The College Football Czar: Week 10

Week nine in review: The horse race is on for the #2 BCS rating, with Oregon pulling ahead of Florida State on the strength of their 42-14 win over UCLA. They will likely trade places again this week, while the Ducks are idle, and the Noles face undefeated arch rival Miami. The College Football Czar takes back what he said about doubting Ohio State’s #4 rating in light of last week’s games. There has now developed a bold line of demarcation between the top four teams and everyone else.

The most recent nominees for the Lardhead of the Year Award are Florida Atlantic head coach Carl Pelini and defensive coordinator Pete Rekstis, who were suddenly forced to resign when it was discovered that they’d been smoking marijuana at what so far is being described only as a “social event.” In the College Football Coaches’ Guide of What Not To Do, number two, right under the Sandusky Rule, is “do not use illegal drugs.” If either of these guys has any future in coaching, he’d better start boning up on Dauber’s “We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you” speech, because he’ll need it.

Unfortunately for Pelini, his brother Bo at Nebraska does not appear to be in a position to give him his old job back. All is not lost, though. Remember Larry Eustachy, the Iowa State basketball coach who was fired for crashing frat parties and drunkenly slobbering all over the co-eds? Well, Eustachy was not even out of the game for a year, before his career was revived by Southern Miss, whose team he coached for the next eight seasons. The Southern Miss football team has lost 19 in a row, and may be in the market for a new head coach very soon. Unless that school has developed ethical standards since the Eustachy hire, coach Carl may be in business.

The Czar correctly predicted South Carolina’s upset of previously unbeaten Missouri, as part of an 11-6 week. For the season, his record is 128-47, for a .731 winning percentage.

The Trojans trudged past Utah 19-3, in a defensive battle in which they only outgained the Utes 260-201. Southern Cal went plus-4 in turnovers, which they converted for 16 points, providing the margin of victory.

The Beavers were stuffed 20-12 by a Stanford defense that held QB Sean Mannion to 271 passing yards on 41 completions. Mannion’s eight sacks helped hold OSU’s rushing offense to a paltry 17 yards on 24 carries.

In 2006, the Men of Troy were handed a shocking 33-31 defeat by the Vers of Bea, in what was regarded as a huge upset at the time, but has since become routine. That was only the first of three consecutive losses for SC in Corvallis, followed by a 27-21 loss in ’08, and a 36-7 trouncing in 2010.

The College Football Czar doesn’t often like to write about converted turnovers. He figures a pastry’s religious beliefs are its own business.

It’s hard to overestimate how damaging last week’s 24-21 loss at Navy is to the Panthers’ season. Not only did it put them back on the bowl bubble at 4-3, but the way their defense was worn down by the Middies’ option game was not the best preparation for a similar but more productive attack from the Ramblin Wreck.

The Czar is stunned to hear that Panther players are admitting to having become overconfident and complacent by halftime, while nursing a tenuous 13-7 lead. That’s bad under any circumstances, but how could they be overconfident so soon after an uncomfortable 35-24 win over Old Dominion? This is a team that’s played in three consecutive BBVA Compass Bowls, and lost the last two of those, badly. That’s a heck of a place to in which to become complacent. You’d think they’d at least be ambitious enough to make it all the way to the prestigious Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl.

Tech coach Paul Johnson, not coincidentally the former skipper in Annapolis, hired defensive coordinator Ted Roof away from Penn State, where his absence is definitely noticeable. GT is allowing 8.4 points per game fewer than last season, while PSU is yielding 10.2 points more.

Panther QB Tom Savage started out at Rutgers, then went to Arizona, before arriving in Pittsburgh. No wonder no university will keep him. Doesn’t he realize how offensive the name Savage is? Please, it’s Tom Indigenous Person – do you mind?

The Fighting Illini (3-4, 0-3) didn’t put up much of a fight on their home turf last week, when Michigan State went through Champaign like Liz Taylor. Tim Beckman’s team only picked up eight first downs during that 42-3 thrashing, and only one of those in the second half.

Last time the Nittany Lions lost as badly as they did to Ohio State, it was still only the 19th Century. The 63-14 clobbering in Columbus was the worst they’ve suffered since a 64-5 loss to Duquesne in 1899. The really alarming thing is that it wasn’t a fluke, as anyone knows who watched the Lions languish in the second half against Indiana. They’ve now given up 147 points in three games.

Unlike their mysteriously missing 111 victories, that historic loss to the Dukes has never been expunged from Joe Paterno’s record.

