College football Saturday open thread

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The matchups:


Let's start off with an early game that has some local intrigue as the 3-0 San Diego St. Aztecs go to the Big House at Ann Arbor to take on the 3-0 and No. 22 Michigan Wolverines and the Aztecs, old head ball coach, Brady Hoke.

The Aztecs have gone to the Midwest on multiple occasions over the past several years and have come oh-so-tantalizingly close against the likes of Notre Dame, Michigan and Ohio State only to come up short. Two weeks ago, they found a way to beat Army in a game they would've found a way to lose in years previous and last week they were down 10 to Washington St. at half before ripping off 28 straight points to win going away, 42-24.

As 8 point dogs we're saying, screw it!, this is the year the Aztecs get it done. Mark down a close one for the Aztecs today.




Your SEC game of the week: No. 14 Arkansas at No. 3 Alabama




Your Big 12 game of the week: No. 7 OK St. at No. 8 Texas A&M

If A&M follows through on its threat to bolt the Big 12 for the SEC, this will likely mean this will be the last time you will see this matchup. And if A&M does indeed leave, expect the dominos to start falling and the Big 12 to be no more.

Your ACC game of the week: No. 21 Clemson Tigers host the No. 11 Florida State Seminoles. Let's see how FSU responds after getting handled in their we're baaa-ack game against No. 1 Oklahoma last week.




ABC's primetime matchup: No. 2 LSU at No. 16 West Virginia

Yes, we know what you're thinking: a primetime game involving LSU... playing away from Tiger Stadium

ESPN makes a PAC-12 night call to the desert southwest

No. 10 Oregon at Arizona on ESPN 2

No. 23 USC makes their first roadie at Arizon State on ESPN

P.S. The PAC-12 says they are staying put at 12 teams. Sure they are. If Texas A&M bolts for the SEC, expect the PAC-10 to immediately offer an invitation to Texas who will bring Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma St. along with them for your first 16 team super conference. Mark it down.



* SDSU running back and second-leading rusher in the nation, Ronnie Hillman.

Was it really that bad?

What do Joe Paterno, Josh Groban, USC and the University of Texas all have in common?

They combined forces to produce what the Wall St. Journal is calling one of the worst college football seasons ever.

If there's one thing that sets apart the 2010 college-football season, it's how humiliating it has been for so many of the nation's proudest programs.

We're not just talking about an off year, like the one Penn State had. That happens. We're talking about several of the sport's biggest names enduring preposterous frustrations and indignities all in the same season.

Michigan's coach spoke emotionally at a team banquet about a Josh Groban song. Tennessee's coach made a lengthy analogy comparing his overwhelmed players to the Germans during World War II. Florida, a preseason top-five team, had its worst season in years. Then its coach quit. The same week that an ex-Gator won the Heisman Trophy. For a conference rival.

Every college-football season features a couple of bumbling behemoths, but this year is extreme. Six of the sport's top-10 teams all-time in winning percentage—Michigan, Notre Dame, Texas, Tennessee, Southern California and Penn State—aren't ranked in the Associated Press top-25 poll. Never have all six of those teams failed to appear in a season's final AP poll.

Apparently, the misery is causing fans to lose interest (or shield their eyes). TV ratings at both ABC and NBC were down over 10% this season for college-football telecasts. CBS fell too, though less significantly (4.5%).

Here's Derek Dooley, head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers comparing himself to.... Rommel?






Which school had the roughest go of it this past year? The Journal has the goods, here.

College football Saturday open thread

'Twas the Saturday before Thanksgiving and Ohio St. plays... Iowa?

Chipping away, bit by bit and time-honored tradition by set-your-watch-by-it tradition, conference realignment and the BCS are turning college football into NFL-lite.

Time was, November 20ish was the true rivalry weekend: Ohio St. - Michigan, Army - Navy, USC - UCLA, Cal - Stanford... oh, wait, Cal is playing Stanford today. You get the point: Rivalry weekend is now spread out over the last two weekends in November and the first weekend of December. A depressing development in our book.



The ranked matchups:


#9 Ohio State at #20 Iowa


#13 Arkansas at #21 Mississippi St.


#8 Nebraska at #19 Texas A&M


#24 Miami hosts #16 Virginia



Other games of note:

Both #1 and #2, Oregon and Auburn are off.


