CFB Week 14 (11/25-11/29) T&A, News, & Picks

JPicks said:
Completely agree. I don't even get upset anymore as 2004 was enough for me. I just hope like hell that Utah doesn't end up playing Cinncy or whoever comes out of the ACC.
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Projection I see right now is Utah vs. USC in the Fiesta with Texas vs. Alabama in the Sugar.

Look, I want Texas to have a shot at the MNC this year, particularly after how hard this team has played, improved, and overacheived this year. But if they can't get to the MNC, the BCS gets blown up and we get the following 2 Big XII vs. SEC matchups in BCS bowls, I won't be completely disappointed:

OU v. Florida
Texas v. Alabama

And what could you do to fix the whole damn system if the winner of both those games each has 1 loss? Plus one this year would work well. Even if it was a rematch of the RRS or SEC Championship.
 
Oklahoma jumps Texas in AP, coaches polls

from Bevo Beat
Receiving a big bounce after its 65-21 victory over Texas Tech, Oklahoma jumped over Texas in both the Associated Press and coaches polls today. Next up this afternoon is release of the latest Bowl Championship Series standings, which may be called upon to determine the Big 12 South winner if the Sooners, Longhorns and Red Raiders finish the season in a three-way tie.
Click here for a printable PDF of this week’s polls.
Oklahoma jumped all the way from fifth to second in the USA Today coaches poll, which accounts for one-third of the BCS formula. Florida is third in the coaches poll, while Texas remained fourth. Texas Tech tumbled all the way to eighth. Alabama remained No. 1 in both polls.
The AP poll isn’t part of the BCS mix, but the AP does crown its own champion at the end of the season. After Alabama, Florida is second in the AP poll, followed by Oklahoma and Texas. Tech is seventh.
 
GameDay Signs - Norman, Oklahoma

from CollegeGameBalls: College Football at its Finest by cgb
Here are the best and funniest signs from Texas Tech @ Oklahoma. It was a blowout on the field, but competitive in terms of sign quality.

I am thoroughly impressed with this sign. Genius and creativity aside, the creator managed to get a depiction of a guy grabbing his ass cheeks on ESPN. My hat is off to you sir or madam.

Crabtree only sees the dreams, in his head, he is not responsible for their message. If you don’t get this you need to educate yourself here.

Harrell and Tebow buy their jorts together.

Victory!

You can’t see it all, but it says “Leach Runs The Five Wives Spread.”

Its Dr. Lou, its not supposed to make sense.

Shouldn’t some OU coed be holding up this sign and not a little kid…

And it is still true today.
 
Why Is the SEC Is Completely Over-rated

from The Wiz of Odds by Jay Christensen

One of the biggest lies going around is that Southeastern Conference football is second to none. Don't buy into it, because it's simply not true, especially this season.
Nonethless, we somehow find Alabama and Florida ranked 1-2 in the Associated Press poll. This comes a day after Oklahoma drilled the previous No. 2 — Texas Tech — by 44 points, while Florida was beating up on Citadel, a I-AA team it has no business playing. For some reason, SEC teams don't get penalized for 1) playing nonconferences schedules full of I-AA and Sun Belt opponents; 2) rarely playing road nonconference games.
So the buildup begins for Alabama and Florida in the SEC title game. Forget the Bowl Championship Series title game. There's no need for the Alabama-Florida winner to play an Oklahoma, Texas or USC. The SEC winner will have already done enough to win it all.
Seriously, what has the SEC accomplished this season? The answer is not much. Alabama has played Clemson, Tulane, Western Kentucky and Arkansas State in nonconference play and we've all seen what a house of cards Clemson turned out to be. Alabama's resume is built on one half against Georgia, which we were told was going to win the national title (more SEC hype). Don't forget that the Crimson Tide gave up 30 points in the second half to the Bulldogs.
Florida hasn't played a nonconference game out of the state since 1991, a 31-7 loss at Syracuse.
As for the rest of the conference, here's what you have. Auburn was ranked No. 10 at one point and Vanderbilt was No. 13. Combined, the Tigers and Commodores stand a pedestrian 11-11.
Tennessee was No. 18 in the preseason poll. It just fired Phil Fulmer after it lost at home to Wyoming.
Mississippi State lost at Louisiana Tech. Vanderbilt lost at home to Duke.
As for nonconference victories against Bowl Championship opponents, the resume is not impressive. The SEC can claim four victories. Alabama beat Clemson on a neutral field, Kentucky won at Louisville, Georgia won at Arizona State and South Carolina defeated North Carolina State in Colombia. Of the bunch, only Clemson is bowl-eligible.
When SEC teams have ventured on the road, it hasn't been pretty. Arkansas was routed at Texas, Auburn was drilled at West Virginia, Mississippi lost at Wake Forest, Mississippi State was embarrassed at Georgia Tech and Tennessee lost at lowly UCLA.
But what about that SEC speed, you ask? Check the video below from the 2008 Capital One Bowl. How do you explain Florida's world-class speedster Percy Harvin getting run down by Michigan's Morgan Trent?
We're not saying one conference is superior in 2008. That's not the point. What we're saying is that the SEC hasn't lived up to the hype.
<embed class="content-block-fix" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JybFWy9_-Pk&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="470" height="389">Popout
 
Eliminated In Annoying Fashion

from The Futon Report by Matt Sussman
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As has been said before, the false sense of hope is worst in mid-November, when the Falcons have a very reasonable hope of making a championship or bowl game. The easiest way to avoid it is to forget the game was Friday night and not Saturday night. That way all the angst can be doled out in one run-on sentence once one sees the 40-34 loss box score:
HOW ON EARTH DOES A TEAM BLOW A 20 POINT FOURTH QUARTER LEAD AT HOME AND A 14 POINT LEAD WITH THREE MINUTES TO PLAY AND THEN LOSE THE GAME IN DOUBLE OVERTIME AND I HATE LIFE?
Phew. Now we can just worry about Friday’s UT-BG game and be done with it, then move onto basketball season like honorable little soldiers.
 
Texas Moves to No. 2 in BCS According to CFN.com

from Burnt Orange Nation by awiggo
The latest BCS ratings are out and Texas is your new number 2. Despite being ranked fourth in both the Harris and the USA Today Coaches polls, Texas jumps into the top two because of computer strength.
Oklahoma is a close, very close, number three.
It is likely that Oklahoma will wipe out a large portion of our computer advantage after another week of play. A road win over Oklahoma State is going to be worth a lot more than a home victory over Texas A&M. So, in order for the Longhorns to stay ahead of the Sooners, a few human voters will need to reevaluate their poll rankings.
Cue BZ's talking points below.
Or Baylor could just beat Texas Tech in Lubbock and end all this madness.
 
Wyoming fires Glenn

from Fanblogs.com by Kevin Donahue
In the least surprising coaching move in college football, Wyoming has fired coach Joe Glenn.
"We felt that after six seasons under coach Glenn the Wyoming football program was not making the kind of progress we had hoped for," Burman said in a statement. "We had hoped that after six seasons, we would be competing for a conference championship. That has not happened. "I want to thank coach Glenn for the way in which he has represented our athletics department and our university over the past six years. There is no finer man, no finer person than Joe Glenn. He has been an outstanding ambassador for Cowboy and Cowgirl athletics, the University of Wyoming and the state of Wyoming. We will always be grateful to him for his service."
Glenn finishes his Wyoming career at 30-41 (15-31 in Mountain West Conference play), including a 4-8 (1-7 MWC) record this season to finish eighth in the conference after being picked to finish fourth and even contend for the conference championship.
The Cowboys had just two bowl-eligible seasons, though they were only invited to a bowl during the 2004 campaign. They finished 7-5 with a Las Vegas Bowl win.
​
It's tough to keep track of who coaches where these days in the MWC. Three guys are gone already, and several others are candidates at bigger schools. Looks like a wild off-season out in the Mountain West.
 
NEW YORK—Faced with ongoing criticism of what many believe is a flawed system, representatives from the Bowl Championship Series assured college football fans Wednesday that the NCAA football title picture becomes much less complicated when one simply pretends certain teams do not exist.
NIB-BCS-R.jpg

"Yes, Boise State and Utah are undefeated, but if there are no such teams as Boise State and Utah, considering them for a national title shot becomes a nonissue," said David Frohnmayer, chair of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, who acknowledged that many BCS voters already used a limited version of the technique. "Furthermore, if the University of Oklahoma is able to beat Texas Tech this Saturday, we are fully prepared to act as if there is no such institution as the University of Oklahoma, since if there were it would confuse the entire picture unnecessarily. And, as always, no matter what happens with the rest of USC's season, we will pretend that any team that comes between them and a BCS bid is imaginary." Concluded Frohnmayer, "The BCS works."
 
Texas holds off OU, moves to number 2 in BCS rankings

from Bevo Sports by Brian
The latest BCS rankings are out and despite the gains by Oklahoma in the two human polls, Texas has taken advantage of the the Texas Tech loss and moved up two spots to number two in the rankings. The computer polls are the reason the Horns are hanging on now but since the Sooners play a ranked team this week it may take an impressive Thanksgiving Day win to remind voters that the Horns actually beat the Sooners when they matched up in October.
Check out the top 10 below:
<table style="width: 260px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr> <th>Rank</th> <th>Team</th> <th>BCS Average</th> </tr> <tr> <td>1</td> <td>Alabama</td> <td>0.987</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2</td> <td>Texas</td> <td>0.920</td> </tr> <tr> <td>3</td> <td>Oklahoma</td> <td>0.912</td> </tr> <tr> <td>4</td> <td>Florida</td> <td>0.875</td> </tr> <tr> <td>5</td> <td>USC</td> <td>0.797</td> </tr> <tr> <td>6</td> <td>Utah</td> <td>0.785</td> </tr> <tr> <td>7</td> <td>Texas Tech</td> <td>0.778</td> </tr> <tr> <td>8</td> <td>Penn St.</td> <td>0.752</td> </tr> <tr> <td>9</td> <td>Boise St.</td> <td>0.658</td> </tr> <tr> <td>10</td> <td>Ohio St.</td> <td>0.620</td></tr></tbody></table>
 
2008 FCS Playoff Bracket

from In The Bleachers College Football Blog by Brian Sakowski
The FCS announced its brackets today. The first round games are all played at the higher seeds.
16. Wofford (9-2) at 1. James Madison (10-1)
9. Colgate (9-2) at 8. Villanova
13. Texas State (8-4) at 4. Montana (11-1)
12. Weber State (9-3) at 5. Cal Poly (8-2)
14. Maine (8-4) at 3. Northern Iowa (10-2)
11. New Hampshire (9-2) at 6. Southern Illinois (9-2)
10. Eastern Kentucky at 7. Richmond (9-3)
15. South Carolina State (10-2) at 2. Appalachian State (10-2)
 

<!-- google_ad_section_start --> Sunday, November 23, 2008

Separating the Big 12 South Trio

Dr. Saturday in his post about the tangled and tied triangle of the Big 12 South points out the following –

All three teams are 10-1. They're all 1-1 against one another. This is not about Texas > Oklahoma on Oct. 11 because there's another two and half months' worth of information, much of it -- like Texas Tech > Texas on Nov. 1, and Oklahoma > Texas Tech on Saturday -- directly contradictory to that single afternoon in the Cotton Bowl. This is not a plea for Oklahoma. But whichever of the three you advocate to represent the South in the Big 12 Championship, it has to be based on all the information.

What we have here is the essence of a tie – three teams, all who have each beaten one of the others. Ties are broken in all sorts of ways in sports – from overtime to “shoot-outs” in individual games, to conference records and total points in the cases of teams with tied records. However, in the case of all tiebreakers it is important to note one element – while typically “fair” in application, what is trying to be decided – the outcome of an otherwise even contest – lends the decision to the narrowest of margins by its very nature. In doing so, one (or in this case more than one) of the participants is bound to be disappointed by an victory so narrowly missed.

At Dr. Saturday’s urging, and in breaking the tie for my BlogPoll, I’m going to base my tiebreaker on the “information” available. When you have three teams that are equal in record having played each other, let’s look at the primary stats that made up those games (stats are compilation of each team against the others)-

Oklahoma

Points Scored: 100
Points Against: 66
Net Points: 34
Total Yards: 1060
Total Yards Against: 844
Net Yards: 216

Texas

Points Scored: 78
Points Against: 74
Net Points: 4
Total Yards: 812
Total Yards Against: 1014
Net Yards: -202


Texas Tech

Points Scored: 60
Points Against: 98
Net Points: -38
Total Yards: 985
Total Yards Against: 999
Net Yards: -14

Obviously Oklahoma is by far the most impressive here. Texas has the worst net yardage, but at least they have positive net points to the net negative of 38 points for Tech.

In considering the venues played, one was “neutral” (Texas-Oklahoma), one game took place at Oklahoma (OK-TT), and one at Texas Tech (TT-Texas). So only Texas didn’t truly have a home game, though some would argue the Red River Rivalry is exactly that.

Based on this evidence I find it pretty reasonable – even easy – to rank these three as –

Oklahoma
Texas
Texas Tech

Now where they end up in my BlogPoll overall is a totally different issue.
 
Wisconsin Fans Mad About Cal Poly Game, Want Badgers Left at Home for Holidays

from The FanHouse - NCAAfootball
by Bruce CiskieFiled under: Wisconsin, Big 10, NCAA FB Fans
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Well, they could be mad about a promising season that fell into the bowels of sucktitude, too.

But one thing is certain. Wisconsin fans are mad about something.

One day after the Badgers valiantly escaped the depths of heartbreak against the mighty Mustangs of Cal Poly, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is running a poll about the upcoming postseason.

Apparently, Wisconsin's rally from a seemingly insurmountable deficit against a I-AA opponent (albeit a highly-ranked I-AA opponent) didn't impress anyone.

The question "If you could place Wisconsin in a bowl, where would you put them?" has been voted on by over 3,000 people as of this writing. Since it's a Milwaukee newspaper, it stands to reason that the majority of people voting in this poll are Wisconsin fans.

(Yes, I understand that this is not a scientific survey. However, the fact that people took time to click on the poll and vote tells me that at least a good portion of them have some passion for the subject.)
 
RJ - GL this week and have a good Thanksgiving! I know the Oklahoma game didn't turn out the way you would have liked. I would think Texas would try and put a burial on Aggie on Thursday night and not stop scoring.
 
Timh said:
RJ - GL this week and have a good Thanksgiving! I know the Oklahoma game didn't turn out the way you would have liked. I would think Texas would try and put a burial on Aggie on Thursday night and not stop scoring.
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Let's hope, Tim. Good luck this week too.
 
BCS Realpolitik: The computers are starting to go a little crazy, but it's not their fault

from Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo! Sports by Matt Hinton
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In a perfect world, the Doc would be given carte blanche to publicly torch the Bowl Championship Series in effigy and institute the elaborate, double-elimination battle royale of his dreams. But we live in the world we live in, so each Sunday the Doc looks instead at what the new BCS numbers mean for the rest of the season. Rooting interest: chaos. Always chaos.
ept_sports_ncaaf_experts-360995255-1227495563.jpg
First of all, what's up with the computers? Utah and Texas Tech remain ahead of Florida and Southern Cal? Only one of the machines has Florida in its top four, and five of six have the Trojans ranked seventh or lower. Meanwhile, five of six still have Texas Tech in the top five, and Jeff Sagarin's "ELO-CHESS" rating -- the one he's forced to submit to fit BCS rules, rather than the "real" rating he honed for years -- still ranks Texas Tech ahead of Oklahoma, as does Peter Wolfe. This is the kind of absurdity that results when you withhold information: If the computers were allowed to take into account margin of victory instead treating every win as exactly the same, those algorithms would make infinitely more sense (the poll Sagarin would submit if he could has Oklahoma No. 2 and Tech fourth).
Secondly, Oklahoma's emphatic expulsion of the Raiders from the ranks of the unbeaten guarantees this, at least: Somebody is getting screwed. Probably several somebodies. In the Big 12 South, either Oklahoma or Texas -- along with their presumptive co-champion, suddenly left for dead -- will get jobbed as early as next week, when, barring a huge upset, often inscrutable pollsters and even more inscrutable algorithms will pluck one to make its final argument in the Big 12 Championship while leaving the others for no good reason at all. USC, Utah and Penn State won't even get that opportunity.
We shouldn't be having any of these circular, dead end arguments, because there's not enough difference among any members of that group based on their accomplishments to logically justify excluding any of them. But among the half-dozen teams that will still have a legitimate championship claim after Dec. 6, only two will go on to the so-called championship game. If your team's not among that pair, yes, y'all got screwed. If your team is among that pair, you're lucky the screwjob worked in your favor. There's no way to be right or wrong about it. So either way, whatever happens over the last two weeks, accept your fate like a man. Somebody's getting screwed, and it might as well be you.
Sitting pretty. Florida and Alabama remain on a collision course for the biggest conference championship game in history, and they're the only two teams on the board who are definitely locked into one of the top two spots if they win out.
ept_sports_ncaaf_experts-549635130-1227495510.jpg
After that, we got us a fine bit of Big 12 South chaos, which is still wild enough, technically, to open the door to any of the teams currently ranked in spots 2 through 7 (yes, even Texas Tech; see below). I think the scenario can get complicated enough there to make voters throw up their hands and run screaming into the big, rippling arms of USC, but if I was a betting man, I'd stick with the story I've been peddling for the last two weeks: Oklahoma will beat Oklahoma State next week, hop Texas and go on to the Big 12 Championship. OU remains behind Texas this week because of the computers -- obviously, the humans were impressed enough by Saturday's obliteration to dismiss UT's win in the Cotton Bowl in October, and I have no problem with that -- but the strength of schedule boost in beating the Cowboys, while Texas plays Texas A&M, should push the Sooners up to No. 2 next Sunday.
So in my mind, Oklahoma controls its own destiny. If Oklahoma State manages to beat OU, though, that's when it gets really interesting.
A little help? For a team now known best for getting its head handed to it on national television in late November, I actually think Texas Tech is still alive with the Cowboy upset on Saturday: Assuming Tech beats Baylor, a second Sooner loss in-conference would put the Raiders back in a two-way tie for the South title with Texas, which Tech would win as a result of the head-to-head win over the Horns earlier this month. If they can get to the Big 12 Championship and beat Missouri, voters will have an awfully difficult time justifying passing up the 12-1, conference champion Raiders for a runner-up, 11-1 Texas outfit that they defeated in the regular season. Or so Tech hopes.
I maintain, then, that Texas is on the outside looking in. If Oklahoma wins again in even remotely convincing fashion, the computers are going to have to spit out one hell of an equation that keeps the Horns at No. 2.
For chaos' sake. The specter of ridiculous upsets always looms -- imagine the potential ripple effects of Auburn over Alabama, Florida State over Florida, Texas A&M over Texas or UCLA/Notre Dame over USC -- but the most realistic chance at complete meltdown is a Missouri win in the Big 12 Championship. Combined with Oregon State's pending Pac-10 championship, a Tiger win in K.C. would basically guarantee the second member of the mythical championship game across from the SEC champion will be an at-large selection, either Texas, Oklahoma, USC or, in an extreme case, Utah. There is no way to make this process "right," but Mizzou is in the best position to guarantee that it goes really wrong.
 
