gilbert and Brantley and it will be interesting to see how both perform. Gilbert has looked solid, although not spectacular so far. The Longhorns will almost undoubtedly need more out of him in this game. For Florida, Brantley will need to be patient and trust his defense. As little firepower as Florida has shown in the first two games, Tennessee has less…a lot less. Some opportunistic offense should work wonders and a win for Florida.
Big 10 vs. Pac 10 matchups – Iowa visits Arizona as the second best team in both conferences face off against each other. Also on the docket, Arizona St. visits Madison and U.S.C. (the other one) goes to Minnesota. I’m interested to see if Minnesota can pull a Kansas and lose to a Dakota school one week and then knock off a top-20 team the next.
Denard Robinson attempting to singlehandedly gain 1,000 yards against UMass – Seriously…this is getting ridiculous. I expected a letdown against Notre Dame and all he did was gain over 500 yards…by himself. That’s just dumb. Add to that the fact that Michigan is basically playing the role of embarrassed bully right now and poor UMass is going to be in for a long day.
Notre Dame at Michigan State – Say what you want to about Notre Dame football it generates excitement. Actually, this makes me think that Notre Dame is basically the institutional incarnation of the BCS, an entity that is simultaneously overrated and underrated, absurdly lucrative, and sometimes outrageously fun to watch. You can be sure that Sparty is going to try his hardest to give Brian Kelly and the Irish a losing record, let’s face it, straight up who are you going to pick against? A Brian Kelly team that just lost a close game they feel they should have won or a Mark Dantonio team?
Being one week closer to Texas/OU weekend…
