It's October! Things will start to sort themselves out, conference races are heating up. There is actually a Tues night game this week. App State v Ark State...but it's of little concern to those following big time college football. Thurs has a big game for the B12 Texas Tech vs TCU ...both teams have 1 conference loss, and while it isn't likely that either will end up in the Conf Championship game, they still need this win to keep hope alive. Preseason you had to wonder if Tech coach Kingsbury would be able to have a good enough season to keep his job. He's 3-2 and has found a freshman QB to run the offense, still no defense. I think that loss to Ohio State followed by the loss to Texas sort of took it all out of TCU, they can stlll have an excellent season but lose to Tech and it's glum. Friday night has a similar game Arizona at Utah. The Utes coming off the upset of Stanford and the Wildcats somehow righting the ship and after starting with 2 bad losses are 3-1 in their last 4 games. They are in the race for the Pac 12 South if they can beat Utah. Utes are in a must win situation with 2 losses already. Saturday Minn at Ohio State. PJ Fleck is struggling a bit already 0-2 in the B1G and likely to be 0-3. Buckeyes just have to show up and play their game and it will be over at halftime. Fla at Vanderbilt. Resurgent Gators get a trip to Music City and likely a win. Vanderbilt is 0-2 and likely to be 0-3 after that Gator defense gets finished. Will the Gators offense find it's self and not need big plays by the defense? Tenn at Auburn. Auburn just has sort of collapsed here recently. That was a bad loss last weekend against Miss State. Last year I thought Jarrett Stidham was going to be an AA and 1st round draft choice, this year not so much. He's got arm talent and all but the Auburn offense just isn't getting it done. OL problems? RB problems? I don't know. But they should get healthy against Tenn at home. Neb at Northwestern ... Another loss for the Cornhuskers. Northwestern almost upset Michigan and did upset Mich State, they and seem to have recovered from that horrible loss to Akron and the 3 game losing streak. Pitt at Notre Dame ...hopefully the Irish aren't reading their press clippings and listening to how great they are and how they will have and undefeated season. Kelly needs to keep these guys humble and focused. Georgia at LSU...big game, very big game. LSU at home in Death Valley that's a tough place to play. But Joe Burrow was made to look pretty ordinary by the Gator defense and I'm afraid that Georgia's defense will do the same and Georgia has a very productive offense. Pain for Eddie O. Washington at Oregon. Huskies in another of those must win games. They have to run the table to get to the CFP. Ducks still in it for the Pac12 North title and have one of the best QB's in football, so this should be an exciting game and a close game. Mich State at Penn State .. .MSU lost at home to Northwestern. I can't see them going to Happy Valley and beating Penn State. I have a feeling this won't even be close. Baylor at Texas . Baylor showing a little bit of a pulse and have a dynamic QB in Charlie Brewer, but Matt Rhule in his 2nd year has had a much deeper hole to dig out of than Tom Herman. Longhorns energized by the OU win and smelling the B12 championshp...roll. Texas A&M at South Carolina ...both teams need this win. Next step for the Aggies is to get a good road win in the SEC. This is that game. West Virginia at Iowa State. West Virginia is now ranked pretty high and in the conversation for the CFP. Going to Ames could be a trap, Will Grier threw a bunch of picks against KU at home. Iowa State is an overlooked program. Matt Campbell is a rising young coach. WVU should win, but they better not play like they did vs KU last week. Miami at Virginia. Miami survived a scare vs a not very good FSU squad, they have a not very good Virginia team on the road. Bounce back game for the Hurricanes. Wisconsin at Mich ..The game of the day in the B1G. Michigan has been rolling since the loss to Notre Dame, stumbled a little vs Northwestern but still got the win. Wisconsin has that loss to BYU. Both teams need this win badly, but of the two, Wisconsin playing in the West could lose and still be ok for getting to the B1G Championship game. Michigan loss ends it for them. Colorado at USC. So this is where the rubber meets the road in the Pac12 South. Colorado is unbeaten 5-0 but they really haven't played a tough schedule. That win over ASU was big though. USC is young, has one of the top freshmen QB's in the Country in Daniels, but so far they haven't clicked all that well on offense having lost to Stanford and Texas. But they seem to be improving, beat Wazzu and Arizona. If they want a chance to win the South they have to beat Colorado.