Recapping Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma

from Double-T Nation by Seth C
Pre-Game
Before we get to the game I wanted to share a couple of cool events that happened before the game.
Cool Moment #1: I had the pleasure of hanging out with some DTN readers and they were gracious enough to provide a place to congregate before kick-off. Much thanks.
Cool Moment #2: I was lucky enough to have tremendous seats in Norman (shout-out Kris). I was essentially on the 12 yard line, south endzone, row . . . 2. That's right, I was on the freaking 2nd row (which is ground level) and I had the most amazing vantage point. I've never sat that far down in a stadium. If anything it makes you appreciate what these players do as it is absolute chaos on the field. I can't imagine processing a play as quickly as they do.
As far as the game production is concerned, there are cameras and people everywhere. Lisa Salters checks her phone . . . a lot. Also, her assistant (i.e. girl that follows her around with a clipboard) is pretty good looking (shout-out to my wife), and looked a lot like Erin Andrews. I wouldn't be surprised to see this girl in a year doing sideline reporting. Sorry, no picture and yes, that makes me very uncool.
Cool Moment #3: About half an hour before the game I watching every one warm up, taking it all in, and right before me walks Austin Murphy. So, like a school girl yelling for Miley Cyrus, I think I said, "Austin!" (Austin looks my way.) "It's me Double-T Nation." (I pause because I just realized what I had just said and I wanted to make sure and correct myself). " It's Seth from Double-T Nation." Those may not be direct quotes, but that's pretty close to how it went down. Austin and exchanged thoughts about the game, all of my were wrong, and it was a nice conversation and a pretty cool moment for me personally, I just hope I didn't embarrass myself completely (totally recognize that I was somewhat embarrassing).
The Game
The Trenches: No report card really needed for this one. I've DVR'ed the game, but I really don't see any need to watch it. That game was won and lost in the trenches. I never saw it coming, it was like a Mack truck coming straight at me behind my back. I think we could talk about scheme and play calls and other things, but the bottom line is that OU whipped Texas Tech up front and any game plan disintegrated from there. It stinks, but it's true.
Going For It: Going for it on 4th downs caused me consternation during the game, but thinking about it in retrospect, I think Leach probably felt like he knew what was about to happen and if he didn't at least give his team the opportunity, it would have been a mistake. Converting those could have been the difference in a close game. Again, Leach is going to gamble and it's not always going to be pretty, but I think Leach instills a sense of confidence in his team by saying that he believes that they can do it. Some days chickens, some days feathers.
I Wish I Had Been Wrong: When I think of my 5 Reasons Why Texas Tech Will Win/Lose I never expect to actually be right. Well, I was entirely too right this past week.
Recovering Quickly: I'm really interested to see how this team recovers against Baylor. I'm not sleeping on Baylor and Robert Griffin is an amazing talent that can change the game. After watching the Sooners shred Texas Tech's defense this past week, I'm not looking forward to seeing what he can do with his legs and with his arm, which is better thank you think. Everyone needs to pick themselves up and remember that 10-1 is not good enough this year and the Red Raiders need to do it's part to complete the season.
Going Forward
Where I Stand: I gave this lots of thought Sunday morning. It was actually pretty strange, I arrived where I was going to lay my head and didn't turn on ESPN for any sort of highlights. I wanted no part of sports for the night. In fact, I ended up watching this (not trying to be religious, it's just what I watched) until I simply passed out.
I woke up this morning, trying to figure out what I was going to say about the game.
My first thought was if we are in a better place, as far as a program is concerned than we were 1 year ago today. This time last year, Texas Tech just knocked off #4 Oklahoma and was waiting as to where Texas Tech was going to play in a bowl game. Texas Tech also had an 8-4 record and had losses to Oklahoma State, Missouri, Colorado and Texas.
And I'm not asking you if this year's team is better than last year's team, that's too easy, but the big question that I want to pose is whether or not you feel the program, as a whole, is in a better place that it was 12 months ago? For me, there is no question that the answer is a definitive yes, for some of the reasons listed below.
Any time I talk about Texas Tech with friends or family, I always mention that I think Captain Leach has taken baby steps with this program, but changing history is not something that can be done overnight. It takes time.
Re-Sign Captain Leach: I know that I promised that I wouldn't talk about this any more, but hopefully you'll grant me this one exception. I think it gets done, but more than that, I want it to get done.
Lessons Learned: I think both Leach and McNeill are smart guys, but I think that on Saturday they were out-coached. That still doesn't change my opinion of them because I think they're both pretty good at what they do. There's been improvement on both sides of the ball this year. I'm still very much comfortable with both of these guys going forward. Although neither Leach or McNeill showed much propensity to stop their opponent against Oklahoma, I think they've done a pretty good job thus far and I can't help but think about the advances the defense has made from one year ago.
<table align="left" border="1"> <tbody> <tr> <td>Year</td> <td>Rivals Avg *'s</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2009</td> <td>3.10</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2008</td> <td>3.00</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2007</td> <td>2.73</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2006</td> <td>2.88</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2005</td> <td>2.67</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2004</td> <td>2.69</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2003</td> <td>2.60</td> </tr> <tr> <td>2002</td> <td>2.42</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Talent: There shouldn't be any doubt though that the team will play better as the talent improves. As mentioned above, we're talking baby-steps here, but as more talented players show up on campus, then competing on a year-to-year basis is that much easier. And the truth of the matter is that as much as we talk about scheme and particular plays on the field, perhaps the biggest difference maker is the talent on the field.
I think its disingenuous to think that things have remained completely static or that there's absolutely no opportunity for things to change, although you're certainly entitled to your opinion. Keep in mind the recruiting numbers to the left.
I know that recruiting rankings aren't 100% accurate in predicting a player, but I have no doubt that there is some truth there, that the overall level of talent is trending upward. As an aside, the strange thing to me is that the 2007 class is actually a pretty good class, with some guys already making significant contributions, including Colby Whitlock, Detron Lewis, Bront Bird, etc.
Concluding It All: At the end of the day, Texas Tech isn't quite ready for the big time. In year's past, Texas Tech has always struggled on the road and sometimes struggled at home. This year, the Red Raiders overcame some of those stereotypes by winning on the road, sans one major exception, and winning at home.
And I think a lot of this depends on your personality and level of patience. Personally, I'm a glass half-ful sort of guy and I absolutely believe that Leach is working on a master plan.
And I understand you guys who have been cheering this team for 35 years or longer and think that this was Texas Tech's only shot at this type of future success. I can't and I won't believe that. I'm not saying that Texas Tech is going to be able to run the gauntlet next year without any hiccups, but Leach has left us in capable hands next year. Attrition is a part of the college game and the biggest part of being a coach is making sure that there are guys on the team that are capable of filling those roles.
In any event, there's plenty of time to do that after the season has concluded.
I've got Baylor firmly in my sights for the rest of the week.
 
Bill Snyder trades his putter for another impossible, long-term rebuilding project at Kansas State

from Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo! Sports by Matt Hinton
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After two solid months of prematurely rolling heads, we have our first coaching hire of the season, and it is without question one of the most bizarre assumptions in recent memory: Papa Bill Snyder has agreed to take in Kansas State until the Wildcats for a year or two, until they find themselves and get on their feet again. In other news, Titanic is shattering box office records and Oscar voters' hearts, while "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" is climbing the charts. After three disappointing years with a first-time boss, KSU is going a little overboard with the "experience" hire. Snyder is without a doubt the most accomplished coach in school history, by many miles -- K-State was the losingest program in the country over the course of its history when Snyder took over in 1989; in 93 years, the Wildcats had won more than eight games in a season only once, in 1910. Snyder won nine games or more 10 times in 11 years from 1993-2003, including four straight 11-win seasons from 1997-2000 and KSU's first ever conference championship in '03. Between 1990 and 1992, he hired Bob Stoops, Mike Stoops, Kirk Ferentz, Jim Leavitt and Mark Mangino as assistants. He completely deserves to have the stadium named after him (I can't speak for the rest of his family).
He is also old. Not as old as Joe Paterno or Bobby Bowden, but his silver hair and stoic, grandfatherly demeanor always made Snyder look older and more frail than he is (he turned 69 last month), and he's been out of the game now for three full seasons. His last season, in 2004, was a 4-7 disaster that included losses to Fresno State, Kansas, Texas Tech, Colorado and Iowa State, teams the Wildcats had owned for a decade, and set the tone for the malaise of the Ron Prince administration. Until tonight, I assumed Snyder's hotly-rumored candidacy was just idle speculation in lieu of better or more interesting information. Because this is not exactly a program on autopilot, and even before he actually retired, Snyder's penchant for windbreakers, turtle necks, receding hair and slightly confused expressions screamed "retired guy."
Or he was. Early word is Snyder's deal is for five years at $1.8 million per, a hefty deal in length and lucre for a veteran placeholder. Maybe he's really into this. Maybe the strain of resurrecting Kansas State Football from the mire will finally kill him, after all. We'll see what he says at a news conference scheduled for Monday morning.
 
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]2008 BCS Analysis[/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]

Week 6[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2]By Pete Fiutak

[/SIZE][/FONT] BCS Rankings | Computer Rankings

- BCS Analysis Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5
And now things get interesting. Very, very interesting.

In the big news of the BCS day, Texas moved up to two and Oklahoma is up from five to three. That means that this weekend should be all about style points as Texas needs to impress the humans to say ahead of OU, because it's the computers who currently like the Longhorns. More on this in a moment.
<table class="MsoNormalTable" style="width: 1.25in;" id="table2" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="3" width="120"> <tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 0.75pt; background: rgb(255, 255, 204) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"> The Top 25
- Expanded BCS Rankings

1. Alabama
2. Texas
3. Oklahoma
4. Florida
5. USC
6. Utah
7. Texas Tech
8. Penn State
9. Boise State
10. Ohio State
11. Georgia
12. Oklahoma St
13. Missouri
14. TCU
15. Ball State
16. Cincinnati
17. Oregon State
18. BYU
19. Michigan St
20. Florida State
21. Boston Coll.
22. Georgia Tech
23. Oregon
24. Northwestern
25. Pitt
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> Texas Tech excused itself from the national title chase moving all the way down to seventh, while Penn State didn't budge off the No. 8 spot despite blowing away Michigan State. More on this in a moment, as well.

USC is in range at five, but it's all about the Big 12 and the SEC at the moment. If the champions of the two conferences, including Alabama, finish with one loss, they're playing each other for the national title and USC, Utah, and everyone else will be on the outside looking in.
Utah is going to the BCS, which is what everyone knew after the win over BYU, but now it's confirmed at the No. 6 spot. Boise State is at nine, and isn't likely to move any higher unless there are some monumental upsets, while an unbeaten Ball State is the fourth non-BCS team in the rankings, coming in at 15th, one spot behind TCU.

Basically, here's what you need to know ...

1. If there aren't any upsets this weekend, the SEC champion will be playing for the national championship. The big question mark is Missouri. If the Tigers win the Big 12 Championship, will the BCS put in a one-loss Oklahoma or Texas (whichever one is left out) over USC? That will be the big fight unless the Tigers lose, and then Oklahoma or Texas (whichever one gets into the Big 12 title game) will play the SEC champion.

2. Utah can continue to have a major complaint. On merit, USC has no case for being ranked ahead of the Utes. The computers realize this, but the humans don't. The Utes have a better computer ranking than USC, they beat Oregon State, USC lost to Oregon State, and the Mountain West went 6-1 vs. the Pac 10. However, even after a blowout win over a good BYU, USC is No. 5 and Utah No. 6.

3. Work with me here. Penn State is firmly stuck on the No. 8 spot. However, forgetting about what happens in the SEC, if Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma, which isn't all that far-fetched, then the Big 12 South goes to a two-team tie-breaker and Texas Tech, if it beats Baylor, would face Missouri. If the Red Raiders beat the Tigers, would the voters still want them in the national title game over Texas and Penn State after what happened this last week in Norman? No way. Also, if that happens, then Texas wouldn't have won its division, much less its conference, so to put the Longhorns in would mean a 2001 Nebraska scenario which the college football public and voters have been loathe to repeat.

If Oregon State beats Oregon, then it wins the No. 1 spot in the Pac 10, and while USC would win a share of the title with a win over UCLA, would the voters still want USC in over Penn State? The computers wouldn't. Therefore, all it'll take is for two reasonable things to happen (Oklahoma State over OU and Oregon State at home over Oregon) and then Penn State would have a case, unless the voters really did go bold and decided to go with Utah. In other words, while there's too much traffic ahead for Penn State to get to the national title, the debating and politicking might not be over.

4. It's over. Utah will get the automatic BCS slot. As it looks now, the SEC and Big 12 will each get two teams in, Utah and Penn State have automatic berths, and the ACC and Big East champions will get automatic spots. That means there are two spots available, and it comes down to the Civil War. If Oregon State beats Oregon, assuming USC beats Notre Dame and UCLA, the Pac 10 will get two teams in with the Beavers going to the Rose Bowl. If Oregon beats Oregon State, then Ohio State will likely get the final BCS spot.

Don’t forget that the BCS takes the entire season into account, so there will be wild changes from the computers at the end, but the two human polls will be the biggest factors.

The Big Winners: Oklahoma (moved from No. 5 to No. 3), USC (6 to 5), Oregon State (21 to 17)
The Big Losers: Penn State (didn't move from 8), Texas Tech (2 to 7), USC (didn't jump over USC after big win)

1. Alabama Score: 0.9872 Last Week: No. 1
Alabama moved up even more as it's now No. 1 by both the humans and the computers after being No. 2 by the computers last week behind Texas Tech. Obviously, Bama is playing for the national title by beating Auburn and Florida, and with the Gators getting so much respect, the Tide could still play for it all if it loses to Auburn and wins the SEC title game.

predicted wins: Auburn
predicted losses: SEC Championship (Florida)
predicted record: 12-1
predicted bowl: Sugar Bowl
toughest test: SEC Championship vs. Florida

2. Texas Score: 0.9209 Last Week: No. 3
Texas has the computers to thank for the No. 2 spot, because both human polls have Mack Brown's club at No. 4. A blowout win over Texas A&M is a must, or else Oklahoma, if it beats Oklahoma State, will start to get more respect from the computers and won't get any less from the humans. All UT wants is a chance for a repeat battle against Missouri, and for one week, it's still in the mix.

predicted wins: Texas A&M
predicted losses: none
predicted record: 11-1
predicted bowl: Sugar Bowl
toughest test: Texas A&M
3. Oklahoma Score: 0.9125 Last Week: No. 5
Oklahoma did what it had to do to get in a position to play for the Big 12 and national title by blowing away Texas Tech. Now there's just one more hurdle to overcome to get into the No. 2 spot and into a chance to play Missouri. The humans are on board, with the Coaches' Poll putting the Sooners at No. 2 while the Harris Poll has them at 3. Oklahoma State, ranked 12th in the BCS, is a great team, and if OU does next week what it did to Texas Tech, it'll be in the Big 12 title game without a question.

predicted wins: at Oklahoma State, Big 12 Championship (Missouri)
predicted losses: None
predicted record: 12-1
predicted bowl: BCS Championship
toughest test: at Oklahoma State

4. Florida Score: 0.8755 Last Week: No. 4
Talk about focused, to a man, Florida said it was going to be business as usual against Citadel. 70 points and over 700 yards later, the team made its statement that it's not planning on letting down any time soon. The computers are still less than thrilled, partly because the SEC stinks and partly because of the loss to Ole Miss, but the humans are on board with the Harris Poll ranking the Gators No. 2 and the Coaches' Poll putting them at third. All that matters is winning the last two games. With wins over Florida State and Alabama, Florida will be playing for the national title.

predicted wins: at Florida State, SEC Championship (Alabama)
predicted losses: None
predicted record: 12-1
predicted bowl: BCS Championship
toughest test: SEC Championship vs. Alabama

5. USC Score: 0.7974 Last Week: No. 6
 The Trojans probably won't earn the Pac 10's No. 1 spot, and the computers have them eighth overall, with four of the six ranking them eighth or lower, yet the humans are falling for the blowout wins over bad teams. Ranked fifth in both polls, the humans are keeping USC alive in the national title hunt. The dream is for Missouri to win the Big 12 championship game after getting a little more help from somewhere to get within range. If USC isn't in the top four after next weekend, it's not going to happen.

predicted wins: Notre Dame, at UCLA
predicted losses: None
predicted record: 11-1
predicted bowl: Fiesta Bowl
toughest test: at UCLA

6. Utah Score: 0.7858 Last Week: No. 7
No. 5 in the computer polls but seventh in the Coaches' and eighth in the Harris, Utah is too far out of range to have any honest dreams of playing for the national title. On the plus side, this is the only two-time BCS buster and it'll be a lock to go somewhere, which above all else, means a ton of extra cash compared to the Las Vegas Bowl.

