Its time to review the week that was in college football

Music to listen to: Prayer for England by Massive Attack

　

Here’s my top-25 ranking:

1- Oregon

2- Oklahoma

3- Auburn

4- Alabama

5- Boise State

6- TCU

7- LSU

8- Michigan State

9- Utah

10- Wisconsin

11- Stanford

12- Ohio State

13- Iowa

14- Florida State

15- Arizona

16- Nebraska

17- South Carolina

18- Missouri

19- Oklahoma State

20- Arkansas

21- Texas

22- Mississippi State

23- West Virginia

24- Virginia Tech

25- Kentucky

General thoughts on the week that was:

-It may seem like I’m picking on Boise State by not having the Broncos as high as #2 or even #1 in my poll, but here’s my question for all of the apologist for Boise State.

Based on this season so far, if Boise faced either Oklahoma, Oregon, Auburn, Alabama on a neutral site, would the Broncos be favored in any of those games?

I dislike the BCS system just as much as anybody else and would love a playoff to settle this matter, but under the current system that’s in place, I don’t feel the need to slot Boise in the number two spot in my poll because they’re undefeated.

While I’ve seen Oklahoma beat Florida State and Texas, Oregon beat Stanford, Auburn beat Arkansas and win at Mississippi State and Alabama beat Arkansas on the road as well as Florida, I’ve seen Boise barely beat an over-valued Virginia Tech squad and win against an Oregon State team that just lost to Washington on Saturday.

I think we’ve reached a point where voters and some fans are elevating Boise State to a higher level because we WANT the STORY of Boise State to be in the national title game.

As fans, we would love to see the small school from Idaho with the weird home turf crash the establishment and take it down. We would love to see Boise head into the national title game against a big and bad SEC team like Auburn and pull off the win. It would be a victory that we would all remember in our lifetime and probably tell our future children that we witnessed it.

However, this isn’t about sentimentality. This is about having the two best teams in the country play for a championship. I don’t believe that Boise will eventually be one of those teams.

I still think that even if there is a one-loss team from the SEC, Big 12 or even the Pac-10, that team may be more deserving to play for the national title than Boise State.

I have two major pet peeves when it comes to college football voting. I’ll get to the second one in my next segment but the first one is voters automatically voting teams without a loss above a team with a loss.

That’s why it disappointed me that people were ready to put Alabama as low as 10^th in their poll and place undefeated teams such as Michigan State, Utah, TCU, Boise State and others above the Crimson Tide.

Alabama went on the road to face a than-top 20 ranked team in South Carolina after defeating a ranked Arkansas and Florida squad in the previous two weeks. The Crimson Tide lost the contest to the Gamecocks and should have lost their top ranking but that still doesn’t mean that the Spartans, Utes and others without a loss were suddenly the better team.

-My second peeve in voting is the argument that all because you beat a team means you should automatically be ranked ahead of them.

We saw a prime example of this when voters placed South Carolina ahead of Alabama last week. However, since the Gamecocks lost to Kentucky Saturday, now Alabama is back ahead of South Carolina.

The problem with this logic is that college football works in a fluid system where you can’t just slot winners ahead of losers. Lets say that Wisconsin loses the rest of their games and Ohio State wins the rest of its games. Do you still have to have the Badgers ahead of the Buckeyes? Do we have to rank James Madison ahead of Virginia Tech?

What about Texas still being behind Nebraska in the rankings? The Longhorns won on the road in Lincoln in a decisive fashion yet still are below the Huskers.

My process when making my poll is to look at each team in a weak vacuum. While I do look at common opponents, win-loss record, strength of schedule and various factors, my main basis is to look at who would beat who on a neutral field at this given time.

Do I think Oregon is going to be a better team than Oklahoma or Auburn at the end of the season? Maybe, maybe not.

What I do know is that at this moment, Oregon is playing at the highest level in the country and would most likely beat every other team in the nation, at this moment.

We have to stop projecting what we think will happen and rank what is going on right now.

Ok, enough about my voting techniques, on to the on-the-field activities from this past week.

-I’ve been watching football for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve seen an athlete at the quarterback position like Auburn’s Cameron Newton.

We’ve all seen fast quarterbacks at the college level like Mike Vick and more recently Denard Robinson of Michigan and Taylor Martinez of Nebraska.

We’ve seen big quarterbacks perform at a high level like Tim Tebow and Jared Lorenzen combine their above-average size for a quarterback with good throwing skills.

