College Football Weekend November 13th and 14th

Well I’m guilty of a bit of sloth lately, and I apologize. I’m a terrible human being and I deserve nothing but disapproval and shame. But enough about me, let’s talk about what’s going on in college football. Essentially there are three teams that control their destiny, with several others hoping for those three teams to fall. Florida, Texas, and Alabama all control their destiny, and either Florida or Alabama will knock the other one off in the SEC championship game. At this point I don’t think anyone is going to beat those three teams in the regular season, and if one of them do lose it would be a major upset.

On the outside looking in are Cincinnati, TCU, and Boise State, all of which need some help to get in the championship game. But at this time last year there were a number of undefeated teams that needed help and instead of getting help they all failed to take care of their own business. The most likely situation is that Texas is going to play the winner of Alabama/Florida, and then these other teams play in other BCS games. Luckily the ACC, Big-10 and Pac-10 have taken themselves out of the conversation for the National Championship.

As for the Heisman? I have no clue who is going to win at this point, I think there are lots of deserving players on about 7 or 8 teams. Some people are saying crazy things like a defensive player winning. Well those people are insane, and they should be doing insane things like petting pretend porcupines, and licking unicorns. But happy Veteran’s day to all those Veterans out there, and on to the one and only comment:

“Hey remember that guy who used to write a college football column? That was fun. I don't care about your "personal life" or that "things are busy at work." I want to know your take on the Utah-TCU game!” – Dan

I hate you.

Games:

Friday November 12^th:

#25 West Virginia at #5 Cincinnati 8PM EST:

The Cincinnati Bearcats have been weathering the storm for a bit while their starting QB Tony Pike has been hurt for the last 3 weeks and luckily Zach Collaros has filled in adequately, just like that guy who filled in for Radar on MASH (I don’t even know if that reference is correct). The Bearcats are interesting, because they’ve snuck up on the national scene, and they’ve done it with a little bit of style. The Bearcats have won every game pretty convincingly with the exception of last game which got a little out of hand at the end.

The West Virginia Mountaineers have a couple marks against them, both from teams that were able to slow down the spread option attack. They rely on the blazing speed of RB Noel Devine and the fast but not quite as fast speed of QB Jarrett Brown. The key to West Virginia as always is getting your defense to play smart by sticking to their assignments, so that is the big test for the Bearcats.

If you get a chance to watch this game, prepare to see some offense, because both these teams are very offensively inclined, I’m thinking somewhere in the range of 1000 yards of offense or more. What concerns me about Cincinnati is that they apparently have plans to bring Tony Pike in off the bench in this game, in the past I’ve rarely seen that kind of thing work, and if they do it too much in the game it can break the offensive rhythm, which is like stepping on your dance partner’s toes. I think Cincinnati will win a high scoring affair at home.

Saturday November 14^th

#10 Iowa at #11 Ohio State 3:30PM EST

First let’s talk stakes here, the winner of this game goes on to the Rose Bowl in Southern California the beginning of January, which if you are coming from Iowa City or Columbus, is pretty nice. Heck it’s nice no matter where you are coming from (not trying to rub it in, just saying). The loser will not be playing in a BCS game, and they probably will be playing a bowl game somewhere considerably colder then Los Angeles. I’ll get my prediction out of the way early and tell you that if I was an Iowa fan, I wouldn’t book tickets to Socal to see my brother and this bowl game, not only because I don’t think Iowa isn’t going to win, but also because you never call >:(

The Hawkeyes have been getting by all year by the skin of their teeth, and that skin finally got scraped last weekend when they dropped a game to Northwestern. Their starting QB Ricky Stanzi got hurt in what looked like a very nasty sack in the endzone (his own). Ohio State got beaten at home by USC early in the year and then got clipped by Purdue a couple weeks ago. This year is a bit of a rebuilding year for the Buckeyes as they’ve been trying to get QB Terrelle Pryor to live up to the hype he had coming out of high school. At one time Pryor was the most highly coveted quarterback in all the country, and he ended up spurring about 10 schools to go to Ohio State. He’s a great dual threat quarterback, and although he hasn’t been a superstar this year, he’s improved and I suspect he’ll have a breakout year next year.

Iowa has really been fortunate that they didn’t lose before last weekend. Iowa doesn’t have the defense to win this game, and their inconsistent offense only trouble me more. But they did go into Happy Valley and beat Penn State back in September, which is an eternity ago in college football, but who knows, maybe they can capture a bit of their early season magic. I believe that it’s Ohio State’s dominant defense that is going to punch their first ticket to the Rose Bowl since 1996, and Iowa will have to continue their 19 year drought from Pasadena.

#16 Utah at #4 TCU 7:30PM EST

This is maybe the best and most important game of the week in the land when it comes to the BCS. The TCU Horned Frogs are 1-5 all time against the Utah Utes, who suffered their only loss of the season against Oregon back in September. These two teams have played some really exciting close games in the last 4 years, and while Utah has won all but one game, an overtime loss in 2005, none of the games have been blowouts. Expect a very hard fought, nose to the grindstone type of game. A defensive battle is almost certainly going to break out.

The last time I talked about TCU, I spoke poorly of them and they burned me by lighting BYU up badly. I was all set to talk about how this game really was going to come down to which Utah team showed up the one that crushed or the one that went to overtime with the Air Force Academy? But then I realized two things; first, actually doesn’t exist, because Utah hasn’t really beat anyone impressive this season. And second, although Utah beat Air Force in overtime, TCU only beat them by 3 points. So I nearly slighted Air Force and game them no credit.

In the end I think you are going to see a defensive battle, even though TCU has a much better offense, Utah probably has a slightly better defense. But Utah always seems to come up big in most big games, and with their potent running game and tough defense they have a very good fighting chance at TCU. TCU should win, and I think they will, but you can never count out a game Utah team. They are like Hulk Hogan, they never tap and just when you think they are beat and the ref is about to drop their arm for the third time to signal they are unconscious…they Hulk up and get out and body press their opponent and deliver the leg drop, cover for the three count, and then cue the theme music Hulkamaniacs! “I am a real American…fight for the rights of every man….”

Everyone have a great weekend, and be sure to thank any Veterans in your life.