The subway alum get their fighting Irish at Yankee Stadium against Army.


BCS busters: #4 Boise St. whupped Fresno St. 51-0 last night and #3 TCU, after surviving a scare against San Diego St. last week, has the day off.


Michigan hosts #7 Wisconsin. Word around the campfire is that Rich Rodriguez needs to win one of the two remaining games on the schedule (Ohio St., next Saturday) to hold onto his job. The zone-read spread attack he installed 3 years ago has taken hold, it's the deplorable defense there at Ann Arbor, however, that may be his undoing.

The image above is not photo-shopped. Some genius thought that staging a tackle football game at a place known as "the friendly confines" would be a swell idea. The good news: late this week, Big 10 officials put their considerably larged-sized thinking hats on and decreed that both offenses would be directed away from the ivy-less though padded though still possibly paralysis-inducing outfield wall of Chicago's Wrigley Field. The bad news: this momentous occasion is wasted on Illinois and Northwestern.


#6 Stanford at the cramping Cal Bears


#5 LSU, in their 13th home game of the season, hosts Ole Miss.


USC goes to Corvallis where they have dropped two straight to take on Oregon St.


And deep into the heart of Saturday night, #23 Utah comes out here to the coast to play a resurgent San Diego St. Considering affairs of late with the Aztec program, perhaps, "surgent" would be more appropriate.





And finally, Montana Tech football coach Bob Green announced his retirement yesterday after 24 years with the NAIA Diggers. Why is it only now that we find out about this guy?

College football Saturday open thread

What mid-season lull?

There’s a reason why the term “dog days of August” is in reference to baseball. No such with college football. Again, great matchups abound across the fruited plain.

USC gets to exact some revenge against Oregon St. who has twice in the last 4 seasons represented the in-conference toe-stubbers that have thwarted the Trojans BCS title hopes.

Undefeated TCU (#10) goes on the road to BYU (#16) in one of those BCS-buster games.

San Diego native and freshmen QB Tate Forcier (pictured) leads his Michigan Wolverines hosting (#13) Penn St. at the Big House.

Touchdown Jesus will witness the Domers taking on the hated little Catholics of Boston College.

We’re probably out for the rest of the day so enjoy your college football Saturday.

College football Saturday open thread

Our good friend “Jerry” is in Dallas for work and will be trying to get into the Oklahoma-Texas game aka The Red River Rivalry.

Other good games abound:

Trojans on the road against fortunate-to-be 4-1 Notre Dame.

And later on this evening, #4 Virginia Tech will be in Atlanta taking on #18 Georgia Tech and #2 Alabama will be hosting #22 South Carolina.

We may check in later but if not enjoy the rest of your college football Saturday.

True (young) grit

Who says Southern Californian’s are soft? A couple of true freshmen from here in So Cal made names for themselves in gritty comeback fashion yesterday.

Tate Forcier (Scripps Ranch High, San Diego) and the Michigan Wolverines overcame 336 yards passing by Notre Dame’s Jimmy Clausen to defeat the Irish 38-34 at the Big House and USC’s Matt Barkley (Mater Dei High, Santa Ana, pictured) led a late 4th quarter game-winning drive for a 18-15 victory over the Ohio State Buckeyes in Columbus.

We must say, it was a particularly satisfying win for USC as we were all but ready to concede half-way through the 4th quarter before the Barkley-directed 14-play, 86 yard drive that consumed over six minutes and which left the Buckeyes 1:06 on the clock, zero time outs and ultimately no hope.

A loss early in the season, on the road against a very good team and with your true-freshman QB would not have been a season-breaker. There’d still be a chance to get back into BCS contention but no need for such talk right now and…. no excuses from here on out, right? Grinding one out with a young team in an extremely hostile environment will leave any losses to the Stanfords or Oregon States on the schedule even more inexcusable than they have in the past.

The Tyrelle Pryor question: as in, where was he? Was the defensive scheme and execution that good against the OSU quarterback or was there some timidity on the part of this magnificently gifted run-throw quarterback? We suspect more of the latter than the former. There were flashes like his 56 yard strike to Dane Sanzenbacher in the 1st quarter and his 18 yard gallop on 3rd down mid-way through the fourth quarter that nearly iced the game for the Buckeyes but by and large it was a very pedestrian performance for a player who has been touted as the second coming of Vince Young.

