The Insanity of College Football

Every Saturday, the college football landscape changes dramatically and, at times, unexpectedly. This past Saturday - the first one of the season - saw National Championship contender Oklahoma essentially end its season before it even got off the ground.

The severity of Sam Bradford's shoulder injury will likely decide whether OU will be able to rebound and contend for a Big-12 championship or have to pack it in and look toward 2010. They now have one loss, and with the way the season has started, that may be all it takes for a team like OU to be knocked out of the National Championship picture.

Boise State beat 16th-ranked Oregon Thursday night, which paves the way for the Broncos to potentially go undefeated and demand a chance at being the best team in the country. They went into the weekend ranked 14th, and now may be in the top 10. If they go undefeated, OU will have to a tough time claiming they deserve to be in the final game - if they can even stay a one-loss team (and that will not be easy, even with Bradford).

Next, 20th ranked BYU just beat Oklahoma, which would likely give them the edge in any scenario where it would be down to those two teams. BYU's schedule is much more difficult that Boise State's (they play Florida State, TCU, and Utah), but if BYU were to go undefeated, they would be ahead of Oklahoma.

Then you look at the rest of the top teams - Alabama, Florida, Texas, Ohio State, USC, etc - and it's possible that all of those teams finish with no more than one loss. In fact, I think Florida will go undefeated and one of USC, Ohio State, or Texas will join them. I haven't even added in potential sleeper teams like Ole Miss, O.K. State, Penn State, LSU, or Cal. A one-loss OU team will have a tough time sticking around the top 5.

Again, this assumes OU can even stay in the picture and remain at just one loss.

And I'm going to take them out of the picture. They're now a one-loss team and I have a hard time believing that they will have a shot at the title, for the reasons stated above. There are too many good teams who will be at either one-loss or undefeated for OU to leapfrog them, especially if Bradford misses significant time, which I think he will.

But you know what the best part about all this is? I have absolutely no idea what will happen. This weekend proved what a crazy sport college football is. We had Navy being 2 yards away from overtime against Ohio State (in Columbus!). Northern Iowa, an FCS team, had two chances to kick a game-winning field goal vs. Iowa, but Iowa blocked the kick - TWICE! Matt Barkley looked impressive as USC's starter (even though it was against San Jose St.) and he may prove to be the best USC QB in a long time (yes, better than Palmer, Leinart, Sanchez, etc). College football is so unpredictable and each week produces a huge shift in the top of the polls.

I'm excited to see what will happen next and I'm excited to see what changes next weekend will bring. For all I know, Tim Tebow could tear an ACL or Matt Barkley could lead the Trojans into Columbus and tear up Ohio State. Any predictions people make about the season can go out the window in seconds. One of the two teams in most expert's National Championship game already has one loss and may have lost their quarterback for the season. What else can happen? I don't know, you don't know, no one knows. And I wouldn't want to have it any other way.

(Photo: TSN.ca/Getty images)

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

The Humanitarian Bowl

I could be that guy. I could be that guy who sits here and writes about how Maryland - an ACC school with a long, rich athletic history - was forced to play in the Humanitarian Bowl. In Boise. Against Nevada. And they gave us all we could handle, as we won by only seven.

That would be extremely disrespectful towards my school, though, and not how I honestly feel about the situation at all. 

To be frank, I was thrilled about the victory. I thought Maryland was going to go into Boise and absolutely get their brains beaten out. First of all, I never expected Maryland to come out and play the game with the passion and intensity they did. When your whole campus seemingly forgets about you, I imagine it would be easy to lose some of your focus. I feared that my thoughts were affirmed when I learned of the seven players suspended for the first part of the game. 

Then, Chris Turner stepped up, flashing his potential as a terrific quarterback once again (before becoming his inconsistent self in the second half again). Ronnie Tyler (FR), Torrey Smith (FR, pictured), and Adrian Cannon (SO) all stepped up, showing that the passing game can have life without Heyward-Bey and Oquendo next year. Morgan Green and Davin Meggett showed that the offense doesn't need to have Da'Rel Scott to have a big game to win.

Then Scott showed how much easier it is to win when he does have a big game. 

Defensively, they gave up 35 points, but what did you expect? They had a new defensive coordinator, and they were facing one of the top quarterbacks in the country (that's serious; I am of course talking about WAC player of the year Chris Kaepernick, who, even hobbled, managed 370 yards). The defense truly did a remarkable job in shutting down Nevada's rushing attack, holding the number two rushing team in the country to a mere 114 yards. 

I'm not saying the performances were sterling all around, but as a Maryland fan, you have to be happy to send the senior class out with a win. You also have to be happy with how many underclassmen really played well.

