ACC Is Making Me Look Bad

For all the blustering I've done about the ACC being college football's second best conference (this post plus numerous text conversations) they haven't done much to back me up come bowl season. 

The conference finished up at 4-6 in bowl season, hardly enforcing my claim. Florida State posted the conference's most impressive win, laying a beat-down on Wisconsin in the Champs Bowl. Meanwhile, GT was by far the conference's most perplexing and embarrassing loss, as they were dropped by LSU 38-3. GT had already beaten Ole Miss and Georgia out of the SEC, so it seems odd they would pick such a time to fall apart to another mid-level SEC team. Nonetheless, there it was, though.

Some notable conference records in bowl games so far:

Pac 10: 5-0, with 0 to play

Big 12: 3-1 with 3 to play

SEC:  3-1 with 4 to play

Big East: 3-2 with 1 to play

MWC: 2-2 with 1 to play

ACC: 4-6 with 0 to play

Big 10: 1-5 with 1 to play

Looking Back

With so many sports going on at once, how can you keep track of them all? You don't have to, but I will. Every Monday* I will look back and hit briefly upon the five story lines that stuck out from the previous weekend. *Editor's note: I know it's Tuesday, and this happened twice in a row. Forgive me. 

1. It's a shame that Texas Tech-Texas was on Saturday night, because I was not able to watch it. College students go out on Saturday nights. I was at a Halloween party. If this game was on a Saturday afternoon, I would have watched and most certainly enjoyed. But I digress.

What a terrific game with such enormous implications. In one amazing catch and run by Michael Crabtree (pictured), so many things happened at once that it is hard to believe. Instantly, all my gushing about Colt McCoy goes for naught; Graham Harrell one-upped him. Texas is now no longer a lock for the national championship; Texas Tech is now slated for the game with Alabama. If Texas Tech loses any more games, the Big 12 - by far the best conference in America - will probably be devoid of a team. 

2. The NBA season tipped off, and then people realized that they don't care about the NBA until March at least. Although one blockbuster deal already happened - Allen Iverson to the Pistons and Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess to the Nuggets - you can tell by looking around arenas everywhere that even die-hard NBA fans don't care about their teams yet. Nonetheless, listen for a preview tomorrow.

3. Did baseball happen? I don't remember a season that was so quickly forgotten about before this one. The Phillies had their glory for two days, highlighted by Chase Utley's "World ____ing Champions" (warning: explicit content), and since then we haven't seen any "season in review" or anything like that. I suppose it was such an odd season that people didn't know how to revisit it, so they just didn't. Can't say I'm really upset.

4. These NFL happenings get me excited for the rest of the season:

- The AFC East race: Is Miami the best team that just happens to have the worst record?

- The NFC South race: Will either the Bucs or Falcons have enough to hang with the Panthers?

- The AFC North race: Can Baltimore continue to make Pittsburgh nervous?

- The NFC East race: Will the Giants lose enough to give the Eagles and Redskins a chance?

5. These NFL 

happenings I have already heard too much about it and will continue to:

- Rex Grossman has to play a few games because Kyle Orton is hurt.

- Derek Anderson (pictured) is terrible and Cleveland made a decision they should have made in Week 4.

- The Colts and the Jags are playing below expectations. They've been playing that way for 8 weeks and probably will continue to.

- Anything about the Cowboys

(Photo Credits: AP)

Looking Back

With so many sports going on at once, how can you keep track of them all? You don't have to, but I will. Every Monday I will look back and hit briefly upon the 5 story lines that stuck out from the previous weekend.

1. The Big 12 officially has the depth to compete with the SEC as college football's best conference. What a huge Saturday, and nobody made more noise than these two conferences. To say that another conference is even close is absolutely absurd. What we are witnessing happen is teams beating each other up in conference play. This will lead to teams getting worse bowl games than they deserve, which will lead to the Maryland's of the world being absolutely torched.

Consider:

Texas is now the number one team in the country after beating Oklahoma, but if you don't think Oklahoma is still a top 5 team, you didn't watch that game.

Kansas looked dominant. They're 16 and should be higher.

Oklahoma St. is undefeated. It really wasn't that huge of an upset over Missouri.

2. Wake Forest is the best team in the ACC. Which means that Maryland will probably beat them Saturday. If Maryland does, the Coastal is there for the taking, because the next three best teams (VT, GT, and UNC) are all in the Atlantic.

3. The MLB playoffs are fun again. After some boring divisional series, the championships series are already heating up. Tampa Bay proved their mettle - again - by outlasting the Sox in game 2 after being blanked by Dice-K in game 1. And the Dodgers certainly made things interesting last night in their beat-down of the Phillies, especially Hiroki Kuroda, who threw the ball on a line at Shane Victorino's head.

I love the Dodgers player, who, after the game said: "It wasn't at his head, it was over his head."

Yea, he ducked.

4. Contender or Pretender? 

Contender: Colts, Jags, Chargers, Bucs, Cardinals

Pretender: Pats, Dolphins, Ravens

5. Matt Ryan is already better than a lot of starting quarterbacks in the NFL. Did you see that throw he made with 6 seconds left to put the team in field goal range? Terrific throw. Every time I see a Falcons highlight, it's Matt Ryan heaving the ball 40 yards downfield right on the money. 

Meanwhile, Joe Flacco is playing like ... a rookie from Delaware who should be the third string quarterback on his team this year but, due to a couple injuries, is forced to start behind a young offensive line and with a new head coach.

He will get better, but it may not be this year.