Tryptophan-ing our way through this college football weekend

(Full disclosure: we started this post yesterday but are finishing it today after Texas beat Texas A&M 49-9 and which does not fundamentally alter the landscape of the the polls and the BCS rankings)

OK. Let’s get down to business. Here are this week’s BCS rankings:

1. Alabama .9872
2. Texas .9209
3. Oklahoma .9125
4. Florida .8755
5. USC .7974
6. Utah .7974
7. Texas Tech .7789
8. Penn St. .7520
9. Boise St. .6581
10. Ohio State .6210

One of the things to be thankful for this weekend is the Big 12 and specifically the Big 12 South because, frankly, the rest of the nation and conferences have been pretty pedestrian this year. The Big 10 is down, the Pac-10 has been horrible… and you know it’s been a relatively week year for everyone else in the nation (apologies to the Mtn. West) when the pundits are talking up the ACC where no one seems capable of either leading, following or getting out of the way.

And once again the college football world will be descending upon tornado alley as the 12th-ranked Oklahoma St. Cowboys host No. 3 Oklahoma Sooners in Stillwater on Saturday night. A win by Oklahoma puts them in the Big 12 championship game against Missouri but a loss throws Texas Tech, whom Oklahoma thumped last Saturday back into the Big 12 championship game. Should the latter scenario play out, you would have Texas sitting there at No. 2 in the nation lined-up to play in the BCS title game and which did not even appear in their own conference championship game.

A closer look at the polls: The humans were obviously more impressed with Oklahoma’s beat down of Texas Tech than were the computers who may or may not take margin of victory into account as the Harris poll has Oklahoma and Texas 3 and 4, respectively and the USA Today poll has the same two teams at 2 and 4 (the two aforementioned polls are the two human polls cranked into the BCS quantum physics formula). This would indicate that the computers weigh the head-to-head matchup (Texas beat Oklahoma earlier this year) more favorably than the “who’s hot right now?” that the humans do.

And look who’s sneakin’ around the ol’ chicken coop at #5? USC has two more non strength of schedule enhancing games against Notre Dame on Saturday and then against UCLA on Dec. 6. A lot has to happen but USC getting into the national championship game through the back door is not out of the realm of possibility.

Just two weeks ago we were saying that the 6 yrs. remaining on Charlie Weis’ 10 year contract may be too fat a pill to swallow in terms of buying it out if the Tying Irish wished to go in a different direction. Well, guess what fat pill instantly slimmed-down after the Irish choked away their game at home on Senior Day, no less, against a 2-win Syracuse team, 24-23, who had lost to UConn by 25 the previous week? The grumblings are getting louder as bowl-eligible 6-5 Notre Dame travels to the coast to take on USC after which they will most certainly be 6-6 and on their way to…. Shreveport? No one is exactly sure how much Weis’ buyout is but if the worst football program in America can raise $1 million from boosters in just 2 weeks as San Diego St. did to buy out Chuck Long’s contract then we're certain that Irish nation and all the subway alums therein can raise the jack necessary if that’s what they want to do. For the record, we still don’t think he’s going anywhere after this season.

And finally, here’s our annual bitch about ESPN’s Ron Franklin being buried on ESPN 2 calling some Big 12 North game seemingly every Saturday afternoon. Despite our devotion to the Figurehead, Franklin remains the best play-by-play announcer in college football and it rankles us to see the terrible Mike Patrick assigned to ESPN’s primetime slot on Saturday evenings. Well, at least Franklin gets some network love this week as he will call the Nebraska-Colorado game today on ABC. You deserve better, Ron!

Enjoy the Games.