College Football Weekend September 12-13th

Ok, I'll admit I've been a little off thus far this season. I mean, who knew that ECU was going to be a top ten team this year? Name one person besides Sports Illustrated writer Stewart Mandel who called that? That's right not even Alan Greenspan had that one (that's a poli sci joke for those who don't know). Anyhow this week is actually an amazing week for college football, besides the obvious Lehigh/Villanova game there's the meeting between top 5 Ohio State Buckeyes and University of Southern California Trojans. Now on to the comments:

Comments:
"Come on, Martin. You preview the Bucknell game but decide not to mention the Brown & White taking the field for the first time this season. You should be ashamed to forget about your alma mater." - Darius
If i had a quarter for every time I heard something like this last week I would have $1.37. Of course I didn't overlook that, but I can't write about the greatest school of all time every weekend. I mean I love Drake and all but the game was played in a monsoon, there was more swimming than running the ball. How about this, I'll make up for it this week when Lehigh plays someone respectable? Not good enough? Ok then I'll let you take the last of my milk after I go to bed like my roommate did this week. That way when I wake up excited for a bowl of cereal only to find out after the cereal is already in the bowl that my milk was pilfered whilst I was in the land of Nod, I'll feel really sad panda.

"Dear Martin,
For as much as you bashed VT and the ACC last week, it's only fitting that you prove yourself not to be a hypocrite and also admit WVU and the Big East suck as well. Also, how about a mention of the fortitude it took for Notre Dame to come back against San Diego St? You don't just pencil in a victory when you invite the Aztecs to your house. Even after getting completely #$&@ed out of two touchdowns by incompetent referees (bogus goal line fumble where knee was clearly down and blatant backwards pass by SDSU)." - Yale
First of all, the Big East has how many BCS wins in the last 5 years? 4 wins. How many does your precious ACC have? I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with hero...still can't get it? There's another word to describe the number, it rhymes with nun. As for Notre Dame, I work with several people from SDSU who have never been to a game, but I guarantee that since the refs had to rob them of that game, alot more people will be buying tickets this year and the next.

"Do you know which games you will be highlighting this week? Which way are you leaning on OSU vs USC? I think SC is going to murder them. I am sick of hearing that OSU has the best secondary in the country and a great Defense. People always say that until they play a quality team with speed. Hell they couldn't even beat Juice Williams last year and they expect to play with the Trojans or Georgia? No shot. This game will be a blowout and a death blow to the Big Ten just like the huge blows that the ACC has already received this year. New Power Ranking of Conferences based on overall strength:
SEC
Big 12
Pac 10
Big Ten
Big East
Conference USA
ACC
Thoughts?" - Forrest
Ohio State has a decent secondary but I just don't see their offense putting up any points. I'll write more later. Juice Williams is legit, so losing to him is not a huge deal, he's like a young D-McNasty (Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles), and I think Illinois and Missouri are both very good teams, also watch Penn State, I think they are very good this year. I'm not sure the Big Ten is just going to disappear unless Penn State Wisconsin and Ohio State all lose this week(haha watch it happen now). I think Fresno has a legit chance. I need a couple more weeks till I can tell how strong or weak the conferences are. I'll tell you this though. Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Texas might be better then the best 5 teams in the SEC...I'm not kidding about that but I need another couple weeks to see all the teams play to figure it out. I think Missouri is the best team I've seen this year thusfar. Ok on to the games.

Games of the Week:
Friday:
#13 Kansas at #19 South Florida - Game of the week. I'm serious as when your mom says, "Young man you get in here this instant." I think that this game will be highly competitive between two teams with legitimate BCS aspirations. Both the Kansas Jayhawks and the South Florida Bulls were a couple of plays away from not only playing in a BCS bowl game, but the National Championship. Think I'm kidding? South Florida was ranked number two in the country when they dropped three straight games by less than a touchdown. Kansas lost once last year, to Missouri, and they were two plays away from winning it in the fourth quarter of that game. So it's quite possible that this game will have as much to do with who plays in a BCS bowl game as the two top five teams playing on saturday, none. They are both out of conference opponents who could still get there by winning their respective conference. This game in my mind has absolutely as much to do with who plays in the National Championship as the other game as well. Trust me, if either Kansas or South Florida run the table they'll be in the big game. The Bulls will try to do it with Junior QB Matt Grothe, who is a wizard, hat and everything, and he will run and throw and turn you into a frog at the same time. The Jayhawks will rely on Junior QB Todd Reesing, who is currently completing almost 80% of his passes, to lead the way. Normally I would say whomever has the better defense would win but in this case I'm not sure, both teams had great seniors on defense last year who are gone now. I read/watched all about this match up and I still am having trouble deciding who will win. The coin of destiny says Kansas and that coin is always right 50% of the time. So I'll pick Kansas in a game that will go a long way to determine conference superiority if you are into that kind of thing. Do yourself a favor and watch this game.

