Saturday, October 28, 2006

College Football Made Interesting

...and cue the chaos.

I kind of figured that USC would lose at some point. They had Oregon, Cal, and UCLA still left on their schedule. But Oregon State? The Trojans couldn't deal with the Beavers? (Which is amusing on far too many levels.)

So now there are six undefeateds. Two will face off later in the season (Ohio State, Michigan). Three share another conference and will all play each other later (Louisville, Rutgers, West Virginia - incidentally, how many of you thought you would ever be seeing Rutgers as one of the last six undefeated teams in the nation?). One gets absolutely no respect (Boise State). Should the Big East teams beat each other up (possible) or get screwed by the BCS (likely), there are eleven one-loss teams that could lay claim to a spot too (BC, Wake, Texas, Texas A&M, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, Tulsa, Cal, USC, Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Auburn). That's seventeen teams still somewhat alive in the title race. That should narrow a bit as BC and Wake play, USC plays Cal and ND, Texas and A&M play, the four SEC teams go through that meat-grinder, and Tulsa continues to play in Conference USA. Even so, we could end this season like 2004, where eight teams had legitimate arguments for title game consideration. Ah, but who needs a playoff?

Oh, and Duke? Good job making Chris Nickson look like Michael Vick. Seriously, there are high school teams that could keep a freshman Vandy quarterback from getting five touchdowns (two passing, three running). Incidentally, Vandy only needs two more wins to become bowl eligible. Unfortunately, its remaining three games are against Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Jeff for the Tulsa mention; although even as an alum, I can't see the Hurricane getting high enough in the BCS standings regardless of continuing to win. Outside of Houston, the remaining schedule is wretched (and this is the same Houston team who lost at home to LA-Lafayette). Of the Big 12 teams mentioned Texas has the best shot as A&M still has Oklahoma prior to the UT showdown.

All that said, yes there should be a playoff How many teams and under what conditions are topics for another day.

Mike said...

Funny, I never thought of Chris Nickson as a freshman, particularly since I saw him play a few downs last year at the LSU game :-P

Kentucky is imminently winnable, though it always is and we still fuck it up half the time. Tennessee will be out for blood after last year. Florida might be too, given that we showed them up pretty well on national TV last year, but I'd put them as the more likely second win. Oh well, as Robert Pollard would say, "Everybody's got a hold on hope, it's the last thing that's holding me."

And yeah, as usual, the BCS is totally hosed.