In last year’s meeting, Texas Christian prevailed 39-38 in double-overtime, although the Czar thought they got the benefit of a blown call on the winning two-point conversion.

The 3-5 Mountaineers fell to 0-4 on the road last week, with a 35-12 loss to Kansas State. WVU led 12-7 midway through the third quarter, but barely impeded the K-State offense during its last four drives of the day.

The Horned Frogs, also 3-5, scored approximately one point per hour in a 30-7 loss to Texas that included a three hour, six minute lightning delay. The Longhorns led 17-7 when the game was halted, so those fans in Fort Worth who stuck it out didn’t see their team score at all once it resumed.

When the Frogs wore their red-streaked helmets in their opener, they pointed out that horned frogs actually shoot blood from their eyes. This isn’t something that they’ve always been able to do, though. They’ve only been doing it since the beginning of last season, when both of these teams joined the Big XII. That’s because now, they’ve got to look at Dana Holgorsen.

Sebastian can hardly believe his Ibis after watching his team escape its last two games with its unbeaten record intact. In a Thursday night Week 8 game, the Hurricanes rallied from a 10-point, fourth-quarter deficit to beat North Carolina 27-23. Nine days later, they needed two fourth-quarter TD runs from Duke Johnson to ward off Wake Forest, 24-21.

Despite being undefeated, the Canes are nowhere near seventh-best in the nation. Their BCS rating is being elevated by their position in the human polls, which means that they’ve gotten there on their name, and not based on what they’ve done on the field. Just wait until next year, when there are no computer ratings, and the collective opinion of 13 voters is all that matters.

The Seminoles avenged their only ACC loss of last season against Nc State, but they resisted the temptation to rub it in. Having taken a 42-0 halftime lead, they pulled their starters early in the third, and coasted to a 49-17 victory. Freshman QB Jameis Winston, who came out after one possession in the second half, threw for 292 yards, with three TDs and an interception.

Sebastian, the Canes’ mascot, is a mite apprehensive about all the college students who are pushing for the legalization of can ibis. Perhaps he can dissuade them by telling them it isn’t dolphin-safe.

For anyone who was holding out hope for the Red Raiders to bring a BCS championship back to Lubbock, T-T-That’s all, folks! Tech’s 7-0 start against the Elmer Fudds of the football world was just a lead-in for the main feature, in which they face their five toughest opponents to end the regular season. The first of those was Oklahoma, whose balanced attack outlasted the air-Raiders, 38-30.

Junior Cowboy running back Desmond Roland barreled through Iowa State for 219 yards in a 58-27 rout. That total more than doubled his career high, which shouldn’t really be a surprise, since his 26 carries doubled a career high in that category as well.

It’s a little-known fact that Lubbock is a substance similar to flubber, except that instead of flying, it lies. That lying rubber is bad news. It once promised the College Football Czar that nothing he threw at it would bounce back and stick to him. It also told him that his fly was open.

Actually, that second thing wasn’t exactly a lie, it just wasn’t a very nice thing to say.

The 4-3 Midshipmen have lost their last three road games, to Western Kentucky, Duke and Toledo. They did open the season with a win in the state of Indiana, 41-35 over the Hoosiers, but anyone who considers that a precedent for this game is a lardhead.

Last week, the Middies pulled out an unlikely 24-21 win over Pitt, due largely to a gutsy performance by quarterback Keenan Reynolds, who played most of the game with an injured right ankle. Reynolds still had most of his mobility for as long as he kept moving, but we’ll see if he’s still as flexible a week later.

The Fighting Irish spotted Air Force an early touchdown, but soon took over for a 45-10 victory, which was their most lopsided win since opening last season with a dominant 50-10 performance in Dublin, against this same Naval Academy team.

When the announcers for that game referred to the “stout offensive line” of the Irish, that merely meant that the fellas had been tossing down a few pregame pints at the pub across from the stadium.

There’s usually a lot more at stake in this traditional, neutral-site game in Jacksonville than merely a chance to avoid falling to .500. Actually, even this year it’s a little more important than that, with each team (4-3, 3-2) only trailing Missouri by half a game in the SEC East.

Mark Richt’s bedeviled Bulldogs are coming off an urgently needed idle week, after dropping their second game in a row, 31-27 to Vanderbilt – a game they led 27-14 at the end of three. Running back Todd Gurley, who did not play that game as Richt had hoped, should finally return from his ankle injury against the Gators. Wide receiver Michael Bennett and safety Tray Matthews are expected to come back from their injuries, also.

