- Last year Florida and Miami both went head-to-head after 3 in-state cornerbacks: Patrick Johnson (now Patrick Peterson), Janoris Jenkins and Brandon Harris.  Florida got Jenkins, Miami landed Harris and Johnson went to LSU.  I’d say thus far Florida has gotten the better of the deal.  Janoris Jenkins has earned his way to starter already and looks like one of the best young corners in the SEC while Brandon Harris is a starter almost by default and was flagged numerous times against FSU for pass interference.  He looked completely over his head out there for the Canes and is part of the reason the Noles were able to operate so efficiently on offense last Saturday.

 - I really like Stanford.  It’s amazing to me how Jim Harbaugh has turned around that team’s attitude in his short time there.  They have adopted their coach’s “never quit” attitude.  They are still a year away from being a bowl caliber team but they will get there.  I don’t think Harbaugh will be long for Palo Alto.

 - Two early mistakes by Kentucky basically cost them the chance to upset Alabama on the road.  An early defensive bust led to a 78 yard touchdown run by Coffee and then Hartline had the mysterious unforced fumble which the Tide recovered for their second and last touchdown of the game.  UK, a big underdog to begin with, put themselves behind the 8 ball early in the contest and it overshadowed a gutsy performance by the Wildcats.

 - Despite a big win over Wisconsin last week, the University of Michigan is NOT back.  The Fightin Zookers went to Ann Arbor and spotted the Wolverines a 14 to 3 lead before outscoring Rodriguez’s team 42 to 6.

- Given Tim Tebow’s play thus far and Urban Meyer’s absolute Belichik-like paranoia about giving out injury information I wonder if part of Tim’s problem this year is physical. He has definitely looked slower and more hesitant when running the ball. Could he be suffering from some unknown (or should I say unannounced) nagging injury? Perhaps a lower extremity issue or a muscle pull? One Gator blogger believes Tim is suffering with a chronic lower back injury. If you think about it, hampered Tebow would be disastrous for UF. Tebow is not a proficient pure pocket passer, without the threat of his running Florida would become almost one-dimensional. One only need to look back to the Georgia game to see how impotent we would become against a defense schemed against an immobile Tebow. Even with a very painful shoulder last year Tebow ran the ball against Kentucky. Could he be sucking it up for 8 to 10 plays a game with a lingering injury just to keep defenses honest? (more…)

GRANDPA STEWART SMITES MOUNTAINEERS

Last year I was shocked when WVU chose to promote Bill Stewart to the head coaching spot to replace Rich Rodriguez.  What was the primary motivation for this?  In my opinion it was nothing more than loyalty.  The Mountaineer Nation had their feelings hurt when another coach dissed the coal state for better stomping grounds and they focused on a coach who would stick around for a while.  So they hired a guy who was nothing more than a lifetime assistant coach (other than a disastrous three year run at VMI) to lead their program.  I saw Stewart as the next Larry Coker, a nice guy who was not going anywhere else but was going to slowly erode the program from a high level of success into mediocrity. 

Boy was I wrong!!! Stewart wasn’t like Larry Coker, he was more like Steve Kragthorpe!!!  Everyone remembers how Kragthorpe replaced Petrino and was handed a Top 10 Cardinal team only to finish at 6-6.  Perhaps Stewart can prove he is the next Kragthorpe.  The real difference though is I believe Kragthorpe has the ability to rebuild Louisville in his own image and become a program that averages 9.5 wins a year under his tenure.  Stewart does not have the offensive or defensive mind nor leadership or recruiting ability to do the same.   Eer fans better prepare for a return to angry, drunken blowouts with WVU being on the receiving end.  And don’t worry, I’m sure it’s still all RichRod’s fault.

AN UNSIGHTLY CANE STAIN

Former Miami Hurricane linebacker Willie Williams was recently covered in an article in the Miami Herald this week (LINK).  It seems Willie now plays for the Bulldogs of Union County in Barboursville, Ky.  As a quick recap, Williams was once one of the most coveted players in the nation before announcing he was going to stay with the hometown Miami Hurricanes.  Williams came to the school with a total of 11 former arrests but the staff (Larry Coker at that time) went to the wall for Willie assuring the athletic department that he was a good kid who they could keep on the straight and narrow.  What did coach Coker get for all his effort?

He spent his first year out with a knee injury, then spent his 2005 redshirt-freshman season not starting but productively leading UM in special teams tackles.

