College Football General

[BigRedMan]

I somehow want Clemson and Boise State as the only two unbeatens left at the end of the year. That would bring me great joy.

[aTm]

I don't want Clemson undefeated because their OC is Chad Morris (A&M grad, offensive guru, former texas high school coaching legend) and we already have fucking nutcases running around saying that the #7 offense in the country isnt good enough and that Sherman needs to hire an OC (hint hint) rather than run the offense himself.

[dave_rickart]

that's easy, you just pair up Clemson and Boise in one of the other BCS bowls (Orange?), as a consolation prize.

[THE_WIZARD_]

I just want all of you to die.

[Dr. Nostron]

That was a cool list of #1 vs #2 - Noles are 3-3 which is I guess what'd you expect.

Victims:

Nebraska
Florida
Va Tech

Assholes:

Miami
Notre Dame
Tennessee

[JRB]

that's easy, you just pair up Clemson and Boise in one of the other BCS bowls (Orange?), as a consolation prize.

That would be unlikely should both of those teams finish undefeated, since the Orange Bowl gets the last pick of at-large teams and almost certainly will be stuck with the Big East champ in that spot. The teams could always try to swing a deal to get the game they wanted, but it wouldn't make much sense for the Sugar Bowl to pass on the Broncos as opponents for a one-loss Alabama or LSU team. If Oklahoma wins the Big X(II), the Fiesta might want an OU-BSU rematch badly enough to take Boise State with the first at-large pick.

[JRB]

The short versions of the last two Top Tens(since I couldn't be bothered to write them):

1. Alabama

2. LSU

3. Oklahoma

4. Boise State

5. Stanford

6. Wisconsin

7. Clemson

8. Oklahoma State

9. Oregon

10. Arkansas

Now that those rankings have been rendered obsolete by an insanely entertaining Saturday night of football, the current Top Ten:

1. Alabama. I'll have more to say on Alabama-LSU next week(as will everyone else), but I'll go with this for now: the two halves of the Tennessee game perfectly encapsulate Alabama's season to this point. On offense, they can look surprisingly ordinary for long stretches. A.J. McCarron's accuracy goes when he isn't consistent with his feet, the offensive line can struggle against athletic defensive tackles. While their receivers can all do the job, they don't scare you outside they way they did with Julio Jones, and McCarron can get a little overdependent on Marquise Maze. They can get bogged down-- for a while. Then all of a sudden, they can flip a switch, and the ground game becomes so dominant that the play-action game is lethal. As for the defense, well, you better hit them with big plays over the top, because they haven't shown much vulnerability to anything else yet. Of course, they haven't played anybody the caliber of...

2. LSU. The program goes on probation before the season starts. The starting QB gets himself arrested the week of the opener against a top five team that played for the national title last year. The best defensive player and the starting tailback get themselves suspended for the game against the defending national champions. They've missed their best offensive lineman for the last two games, and another of their best all season. Most coaches would be having ulcers having to deal with all this turmoil-- Nick Saban might have murdered someone by now if all this had happened on his watch. But Les Miles? He grins, shrugs it off, says something unintelligible, eats some grass, and just finds more ridiculously talented players on his depth chart. So, of course, they beat Oregon handily, the backup QB plays better than the starter last season did, the reshuffled offensive line has been abusing people all season. Against the defending champs, the fourth-string tailback was at times the best player on the field, Tyrann Mathieu's replacement scores a defensive touchdown, and LSU beats Auburn so badly the referees should have stopped the game in the third quarter and awarded it to LSU via TKO. Les Miles is The Joker of college football-- he is an agent of chaos. The more ludicrous the circumstances, the more Les Miles thrives. While Nick Saban ruthlessly prepares for SEC Armageddon on November 5th by watching film of every LSU game Les Miles has coached, Miles might not even bother preparing at all. Does he look like a guy with a plan? More importantly, with this team, does he actually need a plan?