Done ... Record: 12-0
predicted bowl: Fiesta Bowl
7. Texas Tech Score: 0.7789 Last Week: No. 2
And there goes that ... maybe. If Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma and Texas Tech beats Baylor, then it'll be the Red Raiders playing Missouri for the Big 12 title. If they win the conference championship, would Texas get into the national title? Not a chance. The computers still love the Red Raiders, and the humans would either have to follow, or face the Utah vs. USC debate as to which one should be sent to Miami.

predicted wins: Baylor
predicted losses: None
predicted record: 11-1
predicted bowl: Gator Bowl
toughest test: Baylor

8. Penn State Score: 0.7520 Last Week: No. 8
While Penn State would have a big argument to be in the national title game if Missouri wins the Big 12 title, it's not going to happen. Enjoy Pasadena. Either it'll be a rematch against Oregon State, even though the Nittany Lions won 45-14 in Happy Valley earlier this year, or it'll be a tremendous battle against USC. Done ... Record: 11-1
predicted bowl: Rose Bowl

9. Boise State Score: 0.6581 Last Week: No. 9
Boise State survived a late run by Nevada and just needs to get by an underachieving, mediocre Fresno State to be unbeaten, but it'll get left out of the BCS hunt thanks to Utah's great year. Barring a huge upset, the Broncos will have to settle for the No. 9 ranking while watching a few teams with far, far lower rankings get in.

predicted wins: Fresno State
predicted losses: None
predicted record: 12-0
predicted bowl: Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl
toughest test: Fresno State

10. Ohio State Score: 0.6210 Last Week: No. 11
Ohio State will get out the Nikes along with the yellow and green pom-poms as it roots for Oregon to upset Oregon State in Corvallis. If the Ducks win, the Buckeyes will be all but certain to get the tenth BCS slot, but if the Beavers win, then it'll be off to Florida for a New Year's Day game against (cue ominous music) the SEC.

Done ... Record: 10-2
predicted bowl: Capital One Bowl

In Range
11. Georgia Score: 0.6020
12. Oklahoma State Score: 0.5705
13. Missouri Score: 0.5589
14. TCU Score: 0.4702
15. Ball State Score: 0.4379
 
5 Thoughts ... Nov. 25
Five Thoughts: 2007 Thoughts | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4
- Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11
- Week 12
Also, a nod to Oklahoma State and, from the North, Mizzou

[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2]By Pete Fiutak [/SIZE][/FONT]
1. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Blake Gideon for dropping the sure interception that would’ve sealed a Texas win over Texas Tech, and a brownie basket and big smiley face balloon to both Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree for hooking up on that last second touchdown pass to come up with the win over the Longhorns three weeks ago. If Texas Tech didn’t come up with that victory, this might be the most boring college football season ever.

To the merciful gods of all things college football, thanks for giving us the Big 12 South. Without it, there’d be nothing, absolutely nothing, to talk about.

Think about it. Had Texas pulled off the win in Lubbock, we’d be in the midst of a six-week pregame show for the SEC title game. The Heisman race would’ve been over, with Colt McCoy’s name being put on the prize already. Texas would be No. 1, Alabama would be No. 2, and all of our focus would be on the ACC and Big East races. While that would’ve been fine by me, and it would be a dream for long-suffering fans of both leagues who have been dying for more attention and respect, the rest of the college football world would’ve treated this season with a collective yawn.

The SEC sucks this year. The Big Ten sucks this year. The Pac 10 really sucks. No, it’s not parity; it’s bad football. There are bad teams, bad conferences, and bad coaching jobs being done up and down the board. Believe me, I'm Mr. College Football and I see the good in everyone and every game, but we're in a holding pattern before getting to a good 2009 and great 2010. Without the Big 12 South, we’d be gabbing about Charlie Weis and Notre Dame and we’d be spending all our time on the coaching vacancies ... zzzzzzzzz.

 Of course, it’ll all change; these things go in cycles. The SEC will soon be the dominant league in college football again, the Big Ten really isn’t as bad as it appears, and the ACC and Big East really are entertaining (really, you should be watching those leagues, too). But for this year, it’s all about Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma. Thanks for the help.




And then comes the rematch with Penn State

 By Richard Cirminiello[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] [/SIZE][/FONT]
2. To understand what makes this year’s Oregon State team so special, all you had to do was watch the team battle back to beat Arizona, 19-17, to stay ahead of USC in the Rose Bowl race. However, a comeback win on the road doesn’t even begin to tell how the Beavers were able to deal out some redemption, Corvallis style.

The quarterback who calmly led Oregon State to a pair of scoring drives in the final four minutes was backup Sean Canfield, who was summoned from the bench when starter Lyle Moevao was scratched with a sore shoulder. That’s the same Canfield, who was booed repeatedly last season and had lost his starting job before in August. The quarterback’s favorite target on those two pivotal drives was Sammie Stroughter, the same receiver, who’d nearly given up football last season, battling depression and a lacerated kidney. Yet, there he was, getting behind the Wildcat secondary to set up the winning kick and loving life with his teammates. Picking up the tough yards was Ryan McCants, who’d been anointed the next big thing at running back before getting upstaged by Jacquizz Rodgers. Unfortunately, Rodgers was lost in the first quarter to a shoulder injury of his own, forcing McCants to log his most carries of the year.

And then there’s Justin Kahut, the goat-turned-hero, who popped the game-winning field goal just a few minutes after hooking the potential game-tying extra point. That’s the Beaver way, something they know plenty about in the Pacific Northwest. Resiliency. Brotherhood. And a slew of capable, well-coached players in lieu of a bunch of stars. The formula is obviously working for head coach Mike Riley and Oregon State, which has gone 8-1 since opening 0-2, and is a Civil War victory away from earning a Rose Bowl trip for the first time since 1965.






But who's the new Elway?
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2]By [/FONT][/SIZE] Richard Cirminiello[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] [/FONT][/SIZE]
3. If Bernie Kosar had a more polished, slightly more athletic offspring, he’d be Sam Bradford.

Every time I watch Bradford in action for Oklahoma, it conjures up images of Kosar, the former Miami Hurricane and NFL quarterback. Honest, that’s a compliment not a knock, so spare the hate mail. I understand that Bradford has a higher upside and isn’t nearly as gawky dropping back to pass, but some of his characteristics are unmistakably Bernie. His poise in the pocket and leadership skills of a national power at such a young age. His throwing motion and arm strength, which are plenty effective, but not exactly picture perfect by scout’s standards. The way he stands up to pressure and burns opposing defenses that dare to blitz him. His ability to read defenses, check down when his primary receiver is covered, and limit his unforced errors.

In two seasons, Bradford has thrown 78 touchdown passes and just 14 interceptions. Against teams that’ll bowl in December or January, he’s tossed 26 scoring strikes while getting picked just five times, including a nearly flawless effort in the Sooners’ demolition of Texas Tech Saturday night. Is it possible he’s being taken for granted because he makes everything look so easy? Heck, you can argue he’s had one of the best first two seasons by a quarterback in college football history. Tim Tebow won a Heisman Trophy and was part of a national championship team before the end of his sophomore season. Kosar led Miami to a national championship as a freshman and finished fourth in the Heisman voting as a sophomore. Bradford has a chance to equal or surpass those accomplishments this year because no one has ever won the Heisman and been the starting quarterback on a national champion in his first two years.








All together now ... 45-35 ... 45-35 ... 45-35
By Matthew Zemek

4. The early verdict from the talking heads is that Oklahoma should be rated higher than Texas. The reason? The Sooners are playing better right now. They're hotter right now. They're catching fire late in the season. The Sooners are the team "you don't want to play" at this point.

All of the above statements are hard to refute. They're not objectively true, mind you--one can't "prove" those statements in the same way one can prove that two plus two equals four--but they possess a lot of what I like to call "subjective heft." (Hence, The Subjective Heft Show in most editions of the Weekly Affirmation.) I wouldn't want to argue against the contentions made by Mark May, Lou Holtz and--I suspect--most other TV types across the country.

What I will--and should, and must--argue against is the claim that you rank a team based solely on present-day factors.

In the first half of a typical college football season, before conference collisions come across the calendar, the nation's top teams can more easily leapfrog each other, because they're not falling like flies in their respective leagues. A Big 12 team ranked sixth can and should leapfrog a third-ranked team in the SEC if it bags enough biggies. This is basically how Texas Tech went from No. 7 to No. 3 and then to No. 2 in the BCS standings.

But when we get to the end of the season, and inter-conference comparisons need to be made, limits must be applied to the leapfrogging.

There have been fewer more ardent defenders of the Oklahoma Sooners than this writer. While many have used the disparaging terms "Choke-la-homa" or "Joke-la-homa" to refer to OU's recent Fiesta Bowl losses, this correspondent has chosen to focus on the Sooners' remarkable display of championship consistency over the past several seasons. Bob Stoops never lost his big-game ways; terrific Texas teams merely proved to be better in recent seasons. Moreover, Stoops has never lost what one could call a five-star game at home in his OU career. His only losses came in stunners, a sleepy season-opener against TCU (2005) and a rivalry game against underdog Oklahoma State (2001). After drilling Texas Tech, Stoops is still perfect in big-time battles in Norman's Memorial Stadium (formerly Owen Field).

But for all the love that deserves to be lavished on OU, it needs to be said that the Sooners shouldn't be allowed to leapfrog Texas in the national rankings and the BCS standings that (partly) flow from them.

Yes, OU is hotter and more imposing right now. In the first half of a football season, that kind of detail matters. But at the end of a season--and OU is just one game away from completing its 12-game slate; ditto for Texas--one has to include early-season evidence along with late-season facts and figures. All in all, when one compares the body of work compiled by both Oklahoma and Texas, the Longhorns deserve a narrow edge.

Yes, a playoff system would (more) fairly deal with this kind of conflict, but since we're now stuck with the BCS through 2014, thanks to ESPN, we have to regrettably make this--sigh!--a beauty contest. If so, Texas has the body with fewer blemishes.

OU's biggest argument is the pair of fine non-conference wins over Cincinnati and TCU. Texas, though, has a superior Big 12 record of achievement for two primary reasons: 1) Texas had to play Missouri, whom the Longhorns summarily throttled; OU didn't tackle the Tigers. 2) Texas beat OU on a neutral field, which should carry a lot of extra weight when comparing two teams. Had Texas won that game in Austin, and not Dallas, OU would enjoy a great deal of additional leverage in this debate. But with the facts at hand, Texas--whose one loss came on the road, with one second left--has endured more to achieve what is likely to be an 11-1 record. "Who would win on a neutral field?" is the ultimate argument-settling question in any meaningful debate, and UT has that question squarely on its side. The Longhorns also had to play four superb ballclubs--OU, Mizzou, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech--in succession, and nearly survived the entirety of that grueling gauntlet. Oklahoma's closing stretch--with back-to-back games against Texas Tech and Oklahoma State--is terrifically tough, but it's only half of the four-game fire through which Texas had to walk.

The non-conference side of this debate goes to Oklahoma, but the Big 12 portion of the OU-UT clash just as clearly goes to the Longhorns.

To be honest, no fully fair decision can emerge from all this. Since the Big 12 doesn't use a more sensible tiebreaker system, the BCS standings just might have to determine far more than they ever have a right to. Given the lousy system we have, though, it would be unfortunate and inappropriate if Texas got vaulted by Oklahoma just because the Sooners caught fire late, and seduced pollsters for that reason alone.

Part of the human body, after all, involves the eyes, the window into the soul. Look at OU's eyes, one would be charmed, yet left with the sense that "Miss Sooner USA" lacks the centeredness needed to win the beauty pageant. Texas--just as sexy as the Sooners--would have the eyes of a woman worthy of the crown.

Both Texas and OU are drop-dead gorgeous girls in this beauty contest known as the BCS system. But when choosing between two beautiful bodies, The Eyes of Texas have the better claim to fame.

It only stands to reason, anyway: The team nicknamed the Sooners can't begin to argue for the BCS Championship Game based on its superior play LATER in the season.

You should have gotten started SOONER, Oklahoma. Texas, though, cut you off at the pass, and that--when all is said and done--should settle what is currently the central debate in the college football world (and will remain so if OU beats Oklahoma State next week).

Yeah, yeah, Florida vs. Penn State might be ugly, but ...

[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2]By Pete Fiutak [/SIZE][/FONT]
5. I've been screaming for weeks that Utah at least has to be considered for the national title if you're going to include USC. I'm really not anti-Trojan (this has nothing to do with the team or the program; it has everything to do with the process and the research voters and talking heads are, or aren't, doing), but why, if you're going to include USC among the one-loss teams still in the mix for the national title, why aren't you going to include Penn State?

Why is it a natural assumption that the Nittany Lions should go to the Rose Bowl? They will, there's too much traffic in front to get into a top two spot, but this isn’t that crazy …

If Missouri beats the Big 12 South Champion, this thing goes haywire. OR,if Oklahoma loses to Oklahoma State, then Texas Tech is in the Big 12 title game. Would you take Texas Tech, even if it beats Missouri, in the national championship at this point over Penn State? Not after what happened in Norman you wouldn’t. Could you put in Texas? Not if Texas Tech wins the Big 12 title because that would mean Texas didn’t even win its own division. If you have a problem with 2001 Nebraska playing for the national title, then you can't put Texas in if Texas Tech wins the Big 12 South.

If Oregon State beats Oregon, then could you put USC in the national title game over Penn State? How? Penn State blew out Oregon State and beat Ohio State in Columbus. USC lost to Oregon State and beat Ohio State at home. Besides, USC, in this scenario, doesn’t even earn the top spot in the Pac 10, even if it does win a share of the Pac 10 title.

So who’s left? Utah? It’s not going to happen. It deserves to be in over USC, but it’s not going to happen. It's not fair, but the anti-BCS league bias is too great.

If a one-loss Oklahoma beats Missouri in the Big 12 Championship, it’s a done deal; it’s OU vs. the SEC champion for the national title, unless Florida loses to Florida State and then beats Alabama. Again, a Missouri win in the Big 12 championship or an Oklahoma loss at Oklahoma State … that’s all it would take to get the party started, yet ESPN doesn’t even put Penn State on its screen when of possible one-loss teams that could play in the national championship. Ohio State made the rise last year, and it has to be considered that Penn State should be in the mix to do the same.

 
Ted Gilmore To Wyoming?

from Corn Nation by Husker Mike
The Omaha World-Herald is reporting that Nebraska assistant head coach Ted Gilmore will interview for Wyoming's head coaching position on Tuesday. The job opened up today when Lincoln native Joe Glenn was fired.
Gilmore played for Wyoming in 1988 and 1989, and started his coaching career as a graduate assistant (1994-96) and assistant coach (1997-98) for Wyoming.
Currently, Gilmore is wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator for the Huskers, as one of the two coaches retained from Bill Callahan's staff.
 
Mack Brown Recruiting Video

from The Wiz of Odds by Jay Christensen
<embed class="content-block-fix" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="never" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2RrYqK8sa0U&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="470" height="389">Popout
Next up for Texas A&M: the dreaded Longhorns of Texas. Aggie Report.com discovers why Mack Brown is a great recruiter.
 