Newton takes it to another level. When you have a guy who is 6’6’’, 250 pounds, can throw the ball and have mobility to actually outrun defensive backs, you’re looking at something special.

If he gets past LSU and Alabama this season, not only can you just ship the Heisman trophy to his front door, you may be witnessing the next evolution of the quarterback position.

-Ohio State does it again. Its hard to criticize Jim Tressel because the Buckeyes have become the top team of a major conference, won a national title in the past ten years and competed for several others.

However, you do have to wonder if the Buckeyes have reached their peak with Tressel.

As a fan and alma mater of an SEC team that just got shutout on the road against one of the weakest Georgia teams in recent memory and look pathetic in doing so, I would take Ohio State’s “peak” under Tressel for my squad any day. I would say that the majority of college football fans would as well.

But seeing Wisconsin dominate Ohio State makes you wonder if the Buckeyes’ program has become content being very good.

The Buckeyes played THREE MAC squads at home this season before starting conference play. These games are darn near guarantee wins and make the school a lot of money.

The problem is that these games don’t prepare you for the rigors of a conference season and you can clearly see that in the Wisconsin game.

I’m not saying that Ohio State needs to start scheduling a home and home against Alabama or take on Texas in Dallas, but stepping up the non-conference portion of the schedule would help.

However, I doubt that this will happen because the Buckeyes know that they can finish 11-1 every year, win the Big Ten or come close to it and eventually find its way to a BCS bowl, hopefully the Rose Bowl every season and than compete for a national title every five or six years.

Once again, that would be awesome for my school, but in the high stakes battle among the elite in college football, which Ohio State definitely qualifies for, losing to Wisconsin in that fashion isn’t good enough.

-The tragic injury to Rutgers’ Eric LeGrand puts things in perspective. Seeing the injury replayed on TV has been tough to see.

When you see that, you immediately think about your family. I have a nephew who plays high school football and is fielding top offers from schools in the ACC, SEC, Big 10, etc. He’s an excellent player, loves the game and wants to compete at the highest level possible.

His skills will allow him to gain a scholarship to attend college but at what cost. I want him to have a functional body when he’s a senior citizen but playing football doesn’t allow for this process to happen naturally.

I would not tell him to not play football because of the threat of injury but between the potential for paralysis, head trauma with concussions and everything else, you have to ponder putting your foot down as an adult and not letting your son play the sport.

-The coaching carousel got off to an expected start with the dismissal of Tim Brewster from Minnesota. The school had modest expectations that weren’t met by Brewster. When you add the fact that the school has a newly built stadium on campus in a major sports market, this wasn’t a surprising firing. The timing is all about recruiting and increased opportunity for the search committee.

I don’t think that Mike Leach is going to consider taking this job, even though he should be a candidate. Him mixing with the Big Ten and the Midwest in general would be entertaining for spectators but not for the football field.

-Oklahoma State and Missouri are both undefeated and I have minimal information on each of them. Thankfully, Nebraska travels to Stillwater and Oklahoma visits Columbia to test both squads and gain a better reading of all four schools involved.

-Maybe I was a little brash to say that USC was going to finish eighth in the Pac-10. They did look good against Cal on Saturday and may actually finish in the top half because Matt Barkley is a legit quarterback and the offense is good.

-Big, big win for Mississippi State at Florida. I don’t care if Florida is having a down year, anytime you can get a win in Gainesville, on homecoming no less, that deserves some major respect.

I stole this from someone but if Mississippi State was in the SEC East, they would be the second-best team in that section. Unfortunately, the Bulldogs are in the SEC West and are the fifth-best squad with five wins, including two SEC wins.

-Respect to Kentucky beating South Carolina as well, but many including myself saw that loss coming. The letdown for the Gamecocks after beating Alabama had to be strong. However, South Carolina led the game 28-10 over Kentucky and looked to be rolling towards another victory, but the Wildcats chipped away and got the victory.

-Nevada didn’t help Boise State’s cause Saturday by losing at home to Hawaii.

-I would write more about Vandy’s shutout loss at Georgia but I may be too emotional when writing about it.

I’ll say this. I don’t mind seeing a team I follow lose. Losses happen in sports. What makes me mad is not giving a maximum effort and that’s what I saw on Saturday in Athens from the Commodores.

I’ll be a Commodore for life but still disappointed by Saturday’s game.

Those are my thoughts, what about yours?