"heh, heh, heh, heh.... still smiling... still not Charlie Weis."

Housekeeping item, we’ve been meaning to get around to: Eons ago, probably like about 1-1/2 months back we posted on a possible phenomena of coaches leading their teams to a national championship but then never duplicating the feat. We totally forgot about Michigan coach, Lloyd Carr who won it in his 3rd year back in ’97. And despite what a disaster the first two weeks of the season were for the Maize and Blue, they are undefeated in conference play and thus still in the hunt for the Rose Bowl. Anyway, updated post with a couple more thoughts on the matter can be found here.

In what looked like a possibly “epic” weekend of college football last Saturday around 9 PDT, has been downgraded to merely “very good”. Oklahoma, Texas and Florida fell from the ranks of the unbeaten so the Red River shootout and Florida – LSU will not have the same appeal…. someone though, either Oklahoma and Texas, will be limping out of Dallas with 2 losses so that will be worth the price of admission alone.

And in a broader context, the shocking losses experienced by the Sooners and Longhorns now leads us to question why the Big 12 has been able to slip the criticism that has been levied at the Pac-10 the last few years? All that grief, all that sniping of the Pac-10 being soft, 2nd rate or not-yet-ready-for prime time… that’s been the Big 12! Outside of Oklahoma and an underachieving Texas program, the Big 12 has been a very mediocre to poor conference the past 4 or 5 years.

For us, this LSU-Florida game will be as much about the coaches as the players lining up on the field tomorrow night in Baton Rouge. Even with an edge in talent, we’re confident LSU head ball coach, Les Miles will do just enough to keep this one interesting. Conversely, we gotta hunch that Gator coach Urban Meyer has leveraged his team’s loss to Auburn last week to optimal effect…. Tim Tebow and the boys will be ready. Football…. under the lights… at Death Valley. Awesomeness…

UCLA has a chance to avenge its absolutely inexplicable loss-by-coaching performance of last year (and which inspired this) in South Bend by hosting the winless Irish in Pasadena as 3 touchdown favorites. UCLA remains one of the most hard-to-figure teams in the nation so despite that huge line, anything can and probably will happen in this game.

A banged-up USC team plays Stanford as 40 point favorites. The conventional wisdom is that this “scrimmage” will give the Trojans a breather and thus a chance to mend-up with the injuries to the O-line, linebacking and secondary units. The last thing they need after that 16 penalty performance last week is a breather. Stanford will not inspire a performance required from a team that has to start ramping up the precision and intensity needed for the teeth of the conference schedule. Besides, SC only beats its SEC opponents by 40.

Clemson v. Virginia Tech. Clemson’s run offense vs. Tech’s run defense. Bring a lunch.

Enjoy the games.