Sunday, October 07, 2007

Look! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a ... pig?

The craziest college football season I've ever seen continued unabated today, as there appears to be nobody in the country that wants to challenge LSU on the way to their championship.

Consider for a moment this list of unbeaten teams:
LSU, Ohio State - not a big surprise at this pont
California, Missouri, Arizona State, Boston College - middle of the road BCS teams having a good year, we'll have to see if they hold up through a long season
Hawaii - the obligatory non-BCS unbeaten
Kansas, South Florida, Cincinnati, Connecticut - Seriously, WTF? Did anyone, anywhere, pick these teams to be undefeated halfway through the year?

Besides LSU, how many of those teams did you have picked in your preseason top 5? 10? 25?

I'd recap all of the zaniness this season, but I'd rather stick to the basics of this week.

We'll start in Southern California, where there were a pair of college football games going on at the same time across town from each other.

USC were 41-point favorites over Stanford, and were protecting a record 38 game home winning streak. Easy win, right? Apparently, Stanford didn't get the memo, beating the vaunted Trojans 24-23.

Across town, Notre Dame was staring down the barrel of their 0-8 start, sporting the nation's worst offense and no significant signs of life. UCLA almost beat Notre Dame in their own stadium last year with Brady Quinn at the helm with almost all of the same players, and now they got the Irish in their house with revenge on their mind. Easy win for the Bruins? Apparently Maurice Crum didn't get the memo. Notre Dame won 20-6 after forcing 7 turnovers.

Earlier, the 12th ranked Georgia Bulldogs were supposed to roll over a .500 Tennessee squad en route to their showdown with Florida in a couple of weeks. Apparently, Georgia's offense didn't get the memo until the second half, when it was too little, too late. Georgia got smacked down to the tune of 35-14.

#5 Wisconsin just had to dispatch the long-suffering and unranked Illinois squad to keep their national title aspirations alive. I'm beginning to think the guy that was supposed to deliver the memos should get fired, as Rashard Mendenhall didn't get his memo either, rolling over the Badgers to lead his team to a 31-26 victory.

Add on the 7 Top Ten losses from last week, and you have a lot of tired poll voters tomorrow morning.

With the LSU Tigers battling back against the Florida Gators, picking the top team in the country isn't too hard. It's 2-25 that gets kind of tricky.

My rankings at the halfway point:

1. LSU
2. California
3. Ohio State
4. Missouri
5. South Florida
6. Kansas
7. Cincinnati
8. Arizona State
9. Boston College (I just threw up a little bit in my mouth)
10. Connecticut
11. Hawaii
12. South Carolina (L at LSU)
13. Virginia Tech (L at LSU)
14. Oregon (L vs. California)
15-T. Purdue (L vs. Ohio State)
15-T. Illinois (L vs. Missouri)
17. West Virginia (L at South Florida)
18. Kentucky (L at South Carolina)
19. Wisconsin (L at Illinois)
20. Indiana (L vs. Illinois)
21. Virginia (L at Wyoming)
22. Wyoming (L at Boise State)
23. Oklahoma (L at Colorado)
24. Florida State (L at Clemson)
25. Boise State (L at Washington)

These rankings reflect what a team has earned on the field this year, rather than hypothetical postulating about neutral fields and reputation. So I don't want outraged comments about how SC would beat so-and-so. 'Cause they lost to Stanford - find me a worse loss among my top 25. The top 10 include ALL of the undefeateds, as I feel that you deserve to be at the top until you lose. And don't even bitch about your [insert 2-loss team here]. That means you, crazy Florida fan. You lost twice. You no longer matter, to me or to anyone.

1 comment:

Wacko said...

poke, poke, poke.