His catching up to his potential was still in play here when, just prior to the 2006 season, upset he still was not listed as a starter, Williams said he wanted out.

Then-coach Larry Coker obliged. The thing about college players with 11 juvenile arrests — they are rarely begged to stay.

Williams was lambasted on his way out, called a criminal or a quitter or worse. It seemed like the end for him.

(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…)

The season is still young and that means the conference battles have yet to begin for most team.  This is the time when fans are able to enjoy actual interconference competition.  Granted often the teams are not evenly matched and many are one sided affairs but it’s still the closest glimpse we get to conference comparison until the end of season bowl games.  And with a large number of games we can still spot trends and get a feeling for the various teams and conferences out there.

Last week was our first opportunity to see such matchups.  As I wrote last week the Pac 10 came out looking the best with the SEC and Big 12 both close behind.  The Big 10 seemed average at best while the ACC and Big East were downright horrible.  Let’s take a look at week two’s scores and outcomes.

ACC
At this rate people are going to think the ACC really DOES stand for Almost Competitive Conference.  After an embarrassing first week the league was looking for a little respect in week 2.  The result?  Clemson, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State and Virginia all bounced back from dissapointing week one losses by throttling lesser competition.  The lone remaining ranked team and current conference favorite won a nailbiter at home against SEC lower echelon power Ole Miss.  A last second field goal gave the Demon Deacons a 30-28 win with Wake being aided on their last drive by a questionable pass interference call.  Wake looks to be a favorite for their second ACC Title in 3 years. 

The next best game for the league was Miami’s 23 point loss to in-state rival Florida.  Sure, a 3+ touchdown loss doesn’t seem like much of a victory but the Canes kept the game close for 3 quarters and outperformed their expectations.  This is a much improved team from a year ago and while you can expect a young team to drop a game or two when they lose focus, if the Miami defense continues the year playing to their current level they could find themselves in the ACCCG at the end of the season.  

Adding to the leagues downward perception was Duke’s loss to Big 10 lightweight Northwestern and Maryland’s loss to Sunbelt power Middle Tennessee.  Florida State opened the season with a dismantling of Western Carolina by a score of 69-0.  Before Seminole fans start dreaming of past glory though, they might want to wait until they play Wake in two weeks for a true assessment of their relative strength.  Georgia Tech is now 2-0 under new coach Paul Johnson as they edge Boston College 19-16 in an early season conference matchup.

Big 12
While there were only a couple interesting games we cannot overlook the fact that the league went 12-0 last weekend.  Colorado looked like it might become the Week 2 goat of the conference against Eastern Washington but came back from a 14 point deficit to win by a TD.  Last week’s goat Texas A&M managed to win its first game for new coach Mike Sherman beating New Mexico.  Most of the league beat who they were supposed to (which in itself is impressive).  The biggest wins include Oklahoma’s thrashing of a good Cincinnati team and Texas Tech almost doubling up a solid Nevada squad.  Half the league scored at least 48 or more points last Saturday with 5 breaking the 50 point barrier. (more…)

HOUSE OF CARDS

Well the second biggest upset of the year occurred Saturday when a preseason top 10 team in Louisville fell at home and gave up 38 points to arguably the worst offensive team in the country, save Notre Dame. A team in Syracuse that had lost it’s three previous games by at least 30 points. It takes a little luster off the Wildcats win of a week before. Perhaps the Cardinals were so crushed in the loss to their in-state rivals that they never came to play but still . . . talk about overranked. Between Louisville and Michigan the anti-preseason poll folks have garnered considerable momentum in their cause. Memo to Kragthorpe: Sometimes a little defense can go a long way.

I’d say either the heat on Steve Kragthorpe is approaching that required to split atoms or Bobby Petrino took all the fans mojo with him when he left the program. Given the loud chorus of boos that were heard Saturday coming from Papa Johns stadium I believe it’s the former. Luckily UK didn’t get so wrapped up in their last second win to lose focus the way the Cards did. Kentucky continues to play well beating Arkansas on the road. Could it be any worse to be a Cardinal right now? The Wildcats punched you in the stomach so hard you lost TWO games. Last week there was some discussion questioning how Louisville could be ranked ahead of Kentucky. That injustice has now been rectified.