3. Stanford. Jeff Sagarin's computer ranking currently has Stanford, which just became the first team in the poll era to win 10 consecutive games by 25 or more points, at #21. I can only assume this is entirely due to Stanford's relatively weak schedule, but still, this team's in the top five nationally in scoring, scoring defense, rush defense, sacks, tackles for loss, passing efficiency, third down efficiency, fewest turnovers, fewest sacks allowed...you get the idea. They've done exactly what a great team should have done against their opposition to this point, and in the one game in which they faced a reasonably good opponent, they absolutely trampled Washington. Now, it remains to be seen if this is actually a great team-- they get USC in the Coliseum and Oregon at home in the next three games, so we're about to find out. But I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb when I say that only a computer ranking could come up with this Stanford team at #21 right now.

4. Boise State. I can't move Boise State up after the struggle with Air Force, but I certainly can't punish them for it, either. This is the same team that beat possible SEC East champ Georgia in Georgia by two touchdowns, and I don't think it's fair for pollsters to have griped constantly about Boise State blowing out weak competition in the WAC and then to drop them for not being able to blow out better competition in a better conference. Besides they'll probably be getting back to blowouts next week, as they visit moribund UNLV, a team that can't throw, can't score, and can't stop anybody from scoring. If the Air Force game is any indication, though, they might have trouble with the three-week stretch against TCU, San Diego State and Wyoming. They're not out of the woods just yet.

5. Clemson. OK, this was a pretty neat story at first, but now things are starting to get serious. With where they are in the BCS standings, and given that they'll likely pass Boise State if they win out, they need to win their last five and have Oklahoma State lose, and they're probably in the BCS title game(a Stanford loss would help, but I don't know that it's necessary). They've got the offensive pieces-- the gamebreaker at WR, the chain-moving TE, the every-down back, the play-making, efficient QB-- you want to see in a legitimate contender. As for the defense, I'd think it's not good enough. It's terribly difficult to give up 38 points in a game in which you win the turnover battle 6-0, but Clemson managed it against UNC. Still, I thought Auburn's defense wasn't good enough last year, but those Tigers could make plays when they had to have them. Right now, Clemson has a little of that same sort of magic going on. Georgia Tech's option attack ought to give Clemson's defense problems, but Georgia Tech's passing game might give Georgia Tech so many problems that it won't matter.

6. Oklahoma State. They can get yards and points in bunches, and they play a high-risk, high-reward defense that masks some of their talent deficiencies on defense. The upside of their defense: they lead the nation in turnover margin. The downside: a lot of crappy tackling. This might be one of the least fundamentally sound tackling teams to ever crack the top five of the major polls. I don't know if Chris Spielman has ever been in the booth for an oSu game on ESPN, but if he catches this team in person this year, his head might explode. But as long as they're turning the ball back over to Brandon Weedon, Justin Blackmon, et al., they'll have a chance. Are they the best team in the country? According to the computers, they are. That's utterly mind-boggling to me, but again, Auburn last year made the spread-and-shred offense/just-good-enough defense formula work last year.

7. Michigan State. It's taken a lot of work to change the mentality in the Michigan State football program from one that expects mediocrity and stupidity to one that demands excellence. Saturday night against Wisconsin, we saw Mark Dantonio's hard work pay off. That was a thrilling, program-redefining sort of win, provided that Sparty doesn't let the euphoria last too long. They go to Nebraska this week, and get a dangerous trip to Iowa two weeks after that-- Iowa buried MSU in Iowa City last year, and the Hawkeyes have developed the sort of passing game that could give MSU's blitz-happy defense nightmares. If Michigan State can handle Nebraska and Iowa, though, they're almost certainly through to the Big Ten's inaugural title game, since they're not likely to get much resistance from Indiana, Northwestern or Minnesota. I dislike both Michigan State and Wisconsin, but I wouldn't mind seeing an MSU-Wisconsin rematch in Indianapolis.

8. Oregon. You've got to be impressed with Chip Kelly's ability to retool his offense on the fly. He loses LaMichael James and Darron Thomas to injury, no problem. Just plug in Brian Bennett and run people out of the building. Bennett, though, isn't much of a passer yet, and I don't see this team winning in Palo Alto without a passing game. If Thomas can come back healthy, Oregon can pull that one off-- their tempo and perimeter speed tied Stanford in knots last year, as the Ducks rebounded from an early 21-0 deficit to win going away, and Stanford hasn't seen that sort of speed this year.

