Why I love College Football!

This weekend was great. It highlights the beauty of college football. Ranked teams struggling, and some losing, to unranked or supposedly inferior opponents. Motivation, coaching, effort, schemes, matchups, etc. all matter. A quick recap.

The SEC officials essentially handed the game to Florida down the stretch. Two bogus automatic first down penalties on Arkansas on Florida's game-tying drive set them up with first and goal on the 7, which Florida, to its credit, executed on and scored. Then on Florida's game-winning drive, Arkansas' DB made a break on a pass and would have intercepted it but was CLEARLY interfered with by the Florida WR. No call. Florida should have been moved back 15 yards, making a field goal more difficult (albeit still make-able). Anyway, the point is: #1 Florida struggled at home against unranked and fairly unspectacular to this point Arkansas. Which begs the question: what is wrong with Florida's offense?

Boise State and Cincinnati were both unspectacular in their wins earlier in the week, on the road, against outmanned opponents. Boise's game was in doubt at the end, though they were fairly dominant for the majority of the game. South Florida made every mistake in the book against Cincy, and was still in it in the fourth quarter.

Coming in to the Red River Rivalry, Texas appeared to have all the steam, but got steamrolled for much of the first half. I turned to my wife at halftime with OU up only 6-3 and said: you can't dominate Texas for 4 quarters, you can't afford to only be up 3 after dominating for two. It turned out I was right as the second half played fairly evenly, with a slight enough edge to Texas that they won the game. Andre Ware, who predicted OU would lose 4 games this season, including BYU, Miami, and Texas, is looking like a prophet these days.

All the well-known pundits said Va Tech would clobber underdog but at home Ga Tech. One of those lesser known guys, me, told you Ga Tech would pull it out, though my score wasn't very close. I said 27-24, it was 28-23.

Notre Dame had a Golden chance to knock off USC (or at least force OT) but poor clock management (AGAIN!) led to their demise. I've seen way too much of this so far this season: they had first and goal with 38 seconds left and the game ended after a third down play. Pick up the pace. Pathetic.

Purdue handled Ohio State ALL game. A big flurry at the end allowed Ohio State a chance to tie it late, but they were down two scores for most of the game.

Wisconsin imploded after getting off to a 10-0 lead against Iowa. Either Iowa is lucky or good, i.e. teams have continually imploded against them, I can't tell yet if that's Iowa being good or Iowa's opponents all being bad. I guess I'll give them the benefit of the doubt this week until I make my picks for another Big Ten road game.

Tech laid a beating on Nebraska. The home fans were booing. I love it!
Mizzou got screwed by another poor replay official and took away any chance of a comeback by them, but it was a good game.
Colorado took advantage of a porous KU D and came away with the unexpected W. Poor coaching again in this one: KU down 4 with 4 minutes to go elects to go for it on 4th and goal instead of taking 3 points. Their final drive put them in field goal range with a few ticks left, if they had kicked the field goal, they would have had a much easier chance at winning that game. Oops.
San Diego State took advantage of a porous BYU secondary to keep the game close. BYU also went after a couple stupid 4th down plays electing to not kick a field goal to put themselves up 10 and electing to not punt from their own 40-yard line with a 7-point lead. Stupid.
UNLV played Utah well for about 10 of the 60 minutes and twice gave the home fans reason to believe they could pull off the upset, once late in the first half and once early in the fourth quarter. In the end, they finally did what they do best: roll over and play dead. Speaking of dead, anyway hear anything about Mike Sanford's future head coaching career? Another OC trying to be an HC and failing.

This is what college football is all about: David vs. Goliath. David got his fair share this weekend, and I'm hoping for more of the same this upcoming weekend. My POTENTIAL upsets: Hawaii over Boise State, Michigan State over Iowa, Clemson over Miami, BYU over TCU, Washington over Oregon, Virginia (don't laugh, they've won 3 in a row) over Georgia Tech (letdown game?), Michigan over Penn State, Air Force over Utah (don't laugh, Utah struggles with Air Force: 2008, 7-point win; 2007, 8-point loss at home; 2006 and 2005, 3-point wins), and Oklahoma over Kansas (???). Just potentials, I'm not saying all (or any) of them will happen, just saying, it should be another fun weekend. Apparently, ESPN read my blog from Saturday night, as they are heading to Provo for College Game Day for the showdown of TCU-BYU.