THAT’S A BUNCH OF BULL

Moving up on the old impressameter is the South Florida Bulls. As I speculated two weeks ago, South Florida now meets with West Virginia in a nationally televised Friday night game of two ranked and undefeated teams. USF manhandled ACC also ran North Carolina in Chapel Hill and now has a chance to jump another 4 or 5 spots in the polls with a win. Could South Florida be on the way to its first ever top 10 ranking? This would be the first step. How impressive is what Jim Leavitt has done in Tampa with this program? Should the Bulls keep winning will he be long for the school? I realize he has been approached for jobs previously but now he will be targeted by big name programs rather than for mid-level positions.

BEWARE OF DAWG
(more…)

VOLUNTEERING FOR A MASSACRE

Tennessee proved what a lot of SEC football fans already knew this weekend, that they are several years away from competing for an SEC East title.  Florida is young and talented.  Tennessee is young and physically immature.  They have landed some quality recruiting classes but those players are still several off-season strengthening program and years of growing to be able to compete in the physical SEC.  Depth is a serious problem for the Vols and team discipline is non-existent.  When your team lacks depth it first shows on special teams where Tennessee has struggled thus far in 2007.

Florida used a major thumping of the cream and tangerine to vault back into the National Championship discussion.  That’s all and well for Gator fans but don’t get too excited about taking apart a Volunteer team that was similarly dismantled by a good but less athletic Cal team two weeks ago.  Tennessee has proven that it can compete with the big boys for almost 3 quarters before they pack it up and mail it in.  That Tennessee defense has trouble stopping people when they are FRESH, let along late in the game.  Florida still has much stiffer tests upcoming this season.

AUBURN KITTY CATS

For two weeks in a row the Auburn team took the field at home against a lesser opponent and lived up to my preseason expectations.  This time it was the Mississippi Bulldogs who outhit and bullied the Auburn Pussies up and down the field.  I like the MSU defense but their offense is horrid and that’s BEFORE they lost starting quarterback Michael Henig.  With true freshman Wesley Carroll taking over the Mississippi State coaches turned almost exclusively to their running attack to win the game.  To say the MSU play calling was a bit conservative is like saying Hurricane Katrina was a little windy.

This Auburn team will be hard pressed to make a bowl game this year.  With games remaining at Florida, at LSU, at Arkansas, at Georgia and against Alabama this looks to be a 7 loss team.  They have two sure wins in Tennessee Tech and New Mexico State but Vanderbilt and Ole Miss are not givens anymore.  I have been critical of Tuberville but if he can somehow manage to win 8 games with this team I will reevaluate his ability to coach.  Now that Auburn has faced extreme adversity we will see how they respond.  My prediction is that they will roll over and die: aka “Dead Pussy walking”!!!  By the way Gator fans, this isn’t one of the stiffer SEC tests I was referring to in the previous section.  Auburn is not as good as UT and will also be blown out in the swamp.

INTER-CONFERENCE COMPETITION

The Pac 10, which had been enjoying a great non-conference season, got knocked down a bit with a couple of losses last weekend.  USC did it’s part in throttling a good (not great by any means) Nebraska team at their place but Washington got throttled at home by a Big 10 team that had struggled to score all season.  Even more embarrassing was conference teams Arizona and UCLA losing to Mountain West teams New Mexico and Utah respectively.  In the latter game UCLA, ranked 11th in the nation and picked as the second best team in the Pac 10 by some prognosticators, lost by 38 points and were never even competitive.

The Big East which had gained a modicum of respect with their non-conference play of late also suffered several setbacks.  Reigning conference champ and preseason top 10 team Louisville lost on the road to unranked Kentucky, mid-level and traditional power Pittsburgh lost to a rebuilding Michigan State team in East Lansing and in a battle of conference bottom dwellers Syracuse lost out to Illinois by a score of 41 to 20.  In respect to former Florida coach Ron Zook it looks like one of these teams is on the upswing while the other is . . . well I guess staying pat (Syracuse can’t really get any worse). (more…)

THE MIAMI HURRICANE STOOPS STOMP

There’s no better way to judge the state of a program than by matching it up against a top opponent. If that’s the case than Randy Shannon proved to the world that he has a long way to go in returning Miami to football prominence. In the Canes defense there is no team in the ACC that can match the Sooners for talent. While the two ACC Techs (Virginia and Georgia) both have equivalent defenses neither has the kind of offense that will dominate the Canes defense like OU did. Miami and FSU are in a dogfight to be considered one of the top three teams in Florida. Right now it looks like Florida is #1 and South Florida #2 but that three spot is still up for grabs.

