The College Football Czar: Week 7

Week six in review: Eight ranked teams lost to lower-ranked or unranked opponents, including #2 Oregon, #3 Alabama and #4 Oklahoma. Top-ranked Florida State was among the few favorites that won handily, 43-3 over Wake Forest, in spite of another pedestrian performance from Heisman-winning QB Jameis Winston.

Late collapses by Bama, Tennessee, Stanford and USC sent the College Football Czar crashing to a 10-10 mark, which drops his season record to 81-48, for a .628 winning percentage. The Czar did make a good pick on Mississippi State’s 48-31 toppling of Texas A&M (predicted score 44-31), and he correctly picked Utah to down #8 UCLA, but in hindsight, he should have seen more of the upsets coming. After all, Week 6 was the first serious challenge for many of these teams. Up until then, the rankings meant little more than they did in the preseason polls.

Replay officials made a correct, albeit very easy reversal in the Ole Miss-Alabama game, but other than that, they were abysmal. From what the Czar saw, a majority of their reversals were incorrect, as were many instances in which they “confirmed” blown calls on the field, and still others in which they timidly allowed plays to stand when they should not have. So, please, lardheaded announcers everywhere, spare us your rationalization that “the important thing is to get the call right in the end.” Instant replay has never offered a simplistic choice between getting the calls wrong or right. It only results in a marginally higher percentage of calls being right in the end, at the cost of a certain degree of disruption to the continuity of the game. Is it worth it? In Week 6, unless you’re an Ole Miss fan, the answer was a resounding no.

If there’s anything that disrupts a college football game more than replay reviews, it’s network “rules analysts” who are invited to butt in to comment on the reviews, when they aren’t contributing anything that the viewers can’t see for themselves. There is no value to having former NFL Director of Officiating Mike Pereira say, “The runner’s knee is clearly down here, so I’d expect that this call will stand.” Not only does that observation not require expertise, but once it is given, the announcers have to pretend not to have already figured it out on their own.

Isn’t it already part of the announcers’ job to know the rules anyway? How helpless must they seem if they need to be supplemented by a rules analyst? Media critics used to mercilessly dump on sideline reporters, often deriding the attractive female ones as bimbos, but sideline reporters provide valuable information to the viewers through on-field interviews and injury updates. What information have we ever gotten from these superfluous rules analysts?

Due to unforeseen circumstances (nothing dramatic, just a chance to go to the Penguins’ opener), the Czar must issue this week’s picks a day early, just as he will next week, when his hometown Panthers host Virginia Tech on Thursday night. As he always does while working on a short week, he asks you to please excuse this installment’s relative illiteracy.

On a decisive fourth-and-long play against Notre Dame, the Cardinal defense dropped back into coverage and only rushed three. They might as well have rushed tree, for all the good it did, because their mascot would have gotten no less penetration than their powerless three-man front. The Irish not only converted the fourth down on that play, but scored the winning touchdown, as anyone would have expected who had watched a three-man rush give up a third-and-10 play earlier that same drive.

Cougar quarterback Connor Halliday threw six TD passes and no interceptions, while piling up an NCAA Division I-A record 734 passing yards last week against California. As so often happens when passing records are broken, his team lost the game, 60-59. WSU had twice taken 11-point leads in the third quarter, but on each occasion allowed the Golden Bears to return the ensuing kickoff for a touchdown. Mike Leach has since fired special teams coach Eric Russell, which might seem harsh, but is a probably a smart move before facing Cardinal KR Ty Montgomery.

Stanford coach David Shaw says QB Kevin Hogan sustained a leg injury at South Bend, although nobody seems sure just how and when he got hurt. It was probably when he became disoriented and thought he was Paul Hogan, and tried to walk to the end zone by stepping on people’s heads.

And to think that, until Crocodile Dundee was released, we insular Americans had no appreciation of the proud Australian tradition of head-stepping. Thank you, Paul, for expanding our horizons.

