We’ve accepted the gracious invite of SBNation’s Crimson and Cream Machine to exchange some inside info on our respective teams during the Holiday lull. C&C’s interview with us can be found here.

Orange and Blue Hue: Let’s start with injuries. For some reason, guys whose name starts with “Demarc” are getting injured left and right on your team. Talk about the loss of Murray and Granger and how it will impact this game.

Crimson and Cream Machine: The loss of DeMarco Murray will hurt the team a lot worse than DeMarcus Granger. Oklahoma is fairly deep along the defensive line and rotates all of their linemen. Grander was in the second wave of defensive tackles to come into the game. He’s good but not one of the best two on the team and the Sooners will just break into their depth to replace him. His loss will be significant but not nearly as significant as DeMarco Murray.

Murray is the team leader in all-purpose yards. He is a lightning fast runner, a dangerous kick returner and an excellent safety valve for Sam Bradford on passing downs. He is irreplaceable but Mossis Madu will do his best. He had an excellent Big 12 Championship Game but still has me worried just based on experience or lack of.
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THE DISASSOCIATED PRESS

Oklahoma vs. Florida, a matchup between Heisman winners past and present.

In the midst of one of the most hyped matchups in history, we decided to have cross-examinations with the quarterbacks of each team. First and foremost, we sent our SEC representatives to interview Bradford.

SEC Guy - Sam, we appreciate you sitting down to talk with us.

Bradford - Glad to be here.

SG - There have been concerns about OU reaching the BCS title game despite a 45-35 loss to Texas, your thoughts?

SB - Well, we might have lost, but tiebreaker rules are rules. UT shouldn’t be blaming us! No, they should point fingers at Texas Tech. If they weren’t 11-1, none of this would have happened and the good guys would have won.
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Penn State defeated Ohio State in Columbus on Saturday. For any SEC fan paying attention to the big picture, Terrelle Pryor’s fourth-quarter fumble (pictured above) might be the pivotal event around which the worm will turn in 2008. Winning a defensive battle by the score of 13-6, JoePa’s Nittany Lions passed their last (and first?) difficult test of the season. Now, a handful of Big Ten runts will have an opportunity to make their mark on the national college football landscape: Iowa (5-3), Indiana (3-5) and Michigan State (7-2) are all that remain to oppose Penn State’s romp to Miami.

It’s not a pretty picture. Sure, we can look back and try to find some hope. There was Pitt’s thrilling and improbable win over West Virginia last season, which set up two-loss LSU’s bid. And Gator fans remember UCLA’s even more unbelievable victory over USC in 2006, news of which was piped into the Georgia Dome at halftime, igniting the Gators’ 38-28 win over Arkansas to secure both an SEC championship and a BCS title berth.

But do you really think these three Big Ten scrubs have any chance of defeating Penn State? Really? If so, I’ll have some of what you’re smoking.
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With the biggest portion of the Out-Of-Conference (OOC) season slipping away before league games begin, several conferences made some significant “last stands” to try and regain some respectability.  Let’s look at last weekend’s action.

ACC
One of the doormats of the FBS had been the ACC which got off to a terrible start in the first 2-3 weeks.  This week the ACC put forth a quite respectible showing.  North Carolina State managed to win its first FBS game by upsetting East Carolina in overtime.  Miami went on the road and blew out Big 12 team Texas A&M while Georgia Tech dismantled Mississippi State at home.  Despite forcing overtime against South Florida, UCF didn’t put up much of a fight against Boston College.  Inside the league Virginia Tech looks to be winning ugly (or typical Beamer style) after beating Georgia Tech and North Carolina in back-to-back weeks.  Wake Forest solidified its hold as conference favorite by travelling to Tallahassee and extending its winning streak against FSU to 3 games in a matchup mired by offensive ineptitude, turnovers and mistakes.

BIG EAST
Another joke of a conference that has edged its way into respectability is the Big East.  Largely thanks to a number of intersectional matchups against the Big 12, the Big East is on a bit of a run in OOC games.  Going back to South Florida’s upset of Kansas last Friday, the Big East has gone 3-1 against the Big 12 in nationally televised ESPN night games.  Connecticut held off Baylor and Louisville tripped up Kansas State while only West Virginia failed to uphold the conference honor losing at Colorado in OT 17-14.  Rutgers continued its unexpected slide losing to Navy but Pittsburgh managed to outlast Iowa 21-20 and even Syracuse managed to win its first game this season against Northeastern.  The league is down to only one ranked team, South Florida, but at least isn’t the laughing stock it was two weeks ago.