UF has had a week off, also, since getting mauled by Missouri, 36-17. Will Muschamp’s chompers only managed to bite off 151 total yards that day, compared to an even 500 for Mizzou.

The NCAA’s political correctness police won’t allow this event to be called the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party any longer. Now, it’s called the World’s Largest Outdoor Awareness Symposium. Its participants talk about how badly they feel for people with prickly heat, as they drink mint juleps until they barf.

This may be the Big Ten’s last chance to contrive a Michigan-Ohio State conference championship game, as they had hoped to do when they drew up the unkeepstraightable Leaders and Legends divisional alignments. With next year’s expansion, geographical sanity prevails, placing these two in the East division, along with OSU, making it impossible to worm the league’s favored teams into the title game against each other. The Czar applauds the move, in part because it’s so obviously improper for a conference to play favorites in the first place.

Last year, the Wolverines snapped a four-game losing streak to their rivals from East Lansing, although they failed to reach the end zone in a gritty 12-10 triumph. Kicker Brendan Gibbons was 3-for-3 on the day, but coach Brady Hoke wouldn’t trust his range, instead bringing in Matt Wile to boot a 48-yarder.

The 7-1 Spartans are third in the nation in scoring defense, allowing 12.3 points per game, but they have benefited from a favorable schedule. Not only were their first three nonconference opponents offensively impotent, but their Big Ten slate includes neither Ohio State nor Wisconsin.

Devin Gardner had a record-setting harvest for the maize and blue, while winning a 63-47 shootout with Indiana two weeks ago. Gardner passed for a team-record 503 yards, completing 21 of 29. His yards per completion is perhaps the most impressive thing about that, at a time when other QBs are weenily bubble-screening their way to records in attempts and completions, without piling up nearly as much yardage.

On second thought, screening bubbles would be a difficult task. I mean, they all look pretty much the same. How do you figure out which bubbles to let through? And doesn’t that inevitably lead to charges of profiling?

In an otherwise dead-even rivalry game, the Rebels captured the Fremont Cannon with a 27-22 victory over Nevada, largely due to their only committing three penalties to the Wolf Pack’s 13.

Spartan slinger David Fales did not at first succeed in 2013, but in his last two games, he’s thrown for a total of 913 yards with 8 TDs and only one interception, in beating Colorado State and Wyoming by seven points each.

At 5-3, the Rebs are poised for their first bowl appearance since 2000. To say the least, that would be a happy ending for coach Bobby Hauck’s fourth season in Vegas. The former Montana coach’s tenure to this point has been a grizzly scene, with only six wins in his first three seasons.

Yes, of course the Czar knows the word is spelled “grisly.” So who are you, the homonym police?

First-year coach Dave Doeren is having trouble instilling the same Pack mentality in his new team that he used to mush his way into the BCS last year with the Northern Illinois Huskies. His NCSU squad is 3-4 thanks to a weak nonconference schedule, but has dropped all four of its ACC games, including poor showings against also-rans Syracuse and Wake Forest.

The 2-5 Tarheels had their feet stuck in neutral for the first five games, but they’ve now followed up their near-upset of Miami with a 34-10 beaning of Boston College. Andre Williams, who leads the ACC in rushing with 1,010 yards, gained 172 against BC, including a 56-yard touchdown run.

The Czar generally dislikes black uniforms on teams that don’t have black as one of their team colors, but the black helmets UNC wore against Miami were nifty. If fictitious North Carolinian Howard Sprague got blackballed with one of those, it would have taken him a lot longer than one episode to recover.

By that remark, the Czar did not mean to condone “targeting.” Well, maybe against Howard Sprague, but nobody else.

Somebody please inform the Falcons that there is no government shutdown, so they can start playing football any time now. The AFA’s only win this year has been their opener against Division I-AA Colgate. Going back to last season, they’ve now lost their last nine against I-A competition.

Freshman Nate Romine became the Falcons’ fourth starting quarterback of the season last week in a 45-10 loss to Notre Dame. Karson Roberts, who had been held out after sustaining a concussion against San Diego State, was nevertheless used in the fourth quarter against the Irish, and will probably return behind center this week.

With a win, the 3-5 Black Knights would still have a chance of claiming the berth that is reserved for them at the Poinsettia Bowl. They’d need to beat a currently winless Hawaii team, and pull a mild upset against either Western Kentucky or Navy. Realistically, the Band of Hudson Brothers may not have enough razzle dazzle to get it done, at least not if lopsided losses to Wake Forest, BC and Temple are any indication.

The Air Force Academy is located in Colorado Springs, which is in a state that has famously decriminalized pot. The Czar only mentions this because coach Carl Pelini has recently become available.