Defending the Triple Option: Some Basic Realities.

from Dawg Sports by MaconDawg
As you all know, the Georgia Bulldogs will face off this weekend against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, practitioners of occasional drug trafficking, international terrorism, poor academic oversight, and the triple option offense.
As you (and Miami coach Randy Shannon) also know, that triple option offense can gash even good defenses in a hurry. Defenses (like ours) which struggle with bruising running backs (like LSU's Charles Scott) are in danger of giving up tons of yardage to a guy like Tech's Jonathan Dwyer. None of this is even remotely mysterious.
What is a little mysterious is how you actually can stop the triple option. I propose that it can be done, assuming you first understand some basic realities. Now I'm not a football coach, but I play one on the internet. As such, I hope you'll enjoy this, my list of the six basic realities of defending the triple option:
1) It's just different from the beginning. The triple option is designed to take advantage of defenses by allowing the quarterback to make his reads during the play, not before. This has two important consequences. One is that you will rarely be in optimum position to stop the play. Because if you are, it means the opposing QB has failed to get the ball where it was supposed to be to take advantage of your location. Two, all of the presnap hoodoo in the world is basically useless. When you see Willie Martinez's defense standing stock still, don't be too surprised.
2) It will get its yards. An extension of the "rarely in optimum position rule" is that sometimes there's just not going to be anything you can do to stop this offense. It's designed to allow an astute quarterback, borrowing an old baseball axiom, to "run it where they ain't." Please do not hyperventilate when you see Dwyer and Roddy Jones break the occasional 15 yarder. The key is limiting the number of them. Holding Paul Johnson's offense under 200 rushing yards is a solid accomplishment. Keep telling yourself that.
3) It will put the ball on the ground. Especially with a young quarterback like Josh Nesbitt or Jaybo Shaw. The question is whether the defense can take advantage. North Carolina, Vrginia and Virginia Tech have each beaten the Yellow Jackets this season. Each forced three turnovers. I doubt seriously that this is a coincidence.
4) Blitzing it is a bad, bad idea. The first instinct of fans seeing a team defend the option is that you should attack. This is usually the worst thing you can do. Why? Because blitzing puts you upfield and out of position. Remember, the option is calculated to roll downhill fast and force defenders to make decisions on the fly. There's no quarterback scrambling aimlessly in the pocket. The offense will get to your personnel plenty fast enough. Blitz-heavy gameplans against the triple option mean that eventually somebody's gonna run right past their assignment. And when you're playing one-on-one assignment football, that means a touchdown. Remember this, ye acolytes of the "Willie Martinez never blitzes" faith. This is the one time we actually want Willie to dial it back.
5) The "A" and "B" gaps generally decide the ballgame. The first read the quarterback makes on most triple option running plays is whether or not to give the bal to his "A" back right up the middle on the option's version of the fullback dive. If everything went according to Hoyle in this offense, that play would be the offense. The line would drive the defensive tackles back and they would grind the opposition to a fine powder 5 yards at a time.
The only reason for the ball to ever move laterally in this offense is for the inside gaps to be unavailable. Flushing things outside allows a fast defense to catch up to the option, and it creates the need for the QB to pitch the ball, and potentially put it on the ground (see number 3 above). This means that Geno Atkins, Kade Weston, Deangelo Tyson, Corvey Irvin and Brandon Wood will be the most important guys on the field Saturday. I'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing. Just an existential reality to which you should accustom yourself. They will spend the day tackling the fullback on the dive whether he has the ball or not, and preventing Tech's mobile offensive line from getting back to the linebackers. Watching this personnel group in the early going should give you a decent idea of how this edition of Clean Old Fashioned Hate is going to go.
6) First down is the most important of all. If a decent triple option offense has 3rd and 4 or less, they will convert on a generous percentage of attempts. See Reality Number 2, above. The key to stopping this offense is to limit it to short gains on 1st down then play solid assignments on 2nd and 3rd. The triple option, like all offenses, will generally have trouble converting 3rd and 6 or longer. With the triple option you have the added problem that there's a limited passing arsenal. The goal should be to get them to 3rd and 7, give up 4 on the play, then get the heck off the field. Like so many other things in life, this is much more easily said than done.
Want to learn more? Try these sites:
 
WHY MIKE LEACH SHOULD COME TO TENNESSEE

from Rocky Top Talk by hooper
We've spent plenty of time debating the various head coaching candidates and why each one would (or wouldn't) be good for UT, but let's consider the other side of the equation: why UT would be good for the coach. Here, I'll discuss the most talked-about candidate and why UT would be a good move for him.
If you're interested in the argument why Leach would be good for UT, check out Joel's post on the subject: THE CASE FOR MIKE LEACH AS TENNESSEE VOLUNTEER HEAD COACH.
​
BUY LOW, SELL HIGH
Mike Leach is riding a tremendous wave of success this season. Despite the blowout loss against Oklahoma in Norman, the Red Raiders are unquestionably having one of the greatest years in their team's history. This year isn't a fluke, either; Leach has been shredding defenses with his offense with tremendous regularity as a head coach, and as a coordinator at Oklahoma and Kentucky. Each year, Texas Tech seems to get just a little stronger and a little more rounded out. This year, with the addition of a decent running game and an improved defense, Texas Tech is the nightmare matchup for any team.
Just ask Bob Stoops how relieved he was to win, much less win big.
At 10-1 (and most likely 11-1 by season's end), Tech is at their peak. After this year, Harrell is gone. A 3-year starter, he has matured into a fantastic quarterback and his performance will be sorely missed next year, no matter how good his successor is. Additionally, several pieces of the team will be headed out, either by eligibility, by the draft, or by both. All teams must replace players every year, but some years are more profound than others, and Tech will see that this season.
Mike Leach's stock will never be higher than today.
Not only will Leach have his best opportunity for a high-dollar move this year, a move also buys him more grace and forgiveness from the fanbase. If the Red Raiders slide back to 8-4 over the next 3-4 years, this year will be a distant memory and some may even wonder if Leach has "lost the touch". However, if Leach goes to UT and suffers through three or four 8-4 seasons, most of those will simply be "rebuilding". The simple fact is a new coach has more margin for error than a tenured coach. After all, that's largely why people were getting tired of Fulmer several years ago - he was too familiar. And familiarity breeds contempt.
And just to be clear: Tennessee fans know it will be rebuilding. There are a lot of very good athletes on the team, but it will take some time to get a new system in place and in order. We learned that lesson already. We'll give the time.
This is the time for Leach to sell his Texas Tech stock at an all-time high, while buying Tennessee stock at a historic low.


SECOND FIDDLE TO NOBODY
Texas Tech is a great coaching gig. Tech is located on an island of humanity in the middle of the North Texas desert where everybody is football-insane. The head coach of the Red Raiders is the most beloved man in Lubbock, and the pay's not exactly shabby. There's only one slight problem:
longhorn_logo_medium.jpg
The Texas Longhorns have always been (and will always be) the premier team in the state. Even in their lean years, the Longhorns are the bell cows of the most football crazy state in the nation. Teams like Tech and Texas A&M have their followings, but ultimately must stand in line behind Texas (and even Oklahoma) for the top recruits. It's not that you can't recruit well in Lubbock, it's that the team from Austin will always be able to recruit better. With their superior following, their superior budget, and even advantages in state legislation, UT-Austin will have the upper hand. An average coach at Austin will always be able to field a top-flight team and appear to be the equal of any coach in Lubbock, no matter how skilled.
Knoxville is Tennessee's Austin. UT-K is the premier spot for college football, and the top recruits are naturally attuned to play at Neyland Stadium. Tennessee itself isn't the football wellspring that Texas is, but the Volunteers are as highly revered in their own state as the Longhorns are in the Lone Star. You get the best resources. You get the best recruits. You get all of the favors that Lubbock provided, and more. You get every opportunity to take your system to the highest levels it can go.

RECRUITING
This ties in with the previous argument, but Knoxville is national in recruiting. With the largest recruiting budget in the SEC, the Volunteers pull top players from all over the country. Rather than watching the only two decent left tackle prospect in Texas go to Austin and Norman, wouldn't it be better to get the short list of elite left tackles in the country, knowing that you can actually go and get them? UTenn realizes that their own state isn't sufficient to field a championship team on a consistent basis, so they give you the resources you need to go get the team you want.
Find 'em, get 'em, train 'em, and win with 'em. That's Tennessee football in a nutshell.

IT'S NOT LUBBOCK
The differences between North Texas and East Tennessee are myriad. One is a desert, the other is the near-perfect vegetation growing climate. One has the geological features of a pancake; the other is at the Smokies. One is notable for oil wells, the other has trees. But it doesn't stop there.
Lubbock is really on the edge of the world, in a sense. It's a long, long drive to anywhere else in Texas, and far removed from California, Colorado, and other places people actually like to go. Meanwhile, Knoxville is centrally located among places like Atlanta, DC, Pennsylvania and Ohio, Chicago, Nashville, and even the Kentucky Derby. In any direction you drive from Knoxville, you will find more places to go, people to see, and things to do. You have connections to the rest of the country. With the exception of the oil companies, many industries are linked through Knoxville, be it for Oak Ridge National Laboratory or merely the interstate. Knoxville is in the middle of things, and you have the country laid open before you.
TD-Boom_medium.png
It sure beats oil fires for touchdowns... (courtesy of lawvol)​
PROOF OF CONCEPT
We can all remember the early days of Leach's tenure at Tech. Everybody regarded the offense as flashy and gadgety: an offense good enough to run up tremendous scores against average teams, but not good enough to hang with the elite. When Tech QBs led the NCAA in passing year after year, they were passed up by the NFL as "products of a system". Even the receivers had hard times getting pro gigs. The difficulty in getting respect is simple to explain: people didn't believe the offense was legitimate.
Nowadays, the claims of illegitimacy are quieter. With the exception of some bitter Texas fans and some very relieved Sooners fans, the college football world is tremendously respectful of the Tech team. Even ESPN is aglow about their visits to Lubbock. (LUBBOCK. Let that sink in for a bit.) Yet some people do persist. In particular, some crazy SEC fans still crow that the Tech offense wouldn't stand a chance against top Southeastern defenses. Even if Tech beats a solid SEC team in a bowl game, some people will claim that is was merely one game, one team, against a rusty SEC squad that didn't have their hearts in it. (You can already hear it, can't you?)
Well, Leach, here's your chance. Take Tennessee, bring your offense to the ESS-EEE-SEE and silence the last refuge of critics. Prove that you can compete at the top levels within the SEC, and no critic will be able to speak against you. You will have won over the college world. Not bad, lawya. Not bad at all.
 
WHY MIKE LEACH SHOULD COME TO TENNESSEE

from Rocky Top Talk by hooper
We've spent plenty of time debating the various head coaching candidates and why each one would (or wouldn't) be good for UT, but let's consider the other side of the equation: why UT would be good for the coach. Here, I'll discuss the most talked-about candidate and why UT would be a good move for him.
If you're interested in the argument why Leach would be good for UT, check out Joel's post on the subject: THE CASE FOR MIKE LEACH AS TENNESSEE VOLUNTEER HEAD COACH.
​
BUY LOW, SELL HIGH
Mike Leach is riding a tremendous wave of success this season. Despite the blowout loss against Oklahoma in Norman, the Red Raiders are unquestionably having one of the greatest years in their team's history. This year isn't a fluke, either; Leach has been shredding defenses with his offense with tremendous regularity as a head coach, and as a coordinator at Oklahoma and Kentucky. Each year, Texas Tech seems to get just a little stronger and a little more rounded out. This year, with the addition of a decent running game and an improved defense, Texas Tech is the nightmare matchup for any team.
Just ask Bob Stoops how relieved he was to win, much less win big.
At 10-1 (and most likely 11-1 by season's end), Tech is at their peak. After this year, Harrell is gone. A 3-year starter, he has matured into a fantastic quarterback and his performance will be sorely missed next year, no matter how good his successor is. Additionally, several pieces of the team will be headed out, either by eligibility, by the draft, or by both. All teams must replace players every year, but some years are more profound than others, and Tech will see that this season.
Mike Leach's stock will never be higher than today.
Not only will Leach have his best opportunity for a high-dollar move this year, a move also buys him more grace and forgiveness from the fanbase. If the Red Raiders slide back to 8-4 over the next 3-4 years, this year will be a distant memory and some may even wonder if Leach has "lost the touch". However, if Leach goes to UT and suffers through three or four 8-4 seasons, most of those will simply be "rebuilding". The simple fact is a new coach has more margin for error than a tenured coach. After all, that's largely why people were getting tired of Fulmer several years ago - he was too familiar. And familiarity breeds contempt.
And just to be clear: Tennessee fans know it will be rebuilding. There are a lot of very good athletes on the team, but it will take some time to get a new system in place and in order. We learned that lesson already. We'll give the time.
This is the time for Leach to sell his Texas Tech stock at an all-time high, while buying Tennessee stock at a historic low.


SECOND FIDDLE TO NOBODY
Texas Tech is a great coaching gig. Tech is located on an island of humanity in the middle of the North Texas desert where everybody is football-insane. The head coach of the Red Raiders is the most beloved man in Lubbock, and the pay's not exactly shabby. There's only one slight problem:
longhorn_logo_medium.jpg
The Texas Longhorns have always been (and will always be) the premier team in the state. Even in their lean years, the Longhorns are the bell cows of the most football crazy state in the nation. Teams like Tech and Texas A&M have their followings, but ultimately must stand in line behind Texas (and even Oklahoma) for the top recruits. It's not that you can't recruit well in Lubbock, it's that the team from Austin will always be able to recruit better. With their superior following, their superior budget, and even advantages in state legislation, UT-Austin will have the upper hand. An average coach at Austin will always be able to field a top-flight team and appear to be the equal of any coach in Lubbock, no matter how skilled.
Knoxville is Tennessee's Austin. UT-K is the premier spot for college football, and the top recruits are naturally attuned to play at Neyland Stadium. Tennessee itself isn't the football wellspring that Texas is, but the Volunteers are as highly revered in their own state as the Longhorns are in the Lone Star. You get the best resources. You get the best recruits. You get all of the favors that Lubbock provided, and more. You get every opportunity to take your system to the highest levels it can go.

RECRUITING
This ties in with the previous argument, but Knoxville is national in recruiting. With the largest recruiting budget in the SEC, the Volunteers pull top players from all over the country. Rather than watching the only two decent left tackle prospect in Texas go to Austin and Norman, wouldn't it be better to get the short list of elite left tackles in the country, knowing that you can actually go and get them? UTenn realizes that their own state isn't sufficient to field a championship team on a consistent basis, so they give you the resources you need to go get the team you want.
Find 'em, get 'em, train 'em, and win with 'em. That's Tennessee football in a nutshell.

IT'S NOT LUBBOCK
The differences between North Texas and East Tennessee are myriad. One is a desert, the other is the near-perfect vegetation growing climate. One has the geological features of a pancake; the other is at the Smokies. One is notable for oil wells, the other has trees. But it doesn't stop there.
Lubbock is really on the edge of the world, in a sense. It's a long, long drive to anywhere else in Texas, and far removed from California, Colorado, and other places people actually like to go. Meanwhile, Knoxville is centrally located among places like Atlanta, DC, Pennsylvania and Ohio, Chicago, Nashville, and even the Kentucky Derby. In any direction you drive from Knoxville, you will find more places to go, people to see, and things to do. You have connections to the rest of the country. With the exception of the oil companies, many industries are linked through Knoxville, be it for Oak Ridge National Laboratory or merely the interstate. Knoxville is in the middle of things, and you have the country laid open before you.
TD-Boom_medium.png
It sure beats oil fires for touchdowns... (courtesy of lawvol)​
PROOF OF CONCEPT
We can all remember the early days of Leach's tenure at Tech. Everybody regarded the offense as flashy and gadgety: an offense good enough to run up tremendous scores against average teams, but not good enough to hang with the elite. When Tech QBs led the NCAA in passing year after year, they were passed up by the NFL as "products of a system". Even the receivers had hard times getting pro gigs. The difficulty in getting respect is simple to explain: people didn't believe the offense was legitimate.
Nowadays, the claims of illegitimacy are quieter. With the exception of some bitter Texas fans and some very relieved Sooners fans, the college football world is tremendously respectful of the Tech team. Even ESPN is aglow about their visits to Lubbock. (LUBBOCK. Let that sink in for a bit.) Yet some people do persist. In particular, some crazy SEC fans still crow that the Tech offense wouldn't stand a chance against top Southeastern defenses. Even if Tech beats a solid SEC team in a bowl game, some people will claim that is was merely one game, one team, against a rusty SEC squad that didn't have their hearts in it. (You can already hear it, can't you?)
Well, Leach, here's your chance. Take Tennessee, bring your offense to the ESS-EEE-SEE and silence the last refuge of critics. Prove that you can compete at the top levels within the SEC, and no critic will be able to speak against you. You will have won over the college world. Not bad, lawya. Not bad at all.
 