We almost feel bad for Buckeye fans. If they were going to notch the program’s signature victory, this set up perfectly. In the end, though, another big game, another loss. The Buckeyes have now lost six straight against top-five teams including two routs in national championship games (in last 3 years) and have now dropped 7 straight against USC (including last years 35-3 drubbing) going back to 1974.

Other notables:
Speaking of SoCal and gutty… UCLA goes to Rocky Top and ambushes the Vols, 19-15.

Oklahoma St. (#5) coming off a program-defining victory last week against Georgia, most-likely defined their program by letting down against Houston, 45-35.

Conversely, BYU's (#9) own program-defining victory over Oklahoma was followed up by taking care of business against Tulane, 54-3.

TCU (#16) continues to make the case for the Mountain West Conference by smacking a Virgina team, 30-14 who represent a conference in the ACC that continues to stink up the joint in its non-conference games.


Did someone say we've got more football today? O joy.

The poll positions are set, let the jockeying begin

The AP college football poll was are released this morning and here is the way things stack up, right now.

1. Florida
2. Texas
3. Oklahoma
4. USC
5. Alabama
6. Ohio State
7. Virginia Tech
8. Mississippi
9. Oklahoma St.
9. Penn St.
11. LSU
12. California
13. Georgia
14. Boise St.
15. Georgia Tech
16. Oregon
17. TCU
18. Florida St.
19. Utah
20. BYU
21. North Carolina
22. Iowa
23. Notre Dame
24. Nebraska
25. Kansans


A little bit of history was made as the Florida Gators collected 58 of the 60 (96.7%) first place votes (Texas received the other 2) making the most overwhelming favorite since the poll was started in 1950. The previous high was the ’07 Trojans who received 62 of 65 first place votes (95.4%).

The template has now been set. When the two teams who will be playing for the BCS National Championship square-off against one another in January, their respective BCS standings journey can be walked-back week by week to this Saturday in late August.

To wit, a team like North Carolina may have too much ground to make-up at 21 to have a realistic shot at the title game, even if they go undefeated (this assumes that at least one or 2 teams ahead of them go undefeated).

And thanks for playing along TCU, Utah and BYU. The BCS has shown little regard for the non-BCS conferences though we will watch with keen interest BYU as they open up against Oklahoma on a semi-neutral site in Arlington TX on Sept. 5 and whose roster contains 3 other top 25 teams (Florida St. and conference foes Utah and TCU).

Scenes from the weekend (UPDATED)

>(UPDATE #1):The beer festival out at the Pechanga Resort and Casino was a fine time. Even the Stevie Ray Vaughn tribute band wasn’t the absolute train wreck we thought it was going to be. All the heavyweights, with one notable exception, Alpine, were there in their West Coast/San Diego hop-tastic glory: Stone, Green Flash, Port, Ballast Point, Russian River, Mad River and every other flippin’ Northern Californian flowing body of water.

(one suggestion to the organizers: do it outdoors. “Festivals” by definition are outdoor events and that goes double for beer festivals in the summer. We were confined to a large ball room that was extremely cramped at the beginning of the afternoon but, fortunately, grew into itself as the afternoon progressed. The queuing behavior of the masses that developed organically to find the most efficient means of obtaining beer samples was a study in market economics… or at least would’ve been had we not been pre-occupied with organically finding the most efficient means of obtaining beer samples).

And one brewery that hardly qualifies as a microbrewery was there as well: Sam Adams. They stood out simply because they didn’t need to be there. Their brand is recognized nation-wide, they advertise nationally in the prime time and as we inferred, their capacity probably equals that of all the other breweries present combined. So, why go?

We’re not huge fans of their beers but we will say that it was gratifying to see Sam Adams there because it proves that they are still down for the cause. Remember, this was the little Boston brewery that got this whole micro/craft brew thing rolling back in the 80s and their presence at the beer festival demonstrated that while they are big time, they are not big-timin’. Big ups to Sam Adams for continuing to support the revolution.

(here endeth the update)



They were auctioning off memorabilia up at the beer festival at the Pechanga resort on Saturday, the proceeds of which were going to benefit Habitat for Humanity. However, as you can see below, some people would rather you go homeless than show any particular support for certain institutions of higher learning.
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As the sun slowly sets over the most non-descript day of the week..

There’s not a lot going on this evenings so…. how about some football?