The firing of fourth-year Wolverine coach Brady Hoke is at this point a mere formality, but his troubles can be traced back to last year’s 43-40 quadruple-overtime loss at PSU. Hoke elected to milk the clock rather than try to add to a 34-27 lead late in the game, and left the Lions barely enough time to come back and tie the game. Then, in the first overtime, he timidly started setting up a field goal attempt rather than try to gain yardage. The potential game-winning 40-yarder was blocked.

Finally, in OT #4, Nittany Lion coach Bill O’Brien eschewed a fifth extra frame, and went for it on fourth-and-one rather than kick another tying field goal. The successful call soon led to the winning touchdown. The difference was that O’Brien tried to win the game, and Hoke did not. It’s just that simple.

Granted, the Nittany Lions no longer have O’Brien, or WR Allen Robinson, whose herculean effort drove the game to OT in the first place. On the other hand, the Wolverines no longer seem to have any will to continue the season. Last week, the U of M fell to 0-2 in Big Ten play with a 26-24 loss to Rutgers, with top running back Derrick Green getting injured for good measure.

Last year, the Wolverines’ Devin Gardner started wearing uniform #98 as part of a tribute to team legend and 1940 Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon. This year, he continues to wear the number so that he won’t be identifiable as the quarterback of this dismal offense.

Coaches Dana Holgorsen and Kliff Kingsbury meet again, having previously served as the before and after pictures from an ad for personal grooming products. Unfortunately for the Red Raiders’ coach, there aren’t really any such things in football as those “style points” everyone keeps yammering about.

Raider QB Davis Webb played at Kansas State after having his non-throwing shoulder injured a week earlier Kingsbury might as well have rested him, rather than watch him labor through a four-INT performance, in which he completed barely more than half of his passes. The 45-13 thrashing dropped his team’s record to 2-3, but that is hardly reflective of their poor play throughout the season. Tech had to hold off Division I-AA Central Arkansas 42-35 in their opener, and then edged UTEP 30-26 for a misleading 2-0 start.

Travel will be tough for the Mountaineers for as long as they remain in the Big XII, but it won’t have any effect for this, their first road game of the season. Only after they’ve had to return to the Southwest in Weeks 9 and 11 will it start to take its toll.

On second thought, maybe a few style points ought to be offered to Holgorsen, just as an incentive.

It’s too bad these teams can’t meet in the SEC championship game, as they would if the league had split itself into the Tigers Division and the Bulldogs Division, as the Czar once proposed. For now, these particular Tigers and Bulldogs are ranked second and third respectively, which means that this week’s winner ought to be the new #1, regardless of what Florida State does against Syracuse this week.

The Tigers were almost tripped up in their only road game so far, a 20-14 tussle at Kansas State. In addition to this trip to Starkville, they also must travel to Ole Miss, Georgia and Alabama.

MSU will try to defeat a Top 10 opponent for the third consecutive week, although obviously, those rankings have been somewhat inflated by the pollsters’ usual SEC suckuppery. In those previous wins over LSU and Texas A&M, Josh Robinson rushed for a combined total of 304 yards and three touchdowns. For the season, Robinson has already run for 592 yards, although he has yet to be given more than 20 carries in any individual game.

A week after the Dogs beat LSU 34-29, AU rolled over that same Louisiana State team 41-7. Quarterback Nick Marshall threw for two TDs and ran for two more. Meanwhile, the Tiger defense stopped the visitors from Baton Rouge on every one of 13 third-down conversion attempts.

Since its most recent expansion, the SEC is unbalanced, with three Tigerses to only two Bulldogses. The Czar thinks the Missouri Tigers should not have been allowed to join the league, until they agreed to change their name to the Roughriders.

The way that Southern Cal and Arizona State were scoring at will in the fourth quarter, the Trojans should have known better than to work the clock instead of trying to pick up first downs on their final possession (see: Hoke, Brady). They lost the game on a Hail Mary, which has become so commonplace in Pac 12 play that it has lost its mystique. For that reason, it has been renamed the “Yo Mary, Little Help.”