Headlinin': Cal would like to remind you of your recent defeat

from Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo! Sports by Matt Hinton
• Harb-owned. Back in September, I pointed to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle that examined the extreme lack of privacy, among a lack of many other things, in Cal's decrepit Memorial Stadium. Sunday, courtesy a local NBC affiliate and California Golden Blogs, an enthusiastic Bear fan proved the point again during Jim Harbaugh's press conference following the Bears' 37-16 win over Stanford (you'll hear it around the 40-second mark): Harbaugh, pro that he is, didn't even blink. Of course, he is used to being berated on the job.
• Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Surprisingly little editorial opinion this morning on Bill Snyder's slightly creepy return to Kansas State, which is drawing mixed reviews on the few K-State blogs and message boards ($). Online opinion ranges from "In your face, Gary Patterson!" to "Brilliant!" to "Eh, we had no other options." Even the unabashed worshippers who have added 'L' for "Legendary" to the already-maddening 'HC' abbreviation for "Head Coach" (as in, "LHC Bill Snyder returns to bring us back") are already wondering who'll succeed the legend, which seems to be the real point of this hire -- if nobody wants this job now, let's take two or three years to make it palatable again to someone who might be in it for the long haul.
• A new joint comes to Penn Shtate!. Joe Paterno basically went straight from the press box of Penn State's Rose Bowl-clinching win over Michigan State to the OR, coming through successful hip replacement surgery Sunday on campus. JoePa is supposed to be "back on his feet" today and back into his usual coaching routine next Monday to begin preparation against either Oregon State (if the Beavers beat Oregon) or USC, which is way, way ahead of schedule in my very limited experience with hip replacements.
• Photo of the Day. Rather than subject him to more needless pain at Cincinnati, Cameron Dantley decided to put down Greg Robinson via broken neck while the coach was on top following Syracuse's win over Notre Dame:
ept_sports_ncaaf_experts-293427790-1227537560.jpg
At least Coach Rob can go out with a smile on his face.
Quickly ... In case you missed it, South Florida stopped a three-game skid and secured a bowl bid with a sloppy 17-13 win over UConn Sunday night. ... One game to go, and Tennessee still has no idea who its starting quarterback will be for the finale against Kentucky. ... Pitt and glory do not mix, as usual. ... Like everyone else, Mark Richt was pretty impressed with Georgia Tech last Thursday. ... Purdue quietly begins the Danny Hope era. ... USC's downfall, according to Pete Carroll: Hype following the Ohio State win. At least the Trojans, used to dropping in the BCS after big wins, rose without lifting a finger this weekend. ... And Washington might be setting its heights a little high in its coaching search ... and yet, simultaneously, a little low, too.
 
Brandon: BGSU ‘Crowd Was Pitiful’

from The Futon Report by Matt Sussman
As discovered by commenter Ben in the last post, Gregg Brandon put the BG-Buffalo game in perspective by noting how “pitiful” the crowd was.
Well, I’ll just say this. Our kids played heir guts out. And I don’t want to take anything away from the game but that crowd was pitiful. And I’m so disappointed in, you know the fans that showed up, that’s awesome. ‘Cause they’re the true fans. But our kids deserved so much better than that. To be in a championship with so much on the line, and that kind of crowd, disgusts me.
​
greggbrandon.jpg
Now, I wasn’t at the game — hell, I wasn’t even aware it was being played Friday night — but then again you guys played a game at 6 o’clock on a Friday night. Of course 13,000 people are going to show up and not be entirely loud when it’s 26 degrees out. The fans may not have been in it. In fact maybe they were deathly silent in double overtime for all I know. On that same note, I don’t remember a time in college football history in which a crowd led a team to victory. The fans spirit soars with the success of its team, and this team is 5-6 and lost to Eastern Michigan at home, and is now the reason Buffalo will probably be playing in their first bowl game.
But I really, truly, am sorry for my part in this 40-34 double-overtime loss.
 
Numbers Game: BCS Analysis

from Burnt Orange Nation by billyzane
Enough with the niceties. Down to the nitty-gritty of the BCS numbers. Note that the 1 member of the Harrris Poll that forgot to vote last week is back so the "Last Week's Points" amount is irrelevant for that poll.
<table align="center"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <table align="left" border="1"> <caption>Harris Poll</caption> <tbody> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">Last Wk Pts</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Expected Pts</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Actual Pts</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Diff. from Expected</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Team</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">--</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2850</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2839</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-11</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Alabama</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">--</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2736</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2644</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-92</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Florida</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">--</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2622</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2598</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-24</td> <td style="text-align: center;">OU</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">--</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2508</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2577</td> <td style="text-align: center;">+31</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Texas</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">--</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2394</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2387</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-7</td> <td style="text-align: center;">USC</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">--</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2280</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2187</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-93</td> <td style="text-align: center;">PSU</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">--</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2166</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2118</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-48</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Tx Tech
</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">--</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2052</td> <td style="text-align: center;">2113</td> <td style="text-align: center;">+61</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Utah</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> <td> <table align="left" border="0"> <tbody> <tr> <td> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> <td> <table align="left" border="1"> <caption>USA Today Coaches Poll</caption> <tbody> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">Last Wk Pts
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Expected Pts</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Actual Pts</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Diff. from Expected
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Team</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">1508
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1525</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1518
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-7</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Alabama</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">1305
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1464</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1412</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-52</td> <td style="text-align: center;">OU</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">1373
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1403</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1401</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-2</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Florida</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">1322
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1342</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1370
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">+28</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Texas</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">1245
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1281</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1288
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">+7</td> <td style="text-align: center;">USC</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">1093
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1220</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1157
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-63</td> <td style="text-align: center;">PSU
</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">1113
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1159</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1153
</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-6</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Utah</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">1465</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1098</td> <td style="text-align: center;">1073</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-25</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Tx Tech</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Analysis? You want analysis? Follow me after the jump.
Fact 1 Pisses Me Off : OU jumped Texas in both human polls. This is disheartening, but not entirely unexpected given the infantile memory capacity of most human voters. "Ooh, OU is shiny! Gimme Gimme!"
Fact 2 Provides a Glimmer of Hope: Texas still has a chance, albeit a slim one, to be ranked ahead of OU in the BCS even if OU beats OSU. Texas is barely behind OU in the Harris Poll and it seems as though Florida might be a buffer between OU and Texas on many ballots. A Florida loss to Florida State might just give Texas enough points in the human polls assuming Texas retains it's computer advantage, which is of course not a given.
Fact 3 Thanks the Red Raiders for Playing: Brad Edwards' speculation notwithstanding, Texas Tech is no longer in the national championship conversation. This fact is unspeakably HUGE for Texas. Even if OU loses to OSU and Tech goes to Kansas City and beats Missouri, I am about 90% certain that Tech cannot pass Texas in the BCS (as unfair as that might sound), meaning Texas will go to Miami. If OU goes to KC and loses to Missouri, Tech will likewise not pass Texas in the BCS.
For the Preceding Reasons, Fact 4: If OU loses another game and Texas beats A&M, the Horns will in all likelihood be headed to Miami.
Fact 5 Gives You Rooting Directions: Above all else, root for Baylor to beat Texas Tech and Florida State to beat Florida. If Baylor wins, then OU doesn't matter and that's pretty great. If Florida loses, there are two benefits. First, it eliminates any buffer in between OU and Texas in the human polls, increasing the possibility that Texas will be ranked ahead of OU in the BCS, and second, it dramatically increases the possibility of SEC chaos (i.e. 2-loss Florida wins the SEC) that would automatically send Texas to Miami if Texas wins out. A lower-level rooting interest would be OSU over OU. I think this sends Texas to the national championship game, but it also eliminates Texas from the Big 12 race (unless Baylor beats Tech). Also, hell, root for Auburn against Bama. Chaos in the SEC is good for Texas.
Just to Reiterate Fact 6 Yet Again: USC is out of this, barring some serious chaos. In any event, USC will not under any circumstances pass Texas if Texas wins out. Stop worrying about USC. They are way too far behind in both the human and the computer polls. Look at the numbers from the human polls: USC is basically right where you'd expect a #5 team to be, points-wise, whereas Texas is way ahead of where you'd expect a #4 to be. Plus USC is way behind in the computers and has no good games left with which to move up (Notre Dame and UCLA).
To the Computers!
<table align="center" border="1"> <caption>Computers Poll</caption> <tbody> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">A&H</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Billingsley</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Colley</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Massey</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Sagarin</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Wolfe</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Average</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Diff. from Expected</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Team
</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">25</td> <td style="text-align: center;">25</td> <td style="text-align: center;">24</td> <td style="text-align: center;">22</td> <td style="text-align: center;">23</td> <td style="text-align: center;">25</td> <td style="text-align: center;">.970</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-.030</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Alabama</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">23</td> <td style="text-align: center;">23</td> <td style="text-align: center;">25</td> <td style="text-align: center;">24</td> <td style="text-align: center;">25</td> <td style="text-align: center;">24</td> <td style="text-align: center;">.960</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Even</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Texas</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">22</td> <td style="text-align: center;">24</td> <td style="text-align: center;">21</td> <td style="text-align: center;">25</td> <td style="text-align: center;">22</td> <td style="text-align: center;">22</td> <td style="text-align: center;">.900</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-.020</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Oklahoma</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">21</td> <td style="text-align: center;">22</td> <td style="text-align: center;">20</td> <td style="text-align: center;">23</td> <td style="text-align: center;">24</td> <td style="text-align: center;">23</td> <td style="text-align: center;">.890</td> <td style="text-align: center;">+.010</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Texas Tech</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">24</td> <td style="text-align: center;">20</td> <td style="text-align: center;">23</td> <td style="text-align: center;">21</td> <td style="text-align: center;">21</td> <td style="text-align: center;">21</td> <td style="text-align: center;">.860</td> <td style="text-align: center;">+.020</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Utah</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">20</td> <td style="text-align: center;">19</td> <td style="text-align: center;">22</td> <td style="text-align: center;">20</td> <td style="text-align: center;">19</td> <td style="text-align: center;">19</td> <td style="text-align: center;">.780</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-.020</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Florida</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">19</td> <td style="text-align: center;">16</td> <td style="text-align: center;">19</td> <td style="text-align: center;">17</td> <td style="text-align: center;">18</td> <td style="text-align: center;">20</td> <td style="text-align: center;">.730</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-.030</td> <td style="text-align: center;">Penn State</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="text-align: center;">16</td> <td style="text-align: center;">21</td> <td style="text-align: center;">18</td> <td style="text-align: center;">19</td> <td style="text-align: center;">16</td> <td style="text-align: center;">18</td> <td style="text-align: center;">.710</td> <td style="text-align: center;">-.010</td> <td style="text-align: center;">USC</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Encouraging Fact 7 That's Actually Not That Encouraging: Texas is still ranked quite a bit ahead of OU, though the margin is decreasing. Note though that OU is a weak #3, below what we would expect from a consensus #3. This means that even without overtaking Texas, they can still increase their computer scores relative to Texas. That's not good.
Speculation That I'm Not Even Going to Pretend is Fact 8: OU probably isn't going to pass Texas in the computers as a whole even with a win over Oklahoma State. They will be close, however. Right now, the computers are what's keeping Texas ahead of OU in the BCS. I'm not sure it's going to be enough unless a few human voters change their minds. Which, for the record, I think is entirely possible. Many human voters undoubtedly got caught up in the Sooners' awe-inspiring final score vs. Tech. But a week later, with the magical pixie dust wiped from their eyes, will some voters think to themselves, "You know, I have Texas Tech ranked #8 on my ballot, so this isn't really a discussion of a 3-way tie. This is between Texas and OU. And I do seem to vaguely recall Texas beating OU...maybe I'll make a change"? Possibly a few might be so clear-headed. Or possibly a team like Florida might lose, eliminating a buffer between Texas and OU in the rankings and increasing Texas' points in the human polls more than OU's. I don't know. But either is certainly possible.
Fact 9 is Something I Recently Realized But I'm Scared of Publicizing: Florida is doing so terribly in the computers that it's possible (though not probable) that a 1-loss SEC champion Florida might be ranked behind non-division champ Texas in the BCS. If Florida and Oklahoma both with their conference championships, they will split the #1 human vote while Texas will be a near-unanimous #3. That means that even if Florida is ranked #1, they will be a weak #1. Florida will undoubtedly move up in the computers with wins over FSU and Bama, but look how far behind they are right now. Not only are they 6th in the computers, they're a WEAK 6th. Can they make that distance up? I don't think so. They'd have to bank on being a near-unanimous #1 over Oklahoma in the human polls, and I'm not sure that would be the case. We've all assumed that the winner of the SEC championship would be in Miami (and if it's Bama, I think that's still true, even with a loss to Auburn), but Florida is currently 4th in the BCS and two teams ahead of them (Texas and OU) might not lose the rest of the way. Something to think about.
Speculation Posing as Fact 10 Breaks Down the Ways Texas Gets to Miami: (NB: these all assume a Texas win over A&M.) These are in order from most likely to send Texas to Miami to least likely. To be clear, they are not in order of most likely to actually occur to least likely to actually occur.

  1. Baylor beats Tech; Texas beats Missouri.
  2. OU loses to OSU; Tech loses to Missouri.
  3. Texas wins tiebreaker with OU; Texas beats Missouri.
  4. Florida loses to Florida State; Florida beats Alabama.
  5. OU loses to Missouri.
  6. OU loses to OSU, Texas Tech beats Missouri.
  7. Bama loses to Auburn; Bama beats Florida.
  8. Florida, OU and Texas all win out (see Fact 9 infra -- if Florida doesn't pass Texas in the BCS, Texas will definitely go to Miami, but the likelihood of this happening is slim).
There are lots of different things that can happen and there's a lot of football left to be played. So, um, Yes We Can!
 
Mack: We're not talking BCS

from Bevo Beat
Mack Brown said today that he closed Sunday’s practice by explaining the polls and BCS standings to his team.
Brown gave his players a chance to ask questions, and he received none. “We’ve discussed it so much, and you (the media) have discussed it so much that they had absolutely no questions.” (Brown, however, noted he still doesn’t understand it all himself. “I still don’t know who the Harris poll is,” he said.)
And that’s that, he said. “We made a decision as a group that we wouldn’t talk about it anymore,” Brown said at his weekly press conference.
“Discussion doesn’t help us. ‘What if’ doesn’t help us. Winning and playing well helps us,” Brown said. “Everybody who votes will be watching that game. Period. Why talk about it? Why discuss it? All we can do is play well and win and if we don’t, it’s not worth discussing.”
 
One interested party didn't watch Tech vs. Oklahoma

from Bevo Beat
Mack Brown says he didn’t get to see the Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma game on Saturday night. Instead, he was attending the wedding of his stepson, Matt Jessee, in Chapel Hill, N.C.
“I didn’t get to see a play,” Brown said.
He said there was a TV nearby, but it would not have been wise for him to ditch wife Sally to take a peek at the game. “I was being watched very closely,” Brown said.
He kept up with the game through text messages sent by staffer Bill Little. Given the blowout nature of the game, Brown noted that it didn’t have to pay attention to those texts for long.
 
To Ferentz and Nutt, for bringing them in (again) in better shape than they found them

from Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo! Sports by Matt Hinton
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Most of the talk this time of year centers around coaches who have just been fired, or are about to be fired, or whose fans want them to be fired. Between them, Houston Nutt and Kirk Ferentz have occupied every one of those territories. A brief appreciation, then, for two of the better and more underappreciated coaching jobs in the country over the last two months of the season. Ferentz, in particular, was starting at unemployment after a 6-10 conference record over 2006-07, an unbelievable string of player arrests and an embarrassing rape cover-up scandal that would have been the end of him if certain members of the Hawk Web had their way. His team hit a three-game skid in late September against Pittsburgh, Northwestern and Michigan State, before any of those outfits was thought to have a pulse, with Wisconsin, Illinois, Penn State and then-5-1 Minnesota looming over the second half of the schedule.
Around the same time, Ole Miss managed an upset at Florida thanks to three Gator fumbles and a missed extra point, just about the only series of events that went the Rebels' way before the leaves started to turn (well, not in Mississippi, where the leaves don't so much turn as they just fall off all at once the first week of December, but metaphorically; literally, before Oct. 25). Ignoring the win over I-AA Samford, Ole Miss lost two games on either side of the win in Gainesville and sat at 2-4, 1-3 in the SEC, with Auburn and LSU still ahead.
Since losing to Michigan State, Iowa's rallied to win five of six, knock Penn State out of the mythical championship game for maybe the best win of Ferentz's career, finish the season with the perfect game at Minnesota. Since losing to Alabama, Nutt's Rebels have taken four in a row, cold-cocked LSU, secured more SEC wins (4) than Ed Orgeron's teams earned in three full years (3), crept into the AP poll, and with an expected win over Mississippi State on Friday, will be waking up early for a game on Jan. 1, probably in the Cotton Bowl. Iowa might be joining them in one of the Florida games, or wind up with a perfectly respectable date in San Antonio.
These things get lost in the mix quickly, because there were no expectations for Iowa or Ole Miss, and it was easy to write them off when things got off on the wrong foot. With almost all the returns in, though, it's clear in retrospect just how close both of these teams were to turning in really eye-opening seasons:
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Ole Miss wasn't expected to make any noise again in the SEC West, and is about to finish second in the division; almost everyone had Iowa sinking to the bottom of the Big Ten, where the Hawkeyes easily outperformed Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan. Personally, even though I thought the ever-underrated Nutt was a tremendous upgrade as a head coach, I said at my old digs that any bowl game at all seemed like "a tremendous success" for the Rebels; I figured along with everyone else that Iowa would be lucky to break .500. Eight wins was the "best case" scenario for Iowa, and not really on the radar for Ole Miss.
I don't know about you, but where I'm from, any coach who can deliver August's best-case scenario -- or exceed that scenario, as Nutt has with two season-making road upsets -- from a losing record in October and still have the partisans thinking "We could have been better" deserves a contract extension. Or at least a tip of the cap in a blog post.
 