The college football BCS poll is out and indeed Texas Tech lept all the way to #2 behind Alabama and just in front of Penn St.
Here’s the Top 10:

1. Alabama
2. Texas Tech
3. Penn St.
4. Texas
5. Florida
6. Oklahoma
7. USC
8. Utah
9. Oklahoma St.
10. Boise St.

USC actually drops two spots after its 56-0 drubbing of Washington. A lot has to happen for USC to get back into this thing and this speaks to having one bad half up in Corvalis earlier in the year, playing in a conference that is having a horrible year and then not getting any strength of schedule help… thanks Virginia… thanks Notre Dame.

Florida coach Urban Meyer was asked why he called two timeouts with under a minute remaining in the Gators’ 49-10 blowout of Georgia. “(Emanuel)Moody was running the ball real hard and I wanted to get him a couple of more carries. He deserved it.” And then when asked if he was trying to rub it in, Meyer responded: “No. Just trying to win the ballgame”.

We like Meyer. We believe he’s got quite a bit of “evil” in him… Florida Gators-vintage Stever Spurrier-like “evil”. A thirty-nine point whacking of an arch-rival and top-10 foe “evil”. An “evil” that inspires hilarious videos like this (please be patient as it may take a moment to load but it is one of the funniest things we’ve seen in a while.) No, Georgia coach Mark Richt did not enjoy his Halloween weekend.

And regarding the Southern Cal and Florida programs, here's what we had to say prior to last season:

"If trends continue as they have, we are looking forward to a nice little silent rivalry between USC and Florida in years to come. One can sense that since Meyer took over in Gainesville, the two programs have been eyeing each other, seeing what the other is up to. The locales, the coaches, the talent pools in which they reside… its all there. Stay tuned."

If USC can figure out how to win on the road in conference, we're going to get this epic matchup in the BCS title game sooner than later.

More great matchups abound this weekend as #1 Alabama goes to Death Valley to take on #16 LSU, USC is at home against #21 Cal, #8 Utah takes on #12 TCU on Thursday and in the prime time Saturday night, Texas Tech tries on its #2 ranking against the #9 ranked ‘Pokes of Oklahoma St.

This is what happens when you put Ohio St. on the schedule.

A soft schedule and hard finish for top-ranked USC?

An undefeated, 12-0, USC team shut out of the national championship game? Doubtful but definetely not out of the realm of possibility and just one more reason to love the BCS.

It happened back in '04 when an undefeated Auburn team got left out of the BCS championship game that was played instead by USC and Oklahoma. That is to say, USC played and Oklahoma got lost on their way to the Orange Bowl in a 55-19 drubbing where Osceola CC suited up in the Crimson and Cream.

With the Pac-10 stinking up the joint this year, the Trojans will be rooting for the Buckeyes to run the table in an also-pretty-suspect Big 10 (plus 1). Shouldn't be a problem as USC may need every one of those computer points should teams from both the Big 12 or SEC emerge undefeated.

And because of what we saw last year with LSU and idiot-savant coach, Les Miles, winning the whole shooting match with 2 losses, we would only be mildly shocked if the BCS puzzle palace spit out an 11-1 Missouri vs. an 11-1 Georgia for the championship game with an undefeated USC on the sidelines.

A 'Herd-Earned Reputation

USC opens up against Virginia tomorrow so this gives us the perfect opportunity to present YouTube clip below. As Colin Cowherd, ESPN radio host will spell-out, UVA’s tradition, both that of their fan base and football program, is less than stout.

Now, given the completely self-absorbed nature of the host, this thing wreaks of being contrived – we wouldn’t put it past Cowherd to set-up something like this, but its highly amusing just the same. Enjoy.



P.S. We had to fight for the title of the post. Its all about artistic integrity, right?

Not Happening...

Chris Dufresne, the college football writer for the L.A. Times gives his important dates on the college football calendar here.

He reminds us of why there is a very strong possibility we will, again, be in a foul mood in just a little over 4 months:

· Dec. 7: Final BCS standings release.

Aftermath: National sports columnist from hometown team left out of title game discovers the sport is controversial.

Aftermath II: President of school that finished No. 3 in standings calls news conference to unveil his eight-team playoff plan.

… but misreads the biggest non-conference match-up of the season when USC takes on Ohio State at the Coliseum:

· Sept. 13: Ohio State at USC.