Saturday:
UCLA at #18 Brigham Young - You look at a game like this and you think, new coach at UCLA against the team that's supposed to be this years BCS buster and who have had 3 successful seasons in a row no brainer. But this was the best bowl game of the year last year. The BYU cougars won on a last second field goal block (sound familiar to last week's BYU game?) and the UCLA Bruins went from euphoria to disappointment because of a tip of a finger. This UCLA team also just got done beating Tennessee two weeks ago and they have Offensive Mastermind Norm Chow designing a game plan (That Norm, he just looks like a good guy, he looks like a cuddler). Norm is a genious and he will coach walk on QB Kevin Craft and the army of walking dead that is the UCLA offense to a great second half. BYU on the other hand has QB Max Hall who is completing 78% of his passes and handing the ball off to 250 lbs running back Harvey Unga. BYU has the superior offense and UCLA has the better defense, and it's tough to call but BYU should shake off the slow start they had last week and win by a comfortable margin, and then go home to their wives (27 of them are married which is a really high %).

Michigan at Notre Dame - Comedy, tragedy, drama...which one of these describes this game/these teams? All of them. Both are at low points, both have been talking trash for months. Both are doubtful to have successful years. I'm including it in this writeup because the thought of these two traditional powerhouses clashing is humorous to me. Like clowns fighting each other with seltzer water or kittens wrestling. It's a battle of two offensive minded coaches with new coach Rich Rodriguez of former West Virginia fame, and of former New England Patriots fame, Charlie Weis for the Fighting Irish. All in all this game will receive much more national media attention than it deserves, just like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. And just like Paris and Lindsay, these teams are nothing more then trashy dressed up, famous failures. They should be more like Britany Spears and get their life back together. Also, to follow this pop culture nonsense, just like choosing between a Tom Cruise movie and a John Travolta movie, whomever I pick, I lose. The number of times I physically hurt myself writing this paragraph, 8.

#5 Ohio State at #1 USC - I have great anger when a team wins or comes from behind because of the refs, which is what happened last week when Ohio State finally took the lead against Ohio after a 3rd and 11 where there was the worst non-call on a holding penalty ever. I made my roommate rewind the game and watching it 3 times. So I'll come right out and say that I still have fresh vengence against an Ohio State team that performed very poorly last week. That being said, the game is in Southern California so both teams are winners for getting to spend an evening there. USC's QB Mark Sanchez and USC's 25 blue chip running backs torched UVA a couple weeks ago, which is what Ohio State should have done against Ohio. Instead QB Todd Boeckman barely got the offense on the board against the far inferior Ohio team. This game should be a showcase of the defenses, both teams have tremendous defenses with plenty of NFL talent and people keep talking about how darn fast the Buckeyes secondary is but frankly I think the Trojans secondary is better. USC seems to always blow away the competition in big games, expecially in the early season where they haven't lost a game in September since 2004. Trojans win, the game will hopefully be fun to watch, I'll be watching it with a bunch of Ohio State fans in an Ohio State bar in southern California outdoors a block from the beach.

#10 Wisconsin at #21 Fresno State - First off it would be a huge blow to the Big 10 if Wisconsin loses this. Which is why they are going to lose. The Wisconsin Badgers struggled with Marshall last week at home and although they have the edge in almost every way I can't shake the feeling that the Bulldogs of Fresno State just live for these kinds of games. The plan for Fresno QB Todd Brandstater is to hadn toe ball off to RB Ryan Matthews, so as long as he does that well the Bulldogs should be ok. Wisconsin has RB P.J. Hill who is great but won't be able to run all over the place against Fresno like he and the other Badger running backs did against Marshall. Fresno has a solid defense and will force Wisconsin to throw the ball when the run gets stuffed like a turkey (mmm turkey, I'm hungry!) and unlike last week they won't be able to dial up a pizz I mean passing game as easily as they did at home. Fresno just wins a very physical game close game in the dessert.

Lehigh at Villanova - Another chapter in what has become the best rivalry between the two best teams in the Philadelphia area. These two meet for the 4th time in 5 years with the Lehigh Engineers (or Mountain Hawks) looking to even up the recent series against the Villanova Wildcats. Hard to tell how good either team really is since the valiant Mountain Hawks played in a monsoon last week and the Wildcats got destroyed by West Virginia. One thing we can be certain of is that there won't be any grade inflation like you get at certain other Philadelphia area Universities who take a Quaker like approach to honesty (that doesn't make sense but just roll with it), these teams will be graded strictly on their merits. The Wildcats are led by Junior Antwon Young who just got beat up by WVU. The Brown and White's own sophomore J.B. Clark actually had a 232.20 QB rating in the rain last week. This unbiased writer can't help but think that the Mountain Hawks will win a tough battle die to their superior coaching and alumni donations, but it will be a tough game.