Is Texas being paid back for 2004?

from Bevo Beat
Darren Everson of the Wall Street Journal makes the case that Texas may be getting a bit of the ole “what comes around goes around” treatment this year after edging Cal for a BCS bowl in 2004. He says that Texas might be getting a little more sympathy for its 2008 plight if not for 2004.
It took a while, but justice is finally being done. Karma is coming back to bite the Texas Longhorns. In 2004, as California fans and others with long memories surely recall, Texas leapfrogged Cal for a Rose Bowl berth as Texas coach Mack Brown shamelessly lobbied the pollsters. While coaches understandably must advocate on their teams’ behalf, whenever they lobby for BCS berths, they inherently lobby against and put down other teams. Mr. Brown wasn’t too subtle in his implications about the Bears’ relative worth. The negative campaign worked. Poor Cal missed out on their first Rose appearance since 1959 and trudged off to the Holiday Bowl. Their crime? Winning by only 10 against a respectable Southern Mississippi on the road in their regular-season finale. The politicking has geared up again this season. And this time, Texas could wind up as the wronged party.​
But the Journal writer also says that Texas has a points when it makes its “we beat Oklahoma” argument.
By all rights, this shouldn’t even be a debate. Texas beat Oklahoma. The Longhorns suffered the most defensible defeat of any title contender, a last-second loss at still-top-10 Texas Tech. And Mr. Stoops’s argument doesn’t fly. His logic about the Texas-Texas Tech-Oklahoma dynamic wouldn’t compute if the three-way Big 12 South tie didn’t include the Red Raiders. Well, the Red Raiders lost their shot at the national title. This is no longer a three-team debate. It’s between two teams that already played each other. Mr. Stoops made an argument for parity with Texas. He can’t make one for superiority.​
 
Mack urges fans to be as loud as Missouri game

from Bevo Beat
Mack Brown says he isn’t worried that his team — or its fans — will take Texas A&M too lightly, despite the Aggies’ struggles this year.
“If you can’t get excited at home before nearly 100,000 people when there are Big 12 championship and national championship implications on the line against your rival, then you ought to quit and do something else,” Brown said. “I’m excited. I can’t wait.”
As for the fans, Brown applauded how loud they were for the Missouri game but noted that it hasn’t been that way since.
“I didn’t think we were at Oklahoma State, consistently, and I didn’t think we were at Baylor. We were the best I’ve ever seen them at Missouri. Our fans … know what’s out there. They know how they can help motivate this team. I think every Texas fan will come pumped up and ready and get in their seats early and scream and shout for this one. Every Texas fan will come early and If not, then they should give up their tickets because it doesn’t get any better than this the last game of the season.”
He added, “I want our fans to be like they were for Missouri. I think it’s very, very important for this game that they do the same thing.”
 
With friends like these ...

from Bevo Beat
Mack Brown is no fan of the coaches poll. He has often said that coaches are too involved with planning and travelling for their games to pay enough attention on Saturdays to properly fill out their ballots.
While he didn’t impugn the motives of any particular coach, he also noted that cronyism also factors into the equation.
“If they think it’s even, they’re probably going to vote for their friends,” Brown said. “It was funny. Somebody said Mike Leach said he thought that Oklahoma should be voted ahead of Texas. That’s like my mother. I mean, Mike worked for the guy! Really.”
Brown then quipped, “Call Gene Chizik and see what he thinks. I mean, really!”
Nevermind, of course, that Bob Stoops is such a good friend of Leach’s that he hung 65 points on Tech on Saturday, leaving his first-teamers in the game well into the fourth quarter.
But as much as he would like to, Brown said he wouldn’t be giving up his vote. “I did not want to continue to vote,” Brown said, “And I did because of Texas. I think the University of Texas, if asked, should vote. I don’t like it. I don’t feel good about it.”
 
Facebook movement for UT's BCS ranking

from Bevo Beat
Some Texas students have started a grass roots movement on Facebook to help the Longhorns’ standing in the Bowl Championship Series rankings.
The new group, which is open to anyone, is called “Texas did beat OU 45-35, lest we forget.”
It is encouraging everyone who attends Thursday’s Longhorns game against Texas A&M to carry a sign that says “45-35.” It also wants as many people as possible to show up in Stillwater Saturday morning to hold 45-35 signs in front of the cameras for ESPN’s College GameDay show.
According to the site, it asks fans to “help raise awareness by creating viral marketing, be it youtube videos, images, or signs to be displayed on your car, dorm, etc.”
The Longhorns own a paper-thin edge over Oklahoma in the latest BCS standings. Texas is second; Oklahoma is third.
By Monday evening, more than 1,400 people had joined the group.
 
The BCS, or Why You're Worrying About Nothing

from The Sporting Blog
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Outrage is cheap and plentiful, and like most cheap and plentiful things it is useless when you need to get something done. Any and all outrage over the BCS is functionally useless, and like a customer stuck bellowing at the mute face of an off-bank ATM charging you for the money you must have at that moment, you will take the fee for being a fan because you need the money far more than you can tolerate the lack of it. Go ahead and yell at it all you like -- it changes nothing, and might get you a misdemeanor charge when a passing cop sees you kicking the daylights out of a poor defenseless machine. Sputter on if you like, but despicable as the BCS may be, it is a vast improvement over the old systems of determining a national champion. Remember that in the past -- from 1965 to 1967 -- the AP's national championship could in fact be awarded before the bowl season, meaning double the outrage when your appointed champion went down in flames in a bowl game. Before the half-sanity of the BCS there was voting, and voting alone, to determine the national championship, a process that due to bowl contracts meant the best teams playing each other was never even a possibility.
Under the existing system, that is at least a possibility, and that is an improvement from the previous regimes of crowning national champions. Also, if this seems familiar, it should, since panicking over the BCS leading into this year has only had one undeniably busted year: 2003, when USC and LSU split the title after Oklahoma snuck into the picture through the magic of some funky BCS math. A decade of the system has been good in producing fair matchups, even if the results in the games themselves have been erratic. (OSU/Miami? Classic. USC/Oklahoma? Classically gory.)
For the moment, hold the outrage. After the conference championship games, you should have a one-loss Big 12 team versus either an undefeated or one loss SEC team. USC may have a small case for being in the BCS Championship game, but their strength of schedule serves as a convenient enough counter to any claims they may make. (It's not their fault the Pac-10 went to the dogs this year, but still.) The same holds true for Penn State, whose schedule also puts them a few crucial paces behind a claim at the title. Contrary to what fellow TSBer Dan Shanoff says, it is not a playoff, but it will produce a quality matchup that, in retrospect, will look like the right call once the games are actually played and trophies hoisted skyward.
(Unless Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma this week and/or Texas loses to Texas A&M, and then you can set the drapes on fire, grab a gun and a bottle of liquor, and head to the hills, because this house is burning to the ground.)
 
Profiles in Disillusion: Washington redefines the genre

from Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo! Sports by Matt Hinton
A weekly look at conquered favorites and other notables picking up the pieces of shattered ambition. We're proud to suck only slightly less. As expected, the Apple Cup brought us perhaps the most pathetic moment in football history -- not during the game, but after it, as Washington State fans react to a last-second win over a winless, hapless, essentially coach-less rival:
<embed class="content-block-fix" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hiY3zBhiZSE&hl=en&fs=1" allowscriptaccess="never" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344">Popout​
It was one of the worst losses in Washington history for many, many reasons. Two different Husky kickers combined to miss three potentially game-winning field goals in the fourth quarter and overtime. With a three-point lead, the Huskies punted on 4th-and-3 from the Cougar 40 with two minutes to play, when a first down might have iced the game. Their badly blown coverage in the final minute allowed true freshman Jared Karstetter to run behind the entire Washington secondary for a 48-yard gain that set up the Cougars' tying field goal on the last play of regulation.
But mostly, the bungled victory all but assures the Huskies of a winless Pac-10 season after next week's inevitable loss to Cal, an 0-12 season overall, and with a loss to what looked for all the world like the worst team in Pac-10 history, a seat at the head of the conference's all-time hall of shame:
It turns out that Washington State can't be considered among the worst teams in the history of college football. The Cougars can't even claim being the most pitiful in their own state. ...
[...]
"We just lost to the Cougars," linebacker Donald Butler said, sounding disgusted, surprised and resigned all at once.
Beyond that, Butler had trouble forming sentences.
"It, it, it ... I'm speechless," he said.
​
Not speechless: Former UW quarterback Hugh Millen, a consistent Ty Willingham critic on Husky radio, who apparently called the outgoing coach a "chump" for hanging Karstetter's long reception on freshman corner Quenton Richardson. ("... it was the right defense," and "You just wonder what's through that young man's head.") They may hate you now, Ty, but what are they going to do without you?
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Console that Tiger. You knew LSU's quarterback situation was bad. But it doesn't get much lower, really, than actually getting a queasy feeling that the offense is worse off as you watch pick-six king Jarrett Lee go down en route to the team falling below .500 in the SEC for the first time since ... since ... since when, exactly?
So how far back is the program now?
To 1999, [the last time] LSU had [as many] home losses (three) and [as many] SEC losses ... a 3-8 run that included a 1-7 SEC mark? ...
To 2002, the last time LSU had four losses, going 8-5 and losing to Texas in the Cotton Bowl?
​
Those are also the last times LSU had real quarterback controversies, though nothing like this season's hellish rotation. And the Valley Shook is willing to go much deeper than the quarterback problems, though, especially since they thought true freshman Jordan Jefferson played OK in his first extended action and didn't make any huge mistakes:
A lot of people are going to point to our QB situation and point out how we've been devastated by injuries and dismissals at the position, and that's all true. But it doesn't explain why the Ole Miss defensive spent the entire game in our backfield. It doesn't explain why we can't cover wide receivers.
​
The quarterbacks also don't explain why the Tigers are currently tenth in the conference in total defense and next-to-last in passing defense, categories it's traditionally dominated. I would say the quarterbacks don't explain why they're also also next-to-last in scoring defense, as well, except that, with Lee and his seven INTs returned for touchdown, it does, to an extent. At any rate, this you can practically guarantee: The co-coordinator experiment on defense will officially end before the bowl game.
The Great Boomerang of '08. Roughly 57.9 percent of the readers of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune were so fed up with the Gophers' 55-0 debacle against Iowa, and their four-game slide in general to close the regular season, that they'd just as soon skip a bowl game altogether than accept the fruits of a team that finished this year, at 7-5, looking much worse than it did at the end of 2007, when it was 1-11. At least that teamed looked somewhat competitive in its home finale, against Wisconsin. Saturday's debacle in the Metrodome -- the last game the school will ever play there, if it's outdoor, on-campus stadium opens in time for 2009 -- was the worst Big Ten loss in Minnesota history. And that is a long, long history.
The Daily Gopher notes that, despite a dramatically better defense and turnover margin and the most improved record in the country over 2007, the Gopher offense actually regressed in pretty much every way: Fewer yards, fewer points, fewer touchdowns, more three-and-outs, more punts and a dramatically lower third down percentage in the same number of possessions. So let the debate begin: Just how much better was Minnesota, anyway?
Elsewhere in Disillusion ... Texas Tech is moving forward, remembering cool moments in Norman, putting the loss in perspective, etc. Where is the angst and property damage? ... It was the same old Arizona, putting its fans through the ringer in Saturday's last-second loss to Oregon State. ... And BYU is proud to be back in the Las Vegas Bowl for the fourth year in a row. Seriously. Mormons love Vegas, right?
 
Texas' Loss in Lubbock: Not The Same As OU's Loss in Dallas

from Burnt Orange Nation by PB @ BON
I'm working on a longer set of notes on this mess, but I want to lay out first--all on its own--why Tech-OU-Texas is not an equilateral triangle, so to speak.
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Why head-to-head works for Texas, but not Tech. While Texas fans have very forcefully laid out the case for "Texas over OU"--appropriately premised on 45-35--both lesser (Stoops) and higher (Doc Saturday) minds alike have pointed out that "head-to-head" as an argument on its own won't suffice for the Longhorns, since a literal interpretation of the principle would disallow Texas jumping the Red Raiders.
That's a legitimate point which Longhorns fans must be prepared to answer in this debate. And which they can:

Question 1: Do the totality of the circumstances involving Texas versus Texas Tech justify ranking the Longhorns higher than the Red Raiders?
Answer 1: Yes. First and foremost, the Red Raiders won the game in Lubbock. Secondarily, the game as it set up (Texas facing its fourth straight Top 10 team) and as it actually unfolded was in many ways an absolute perfect Red Raider dust storm. (Though Tech deserves credit for the performance and deserved to win that game, those are relevant factors in this secondary inquiry.) With all that in mind, it's not an unfathomable leap to justify ranking Texas over the Red Raiders, in spite of the head-to-head Tech victory. Not only did the Longhorns lose on the road, at the back end of an obscene four-game stretch, in a contest in which everything went Tech's way, but they otherwise possess a very clearly superior resume.
Question 2: Do the totality of the circumstances involving Oklahoma versus Texas justify ranking the Sooners higher than the Longhorns?
Answer 2: No. This is the argument Longhorns fans have been making, but need to make in conjunction with all of these relevant points. It's not just that Texas beat Oklahoma head-to-head, it's that the circumstances of Texas-compared-to-OU are decisively different than Texas-compared-to-Tech. The Sooners lost to the Longhorns on a neutral field, which makes the burden the Sooners have to carry to overcome that loss higher than that which Texas has to carry to overcome the head-to-head loss to Texas Tech. Bottom line? It's one thing for Longhorns fans to make the case that Team A's crazy loss on the road to Team B can be overcome because of Team A's clearly superior resume. It's quite another to say that Team C's neutral field loss to Team A can be justified when the resume battle is as close as it is between Texas and OU.
Question 3: Do we all agree that Oklahoma (via resume and its head-to-head win) and Texas (via resume and the circumstances of its head-to-head loss) should be ranked above Texas Tech?
Answer 3: Yes.
Question 4: Given #3, is it fair to focus solely on whether Oklahoma has done enough outside its neutral field loss to Texas to justify jumping the Longhorns?
Answer 4: Yes. Texas Tech is in this conversation only because of the tiebreaker rules: When Bob Stoops argues that logic demands we treat these situations equally, he's only half right... We do have to clear the hurdle of Question 1, but once we do--in conjunction with the consensus answer to Question 3--there's nothing illegitimate about everything Texas fans have been saying about Texas-versus-OU.
 
Thursday Night Mayhem: Your Role In Texas' Trip To Miami

from Burnt Orange Nation by PB @ BON
This was also intended to be one among a long series of notes, but upon reflection... it needs to be its own post. Here's what I want everyone who reads this to do:

  1. Think about how close this BCS Standings race is.
  2. Consider the points below about the role Texas' game on Thursday will play in that race.
  3. Send this post via email to 10 Longhorns fans that you know, urging them to do the same.
Considering the importance of Texas showing the nation on Thanksgiving that this is a team that should be playing for it all... we need to do our part as fans to make sure the scene on TV is a lot like that circus viewers just saw in Norman. Crazy fans, with Texas routing badly the Aggies in a statement game that forces voters to take seriously everything else we're saying about Texas versus OU. Don't just take my word for it, either: Mack gets it, too.


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1, 1A, 1B, and 1C. Probably 2, as well. Texas fans are going bonkers making the early case that Oklahoma shouldn't jump the Longhorns. As noted: I'm with you.
But let's be very clear about one thing: All our posturing about resumes, head-to-head qualifiers, and all the rest depend enormously on Texas thoroughly dominating Texas A&M on national television Thursday night.
Think back to 2004, when Mack Brown was lamely accused of "whining" for asking voters to take a good, hard look at Texas and the Golden Bears in casting their final ballots. Mack was doing two things, neither of which can be fairly characterized as whining: First, he was asking the outlier idiots (e.g. the clown who had Texas ranked #9) to present a respectable final ballot. Second, he was putting pressure on Cal to go on national television and perform convincingly against Southern Miss in their final appearance before those final votes were cast. (They did not.)
On Thursday, Texas has an opportunity to make a statement against A&M that will lend forceful support to the arguments Mack Brown and the rest of us will want to make on Friday and Saturday about Texas' worthiness. Not only can Thursday's game support Texas' case, but it seems clear now that if Texas is to win any three-way tiebreakers with Tech and OU, it must. Given the points Oklahoma is guaranteed to pick up in the computers, Texas' hopes rest in large part on convincing a block of human voters to look closely at their final ballots and reward Texas more than they have Oklahoma in this week's poll.
Without some movement in the human vote, Oklahoma will pass Texas. And while I'm one of those who thinks Texas can pick up ground in the human polls, this much I know: It ain't happening without a performance on Thursday night which reminds voters that Texas is big, bad, and... oh, yeah... 10 points better than OU in Dallas.
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Do your effing part. With that said: If you have a ticket to this game.... you have a role to play in this effort. Either plan on going to DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium and being as loud and frighteningly hungry for domination as we want/need the team to be, or pass along your ticket to someone who will be.
I'm dead serious: If you have any thoughts at all about attending the national championship game in Miami should Texas make it, do your part on Thursday night. Loud. Insane. Hungry.... Or give away the ticket.
Do. Your. Part.
Make. DKR. Shake.
 
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]Fiu's Cavalcade of Whimsy ... Nov. 23[/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]
[/FONT][FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif]
a.k.a. Frank Costanza's Festivus Airing of the Grievances [/FONT] [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2]

By Pete Fiutak
What's your beef? ... Fire off your thoughts
Past Whimsies [/SIZE][/FONT] 2006 Season | 2007 Season
- Preseason Cavalcade | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4
- Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10
- Week 11 | Week 12
If this column sucks, it’s not my fault … I told my die-hard readers, who criticized my lousy year, that they needed to get a life, and now I’m in even more hot water after an epic season of losing columns.