As big as it gets, but the loser is not out of the title chase. Ohio State lost at home last year to Illinois in November and still got back to the title game. USC could have overcome the Stanford stinker and played for the title had the Trojans not lost to Oregon.

The “you’re not done just because you lost one game” is now the conventional wisdom in our brave new BCS-world, especially since LSU won it last year with two losses but... Ohio St. is a different case. Yes, a one-loss USC team can play for the BCS championship but a one-loss Ohio State will not play for the same and you can take that to the bank. Voters will not be willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a one-loss Ohio State team precisely because of the fact they’ve been rolled in the last two championships games. Unless they arrive in December undefeated, they ain’t gettin' a 3rd chance.

Everyone has seen enough. Just say “no” to plodding Midwest teams against speed teams from the South and the West. Rich Rodriguez could not have come soon enough to Michigan and to the Big 10.

O Happy Day.

Time was, one had to wait until the 4th of July to get his college football fix. No longer, as Memorial Day marks the roll out of many of the college football preview issues. Lindy's was first out of the chute that we saw this past weekend and looky-there: its Mongo's namesake gracing the cover of the mag.

For whatever its worth, Lindy's has Georgia squaring off against USC for the big crystal football. Should make for some interesting discussions within Mongo's extended Clan.

We'll have more on all this later.

One of these Players is expected to get a lot of playing time next year

When we first learned this past fall that teenage actor/singer Romeo Miller (aka Lil’ Romeo) was being recruited to play hoops at USC, we figured the kid must have some game. Afterall, USC and coach Tim Floyd have made good progress towards establishing USC as a consistent top-25 program nationally and have put themselves in position to go after the top high school players in the nation.

Well, turns out that Miller (who also happens to be the son of former rapper and current all-around entertainment mogul, Master P) does indeed have game... that is to say, if one’s definition of "game" happens to be "is good friends with Demar DeRozan" of Compton who is the No. 2 rated player in the nation according to Rivals.com. Story here.
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At 5-10 and possessing a bum knee, Miller played in only 8 of his team’s 27 games because of that knee averaging 8.6 points a game for that L.A. area scourge, Beverly Hills High School.

Both Miller and DeRozan have signed letters of intent to play for the Trojans next year.

Coach Floyd has been accused of offering a scholarship to Miller as part of a package deal for DeRozan. For his part, Floyd said that Miller was “a good little player” but didn’t deny that Miller’s fame played a part, "The more buzz you can create, the more news stories you can create, the better served you are as a program." ... and Demar is showing up when, coach?
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And speaking of USC… inspired performance today beating the #7 ranked Stanford Cardinal who with their 2nd straight loss here in L.A. (lost on Thursday to UCLA in OT) may have played their way out of the #3 seed in the South region as projected by ESPN.

UCLA slept-walk through their game against Cal this afternoon but in another improbable come-back (that would be 3 straight now) scored 5 straight points in the final 30 seconds to beat Cal 81-80 and most likely locked-up a #1 seed in the West region in the process. Our doubts about the Final Four prospects for the Bruins have only grown this past week. Our ‘barometer boy’, Josh Shipp had 12 points on just 5-13 shooting though he did hit the game-winner.

H/T: Mongo is responsible for the primary research as well as this... which Mongo was thinking was Lil' Romeo and which commentors, in their own vernacular, commended for being a long-lost example of hip-hop that was witty, funny and... good. Nice work, Mongo.

Some Bowl Season Thoughts

As the bowl season winds down to its merciful conclusion (rumor has it there will be a championship game of sorts sometime next week), we had some thoughts about the games, teams and programs we’ve watched thus far:

Outside an epic collapse against Stanford, the ’07 season had to feel like Groundhog Day all over again for the USC Trojans. An 11-2 season, 2 conference losses, another thumping of Notre Dame and all other non-conference opponents and another ass-kicking of a hopelessly out-classed Big Ten team in the Rose Bowl made it a virtual mirror image of the ’06 season. And take a look at their schedule next year and ask yourself if a “three-peat” is not in the offing.

And for you BCS supporters out there, after watching SC destroy Illinois (and their spread-option offense), ask yourself if you really think this BCS thing works. We know it’s a slippery slope to play the comparative win/loss thing but SC humiliated the team that Ohio St. loss to and Ohio St. will play a LSU team that will probably be the first (and hopefully ever) 2-loss national champion. What a great system!


