One of the things that makes
American college football so addicting is that wealth of options and
opportunities for great games, great stories and surprising outcomes. For every
41-9 Alabama beat-down of Arkansas and every 59-16 Oklahoma thrashing of a pathetic and
winless Baylor club, there were
great stories in what had looked (going
into Friday) like a low-key weekend…
Defending national champion Clemson was a 22-point favorite at Syracuse Friday night, a foe they
defeated 54-0 last season. So, of course, the ‘Cuse beat the 6-0 Tigers, 27-24,
in a game where every bounce seemed to go the Orangemen’s way. But the silver
lining for Clemson was the chance for Dabo Swinney, one of the classiest
coaches in existence, to prove it again by going unbidden into the Syracuse
locker room to congratulate the SU players first hand after the game.
Next up on Friday’s doubleheader, in
the smoke and haze from the massive wildfires north of the San Francisco bay
area that have killed dozens already, Cal-Berkeley
drubbed #8 Washington State. It was
this kind of game: WSU quarterback Luke Falk had thrown two interceptions in
the entire first half of the season. He threw five Friday night. Here’s
another example of the football gods working in Cal’s favor: Cal QB Ross Bowers
was hit at the 2-yard line while trying to score the final touchdown of the
game; instead of going to the ground, the tackle flipped him into a vertical
360 and he landed on his feet in the end zone to make the final score 37-3.
Their mates across the state, the
University of Washington, somehow
managed only one garbage time score against an Arizona State defense which had allowed 30 points or more to every
other opponent this year. Just when UW must’ve thought its path to a Pac-12
title and a CFP berth were paved by the two Friday night losses, they tossed a
loss of their own that arguably was worse than either of those. Chris Petersen
is my all-time favorite coaches, having spent fifteen years in Boise where I
lived, but even he serves up a stinker once in a (long) while.
Along those same lines, Louisville has the once-in-a-generation
talent Lamar Jackson at QB… and not much on defense, apparently, because Boston College managed to put 45 points
on the board against the #17 team in the country Saturday after failing to
break thirty against anyone else this year. Florida State at least has an excuse – their top QB went out for
the season in their first game – but considering they were not only ACC
favorites but expected to make the four-team national finals, it’s strange to
realize that not only are they just 2-3, but those two W’s each required them
to knock down last-play passes in the end zone to secure the victories over
traditional lightweights Duke and Wake Forest. The ACC is so upside down
that the best record in the conference is the consensus mid-pack Wolfpack of North Carolina State at 4-0. The two other
undefeateds are Miami (which had
major luck on its side for the last two wins) and 2017 pre-season consensus
conference wooden spoon winners Virginia.
It was a great month for wildlife in
football. A jackrabbit (not a South Dakota State football player, the
real animal) ran onto and across the Stanford
university field Saturday night and scored three touchdowns before it was (humanely) corralled by players on the Oregon Duck bench. The graphics people
on the broadcast noted that the rabbit outgained star Cardinal running back Bryce
Love on the night, and scored more touchdowns that Oregon would score all game.
Personally, my favorite touch was that Stanford’s home cheer crew set off the
“touchdown cannon” after the jackrabbit scored its final touchdown – and to the
rabbit’s credit, it didn’t spook because of it. (If it hadn’t spooked in a stadium of seventy thousand fans, I suppose
the cannon wouldn’t do it, either!) This follows Louisville’s victory over
Kent State a couple of weeks ago, which was highlighted by the
length-of-the-field touchdown run by a tree squirrel, who sprawled out in the
end zone afterwards, huffing and puffing from exhaustion, cheered by the entire
crowd. Which followed Baylor’s hosting of a few foxes, native to their west
Texas locale, both on the field and in the stands. There’s a joke there about it being safe for the foxes to congregate in
Baylor’s end zone because they weren’t using it, but let’s move on…
Such is life in the shadow of
Alabama in the SEC that LSU and Texas A&M are both 5-2 – and their
fans are both hosting GoFundMe
pages sites to pay for the buyouts of their “failing coach” contracts. (So what hope do Bret Bielema at Arkansas or Butch Jones at Tennessee have, both 0-3 in conference
already?)
I wonder if consensus pre-season
Group of Five favorite South Florida
thought their chief competition for a New Year’s Six bowl game wouldn’t come
from San Diego or Boise, or a directional Michigan school or a city in Ohio, or
even the American West division’s triumvirate of traditional strength in
Houston, Navy, or Memphis, but within its own division, even its own state:
recruiting rival Central Florida is
also undefeated and awaiting the Bulls in Week 12 for what’s looking more and
more like a winner-take-all game for the East title, the AAC title, and a New
Year’s Six bowl berth.
Two
years ago, UCF was 0-12. I didn’t expect to see them here so
soon!
I didn’t expect that the Big
12 would have TCU on top at 6-0
(above the two Oklahoma powers, both with a loss) and rival Baylor at the bottom at 0-6 (below even Kansas, who won in week 1 against an FCS team. You scoff, but
Baylor lost to their FCS opponent!)
I didn’t expect that the two
most famous football programs north of the Mason-Dixon Line (look it up!),
Michigan and Ohio State, would each earn their 500th conference
victory on the same day!
Michigan’s was a nail-biter at Indiana that they won in overtime, and Ohio
State pummeled Nebraska 56-14, badly enough that Big Red then fired their
athletic director.