Not only did the SC defense not attempt to rush the passer on that play, but the men who were supposedly in pass coverage stood around in the end zone waiting for the ball to come to them, instead of challenging the ASU receiver who stepped up and made the winning catch. The Czar can’t believe coach Sarkisian and defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox will let them play so passively this week, with their survival in the Pac 12 South race in jeopardy.

Freshman Wildcat QB Anu Solomon was rattled in his first road game, a 26-23 win at Texas-San Antonio, but he had no trouble handling the atmosphere in raucous Autzen Stadium last Thursday, when he kept his cool to complete 20 of 31 in a 31-24 upset of Oregon.

Aside from an opening 58-13 blowout of UNLV, the undefeated U of A has won the rest of its games by seven points or fewer. After that UTSA game, they barely staved off Nevada 35-28, and then needed the unlikeliest of comebacks to down the Cal Bears 49-45.

Sarkisian is only 3-2 with the Trojans, whereas Ed Orgeron went 6-2, and don’t think that isn’t being noticed. If you Orgeron loyalists out there want to gloat, however, you’d better do it right now. That’s because your man has thrown his hat in the ring for the head job at Kansas, where overrated coaching careers go to die.

The Cardinal skinned the Orange 28-6 last Friday in the Carrier Dome, but they’re not likely to find the orange in Death Valley to be quite so a-peeling. In the two games that freshman Deshaun Watson has started for the Tigers, they’ve outscored their opponents 91-35, while he has thrown for eight TDs and only one interception.

Last week, the Tigers led Nc State 31-0 at halftime, but instead of trying to pop scoreboard bulbs, they shut the game down in the second half, during which their only touchdown was scored by the defense. The 41-0 final was their first shutout of a Division I-A opponent since they trampled Louisiana Tech 51-0 in 2006.

Whaddaya mean, they don’t use bulbs in scoreboards? Why, the College Football Czar just happens to own an authentic scoreboard bulb, which he keeps right in the pocket of his coonskin coat.

The Bears’ 28-7 win over Texas was not as easy as it now appears to have been. Late in the first half, BU was stuffed on a goal line stand. The Longhorns responded with a 99-yard drive, before fumbling a snap inside the one at the opposite end. Had their offensively impaired opponents forced a 7-7 tie at halftime, the second half could have gotten a lot hairier for Art Briles’ Bears.

The Horned Frogs’ offense had to overcome 12 penalties, three turnovers, and a blocked extra point returned for a defensive two-point conversion, to knock off Oklahoma 37-33. Junior wide receiver Kolby Listenbee caught five balls in that game, for a career-high 103 yards.

Last season, the Frogs finished 4-8, but they almost bumped off the unbeaten Bears in their season finale. Famously undisciplined QB Casey Pachall threw three interceptions that day, two of which were returned for touchdowns. This year’s starter, Trevone Boykin, had only one pass attempt, which went for a 21-yard touchdown in the 41-38 defeat.

A “Listenbee” is what suffices for ESPN programming during the offseason. It’s kind of like a spelling bee, in which the children demonstrate how much they can learn by listening. It’s like getting all the excitement of the World Series of Poker, except with smaller, less abrasive people.

The Ducks thought they’d returned a fumble for the tying score in the fourth quarter of last Thursday’s 31-24 loss to Arizona, but unfortunately for them, it was ruled that the play was blown dead because the runner’s forward progress had been stopped. On the bright side, that rendered the play non-reviewable.

Webfoot fans are used to seeing their team get the better of the halftime adjustments, but should those expectations have ended with the retirement of longtime defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti? UO held the Wildcats to three points in the first half, but their defense seemed to have been completely solved by the start of the third quarter.

After breezing by Arizona State 62-27, the Bruins seemed stymied by a Utah team that actually showed an interest in pursuing the ball carriers. The blue bears fought back from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit, only to be bounced from the ranks of the unbeaten by a late Ute field goal, 30-28.

