College Football Weekend October 24th

This week in college football is rather bland, only two top 25 teams playing each other, but there are all kinds of other fun games. As a warning to the three people who read this, there are numerous kitten jokes in this week’s column. Onto the comments:

“Another epic column. You are the James Joyce of our generation sir” – Dan

I wonder what you are going to be saying about me once I badmouth West Virginia....farther down the page.

“Can we get a Marty Jenkins response to the loss the Dawgs suffered to LSU as a result of a completely BS excessive celebration? There's a lot of commentary coming out of that on whether or not it's a reasonable penalty to enforce. I just gotta say, from a legal standpoint, it's unreasonable because it's too rarely enforced and that leads to arbitrariness, which is something that should be avoided in order to keep up respect for the law (rules in this case) and those who enforce them.” –Alex

I don’t know about a legal standpoint, but from my understanding that particular referee crew has been suspended after the jobs they did in both that game and the Arkansas/Florida game. But there are two things that really stand out to me about the incident. First, I don’t think excessive celebration should be called in college unless it involves taunting the other team or the other team’s fans. Second, the call didn’t lose the game for Georgia, missed tackles did that, but the call didn’t help. On to the games.

Saturday 24 October

#13 Georgia Tech at Virginia 12PM EST

I’m writing about this one not because I think it will be a good game, I actually think that one wat or the other this game will be terrible to watch. The Virginia Cavaliers are one of the most inconsistent teams in the country. First they drop a game to a division 1-AA team, and they don’t just drop it in a close score, they basically threw that game off a tall building into an open sewer cover that led right down into an access hatch in a super-villain’s lair that emptied into a hole that was actually the entrance to a secret hive-colony of mole men that reside deep within the earth’s core. Virginia then lost two more games against better opponents and they actually played pretty well and then went on a three game winning streak that included beating three decent teams all in lopsided scores. This team is either as confused as a kitten trying to do brain surgery, or something really happened to them after the first three games of the season.

The Yellow Jackets of Georgia Tech have one of the best running games in the country. In their upset of Virginia Tech last weekend they completed 1 (one) pass all game. This game goes down one of two ways. Either Tech uses their triple option attack and blows away the Cavaliers or that kitten learns how to do brain surgery and Virginia once again confuses the heck out of everyone in the country. I like Tech here and I would count on them winning, but all I’m saying is that kittens are very precocious.

The Big East Games 12 PM EST

South Florida at #20 Pittsburgh

Connecticut at #23 West Virginia

Let me go ahead and be brutally honest here, I haven’t watched one Big East game this year other then a few minutes of some Cincinnati games and also I have never lied to my parents. My outstanding record of honesty aside these are two important games featuring 4 teams that should all get some consideration for being in the top 25. The leader of the pack in the Big East is the #5 ranked Bearcats of Cincinnati, but they have only played South Florida so they’ve still got the meat of their schedule to go. It’s not out of the question that the Bulls of South Florida, the Pittsburgh Panthers, the West Virginia Mountaineers and Couch Burning Association, and the Connecticut Huskies could all be contenders for the Big East title and a BCS berth. So keep an eye on all these games, they have big bowl game implications. I’ll take South Florida’s defense over the balanced attack of Pittsburgh, and I’ll take West Virginia at home because they tend to throw batteries.

#13 Penn State vs Michigan 3:30PM EST

Penn State hasn’t beaten Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1000 years according to my detailed records. The Nittany Lions, led by senior QB Daryll Clark, who is putting together a nice little Heisman campaign backed by Penn State’s propaganda machine, if you discount the loss to Iowa he’d be a very viable candidate. Michigan is hard to peg, they’ve lost two games this year to Big 10 opponents, but the Wolverines are also within a couple plays/seconds of being either 7-0 or 2-5. Neither of these teams are elite, but if Penn State wants any chance at being the Big 10 champs, they need to win this pivotal rivalry game.

Penn State is the superior team both talent wise and on paper. And that and a kitten with a ball of string will get you a happy kitten in Ann Arbor, where 100 thousand plus fans will remind Penn State that they haven’t won in Ann Arbor in 13 years (not 1000 as previously stated). I haven’t been able to figure out who is playing QB for the Wolverines, but if QB Tate Forcier dresses and is healthy, the chances of victory increase greatly, because he is elusive and can give that vaunted Penn State defense trouble. More trouble then a kitten caught in a tree…I’ll take Penn State to break that streak

#8 TCU at #16 Brigham Young 7:30PM

This is the best game of the week, and the only game between ranked teams, and yet you will probably hear very little on any major sports network or site. In fact this game won’t be broadcast on any major television network as far as I can tell. That’s a shame because it’s going to be a doozy. Last year the TCU Horned Frogs dealt the BYU Cougars their first loss and dashed their BCS buster hopes as if they were a mean person taking away a toy from a kitten! BYU is hoping to return the favor by taking away the Horned Toads uhhh…lily pads? (yes I’m aware horned toads probably don’t use lily pads).

TCU is going to try and make their case for discussion in the National Title contention, they won’t make it just by going undefeated, they need some help from the teams above them, specifically Texas, Florida and Alabama. If TCU and Boise State both go undefeated my understanding is that TCU would likely pull ahead of Boise in the BCS standings. They would also probably vault USC with an undefeated season and maybe Iowa and Cincinnati.

But all that is discussion for another day because the TCU defense has to bottle up BYU’s great offense. BYU QB Max Hall will most likely be playing in the NFL, he’s got a good arm and understanding of a pro style offense, but the key to BYU winning this game could very well be the ability of the BYU tight ends to get open for dumpoff passes against the blitz. TCU is going to rush the heck out of Max Hall because they can’t let him throw without pressure, they don’t have the offense to keep up in a shootout with BYU. The battle all game is going to be the BYU offensive line slowing down the TCU pass rush enough to give Hall time to throw, they won’t stop the pass rush, they can just hope to slow it down, possibly by holding it’s tail. I’ll take BYU at home, in a close game, BYU has been outstanding in close games.