Oklahoma…. We don’t want to say Bob Stoops is on notice…. but Bob Stoops is on notice. We commented before the regular season that though Stoops was not on the hot seat, Sooner fans were starting to get a little edgy that Oklahoma had not appeared in the BCS title game since beating Florida St. after the 2000 season. And that fact itself would not be so bad if the Sooners had not dropped 4 of their last 5 BCS bowl games including a 20-point loss last night to West Virginia, the epic upsest loss to Boise St. last year and a 55-19 thanks-for-showing-up-and-collecting-the-game check "appearance" against USC 3 years ago in the BCS title game. For one of the 6 or 7 mega-programs in the nation that expects to compete for the championship every year, this is entirely unacceptable.

In fact, as opposed to Oklahoma, its precisely because USC shows up to not just win but abuse their BCS opponent every year, that makes these multiple loss seasons much more tolerable (a 5-1 record in their last 6 while outscoring their opponents by an average of 23 points in those 5 victories).

Great win by 10 pt. underdog Michigan in Coach Lloyd Carr’s last game against Florida in the Gator Bowl. What was up, though, with incoming coach Rich Rodriguez (formerly of West Virginia) on the Michigan sideline? We understand that Rodriguez was invited by Carr himself but the class move would’ve been to politely decline so as to not be a distraction and to allow Carr one last moment of glory as a Michigan's Man.

Kansas (and perhaps the largest man you will ever see roaming the sidelines) takes on Virginia Tech tonight in the Orange Bowl for your antidote to the Hawkeye Caucii. Orange Bowl... hmmm... Hey, do you think we'll see these guys?

Farewell?

We'll touch on it later but the whole college football/BCS controversy has given us a headache and quite honestly, we don't feel like talking about if for a while.

Not to worry, though, dear readers.... we've asked the Substitute to give us his thoughts on the matter and also his take on the possibility that the USC Trojans may be leaving the Coliseum to play their home games at the Rose Bowl, current home of their archrivals, the UCLA Bruins.

Outside of a semester studying abroad, the Sub' has been to pretty much every home USC game there at the Coliseum since childhood so he will have a unique perspective on this matter. (Picture here was taken by our guest poster from the game against the Bruins on Saturday)

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Substitute aka Mongo.....

For this college football fan, three dominant themes crept into mind during the final football Saturday for 2007:

1) The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. As you may be aware, USC has threatened to pull up stakes and travel its football team 10 miles up the highway to the Rose Bowl if the Coliseum Commission fails to make certain concessions. Rather than getting involved in the politics, I spent my 4 hours in the Coliseum during the UCLA game looking around at various spots of incredible sports moments: the Mary Decker-Slaney tripping in the '84 Olympics, the Garo Yepremian whiff kick during the clincher for their perfect season that has become a staple blooper moment, the site of the Great Wall of China during the Dodger tenure at the stadium (BTW -- A Dodger-Red Sox charity game is scheduled for the Coliseum in March); the spot where Bo Jackson's hip finally gave out; the end zone where Hollywood Henderson put an exclamation mark on a Cowboy NFC Championship in a driving rainstorm by dunking the ball over the goal post; the field where UCLA's Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington ran wild for early Bruin teams; And, of course, the Coliseum's dominant theme of Trojan teams running roughshod over the entirety of college football since the 1930's. And all for the low low cost of about $500,000 originally! No stadium before, since, or ever will match the history made under the Peristyle. Move to more "plush" digs?? We hope not.

2) The BCS Mess. As the final two pieces came spilling out of the puzzle (rather than falling into place) on Saturday night it was a stunner to hear the first reports of USC not getting the next best team available after Big 10 Champ Ohio State slid into the BCS title gme, but was instead getting a Big 10 also-ran. What for? Since the Rose Bowl sold its soul to the BCS 8 years ago, why go through with the charade of "tradition" in getting a Pac 10 - Big 10 matchup when, 1) The said tradition dictates that it is the Pac 10 champion v. the Big 10 champion (not a Big 10 also-ran), and 2) The Rose Bowl existed for decades at its inception without a Big 10-Pac 10 matchup being mandated. Why the Rose Bowl Committee wouldn't instead take the next best matchup is beyond me.