Last year, Jim Mora’s team scored shortly before halftime to force a 14-14 tie, but the Fighting Ducks dashed away to a 42-14 victory on the strength of Byron Marshall’s three rushing touchdowns. Marshall and sophomore Thomas Tyner have curiously been bumped on the depth chart to make way for 230-pound freshman Royce Freeman, who leads a gaggle of Duck rushers with 346 yards. The lack of focus created by the RB rotation, as much as injuries to the OL, have contributed to their gaining little more than 200 rushing yards per game.

What? You mean ducks can’t be in gaggles, only geese? Why, that’s waterfowlism! For shame! Quick, somebody organize an awareness campaign at once!

Consistent with their identity as a basketball school, the Blue Devils decided not to face any serious competition until the beginning of conference play. They opened against Division I-AA Elon, and then faced three I-A teams (Troy, Kansas and Tulane) who themselves are a combined 1-12 against I-A opponents.

When ACC scheduling finally forced them to take on Miami, they were stuffed for 264 total yards in a 22-10 defeat. Tech topped that same Hurricane team a week later, 28-17.

After last year’s conference opener, nobody would have guessed that Duke would end the season as Coastal Division champs, because the Ramblin Wreck rumbled through Wallace Wade Stadium like it was at a monster truck rally. Tech rushed for 344 yards that day, with nobody gaining more than 79, but ten different players getting at least one carry.

If you’ve never heard of a monster truck, it’s a truck from which treats are sold to children, and is driven by Elmo from Sesame Street. And you thought your neighborhood Good Humor man was creepy.

Since the Aggies have an ampersand, or “and sign” in their name, then why don’t they call themselves the “Andys” instead? It’s certainly more masculine than Aggies – unless it’s being used in reference to Andy Warhol, that is.

Before the Rebels’ 23-17 upset of Alabama, the College Football Czar didn’t think they were as good as their ranking, which at the time was #11. He stands by that. As rightly excited as Mississippians are, if they look back on it, they’ll see that the Bama team they beat played terribly.

In order to snap their losing streak at one, A&M mustn’t force QB Kenny Hill to set another season high in pass attempts. Instead, they’ve got to serve up a few more carries to Trey and Tra. Running backs Trey Williams and Tra Carson have only got a combined total of 85 carries so far this season, which works out to just over 14 per game.

The way Rebel QB Bo Wallace started the season, last week’s performance probably isn’t enough to start a Heisman campaign, but that’s just as well. In this day and age, plastering SEC country with posters and bumpers stickers that say “Vote Wallace” wouldn’t be very well received.

After his performance at TCU, sophomore Sooner QB Trevor Knight might want to ride, boldly ride, over the mountains of the moon and down the valley of the shadow, rather than go to Dallas and face the disappointed fans filling the red half of the stands in the Cotton Bowl. Yes, he threw for 309 yards against the Horned Frogs, but he completed only 15 of 34, while fumbling away the game’s opening TD, and giving up the game-winning score on a terribly thrown ball, right into a linebacker’s hands at the line of scrimmage.

Last season, the pointy cows pounded OU 36-20, behind running backs Jonathan Gray and Malcolm Brown, who rushed for 123 and 120 yards, respectively. Those two are leading the team in rushing again this year, but neither of them has yet come close to a 100-yard game.

The Longhorns scored with less than three minutes remaining in a 28-7 loss to Baylor, barely preventing themselves from being shut out for the second consecutive game. If Charlie Strong’s offense is playing possum, they’ve got to be into their seventh or eighth overtime by now. Eventually one has to conclude that the possum is no longer playing, but is just plain dead.

The enigmatic Eagles are playing their first real road game of the season. They opened at Umass, but the Minutemen’s temporary home field is Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, which is right next door to Boston, whereas Umass is located on the opposite end of the state. Since then, BC has hosted four consecutive games at Chestnut Hill.

It’s simply n-u-t-s that NCSU will probably be playing in a bowl game this season. Having faced a nonconference slate consisting of a I-AA opponent, two Division I-A newcomers and South Florida, and with Wake Forest waiting for them in November, they only have to beat one somewhat competent opponent in order to qualify for the postseason.