UW is wisconsed in second place in the Big Ten’s Leaders division, without much likelihood of moving anywhere in the standings. The Badgers (6-2, 5-1) are practically two games back of Ohio State because of their head-to-head loss, and they're a game and a half up on Indiana and Penn State.

The Hawkeyes have surpassed last year’s win total by beating Northwestern, 17-10 in overtime, to improve to 5-3. The three teams they’ve lost to – Northern Illinois, Michigan State and Ohio State – have a combined record of 23-1.

The visitors’ locker room in Kinnick Stadium has been painted pink since the 80s, as a psychological ploy by coach Hayden Fry. That means Fry was exhibiting “awareness” at least a decade before it was even invented. Talk about a visionary!

Just like last year, the Bulldogs’ schedule has set them up for a fall. Even after they barely held off Kentucky last Thursday to go to 4-3, they don’t seem likely to become bowl eligible, with a November schedule consisting of SC, Texas A&M, Alabama, Arkansas and Ole Miss.

Injured QB Connor Shaw came off the bench to lead the Gamecocks back from a 17-0 fourth-quarter deficit to beat division-leading Missouri, 27-24 in double-overtime. As maligned as they’ve been, the pugnacious poultry have pulled within percentage points of the Tigers for the SEC East lead.

South Carolina is known as the Palmetto State, which makes it the only state in the Union to have named itself after vermin. It’s a little-known fact that it was originally called Lice Land, but coach Steve Spurrier made them change it, because he found it was bad for recruiting.

BSU’s 37-20 Friday night loss at BYU drops their record to 5-3. They haven’t had four regular season losses since 2001, which is the last time they weren’t invited to a bowl game.

Win or lose, 4-4 CSU stands a great chance of going to its first bowl since 2008. Last week, they held on to win at Hawaii 35-28, despite a scoreless second half. After hosting the Broncos, they don’t face another opponent that currently has a winning record.

Q: What did the Broncos say after blowing out the Rams in their first two seasons of Mountain West play, 63-13 and 42-14?

Last time the Czar picked the Orange to win, Georgia Tech’s triple-option offense ran over them like a tractor over a pumpkin, 56-0. Wake used to run a similar, versatile run-based offense, but has gotten away from it in recent years. 13th-year coach Jim Grobe had brought his option game to Winston-Salem from Ohio U., but this year they’ve gone almost exclusively to the air, while averaging only 96 rushing yards per game.

SU is the 11th-worst rushing team in the nation, which is especially bad because, unlike some of the teams beneath them, they have not abandoned the run in favor of their passing game. Their offense is balanced, as far as plays are concerned, with 274 passing plays to 265 rushes. Yet they’ve only amassed 767 yards on the ground, with a puny 2.9 per-carry average.

In short, there are no carriers for this game at the Carrier Dome. That’s kind of like having a game at Papa John’s Stadium, without any creepy guys to annoyingly nod at you.

Golden Gopher RB David Cobb went on the attack against his natural enemies, the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Cobb took a bite out of the blackshirt defense for 138 yards in last week’s 34-23 victory.

The 3-4 Hoosiers have lost their last two, at Michigan State and at Michigan. Now, they return home for the first time since they pelted Penn State 44-24, almost a month ago. They only went 3-2 on their season-opening five-game homestand, however, with losses to Navy and Missouri.

If you were a Cobb playing against the Cornhuskers, you’d run fast, too. Unless you actually liked the idea of them peeling your pants off, that is. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, even if there is.

1 posted on 10/31/2013 5:29:55 PM PDT by Daniel Clark

I’ll fix the Iowa/Wisconsin prediction for you. U of I -26 U of W -17.

2 posted on 10/31/2013 5:36:49 PM PDT by MountainDad (Support your local Militia)

The question is which Army team of this Jekyll and Hyde season will show up

3 posted on 10/31/2013 5:50:29 PM PDT by chargers fan

Go Hawks !

4 posted on 10/31/2013 6:13:34 PM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks ("Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth.")

A pissed off Missouri team plays Tennessee this weekend. I don’t think Tennessee is going to slip up behind Missouri and do them like they did South Carolina; especially after the thumping they got last week against Alabama.

5 posted on 10/31/2013 6:35:19 PM PDT by vetvetdoug

Go Hawks! Yes sir!

6 posted on 10/31/2013 7:13:54 PM PDT by MountainDad (Support your local Militia)

Of course I want to beat UGA, but another part of me doesn’t want to see Muschamp do just enough to keep his job.

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