Looks like Va. Tech and Oregon may ruin BOTH of next week’s marquee Top 10 matchups (Miami-OU, Cal-USC). Hokies lead 21-0; Ducks lead 18-3.
Looks like Va. Tech and Oregon may ruin BOTH of next week’s marquee Top 10 matchups (Miami-OU, Cal-USC). Hokies lead 21-0; Ducks lead 18-3.
Cal looks like CRAP today. They failed to take advantage of the first turnover, and then re-fumbled another two turnovers. It should be 21-0 Cal right now, but the Bears are totally Cougin’ it.
Oregon is DESTROYING Cal….
Bah. Maryland with 5 turnovers again today. Rutgers offense only has 3 points yet the Terps are losing 20-13.
I wish it was all Chris Tuner’s fault so we could call him Chris Turnover.
err, Chris Turner’s fault.
ha. it just told me I’m posting comments too quickly and to slow down! It should let me edit it!
This is great for Boise State… and terrible for the Pac-10. If Cal had emerged as the “other” Pac-10 contender, aside from USC, they actually had the opportunity to be taken seriously in that capacity, to gain legitimate national respect, given Jahvid Best’s Heisman candidacy. (Unless you play in the SEC or the Big 12 South, or are named USC or Ohio State or Michigan or Penn State or Notre Dame, you generally need not just big wins, but also a legit superstar, to capture the nation’s imagination and respect.) No way is Oregon going to be taken similarly seriously by most fans & pundits east of the Rocky Mountains. Particularly after that season-opening pratfall against Boise State. Instead of reassessing their preconceptions about Boise and Oregon and the Pac-10, most folks will say,”Ha ha, Cal was a fraud, nobody really good would get blown out by Oregon like that. The Pac-10 is the Pac-1 again, surprise surprise.”
*Not that I can really dispute that “Cal was a fraud” based on the score. Even if Oregon is really quite good, there’s no way a legit Top 10 team gets killed like this, by anybody. If I’m going to give Ole Miss the crap I gave them on Thursday, I can’t go easy on Cal here, lest I apply a reverse-SEC-bias double standard…
And how’s come a showdown like Iowa/Penn State, which is currently 10-5, won’t be seen as “Man, the Hawkeyes and Lions are GOOD, man!” like it would if they played in the SEC. It’ll be seen as “Dude, the Big Eleven is mediocre. As you say, Brendan, could we not have the double standard here?
ND is only up 10 on Purdue. Methinks this isn’t what Chaz Weis had in mind.
Heh. Indeed. I just tweeted about this (and got re-tweeted by @AP_Top25!), in response to @LisaHorne’s tweet, “Only in the Big Ten would you see a score of 5-10. Oh wait, SEC game had a 3-2 score last year, didn’t they?” I replied: “Yeah but low scores in the Big Ten mean the conference stinks, whereas low scores in the SEC mean the SEC is a WAR!!!!!”
Its times like this you wish you had a TV. How did Iowa just score there? As far as I can tell from GameCast, PSU had 4th and 10, and the magically, Iowa scored and is on the 3 yard line! Is that for the two point attempt? Huh?!?!?
And indeed, it was the 2 point conversion attempt, which failed. Good. Plenty of time in this one to reverse a 1 point lead.
Aaaaand I hate the fake Steelers.
Re: only being up 10 on Purdue (now 3) … too bad Notre Dame doesn’t schedule mediocre/bad SEC teams instead of mediocre/bad Big Ten teams. Then they could be like LSU, which barely beat Mississippi State today, and yet will almost certainly jump to #5 in the rankings because of the losses by Ole Miss and Cal… maybe #4, if Iowa wins.
Indeed. That might work.
I’m seriously unhappy by this game. How could PSU let this happen AGAIN!?!?! At home, no less!
A sloppy game for the Blue and White. I was at least hoping to lose to a different team then last year. And I haven’t been able to watch either of these games, what with me being in the UK last year and not finding out until the next day that the Hawkeyes ruined the season for PSU, and this year not having a TV at my house.
Aaaaaand take it away, Marty West.
Ugh.
(Just realize, though, that this loss kills the conference this year. Hope you are happy.)
Had an insight today regarding why Notre Dame has struggled so much in the past 20 years. The notion from the Nation is that the team just can’t get enough of its type of players, which is odd considering that they always seem to recruit a Top 5 class. I think the problem is that there is too much distraction in the modern world of NCAA football, while everyone knows Talent is Overrated, and hard work is the key to success.
Colvin’s book (linked above – its great by the way, this is about the 100th time I’ve shilled for it in the blogosphere) has interesting, complicated implications for big-time NCAA football. For Notre Dame, your average rabid Irish fan believes that having the “right” kind of Notre Dame players is key, if they check that box they can win, helped by waking up the echoes and shaking down the thunder. The head coach must press a ton of booster flesh (more so perhaps at Notre Dame than anywhere else), smile cheesy, plastered-on smiles and say “Yes, yes, boosters, this year we’re gonna shake down that thunder!” then turn away and roll his eyes, quickly retreat to his office and put in countless hours studying his opponent to “shake down” their tendencies, as that is where the road to greatness lies.
So its a balancing act at any school, make it look effortless and automatic in public while privately investing an immense amount of effort. Pete Carroll is the undisputed master of this. He has perfectly mastered the cool SoCal persona – but he and his staff work as hard as the school’s greatness merits.
Back to Notre Dame – one can feel a bit sorry in the challenge for the Trustees in finding the right coach to lead the program, they have to uncover a guy who will publicly play along with the echoes and the ghosts and the shaking down of the thunder, while privately realizing that the key is to amass immense talent and then work immensely hard. That said, one wonders what confidence the Trustees would have had in Weis in the sense of “working hard to get it done”, in that he presented himself a couple years ago as a guy a few years out from a stomach stapling surgery but still grossly overweight. The trustees wouldn’t have known that two years in he’d be asking advice from his peers on how to coach. But the image he presented must have carried some hints.
This hit me watching Notre Dame tonight in that this team, like so many Notre Dame teams of recent vintage, is very very talented, they make many great plays, but they do the sort of boneheaded things indicative of teams that don’t work hard enough. The four waved-at missed tackles on Purdue’s opening touchdown. The formation/motion penalties. Blown coverages (McCarthy in the cover two leaving his post on the third TD) Etc etc etc. But then their skilled players, being very skilled, also make great plays.
Obviously, finding a guy like Holtz is the key, someone who plays the humble “its not that I work that hard” angle while working immensely hard in private. Not sure how easy it is to suss that out in an interview process.
But you Trojan fans should enjoy the Carroll era while you can. Next up could be Bob Davie. Or Paul Hackett.