BIG 12
As discussed, the Big 12 almost singlehandedly brought the Big East back to a legitimate FBS conference.  Having a traditional power like A&M getting blown out by Miami at home doesn’t help the conference pride either.  UNLV kept Iowa State winless in a matchup of a good Mountain West team against a bad Big 12 team.  Colorado provided the only significant win when they upset a talented, yet spiraling, WVU team. (more…)

Week three of the young college football season brings us to our third installment looking at conference strengths.  Since it is virtually impossible to identify how a region of football compares to another when conference teams are playing internally, the beginning of the football season is our best, yet far from perfect, indicator of overall conference trends and relative strengths.  So with that lets look at this past weekend.

ACC
For the first time this season, the ACC avoided the image of one of the worst conferences in the country.  North Carolina absolutely thumped Rutgers, in what should have been a matchup of roughly equivalent teams, 44 to 12.  Does this signify that UNC is ready to begin it’s turnaround under Butch Davis or that Rutgers is going to step back from it’s gradual improvement under Greg Schiano.  In a game of two of the best young coaches in the game, Davis seems to have put together a better team in Chapel Hill in his second year than Schiano has in his 8th year.

In another ACC suprise, struggling mid level team Maryland upset Pac 10 upper tier Cal 35 to 27 in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score.   The same Maryland team that was unable to beat Middle Tennessee the week before took a huge 28-3 lead against Pac 10 power Cal and cruised to an eventual 8 point win.  In other games Virginia continued it’s losing ways by getting clobbered by UConn 45-10 while FSU continued feasting on Division AA programs by routing Chattanooga 46 to 7.  Duke has a winning record after 3 games after beating Navy 41-31 under new head coach David Cutcliffe.

Inside the conference Virginia Tech held off Paul Johnson’s up and coming Georgia Tech team 20-17 while Clemson continued it’s bounce back from their opening day fiasco by beating NCSU 27-9.  Two of the conferences better teams, Wake Forest and Miami, had open dates.

BIG 12
The lone conference losses this weekend were Kansas losing a nail biter to USF in Tampa 34-37 in what was perhaps the best game of the entire weekend and Iowa State losing to in-state rival Iowa 5 to 17.  Big 12 powers Oklahoma and Missouri pounded Washington and Nevada respectively.  Baylor also layed the wood this week to Pac 10 BCS team Washington State 45-17.  Nebraska, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State each won big against lesser opponents.  Texas’s game versus Arkansas (SEC) was postponed due to Hurricane Gustav. (more…)

Not too many legitimate college football pundits waste time arguing against the SEC being the best conference in the land.  Personally, I think the Big 12 is the only other conference that should be in the discussion when it is based on quality and depth.  The first weekend of college football led to some interesting inter-conference results.  In total the SEC beat 2 ACC, 1 WAC, 1 MAC, 1 Conference USA and 5 patsies who really need not be mentioned.  The league’s losers were Mississippi State to Louisiana Tech (WAC) and Tennessee to UCLA (Pac-10).

Overall the SEC has often been held as the leading football conference but never before has the league seen the kind of depth of talent as we are witnessing now.  There will be 8-4 teams coming out of the conference this year which would could easily be BCS bound if they played in another league.  It really is becoming a nightmare of brutal competition on a weekly basis these days.  I see three teams - South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, that I honestly believe would strongly challenge if not win outright conferences such as the Big East, ACC or Big 10.

Upsets abounded across the country and the SEC was no exception.  The MSU loss to La Tech suggests that last year might have been simply a blip on the Sylvester Croom tenure radar and the Bulldogs are headed back to mediocrity.  Despite a defense that plays as hard for it’s coach as any in the SEC you will be hard pressed to win games without any offense for opponents to respect.  The other dissapointment was, of course, the mighty (I jest) Vols.  (more…)

Can Billy Donovan identify talent or what?  Former Gator Mario Boggan, who left Florida after his freshman year and bounced around a number of collegiate institutions, has landed successfully at Oklahoma State.  At OSU Boggan has finally reached the potential Billy saw in him.  Last night Boggan scored 37 points and had 20 rebounds in a 105-103 triple overtime thriller against Texas.  Mario is also a top candidate for Big 12 player of the year.
 
When Billy Donovan signed Boggan many clamored that the kid was a natural scorer and had an innate feel around the basket.  Many others espoused that the kid was too heavy and didn’t have the work ethic to make it at UF.  Donovan saw a kid in the mold of Udonis Haslem who came out of high school on the heavy side but worked hard and eventually made himself into an honorable mention All American with a sculpted and muscular physique.  Like Haslem, Boggan eventually realized that to become the kind of player he was capable of he needed to work hard and change himself both physically and mentally.  Unfortunately, while Haslem bought into this as soon as he landed on campus at Gainesville, for Mario it took a little longer. (more…)