Has there ever been a bigger lock for the Heisman than Tua? They usually bring 3 to 5 guys to NYC for the ceremony. I don't think they need to bring anybody other than Tua, but of course that kills any drama so you can bet there will be 3 guys, doubt if there is anymore than that.
Porter Gustin, #45, LB for USC, was ejected in the 2nd half of the game against tu. He was therefore out for the first half against WSU. He came in for the second half. As the clock wound down during the WSU @ USC game, with 2:50 left on the clock, Wazzu was down 36-39, but driving. Cougars have 1st & 10 at the USC 25. Pass is thrown incomplete as he gets hit high-low, late, with targeting. But no flag??? https://twitter.com/i/status/1043379973753581568 (A couple Coug-centric articles written on it: https://www.cougcenter.com/2018/9/26/17907384/larry-scott-targeting-gardner-minshew-wsu-vs-usc https://www.cougcenter.com/2018/9/22/17890080/wsu-vs-usc-targeting-gardner-minshew https://collegefootballtalk.nbcspor...h-obvious-targeting-against-washington-state/ The penalty would have put WSU at 1st and goal at the USC 10 on a drive that started at the WSU 26. I sure would have liked our chances. Instead, with a QB with ringing between his ears, go for two straight runs when the passing game had been killing USC all night (37/52 for 344 yards and 3 TDs). (Run 4 yards to the USC 21, then run for no gain on 3rd and 6, culminating in a blocked would-be tying FG try.) So tell me again how much improvement USC has seen since they beat Wazzu. WSU's offense and defense was better than USC's. (Special teams were worse.) And this returns us to another subject of using targeting as a weapon. If you are just getting KILLED by a QB, why not send one of your guys to go in headhunting, hoping to put him into concussion protocol? USC losing even their starting LB would have been impacted much less than WSU losing their starting QB. Obviously the message wasn't sent to this cat after a single game suspension. And I don't know how drastic we need to go if we're serious about taking this kind of ******** out of the game, but this dude has done this two weeks in a row, and apparently it only matters when they play a big name team like tu. The P12 conference can't even man up and admit this should have been ANY kind of penalty, much less a targeting penalty. Even if it was too late for WSU justice, something should have been done to the perpetrator retroactively. One final note: you won't see this play in any of the P12 network game highlights. I wonder why?
Oh, and I do so enjoy reading through your write-ups each week, T! I just allowed that line to trigger me.
You're call Kes...was this targeting? Refs on the field didn't think so, guys in the booth didn't think it was worth looking at, and the B12 supervisor of officials after extensive review didn't think it was targeting either. I feel your pain. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zCiZPkz1hgc" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"></iframe>
By the rule, I call that targeting. #4 did appear to at least attempt to avoid the helmet to helmet hit at the end which perhaps gives him benefit of the doubt? I would have ejected him. Gustin's hit appears to check every single box, with no attempt to avoid an injurious LATE hit on the QB. And with the hit being the second week in a row, calls for more drastic penalties to Gustin to drive the point home.
NOT SO FAST MY FRIEND...Better take a closer look at the numbers before you make a definitive loss prediction this week. Things are changing.
Targeting is ALSO forcible contact to the head and neck area and does not require the hit to be delivered with a helmet. Definitely targeting in both cases. I don't understand how there can be this much variance in how it's called. If an Aggie safety sneezes on a guy's shoulders they drop the flag on him! The two cases above are no-brainer fouls to me.
I finally found one I could embed, starts at 27 seconds: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CTB4jMKXb7I?rel=0&start=27" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media"></iframe>
In all fairness to FSU and Miami’s poor coaching and the players execution in the first half actually FSU has more 4 & 5 star players than any team in the state of Florida. On paper FSU is much more talented than any other team in our state and should be dominating if we follow recruiting experts... I would be a tad cautious to anyone playing FSU as the season goes on, they have the talent to match most if not all teams vying for the final four...