What a stable of running backs for the Sooners. Oklahoma has always had talent but this year they have a running back corps as good as anywhere in the country running behind a top notch and experienced offensive line. The most frightenning aspect of OU is that they seem to have put their quarterback issue to bed with Sam Bradford looking like the real deal to me. His accuracy and pocket presence is downright uncanny. I’m not sold on their depth at wide receiver and their defense doesn’t look as dominant as in years past but it seems good enough for the Boomer Sooner to make a strong run for a national title.

TOM PETTY SAYS MICHIGAN IS “FREEEEEE . . . FREEEE-FALLING

Although I expected Oregon to score a lot of points against the Wolverines I didn’t expect the Michigan offense to collapse against the Ducks defense. Lloyd Carr has proven to be a special coach. In 12 years at Michigan he has lost 3 or more games 9 times (and I’m guessing he will do it again this year and go to 10 out of 13 years). While Carr’s resume would be impressive at UCLA, LSU, Virginia Tech, Auburn, West Virginia or even Nebraska it wouldn’t cut it at Florida, Alabama, USC, Ohio State, Texas or Miami. So if Michigan really DOES want to play big boy football they need to get themselves a coach who isn’t old enough play shuffleboard on the weekends with Lou Holtz and Bobby Bowden (aka - a young, energetic, up and coming coaching prodigy).

NOTRE LAME DAME AND THE NITTANY LIONS

Any thoughts that the Irish might bounce back and be respectable this year has gone out the window. They will spend the rest of the year trying to get to .500. There are some easy wins penciled in at the end of the schedule but when you are this young and mistake prone there ARE no easy wins. Penn State didn’t impress me and I seem to have forgotten them in the Big 10 race. Instead of trying to determine who is the best between PSU, Wisconsin and Ohio State it’s a matter of deciding which two teams look worse. The 3 to 2 Buckeye halftime lead over Akron was particularly impressive (sarcasm).

SPURRIER PUTS GAMECOCKS BACK ON TRACK (more…)

Tennessee
 
Well it seems that Tennessee volunteered to take their yearly beating a little early this year.  While I thought Ainge and the offense was productive against a suspect Cal defense, it looks like another 8-4 season at best for the Vols.  Remember when Tennessee used to be synonymous with athletic defensive players, big play wide receivers and stud tailbacks?  Well those days are gone.  Although Fulmer’s squad didn’t embarrass themselves, they were clearly in over their head and Cal looked like they could score at will against the confused Vol defense when focused.  One bright note was the play and composure of Ainge who proved to me that he can play at the next level should he escape the nagging injuries that have plagued his career thus far. 
 
Michigan
 
The Big Ten reputation continues to take hit after hit.  Lloyd Carr has sealed his fate and defined his tenure with this loss.  The only thing more exasperating than Michigan’s play must be Lou Holtz insisting this isn’t an upset.  Then again Lou predicted that Notre Dame would win ten games this season so that seems about par.  Jim Delaney is probably calling Michigan AD Bill Martin asking him “What the hell are you trying to do to me???”  Combine this debacle with the last decade of Wolverine basketball and you have an interesting pattern of pathetic play.  At least Martin got the hint about the hardcourt and fired Tommy Amaker.  Does he have the cajones to do the same to the gridiron guys?  Of course not, that’s a rhetorical question.
 
Georgia
 
Stafford finally got some help.  I never doubted that Stafford would be improved but I didn’t know who would step up to help Matt score points.  Last Saturday the Bulldogs looked like they actually had a stable of talented receivers.  Combine that with inspired play on the offensive line (albeit against a suspect defense) and you have the ingredients to push Georgia into the SEC East race.  I had ranked the top four teams in the East as 1) UF, 2) USC, 3) UGA and 4) UT.  After the first weekend I am putting USC and UGA even.  There’s no point in moving the Bulldogs any further since that tie will be sorted out this weekend when those two teams face off.  UGA looks more talented but Spurrier is one of the few offensive play callers who can literally manufacture points during a game.  It should be a good one.
 
Notre Dame
 
Several weeks ago Weis announced that Notre Dame is not rebuilding this year.  He was right; you can’t build something new until the previous structure has completely collapsed and ND seems well on its way to accomplishing that.  (more…)