They got so mad they sweated through their I Grock Spock T-shirts … Rich, my man, when you go 3-9 at Michigan, you keep your chin up, your head down (yes, at the same time) and you praise the fan base for sticking with you through thick and thin while promising that you’re just as mad as they are and that things will improve. You don’t say the Ohio State showdown is just another game, and you never, ever, ever, suggest that the superfans need to get anything more than another Michigan sweatshirt. Short of sending the Pussy Patrol to rooms of all the message board posters, Rodriguez needs to come up with the mega of all mega recruiting classes or else this is going to be a very prickly off-season.

It wouldn’t be any uglier than watching Jarrett Lee try to throw … Two weeks removed from the LSU 30-point fourth quarter to overcome a 31-3 deficit to beat Troy, it suddenly hit me: when, if you’re Troy, do you simply start taking a knee on every play? Forgetting the whole wussing out/competitive fight to the finish aspect, there should be some sort of a chart that shows when it’s in your best interest to start grinding out the clock by going into the victory formation. With the new running time between plays, if you can milk the clock and dance around for a second or two, you’re basically blowing close to a minute per play every time you take a knee. Of course, the other team will use its three time outs, but even so, you should be able to eat up at least eight minutes of playing time by doing absolutely nothing. If you’re up by more than 20 points with around ten minutes to play, and if you can get one defensive stop, you should be able to kill it.

There’s a certain segment of the Penn State population that could only wish this sort of plan was in place … A few years back I asked Mack Brown if he was concerned over losing defensive coordinator Gene Chizik. Brown’s response was, “We’re Texas. We’ll just go out and get another great coordinator.” So then why was there such a desperate need to lock up Will Muschamp?

Of course, if Texas really likes Muschamp, this was a must or else he’d be gone to Tennessee, or any other top job opening he’d want. Brown isn’t showing any signs of retiring; it could be at least three years before the transition actually takes place. Muschamp might turn out to be a superstar, but this is Texas. This is the A list of A list job openings. Unlike, say, Michigan, this place will pay. Texas can hand pick its next head coach, and what if there are other hot coaches out there when Brown ends up retiring? Why not let Muschamp go and earn his stripes somewhere else, and then if you want him, then buy him back?

"We'll put the band back together, do a few gigs, we get some bread. Bang! Five thousand bucks." ... Kansas State fans, are you really that excited about getting Bill Snyder back? It's not like Snyder was working magic at the end of his first run, and, as was proven by the Ron Prince era and the Bill Callahan reign at Nebraska, you can't go the JUCO route and hope to rock and roll in today's Big 12. Snyder isn't the type of name-brand legendary head coach to 17-year-olds who can walk into a living room and end the debate just by his presence, and the talent is just average enough that there won't be a turnaround for at least two years. How long will Snyder be around? I can't believe the rest of the Big 12 is quaking like it would've if TCU's Gary Patterson had taken over.

Uhhhhh, isn’t this the place that had to suspend a slew of players for academic fraud? … It’s with great jealousy and while wearing my Oxford Rugby T-shirt that I jokingly mock the awarding of a Rhodes Scholarship to Florida State safety Myron Rolle. Oh sure, the guy’s going to cure cancer and he’s helping to provide health care to needy children, and he has a shot to be a Pro Bowl defensive back if he doesn’t decide to pursue his career as a brain surgeon right away, but I thought the word “State” in the college title was an automatic dismissal from Rhodes Scholarship consideration. If that got by, then certainly the word “Florida” would’ve thrown up a red flag. Yeah, he graduated from college in less than three years, but a 3.75 GPA really gets it done? What, he couldn’t ace Organic Chemistry and beat NC State at the same time?

Congratulations to Rolle. He’s everything a college football player should be about, and for a Florida State program that gets dogged, fairly or not, for various transgressions on and off the field, and in and out of the classroom, give credit to the school and to Bobby Bowden’s program to be able to let Rolle be the student, as well as the player, that should be the model for all who play the game.

Yeah, right. And if I was a world-class athlete, not an idiot, and if I ever did anything for society beyond wearing deodorant, I’d have been a Rhodes Scholar, too … Forgetting the rushing element, I could’ve had the passing day that Duke’s Zack Asack came up with in the 14-3 loss to Virginia Tech. Asack ran for 87 yards on 24 carries, but he only completed 2-of-9 passes for 20 yards with four interceptions. I’d be dead after those nine plays, but I’d be willing to give it a try if Coach Cutcliffe can find me a game worth of eligibility.

“Wake up pal, if you're not inside you're outside. And I'm not talking a $200,000 a year working Wall Street stiff flying first class and being "comfortable", I'm talking rich pal, rich enough to fly in your own jet, rich enough not to waste time, 50-100 million, a player Bud – or nothing.” … It’s time the college football world took a good, hard look at itself and come to an honest realization. If you’re not going to include Utah or Boise State in the discussion for the national championship under the current system, then you either need to change the system or it might be time to create another division of teams between the haves and the have-nots.

Kent State got 2,267 people in the stadium for last week’s game against Northern Illinois. 2,267. Granted, the weather was lousy and Kent State is finishing up an awful season, but how is a program like this supposed to compete with any of the big boys that would pass out at the thought of 2,267 empty seats? We all pump up the Toledo win over Michigan and Troy pushing the defending national champion, LSU, to the wall, but either the non-BCS programs are part of the equation or they need to be in a sub-division of its own. Ask any Utah fan how frustrating it is to have a team do everything right, in a year when the Mountain West went 6-1 against the Pac 10, and not even be a thought in anyone’s national championship mind.

That’s why pencils have erasers … All that jazz I said last week about giving Charlie Weis a break as he’s trying to turn around Notre Dame, nevermind. You don’t lose to Syracuse. You just don’t.

Maybe it can all go away soon, like all the dopey Twilight vampire stuff … It finally happened, and it took a little longer this year than expected: I’m sick of people whining about a playoff.

Look, the Big 12 South doesn’t get solved with any sort of a playoff proposal that’s within the realm of possibility. If there was a plus-one, it would only include conference champions. No way, no how do all the BCS conferences allow any sort of a playoff, a plus-one, or any format other than what’s happening now without making sure the money train keeps rolling. You think the ACC is going to allow a plan that would potentially allow two Big 12 and two SEC teams play in a playoff? Yeah, right. You’re not going to get a 16-team playoff for the FBS, ever, so quit your “it works for the FCS” beef. Again, we have to work in the land of the real. Go to an eight-team playoff, and there still wouldn’t be any way that Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech all get in. At the moment, your ire needs to be directed at the Big 12 South tie-breaker system, not the BCS or the lack of a playoff.

Why can’t the South have some tangible way of settling the division title rather than going by the whims of the BCS voters? Total points in the three-game round-robin series, out of conference strength of schedule, something.

And you wonder why Penn State isn’t being considered in the national title discussion … A few weeks ago I dogged the Big Ten Network for its promo ad highlighting Purdue’s need for a last second touchdown to win a home game over the MAC’s Central Michigan. The Network is at it again with an ad promoting how exciting the league is by showcasing Iowa’s Andy Brodell taking a punt return for a touchdown in the 17-5 win over Iowa State. I know it’s a nasty rivalry, but still, ooooohhhhh, Iowa beat a team that finished the year with a 10-game losing streak. The Cyclones’ only win this year against an FBS team came against Kent State. Nice going, Big Ten … score! However, the Big Ten makes up for it with its brilliant ad with all the coaches giving their recruiting pitch.

65-21. Again, 65-21. Sixty-five to twenty-one. sesenta y cinco to veintiuno … What happens to the Big 12 South in terms of the national title if Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma? If the Cowboys beat the Sooners, and if Texas Tech beats Baylor and Texas beats Texas A&M, then Texas Tech wins the South clean and fair. Then if Tech beats Missouri for the Big 12 title, then how do you possibly put in Texas, who didn’t win its own division (and it’s not on the technicality it’d be in a three-way tie-breaker that went to the BCS rankings) in the national title over the Red Raiders? The fact is that you can’t do it. Do you really want to see Texas Tech play the Florida – Alabama winner after what happened in Norman on Saturday night? If you’re a fan of chaos, ask T. Boone Pickens to get you a pair of orange and black Cowboy pom poms

“And when we say … Yeeow! Ayipioeeay! … We're only sayin' …. You're doin' fine, Oklahoma!” …

Dear Oklahoma,

So, when’s it going to come?

We’ve fallen for you before. We’ve believed in you before. We’ve given you the benefit of the doubt way too many times when you’ve been the best team in America, only to see you come out flat, seemingly disinterested, or unable to play up to your immense talent level.

You’re not Choke-lahoma for nothing.

Oh sure, you sure look like one of the two best teams in the nation (Florida being the other), but you looked like a world-beater going into the last two Fiesta Bowls against vastly inferior teams. How’d that work out?

You dominated throughout 2004 and won your last two games of the regular season and the Big 12 Championship by a combined score of 107 to 6, and then you decided not to show up against USC in the national championship.

You got blasted in the 2003 Big 12 title game by Kansas State, and then got the biggest break in the book and came up with a loss to LSU in the national championship. You had the national title shot there for the taking late in 2002, but you blew it at Oklahoma State. The same went for 2001 when you lost to the Cowboys 16-13.

So when’s it going to come? When are you going to be all Oklahoma-ey and lose when everyone’s expecting the magic? Will it be in Stillwater or against Missouri in the Big 12 title game? If you could let us all know in advance, that would spare us all from having to listen to all the talking heads proclaim you the greatest team of all-time (like some were doing in 2002 before the Kansas State debacle).
Toodles!
The College Football World

The C.O.W. airing of the grievances followed by the feats of strength
With the voting season for the big awards upon us, I’m going to help out the voters with who actually deserves to get the prizes.

12. Mackey Award – Nation’s Best Tight End
Finalists: Chase Coffman, Missouri; Jermaine Gresham, Oklahoma; Brandon Pettigrew, Oklahoma State
The Vote Will Likely Be: 1) Coffman, 2) Gresham, 3) Pettigrew
The Vote Should Be: 1) Coffman, 2) Gresham, 3) Pettigrew
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … James Casey, Rice

Coffman was banged up yet he was still a steady catching machine throughout the year. Gresham will be a top NFL draft pick, and Pettigrew might be a top 20 overall pick, but they didn’t have the year that Coffman had. Coffman is fourth in the nation in catches per game.

11. Lou Groza Award – Nation’s Best Kicker
Finalists: Josh Arauco, Arkansas State; Graham Gano, Florida State; Louis Sakoda, Utah
The Vote Will Likely Be: 1) Sakoda, 2) Gano, 3) Arauco
The Vote Should Be: 1) Gano, 2) Sakoda, 3) Arauco
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … Jake Rogers, Cincinnati

Gano’s only miss was on a bomb, but he hit four of his other five attempts from beyond 50 yards. It’s hard to go against Sakoda, who was clutch, consistent, and also handled the punting duties. There’s no arguing against Rogers, who hit all of his field goal attempts including two from beyond 50 yards.

10. Ray Guy Award – Nation’s Best Punter
Finalists: Matt Fodge, Oklahoma State; Pat McAfee, West Virginia; Louie Sakoda, Utah
The Vote Will Be: 1) Sakoda, 2) McAfee, 3) Fodge
The Vote Should Be: 1) McAfee, 2) Sakoda, 3) Fodge
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … T.J. Conley, Idaho

Easily the most bizarre category of the bunch, none of the finalists are in the top eight in punting average and Fodge, who’s averaging a nice 44 yards per kick, didn’t even have enough attempts to get on the board of national leaders. The finalists should be T.J. Conley of Idaho, who’s averaging 1.5 yards more than anyone else, Aaron Perez of UCLA, who bailed out the stagnant offense time and again, and Jacob Richardson of Miami University, who has been one of the nation’s best punters over the last few years, was second in the nation this year, and was the lone bright spot as he tried to save a continually sputtering offense.

9. Outland Trophy – Nation’s Best Interior Lineman
Finalists: Michael Oher, OT Ole Miss; Duke Robinson, OG Oklahoma; Andre Smith, OT Alabama
The Vote Will Be: 1) Smith, 2) Robinson, 3) Oher
The Vote Should Be: 1) Smith, 2) Oher, 3) Robinson
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … A.Q. Shipley, C Penn State

Always sort of a nebulous award since it’s supposed to go to an interior linemen, yet offensive tackles are often thrown in the mix no matter where they line up, it would be a stunner if Smith didn’t win this going away. Oher has had a phenomenal career and played a big role in turning around the program, while Robinson is a great representative of the nation’s best O line. However, it’s debatable whether or not he’s the best lineman on his own team, much less in the nation.

8. Davey O’Brien Award – Nation’s Best Quarterback
Finalists: Sam Bradford, Oklahoma; Graham Harrell, Texas Tech; Colt McCoy, Texas
The Vote Will Be: 1) Bradford, 2) McCoy, 3) Harrell
The Vote Should Be: 1) McCoy, 2) Bradford, 3) Harrell
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … Tim Tebow, Florida

For the second straight year, Tebow is out of the mix even though he might win the Heisman. This is a tough one to figure out and there’s no right or wrong answer between McCoy and Bradford, but if it really does come down to these two, and Harrell is out of the mix after the loss in Norman, than go with the guy who beat the other one.

7. Doak Walker Award – Nation’s Best Running Back
Finalists: Shonn Greene, Iowa; Knowshon Moreno, Georgia; Javon Ringer, Michigan State
The Vote Will Be: 1) Greene, 2) Moreno, 3) Ringer
The Vote Should Be: 1) Greene, 2) Ringer, 3) Moreno
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … Donald Brown, Connecticut

For the second year in a row, the Doak Walker voters blew it. Last year the voters didn’t put 2,000-yard backs Matt Forte or Kevin Smith among the finalists, and this year, somehow, Donald Brown, the nation’s leading rusher for most of the season, was shockingly snubbed. Ringer makes the list for carrying the Spartans, but his 4.3 yards per carry is mediocre compared to his peers. Moreno has had a fantastic year, and he might be the most talented back in the nation behind Beanie Wells, but he could be bumped off for Brown. Greene deserves the Doak after running for 100 yards or more in every game.

6. Biletnikoff Award – Nation’s Best Wide Receiver
Finalists: Dez Bryant, Oklahoma State; Michael Crabtree, Texas Tech; Jeremy Maclin, Missouri
The Vote Will Be: 1) Crabtree, 2) Bryant, 3) Maclin
The Vote Should Be: 1) Crabtree, 2) Bryant, 3) Maclin
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … Austin Collie, BYU

Crabtree locked up the honor in the final seconds against Texas. Bryant has been fantastic, but he most of his production has come against the mediocre teams. Maclin is a phenomenal talent, but he’s the clear No. 3 in this group. BYU’s Austin Collie (the nation’s yardage leader by far with 1,149 yards) and Rice’s Jarett Dillard (19 touchdowns) deserve to be in the equation.

5. Thorpe Award – Nation’s Best Defensive Back
Finalists: Eric Berry, Tennessee; Malcolm Jenkins, Ohio State; Taylor Mays, USC.
The Vote Will Be: 1) Jenkins, 2) Mays, 3) Berry
The Vote Should Be: 1) Berry, 2) Mays, 3) Jenkins
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … Rashad Johnson, Alabama

There’s no wrong answer here except for the exclusion of Rashad Johnson, who’d have gotten my vote. Jenkins had a tremendous season even though everyone has tried to stay away from him, Mays is a tone-setter for the phenomenal USC defense, and Berry is, arguably, the nation’s best playmaking safety. My vote is going for Berry, but again, all three are worthy.

4. Butkus Award – Nation’s Best Linebacker
Finalists: Not Announced Yet.
The Best Guess Vote Will Be: 1) Rey Maualuga, USC, 2) James Laurinaitis, Ohio State, 3) Scott McKillop, Pitt
The Vote Should Be: 1) McKillop; 2) Laurinaitis; 3) Maualuga
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Won’t Be … Sean Weatherspoon, Missouri

Laurinaitis has been among the most overrated players in college football, and this year he was one of the most underrated. Sort of out of the national spotlight and all-star talk, he turned in a tremendous year for yet another good Buckeye defense. McKilliop, for the second year in a row, was a killer. He doesn’t have the name recognition, but he was the nation’s best linebacker this year. Maualuga certainly has been terrific, but was he better than Brian Cushing? If he was, it wasn’t by much.

3. Bednarik Award – Nation’s Best Defensive Player
Finalists: James Laurinaitis, LB Ohio State; Aaron Maybin, DE Penn State; Rey Maualuga, LB USC
The Vote Will Be: 1) Maualuga, 2) Laurinaitis, 3) Maybin
The Vote Should Be: 1) Laurinaitis, 2) Maybin, 3) Maualuga
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … Jerry Hughes, DE TCU

How is Hughes not on here? Maualuga will probably win it, but an argument could be made that Taylor Mays was the best player on the USC defense this year. Laurinaitis was in on everything this year for the Buckeyes, and while Maybin was unstoppable, if the choice is between these three, and Hughes isn’t in the mix, my vote is for the OSU star.

2. Maxwell Award – Nation’s Best Player
Finalists: Graham Harrell, QB Texas Tech; Colt McCoy, QB Texas; Tim Tebow, QB Florida.The Vote Will Be: 1) Tebow, 2) McCoy, 3) Harrell
The Vote Should Be: 1) McCoy, 2) Tebow, 3) Harrell
Player Who Should Be A Finalist But Isn’t … Sam Bradford, QB Oklahoma

The Maxwell often becomes the booby prize for the guy who won’t win the Heisman. Since Bradford isn’t even on the list, the guess, at the moment, is that voters will pick Tebow for the Maxwell and McCoy for the Heisman, unless Bradford is winning the Heisman. Then McCoy would get the Maxwell.

