College Football, Week 5: Better Late Than Never

#19 Vanderbilt, idle: Boy, we sure pissed Ole Miss off, didn't we? The week after losing to us in a madcap game in Oxford, the Rebels turn around and beat then-#4 Florida in Gainesville. The SEC: No easy games for anyone. Except maybe Arkansas, this year.

(Postscript: I asked a Razorbacks fan I know if she's missing Houston Nutt yet. She said that she's still glad that Nutt's gone. God only knows why - Nutt seems to be doing pretty well with the smoking crater left by Ed Orgeron at Ole Miss. And Arkansas has decent players that are suffering under Bobby Petrino.)

Virginia Tech 35, Nebraska 30: I don't care who you are or how crappy Nebraska has been the past few years. Lincoln is a damn tough place to get a victory. The sign that the Hokies we know and love might be back: they opened the scoring with a safety off a blocked punt. They forced two costly turnovers - one that set up a touchdown, and the other that killed the Huskers' final drive.

And yeah, I didn't realize that Tech could score 35 points either.

#17 Utah 37, Weber State 21: This score includes 14 Weber State points in garbage time against Utah's scrubs, so it's not as close as it looks. But this was still not a good week for Utah, since they had to watch their next opponent knock off the #1 team in the country. Oregon State's for real, folks, and if Utah continues to play 30 minutes out of every ball game they'll be in for a rough ride. The good news? The Utes can actually make some noise by beating the Beavers. Without that USC win, Oregon State would have been a classic no-help game. Now they can get a little boost out of it.

BCS buster watch: TCU got embarrassed by Oklahoma, so that leaves Utah, BYU, and Boise State. And until idle BYU gives up a point - they've gone almost a month without doing so, and they go to Logan to take on woeful Utah State, so they could continue that trend this week - they're still the prohibitive favorites. After this week gave us 2007 flashbacks, I heard some mumblings that should a major-conference meltdown occur, BYU could end up being the ultimate BCS party-crashers... and get to play for a national championship. Is it possible? The Cougars are #8 now. Four Big 12 teams and two SEC teams are in front of them, plus Penn State (which still has away games against Wisconsin and Ohio State left). The chances for self-immolation up there look pretty good, really. It's worth noting that an undefeated South Florida team (currently #10) would probably get the nod over an undefeated BYU team, even though the Big East is far weaker than the Mountain West. Life's not fair, folks.