Wolfpack quarterback Jacoby Brissett performed against Clemson only slightly better than Jacqueline Bisset might have, as he completed only 4 of 18 passes for 35 yards in the 41-0 annihilation. Oops! Sorry, James Brown of CBS. The Czar did not mean to perpetuate domestic violence by suggesting that Ms. Bisset wouldn’t make a fine ACC quarterback. Of course, she’s 70 years old by now, but surely we can’t tolerate age discrimination, either.

The Bulldogs were suffering their worst injury trouble of the season in last year’s 41-26 defeat, and still, they stayed in the game against the eventual division champs until almost the very end. With RB Todd Gurley in top form, expect them to gain a lot more than the 164 rushing yards it had that day in his absence.

In fact, Gurley himself only came up one yard short of that total in last week’s 4-17 rout of Vanderbilt. He also had two receptions for another 24 yards, and even threw one pass for a 50-yard completion.

The Tigers return home for the first time since being taken down by Indiana, 31-27 in Week 4. In the meantime, they squeaked past the South Carolina team that had previously upset UGA, but that was an unsettling performance as well. QB Maty Mauk completed only 12 of 34 in the 21-20 scare, although he did have his two biggest completions to pull them back from a 20-7 deficit in the fourth quarter.

Who do you suppose Maty Mauk was mocking by completing only 35 percent of his passes? Not Jacqueline Bisset, that’s for sure.

The Czar thought the Wildcats had embarrassed the Big Ten during the offseason, but that’s nothing compared to what they’re doing to the league now. They’ve just beaten Penn State and Wisconsin – presumptive contenders in their respective divisions – after dropping home games to Cal and Northern Illinois to start 0-2. In last week’s 20-14 win over the Badgers, they were a plus-4 in turnovers, including an interception at their own 20, and another one on first-and-goal from the three.

The Golden Gophers have had a week off to imbibe in the contents of the Little Brown Jug, which they carried out of Michigan Stadium after a 30-14 thrashing of the rival Wolverines. The future looks bright for the radiant rodents, who are now 4-1, losing only to TCU on the road.

It’s a little-known fact that there was once a short-lived TV series called The Golden Gophers. Bea Arthur had to wear some costume teeth, but it was otherwise the same.

These two split a wild home-and-home series in 2006-07, with ISU taking the first game in Ames, 45-43, and the Rockets retaliating with a 36-35 victory a year later in the Glass Bowl. UT now returns to Jack Trice Stadium on a three-game winning streak, but those games have been against MAC opponents of dubious quality. Last week, Matt Campbell’s club escaped Kalamazoo with a 20-19 win, only because Western Michigan missed an extra point in overtime.

The Cyclones were victimized by possibly the worst among countless terrible calls by replay officials in Week 6. Their defense made a gutsy goal-line stand that should have ended the first half in a 6-6 tie, but the replay official awarded Oklahoma State a touchdown, in direct contradiction of the video evidence. ISU athletic director Jamie Pollard went on a tirade about the officiating after the game, and was fined $25,000. Maybe Big XII commissioner Bob Bowlsby had no choice but to punish the A.D., but when he went on to assert that the reversal was correct, he only validated Pollard’s cockamamie conspiracy theory.

If the Czar understands that theory, it goes something like this. Those dastardly “Big Oil profiteers” wanted OSU to win in order to ingratiate themselves to T. Boone Pickens, while also depressing the Iowans so that they can’t make so much phony gasoline out of corn. So they released fluoride into the air through the vapor trails of jet planes, which wafted down to earth just in time to obscure the replay official’s view of the goal line.

Sure, it sounds stupid, but once Oliver Stone has made a movie out of it, half of you will believe it.

The MT-heads, whose losses to Minnesota and Memphis are a lot more understandable in hindsight, are already 3-0 in the conference. Their 37-31 win over Southern Miss wasn’t actually a close game. Reggie Whatley’s 64-yard touchdown run staked them to a 37-18 lead midway through the fourth quarter, which only dwindled to a 37-31 final by a USM score with 27 seconds remaining.