1. Heisman – “The most outstanding college football player in the United States for 2008."
The Vote Will Be: 1) Sam Bradford, QB Oklahoma, 2) Colt McCoy, QB Texas, 3) Tim Tebow, QB Florida
The Vote Should Be: 1) McCoy, 2) Tebow, 3) Bradford

It’s not over yet and if everything holds to form, this could be among the closest races ever. How do you pick against Bradford, who’s been razor-sharp all season long? Tebow has been the tone-setting leader on a great run to a possible national title, and McCoy would likely win the Most Valuable Player award. Who has been the signature player of 2008? It depends on which Big 12 South team gets to the conference title game.

Random Acts of Nutty … Provocative musings and tidbits to make every woman want you and every man want to be you (or vice versa) a.k.a. things I didn’t feel like writing bigger blurbs for.


- Outside of Kirk Herbstreit’s dead-on destruction of Michigan’s Nick Sheridan on last week’s GameDay, has any young quarterback been ripped apart as much as LSU’s Jarrett Lee? The dude’s a freshman, yet he’s taking the lion’s share of the criticism for the team’s implosion. He’s been awful, but it’s up to the coaches to make him better, or call different plays to make him more comfortable.


- Peyton Manning, if he was actually dead, would be rolling over in his grave. Yeah, Tennessee beat Vanderbilt, but the Vol passing game completed 4-of-9 passes for 21 yards and two interceptions.


- There’s nothing better than watching a lineman try to do the geeky jump-up chest bump celebration thing with someone who can actually jump.


- If you’re a hot head coach in the MAC, you leave as soon as humanly possible. Take the bigger, better job the second you get the shot. Toledo’s Tom Amstutz was one of the league’s better coaches a few years ago, as was Miami’s Shane Montgomery, and then everything went all wrong. Buffalo’s Turner Gill and Central Michigan’s Butch Jones are all but gone.

- Three things that must always be a part of college football. 1) Storming the field, 2) throwing Oranges on the field when your team is in the mix for the Orange Bowl, and 3) cold weather, non-dome games with lots of snow and lousy conditions.


“I hearby designate Colt McCoy, Texas (but I’m flipping a coin as of this immediate moment) as my First Choice to receive the Heisman Memorial Trophy awarded to the most outstanding college football player in the United States for 2008. To the best of my knowledge he conforms to the rules governing this vote.”


My Second Choice Is: Sam Bradford, Oklahoma

My Third Choice Is: Tim Tebow, Florida

“You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools/But that's the way I like it baby, I don't wanna live forever” … The three lines this week that appear to be a tad off.

2-1 for three straight weeks. Oh Mommy, Oh Daddy, I am a big old baddy … I’m up to 16-22-1 overall.

I press on by taking the three games I’m sure of … 1) Temple -2.5 over Akron, 2) Georgia Tech +8.5 over Georgia, 3) Texas Tech -20 over Baylor

Last Week: 1) Washington -7.5 over Washington State (LOSS), 2) Oklahoma -6.5 over Texas Tech (WIN), 3) South Florida -3 over Connecticut (WIN)

Sorry this column sucked, but it wasn’t my fault … I couldn’t write while being booed and pelted by snowballs thrown by angry Notre Dame fans after losing to Syracuse.
 
[FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] Pete Fiutak [/SIZE][/FONT]
Q: Your Heisman top three is ...
A:I can be sold on any of my top three choices. To me, the Heisman should go to the signature player of a season, a combination of MVP and MOP. At the immediate moment, and with a paper-thin margin between them ...

1. Colt McCoy, Texas - He doesn't have the weapons around him that Tebow and Bradford have. In the lousy SEC this year, Florida would still be in the spot it's in now without Tebow. The same goes for Oklahoma if it didn't have Bradford. Any quarterback who can hit a receiver in stride would go ballistic playing behind the Sooner line. McCoy has carried Texas at times, and he beat Bradford in the head-to-head game. You can't dog him for the loss; his late drive would've sealed the Heisman if Harrell-to-Crabtree didn't become the season's signature moment.

2. Tim Tebow, Florida - I'm starting to believe more and more that he might deserve it. The way he was able to own up to the Ole Miss loss, call out his team, and become the ring leader and lightening rod did wonders, while his stats have matched the leadership over the second half of the season.

3. Sam Bradford, Oklahoma - There's absolutely no question that he's a top pro prospect, unlike Jason White or Josh Heupel, but he's also functioning in a tremendous system. Deadly accurate, he's making the machine go, but he's not carrying his team like McCoy and Tebow are. With that said, I'm still auditioning him for my vote. He can win it over the next two weeks ... maybe.

 Richard Cirminiello [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] [/FONT] <o:p> </o:p><o:p> </o:p> [FONT=verdana, arial, sans serif][SIZE=-2] [/SIZE][/FONT] <o:p> </o:p>[/SIZE]
Q: Your Heisman top three is ...

A: 3. Texas Tech QB Graham Harrell – Saturday’s game at Oklahoma was a Heisman semifinal with the Sooners’ Sam Bradford. While Harrell’s numbers looked fine on paper, they hardly told the entire story of what took place in Norman. Still, he’s got the stats and the Heisman moment at the end of the Texas game to bump Colt McCoy out of the top 3.

2. Florida QB Tim Tebow – No, the numbers aren’t as gaudy, but in some respects, Tebow’s been more of a Heisman contender this season than a year ago. He’s helped make everyone around him better, and unlike 2007, the Gators are in the national championship discussion with two weeks remaining in the regular season.

1. Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford – There’s not much to dislike about Bradford’s candidacy. The second-rated passer in the country, he’s accounted for 46 touchdowns and more than 4,000 yards, while throwing just six interceptions. Plus, his team is closing strong and leading the country in scoring at 52 points a game. Thanks to Tebow breaking down barriers last year, the number of voters who’ll shy away because he’s a sophomore has declined dramatically.
<o:p> Matthew Zemek</o:p>
Q: Your Heisman top three is ...
A: 3- Graham Harrell. On the medal stand, but as is the case in the Big 12 South's likely three-way contest, the Techster will have to settle for bronze.

2- Sam Bradford. Awesome, brilliant, stupendous. (Or should we say, Stoop-endous?) But much like Jason White relative to Larry Fitzgerald in 2003, a Sooner quarterback is--in my mind--the second most outstanding collegiate football player in the United States of America.

1- Colt McCoy. OU fans, I don't wear burnt orange glasses, trust me. McCoy simply has a better case, for one very simple reason. No, it's not the win over Bradford in Dallas. The reason why the Texas quarterback leads the race for the Heisman--with games still left to be played--is that while Bradford has barely been breathed on in 2008, McCoy managed to will his Longhorn teammates to a last-minute lead at Texas Tech, on a night when he got pounded into the Lubbock turf. McCoy could take a beating and still deliver the goods. His one loss gives Kid Colt that extra measure of gridiron gallantry that Bradford--through absolutely no fault of his own--just can't offer.

I'll say this much, though, to placate Sooner backers: If Bradford were to get chosen as the winner, I wouldn't have a real beef. White over Fitzgerald in 2003 was a crime (though I also maintained that White deserved the 2004 Heisman over Matt Leinart), but Bradford over McCoy would be a perfectly legitimate and valid decision.

It's Texas and Oklahoma, splitting the thinnest threads in all major aspects of this college football season. Once again, it's Bevo by a nose hair. It's just the way the stars have aligned in 2008.


Steve Silverman
Q: Your Heisman top three is ...
A: 1. Sam Bradford, Oklahoma -- I know he's a sophomore but his 42-6 TD-interception ratio speaks to me. That and the fact that he leads an offense that will shove it down your throat every step of the way.

2. Colt McCoy, Texas -- A running man (527 yards) and a throwing man (3,134 yards, 30 TDs and 7 interceptions). Hungry and great leader.

3. Tim Tebow, Florida -- Unstoppable when the game is on the line 22 TDs and just 2 interceptions. He can run over linebackers and throw over double-coverage.










 
PB's Weekend Wrap

from Burnt Orange Nation by PB @ BON
I need to free-flow a little bit here, so I'm hitting the bullet points:
FOOTBALL



  • What kills me about the situation Texas finds itself in is that it's Oklahoma who might be the team inching out the Longhorns for a trip to Kansas City/Miami. When it was Texas Tech? I was cool with it, and towing the "2008 has been a hell of a success, no matter what" line wasn't so hard. But if Oklahoma edges us out in the final week? It'll take some time before I'm able to appreciate without bitterness what a great year that it's been.
  • A note to Tech fans: I'm certain my cavalier dismissal of your team from this conversation has to rub the wrong way. I don't blame you. I'll only say (1) See above, and (2) The stakes are just too damn high. Practically and factually speaking, you're out of this race. All I can say is that unlike with Oklahoma... with you guys it ain't personal.


  • After two straight days of hyper-analysis, I think most Longhorns fans understand that if nothing changes in the human vote, an Oklahoma win in Stillwater will provide them the computer boost to jump Texas. With that said, my outlook isn't nearly as bleak as it perhaps should be:

  1. First, I like our argument.
  2. Second, I'm not seeing it as an argument isolated within our partisan bubble (i.e. a sizable chunk of the most visible MSM commentariat seem to be on board).
  3. Third, if nothing else that support outside the Burnt Orange Nation serves to alert voters that there exists a reason to consider our arguments before casting their final ballots.
  4. And finally, the insanity of the process works in our favor this week: Though voters in a totally objective world should perhaps reward Oklahoma more for a close win at Stillwater, if the Sooners squeak by OSU while Texas bombs A&M, the Longhorns may be the ones who make the more favorable final impression. (Rational? Not really, but neither is the "hot team down the stretch" crap that's to this point fueled the Sooners' surge past the Longhorns in the polls.)

  • Talking to my Dad tonight, he reminded me of a point I've made to him countless times over the years: Voters frequently treat their final ballots differently than they do their week-to-week submissions. Which is understandable. If you know that all that matters is your final ballot, you're more likely to (1) vote quickly/by-trend as you go and (2) slow down and consider carefully each ranking on your final ballot that will ship teams to title games. Whether it happens or not, there's at least reason to hope some voters will evaluate Texas-vs-Oklahoma differently than they did this past week.
  • Relatedly, those voters know their final ballots will be (1) made public and (2) scrutinized like no other week of the year. Whether or not they change their mind, they'll give the issues greater thought than they did this past week. I think that helps Texas, given the RRS.
  • After writing all this crap about ties, resumes, blah, blah, blah... How sweet would it be if all the Sooner clowns who've shown up to BON this week had to scuttle back under a cheat-wagon because Tech lost to Baylor?
  • One thing I've always wondered: Are outsider fans just doing what outsider fans are supposed to do, or do they really think Mack Brown is a "whiner" for advocating his team's cause? If they're just taking their shots at the opposition--fine. But if, with the highest of stakes in play and given how this BCS nonsense works, a fan wouldn't want their coach and athletics department working the PR angles involved in this system... that I don't understand.
  • Assume that Texas doesn't make it to Kansas City/Miami. What would your ideal second choice bowl be? I'm excited to say that my top choice is at this moment perhaps Texas' most likely match up--the Fiesta Bowl against USC. Why? My goals for the team are always (1) Big 12 Title, (2) National Title, (3) Prepare for (1) or (2 ) in the following year. Assuming Miami is out of play for 2008, I can't think of any better preparation for 2009 than a clash with a defense as strong as USC's. Win or lose, that's a great game for the team.
  • When thinking about the Will Muschamp successorship decision, keep all this in mind, as well. If Texas earns a trip to KC or Miami, having Muschamp both on board and not a distraction helps Texas achieve the top goals. And even if the 'Horns miss out this year, compare Texas' title chances in 2009 with Muschamp still here against their chances breaking in a fifth defensive coordinator in five years.
  • Random thought: Though you'd always rather be the team that controls its own destiny, is it so bad that Texas' path to Miami might hinge on Missouri beating OU or Texas Tech, rather than Texas having to beat Missouri again?
  • Want to know why I don't much care about the Heisman? Read this, from the blogger who follows the award more closely than anyone... It's a game, not an honest evaluation.
 
Let the Politicking Begin

from The Wiz of Odds by Jay Christensen

We just finished one election, so let's start another. This one has nothing to do with higher office. This is political football, the way a sport picks a champion — or at least one to play in the title game.
Mack Brown and Bob Stoops started their lobbying efforts in full on Monday. Brown, whose team is clinging to the No. 2 spot in the Bowl Championship Series standings, was asked his opinion about the USA Today coaches poll — one-third of the BCS formula — that had the Sooners ranked ahead of the Longhorns despite Texas' 45-35 victory against Oklahoma on a neutral field on Oct. 11.
"I think the coaches will come to light this weekend. I really worry that coaches don't pay too much attention to [voting]. We didn't play this weekend. They're sitting there, getting on their planes, saw a score and said, 'Wow, let's do this,' " Brown said of the reaction to Oklahoma's 65-21 victory over then No. 2 Texas Tech. "That's why I don't like the BCS. If we had a playoff right now, would it not be great to have the top eight teams? There will be more than us and Oklahoma that will be left out if we both win."
The message is clear: Take Texas and give the 35 points against Texas A&M on Thanksgiving Day. The Longhorns are going to do everything in their power to run up a big number on the Aggies in the nationally televised game.
Stoops brought a third team into this love triangle. "If you can’t put us in front of Texas [because of the head-to-head result], if that’s your logic, then you have to keep Texas Tech in front of Texas," he said. "If it’s logical for one, it has to be logical for the other."
Stoops has a friend in Crazy Mike Leach, his former offensive coordinator.
"We think quite a bit of Oklahoma and the Big 12," the Texas Tech coach said. "Our experience with that is Oklahoma beat us, Texas did not, so Oklahoma goes above [Texas]. And then we like the Big 12 better than the SEC, and plus Oklahoma’s impressed me this year more than Alabama, so Oklahoma's at the top."
Stoops, who turned down an opportunity to vote in the coaches' poll (Brown and Leach have votes), was asked if he regrets that decision. "Probably," he said.
Each side is employing all means necessary in this high-stakes battle. A member of Texas' sports information staff was sending text messages to sportswriters late Saturday reminding them that the Longhorns had beaten Oklahoma and Missouri by double digits last month. And some Texas students have started a Facebook page titled, "Texas did beat OU 45-35, lest we forget." It has over 4,200 members at the time of this post.
 
THE CASE FOR BRIAN KELLY AS TENNESSEE'S NEXT HEAD FOOTBALL COACH

from Rocky Top Talk by Joel
Well, we've discovered the identity of our very own Graysnail. At least we think we have. If not, we've found his soul mate.
That would be Bill Simonson of the Huge Show, which I would link to except for the fact that his site has a hugely annoying audio introduction that cannot be bypassed. I don't know anything about the guy other than what I've learned in the last fifteen minutes, but let's just say that I wouldn't be surprised if the web site simply mirrors his personality. And before I rip him too much, let me be clear that I was only kidding about him being anything like Graysnail. As far as I know, the only thing the two of them have in common is that they both think Brian Kelly should be the next head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers.
To say that Simonson is a Brian Kelly fan would be a gross understatement. Listening to Jimmy Hyams' interview with him yesterday afternoon, you sort of get the feeling that any minute now you're going to be asked to pay $8,000 for a timeshare in Tahiti. Well, now that I think about it, it's probably more like you're about to be asked to pay $3,000,000 for a coach in Cincinnati.
Here's the thing, though. If you can get past the bravado, and if you take him at his word (and other than a knee jerk reaction, there's really no reason not to), then Brian Kelly may indeed be our guy. He's the football equivalent of Bruce Pearl. He's the next Urban Meyer. He wins. He sells tickets. He's the guy who's going to take us to 9-3 next year and to the national title the year after that. He's the guy we should offer the moon instead of Mike Leach.
According to Simonson, anyway. Have a listen to the excerpt below, and then head over to the SportsAnimal to hear the rest of the 10 to 15 minute interview. I'm sure the whole thing is over there somewhere.

<center> </center> Chest bump to hooper for the great find.
 
Move Over Erin Andrews, Make Room On Sidelines For Meg Bulger, Marc’s Little Sister

Published by J Koot at 5:13 am under Celeb-Gasm

Visited 439 times, 439 so far today
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WVU fans won’t appreciate Meg in enemy colors. ​
Maybe you’ve heard of Meg Bulger.
She played college basketball at West Virginia, became a legend for overcoming injuries to be drafted into the WNBA, is the sister of NFL QB Marc Bulger and now she wants to become the next Erin Andrews.
Meg studied communications at WVU and once told a local PBS affiliate that she had dreams of working sidelines. That became a reality recently as Fox Sports Net put her in charge of sidelines for Pittsburgh high school playoff games.
While we couldn’t dig up any tape of Meg in action, BC Photo Editor Big Yag Rich somehow, someway discovered Meg’s recent Halloween action.

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One look at the photos tells us that Ms. Bulger just added a 7th tool to our “Creating A Sideline Reporter” report. Meg easily fills the partying category.
It appears FSN has found itself a keeper.
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