Neuheisel was talking about the play Kes mentioned, he agreed with Kes 100 %, said it likely changed the outcome.
I hope so AJ, Frost has a tough job and I have no doubt he's up to the job but it's going to be a painful season for the most part. But if he could get a win vs a team like Northwestern then maybe things will start snowballing. Ralph no doubt Jimbo recruited very well based on the services. He had nothing but top 10 rated classes. Same as always for FSU. But I do keep hearing from the sports media that FSU is just awful with regards to the OL and they feel sorry for the FSU QB who they say is a really good player. With a lot of talent even underachieving as they have been so far this year, there are going to be days when that talent shows up and plays. The Irish have FSU later in the season at South Bend, I'm not penciling in a win I know those guys will come to ND jacked up most likely and maybe by then Taggert will have things under control and the guys finally buying what he's selling. Miami does have the better coach though right now and looking at the recruiting you guys are starting to turn the tide in recruiting.
Did anybody see the piece on Urban Meyer's health? He apparently went to the ground during last weekends game and some thought he'd stumbled over a player or coach on the sideline. But it was a severe headache from an Arachnoid Cyst. It's type of cyst in the brain, look it up, but it's something that can cause a lot of different symptoms including severe headaches. He said he manages it with medication, and I thought I heard him say he's had surgery but I'm not sure about that. https://www.cedars-sinai.org/health-library/diseases-and-conditions/b/brain-cyst.html
Terry, I had not heard about this until after the game Saturday. Yes, he did have surgery, but it needs to be drained from time to time. A bit scary to me.
More on that Targeting incident in the USC/WSU game...this is just crazy. Somebody needs to be fired in Pac12 https://sports.yahoo.com/yahoo-sports-exclusive-document-shows-untrained-third-party-overruled-targeting-call-pac-12-game-040318946.html
uh oh...Tua sprained his knee in the Ark game. Saban says its not a big deal and he hasn't missed any reps in practice. An injury appears to be the only thing that could derail Tua this season. If for some reason he has to miss playing time Saban playing Jalen so much is going to look like a stroke of genius.
Well a couple of thoughts on last nights TCU/Texas Tech game. 1) I guess TCU is done, they looked like a really good team early and looked like they were going to pull the upset of Ohio State. I thought for sure that they would beat Texas Tech. It was in Ft.Worth and Tech has a true freshman at QB. I thought the speed of the TCU defense would be too much. 2) I never would have predicted a 17-14 Tech victory. I thought it'd be a 45-35 or something like that TCU winning. Tech just barely had 400yds of total offense.
A very puzzling game last night Terry. I did not watch the entire game but TCU just never seemed to gain any consistency. Our win over them early on (third week) does not look as good now as back then with our second-half comeback.
There is a lot of confidence brewing down in Austin Texas after that win over OU last weekend. More than a few are thinking that we are positioned well at #9 to move up when those in front of us get their inevitable loss. We also have some big games left with W.Va. coming to Austin and potentially a B12 Championship game. Thinking is this Maryland loss is going to turn out to be a lot like that early season loss that Ohio State had to Va.Tech when they won the NC. The rule is if you're going to lose, lose early and then win out..losing late is tough to overcome, except if you are Alabama. I heard talk about how Penn State is positioned a lot like Alabama last year, 1 loss but to a really good team and by 1 point. They have some big games left and if they win out, they could be in the conversation as well with the resume'. Michigan also in that position. The loss to ND is a good loss, and they have big games left and if they can run the table that would mean beating Ohio State and winning the B1G Championship so they would likely be in the Final Four. I think if Georgia and Alabama meet in the SECCG then that might be like a quarter final game where the loser will be out.
If both UGA and Bama are undefeated when they meet in the SECCG, then barring a blowout... I seriously doubt one gets left out.