I didn’t expect traditional
and now-independent powerhouse Brigham Young (BYU) to have an offense so bad that I feel the need to check their
calendars to see if they’re all a day off. (See,
1-6 BYU is an LDS-religious institution which famously refuses to play games on
Sunday, and they’ve only scored nine touchdowns all season, playing most games
on Saturdays, and… You know, jokes that have to be explained are just
not worth it…)
I didn’t expect Alabama-Birmingham’s first year back on
the field, after a two-year enforced exile imposed by the state’s Board of
Education, to be so successful! At 4-2, including 2-1 in Conference USA’s
wildly exotic West Division, where North
Texas (of all teams) sits at 3-0 on the top rung of the ladder after a
67-second, 98-yard drive with no time outs to finish off an upset of favored UT-San Antonio Saturday, 29-26.
I didn’t expect Kennesaw State, in just its third year
of playing football (ever!) to have waxed Liberty (the only FCS team to beat a Power 5 school this season)
42-28 to go to 5-1 on the season and sit atop the Big South conference. And I really didn’t expect the other 5-1 team
there to be Monmouth, which entered
the season on a five-game losing streak!
Speaking
of surging FCS teams in 2017 which were steaming piles in the past, how
about Elon (on a five-game winning
streak after ending 2016 on a seven-game losing streak!), or Central Connecticut State (riding a
four-game winning streak after winning just two all of last year!), or Campbell (currently 4-0 in the Pioneer
League; the Camels haven’t won four league games in any entire season since 2011!), or our oft-praised Austin Peay (which has followed its legendary 29-game losing streak
by winning four of the last five, the only loss coming at top ten Jacksonville State).
And while I didn’t expect it,
I’m more than pleased to see the Ivy League doormat Columbia Lions start the season 5-0 heading into a showdown for
first place in the league at Dartmouth on
Saturday (a matchup of the only two
remaining 2-0 teams in the league). Columbia’s five wins matches their
total over the last four seasons, when they went 5-35 (including a
24-game losing streak, not to mention their famous 44-game streak back a couple
of decades). The Lions last won an Ivy title in 1961, and since then have had
just three winning seasons in the intervening 55 years, none in
this century. The difference? Pennsylvania’s
former coach, Al Bagnoli, who retired from coaching in the winter of 2015,
decided three months later he missed it – only to realize Penn had already
hired his replacement, so he applied and got Columbia’s job. (Columbia defeated Penn last week 34-31 in
overtime, by the way.) After three
wins last year, he’s apparently changed the culture sufficiently to make Lions
football fashionable aga- no, not
AGAIN. For the first time! Good luck Saturday, Columbia!
Here’s some of what I do
expect in 20 of the most notable of the 113 Division I college football games
across the U.S. in Week 8:
Florida
State at home by 7 to 11 points over Louisville.
Penn
State by 10-11 at home over Michigan.
Oklahoma
State should beat Texas on the road by about what OU did:
five to seven points.
Notre
Dame will hold its three-point home field advantage over similarly skilled Southern Cal.
We predict Memphis at Houston to be a toss-up. (The winner has a leg up in the AAC West, alongside Navy.)
We also see surprising Florida Atlantic to stay unbeaten with
a four to eight-point win over 3-0 North
Texas in Conference USA.
Akron
will suffer its first MAC loss at Toledo,
who’s also unbeaten in conference, by 12-15 points.
Boise
State and San Diego State will
further define the Mountain West division races, focusing towards a rematch of
Saturday’s 31-14 Bronco victory, by defeating their main division rivals, Wyoming and Fresno State (respectively), by one to two touchdowns apiece at
home.
Troy
should knock off upstart Georgia
State from the top of the Sun Belt ladder by 6 to 9 points.
Two big Missouri Valley games should
go to form: North Dakota State
should hand Western Illinois its
second loss by 15, and South Dakota
will do the same to Illinois State
by four.
Duquesne
hosts St. Francis, in a battle
of the two most recent Northeast Conference champions, and the winner moves to
3-0 in conference. We like the Dukes by 11 at home.
The two Ohio Valley battles read
like a boxing ticket: On the undercard,
in the red corner, 3-1 Austin Peay
is a two-point favorite over visiting 2-1 SE
Missouri State. And in the Main Event, 3-0 defending belt holder Jacksonville State goes to 4-0 Eastern Illinois, where we expect the
reigning champs to go home with a 13-point victory on all cards!
Two teams looking to win another
Pioneer Football League title: Jacksonville
goes across the nation to play at San
Diego (note the lack of “State” on
both names – these are the “little brothers” on the football scene, just as the
PFL is as a whole), and is a 12-point underdog.
Two potentially great games include
four of the top five teams in the Southern Conference: Samford @ Wofford (bet the
home team by one to remain unbeaten on the season) and Mercer @ Furman (we like this
home team by two).
We mentioned the Columbia @ Dartmouth showdown in the
Ivy League (we see the home Green winning
by five), but on Friday night, three-point favorite Harvard hosts Princeton
for a chance for the winner to be 2-1 in conference and stay within striking
distance.
Finally, Grambling State (3-0 in the
SWAC West) hosts Alcorn State (4-0 in the SWAC East) in what seems
very likely to be the first of two meetings this season, the second to come in
the SWAC title game in December. That will decide the conference’s
representative in the Celebration Bowl, likely against North Carolina A&T, mowing down all comers at 7-0 in the MEAC,
to determine the HBC (“Historically Black
College”) National Champions! (By the
way, we like Grambling by 11.)
[Originally published in the Roar]
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