3) The tilted field that is the race for the national championship to begin with. Think of this: Even before the first ball is tee'd up for kickoff on Labor Day Weekend, half the teams in college football are in effect eliminated from national championship contention. In a year when teams with 1 or even 2 losses are selected to play for the national championship, can someone give me an estimate as to when it is likely that a school from a non-BCS conference is going to get the votes for a title game appearance?

All that said... can't wait for next September!!

- The Substitute

Poinsettia Bowl Update and Other College Action

B-Daddy here. Navy's record setting win over North Texas, 74-62, (that's not a basketball score, Navy basketball doesn't score that much) sets them up with a date in the Poinsettia Bowl on December 20th. See you there. This is turning into one of the better Navy seasons in my lifetime. Now, we just have to Beat Army!



Got to watch almost all of the USC-Cal game. Mrs. Daddy and I were hosting a party for teenagers; so once the guests arrived it was broadly hinted that I should make myself scarce. No problemo. I was struck by how inconsistent both teams looked and it wasn't just the constant rain. Pre-season, this was the marquee Pac-10 match up. Tonight, USC's defense looked incapable of stopping Cal, but then Cal would make a mistake: fumble, interception, or stupid penalty and the Trojans were spared. The Trojan offense alternated between unstoppable and inscrutable. I don't know why it happens, but these Trojans seem to lack the intensity and focus of prior years. Dean has a theory, but I really was enjoying the success of USC over the past few seasons.

With Ohio State losing, I imagine there will not be a unanimous number one in the polls tomorrow. But I wonder why Kansas wouldn't be picked for the top spot. They are the only unbeaten team in a BCS division, even with a slightly suspect schedule. No harm in voting for them as number one, because if they beat Missouri and then beat their probable opponent in a Big-12 championship, Oklahoma, who could deny that they are number one. However, given the way the unbeatens have tumbled this year, I am making the following bold prediction: Neither Kansas nor Hawaii, the only remaining unbeatens, will finish the season without a loss. So sure am I, that if wrong, I will refund the cost of your subscription to Beers with Demo. (If only Dean could figure out how to make this blogging thing pay, that would be sweet.)

It's the Schedule, Stupid.

I realize that not picking USC to win the BCS championship is akin to picking the field against an even-money horse in a field of 12 but I'll edge a little further out on that sturdy limb by saying it won't be LSU, the other consensus favorite, either. Now, if USC does get the BCS championship game, they will win it. Winning their bowl games at the end of the season (minus a super-human effort by Vince Young and several bone-headed plays by the Trojans in that epic Rose Bowl game two years ago) has not been the problem, its been avoiding the in-conference snake pits that has proved to be somewhat troublesome. Just one out-of-conference regular season loss in the last 5 years and a 4-1 bowl record while somehow managing to drop 4 conference games over that same span. This year, they are on the road against Nebraska, Notre Dame, Oregon, Cal and Arizona St. Solid to Very Good teams all and outside of ASU, perhaps (who they get in November instead of the ungodly heat of Sept. or Oct.), teams with decided advantages at home.

But that's not what bothers me the most about the Trojans. Last year, they could not run the ball consistently and it hurt them. Chauncy Washington, C.J. Gable and Emanuel Moody all showed flashes but not enough to give John David Booty, a first year starter, time to settle into the offense and he, in turn, struggled at times. This situation continued all year and through the first half of the Rose Bowl at Michigan where apparently at half-time a light bulb went off in the heads of the collective brain trust of the coaching staff... "Hmm... let's see: Can't run the ball, but we do have a very good quarterback, a massive offensive line and a physically dominant set of receivers.... hmmm... maybe we should try passing the ball - try passing the ball A LOT." Poor, poor, Leon Hall.

And this year, it has not appeared that any one of the 8 or 9 four and five-star recruits that are on the Trojan depth chart at tailback has stepped up yet to be the feature back. Maybe someone will at fall practices which just opened this week... and now maybe it won't be as much of a problem now that Booty has a full season under his belt and Lane Kiffin has moved on to the pros which means that Steve Sarkisian has full control of the offense which also means that tactical changes to the offensive philososphy won't wait until the last 30 minutes of the season.

Yes, the Defense will be menacing but with a similarly talented team last year and a schedule that set up much better, the Trojans still managed to lose 2 in the regular season. Unless they can establish a running game, though, I foresee a similar fate this year.