Just under a year ago, the Blue Raiders handed the Herd their only C-USA defeat of the regular season, in a 51-49 barnburner. The MU special teams were as horrid as special sauce that night, when they had one punt blocked, shanked another, and muffed a punt return of their own.

The difference in this game is that MTSU is now breaking in freshman quarterback Austin Grammer, whereas the moo-men still have Rakeem Cato, a four-year starter with 11,537 career yards and 103 touchdowns.

It’s a little-known fact that the Blue Raiders added the “Blue” to their name in order to distinguish themselves from the band, The Raiders. It wasn’t done for legal purposes, however. They just didn’t want to be blamed for the song “Indian Reservation.”

The 0-6 Minutemen face a winless opponent for the second week in a row. As that previous sentence suggests, the first one didn’t go especially well. Last Saturday, Massachusetts chewed up Miami Ohio to take a 41-21 halftime lead, but then were blanked 21-0 in the second half.

At 0-5, KSU is 0-2 in conference play, having lost to Ohio and Northern Illinois by identical 17-14 scores. Last week at NIU, they came back from a 17-3 deficit to give themselves a chance to force overtime, but a late 56-yard field goal attempt understandably fell short.

Any online viewers who happen to catch any of this game on ESPN3 will observe that the Golden Flashes’ colors are blue and, um, gold. In light of that fact, how could anyone believe Urban Outfitters’ explanation that they didn’t mean to reference that school’s deadly 1970 tragedy when they produced a pink Kent State sweater that was peppered with red marks that appeared to mimic spattered blood? Had they been smart, they would have claimed that it was a clumsy attempt at “awareness.” They might have even persuaded the team to incorporate them into this week’s uniforms.

The Blazers trailed Western Kentucky 27-14 at halftime, but scored three TDs within five minutes early in the second half, and held on to even their Conference USA record at 1-1 with a 42-39 victory. Quarterback Cody Clements is completing just under 70 percent of his passes, but unlike other QBs with similar completion rates, he is actually gaining yardage while doing so, at a clip of 13.1 yards per completion.

Freshman Mean Green QB Dajon Williams tried to prove he could cut the mustard last week at Indiana, but unfortunately he had to spend most of the day playing ketchup. UNT spotted the Hoosiers a 21-0 lead, and never pulled any closer than a 14-point deficit the rest of the way in a 49-24 loss.

The Hoosiers’ hurry-up offense draws the most attention to mercurial quarterback Nate Sudfeld, but tailback Tevin Coleman is the nation’s fourth-leading rusher, only 37 yards behind leader Ameer Abdullah. Coleman’s season-low yardage total has been his 122 in a Week 5 loss to Maryland. He picked up 150 on just 17 carries last week, in a 49-24 rout of North Texas.

The Hawkeyes handled Purdue 24-10, little thanks to C.J. Beathard. The sophomore QB who had completed 7 of 8 in a great relief performance at Pitt connected on only 17 of 37 against the Boilermakers. Perhaps he expected that every opponent would put as little pressure on him as the Panthers did. At the time of this writing, it looks as if junior Jake Rudock and his injured hip will be back in the starting lineup for this game.

Going back to the Hayden Fry era, the visitors’ locker room in Kinnick Stadium has been painted pink in an effort to put them at a psychological disadvantage. Obviously, that won’t affect a team that was voluntarily wearing pink candelabras on its helmets only a week ago. But just wait until the Hoosiers get back to their hotel after the game. The lack of feng shui in that building is just dreadful.

1 posted on 10/08/2014 6:25:15 PM PDT by Daniel Clark

I’m still getting over SC’s loss to ASU.

2 posted on 10/08/2014 7:50:30 PM PDT by pleasenotcalifornia

Go UAB!!!!!

3 posted on 10/08/2014 10:10:18 PM PDT by political1 (Love your neighbors)

I used to date a guy who was a real football fan.

About the Miami Dolphins he said: “How can I root for a bunch of guys with Flipper on their helmet?”

4 posted on 10/09/2014 4:44:35 AM PDT by SMARTY ("When you blame others, you give up your power to change." Robert Anthony)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794