9. Arkansas. Dennis Johnson's big day finally gave Arkansas the sort of dominant ground game they were expecting to get from Knile Davis coming into the season, and it came at a most opportune time for the Hogs, as they needed to regain control of a game against Ole Miss that was slipping away at an alarming speed early. Still, it was Ole Miss, so Arkansas managed to escape. The road trip to Vanderbilt might be uncomfortable for a while, but the Hogs should have too much talent outside for the Commodores to match up. Nothing's going to be easy for this team-- they're still prone to terrible defensive lapses, especially in coverage-- but they've got a decent shot at heading into Baton Rouge on the day after Thanksgiving at 10-1. LSU's lost three of their last four against the Razorbacks, and the last six games in the Arkansas-LSU series have been decided by a total of 21 points. I'm just saying.

10. Kansas State. You want to know why K-State's made it back here? One big reason: against the four best teams they've played(Texas Tech, Miami, Baylor, and Missouri), they're +7 in turnover margin. Nothing they do is that extraordinary, but so far they've managed to screw up less than the opposition in critical spots. They're still a bit fortunate to be where they are-- they were a foot away from losing to the 'Canes-- and teams like this tend to crash hard when they finally run into better talent that's determined not to screw up. I think that happens to the Wildcats this week, as they take on what ought to be an angry Oklahoma team. Still, this has been an impressive run for Bill Snyder and company. Bringing K-State from football purgatory into the upper echelon of the sport was tough enough the first time-- I think a lot of folks didn't think Snyder could do it twice. As for the surprisingly departed Sooners, I managed to catch an ESPN discussion this week on the OU-Texas Tech game, in which a ranting Skip Bayless demanded that Bob Stoops be fired for losing Saturday night. All I can say in response to that proposition is: Mr. Bayless, seek help.

Next Five: Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Virginia Tech

[aTm]

JRB, just to let you know if you want to you can also post long content like this to the goatpen home page as well.

http://www.goatpen.net/wp-admin/post-ne ... _type=post

should take you directly there, or hit add new post or whatever from the top of the home page. Once you add, I'll approve and it gets published to the site home page.

[AlabamAlum]

Most coaches would be having ulcers having to deal with all this turmoil-- Nick Saban might have murdered someone right now if all this had happened on his watch. But Les Miles? He grins, shrugs it off, says something unintelligible, eats some grass, and just finds more ridiculously talented players on his depth chart. So, of course, they beat Oregon handily, the backup QB plays better than the starter last season did, the reshuffled offensive line has been abusing people all season. Against the defending champs, the fourth-string tailback was at times the best player on the field, Tyrann Mathieu's replacement scores a defensive touchdown, and LSU beats Auburn so badly the referees should have stopped the game in the third quarter and awarded it to LSU via TKO. Les Miles is The Joker of college football-- he is an agent of chaos. The more ludicrous the circumstances, the more Les Miles thrives. While Nick Saban ruthlessly prepares for SEC Armageddon on November 5th by watching film of every LSU game Les Miles has coached, Miles might not even bother preparing at all. Does he look like a guy with a plan? More importantly, with this team, does he actually need a plan?

lmao. Great paragraph.

[Dr. Nostron]

Do not feed Bezerklie.

[aTm]

West Virginia to joing Big 12

[rob f]

I just want all of you to die.

....as always.

Hi Wiz!

[crashcourse]

kstate will disappear from JRB's list quickly after we get through with OU/OSU/TX/TA&M

3-1 in that stretch should get us mentioned in the BCS

2-2 and sanantonio alamo bowl here we come

[dave_rickart]

smart move by West Virginia.

at this point, Big East will be left with service academies and I-AA teams.

[aTm]

http://www.goatpen.net/?p=63

[AugustWest]

are you seeing the crowd at the Pitt game? holy fuck. great addition to the ACC Swoff you stupid motherfucker.

[Jungle Rat]

http://www.goatpen.net/?p=63

Sad

[dave_rickart]

are you seeing the crowd at the Pitt game? holy fuck. great addition to the ACC Swoff you stupid motherfucker.

better crowd than you see at a Duke, Wake or Miami home game...

[AugustWest]

Wake and Miami both have better crowds. that was pathetic for a program that claims 9 championships.

[dave_rickart]

West Virginia to joing Big 12

"West Virginia is one of the founding members of the Big East's football conference, created in 1991. Of the eight original members for the Big East, only Rutgers remains."


Wow. 7 of 8 left within 20 years...