As we know quite well, though, it's the talent that Maryland lacked this year. Hopefully, next year, something clicks and the team can play up to its potential every game. If they can, they can certainly be in contention to win the ACC championship game. 

It all starts with a little momentum. That's hopefully what the Terps got with this win out in Idaho. God only knows, 8-5 sounds a lot better than 7-6. 

(Photo Credit: umterps.com)

The ACC is the Second Best Conference in the Land

Well, we already know they're the second best in basketball; nobody's going to dispute that. I'm talking about football, because I have something to prove here.

The ACC is better than every conference in college football except for the Big 12.

I've been told the Pac 10, the SEC, the Big 10 and the Mountain West are all equal to, if not better than, the ACC.

Jeff Sagarin disagrees. If you don't know who Jeff Sagarin is, he is one of the most respected sports analysts of our time. He is usually uncanny with his rankings.

SI.com's Bill Trocchi disagrees. He's been the SEC's biggest supporter all year. It's not like he's an ACC homer; these were his week 1 rankings. He saw what happened this weekend though.

CBS Sports disagrees. The average ranking of ACC teams? 41. The average ranking of SEC teams? 44.75. The average ranking of Big 10 teams? 46.36. Pac 10? 57.7. Mountain West? 60.1. (The Big 12 incidentally? 45.25. Maybe Sagarin is onto something.)

But why should I let all the experts who know twice as much about college football as any of us make up your mind for you? That just wouldn't be like me. Here are my reasons as to why the ACC is the second best college football conference.

1. The bottom four teams in the ACC are twice as good as the next best "bottom four" in the country. The ACC has 10 bowl-eligible teams, two more than the next guy, the SEC. Of the two non-bowl eligible ACC teams, UVA was one win away and Duke was two. UVA, like NCST and so many other ACC schools, got off to a terrible start. Everyone remembers that 52-7 waxing by USC. They rebounded, though, to save their season and their coach's job. What other team in the country has a losing record, but has two wins against ranked opponents? Meanwhile, Duke continued to be the ACC bottom feeder, going 1-7 in conference. Duke is getting better, though, as evidenced by their victories over bowl-eligible Navy and Vanderbilt (who, by the way, finished 5th in the SEC). They are vastly superior to, say, Iowa State, Mississippi State, Indiana, Washington and San Diego State.

Bottom line: If NC ST, Clemson, UVA, and Duke played Tennessee, Arkansas, Auburn and MS ST, respectively, there's a good chance the ACC might come out with a four game sweep.

2. Outside of your top 2 teams, the ACC will beat you in almost every single matchup. What I mean by that is this.

Everyone knows nobody in the ACC will be playing in the national championship. The ACC doesn't have a Florida, Alabama, USC, Penn State, Ohio State, Utah or TCU. We will readily admit that. Give everyone a +2 in their match-ups against the ACC. I mean, after all, would a USC-BC game even be fun to watch? No. So all four of the leagues we're debating here (SEC, Pac-10, MWC, Big-10), with the exception of the Pac-10, whom VT would beat, can give themselves a +2.

You want to debate number 3 now? GT just beat Georgia. They would drub Michigan State, whose best out of conference win was against Notre Dame, of all teams. BYU wouldn't stand a chance; the only two good teams they've played all year have killed them. Oregon State? I have my doubts, but I suppose they would be the only ones out of this list to do it.

Number 4? Florida State, who just was walloped by Florida. Florida's one loss ironically came to the number 4 team in the SEC, Ole Miss, who I will admit would beat FSU. Mississippi played some real tough games this year. Their only real non-conference game was against Wake, who they lost to, but FSU lost to them, too. Outside of that, tell me FSU would not absolutely trample Cal (who lost to Maryland), Air Force (who lost to Navy) and Northwestern (who lost to Indiana).

Number 5? I'll take UNC over Vanderbilt (0-2 vs. the ACC), Iowa, Colorado State (would Colorado State get a first down in that game?) and Arizona any day. The closest of the bunch would be Arizona.

I would go on with 6 and so forth, but I think you got my drift.

3. The ACC is young. The league's best quarterback (Russell Wilson of NC ST) is a freshman. The league's three best running backs - as voted on by the Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association - are Jonathan Dwyer, Da'Rel Scott and Darren Evans. Dwyer and Scott are sophomores; Evans is a freshman. You can see it from all over, and it explains a lot about the ACC. At the beginning of the year, the ACC was terrible. As the season progressed, though, the young guys obviously got more experience, and every team in the league dramatically improved.

I could get into records against non-conference BCS opponents (ACC's 15-9 vs. SEC's 6-9), but I think I made my point. When you watched two ACC teams play each other, you never knew what was going to happen. You can't say that about any other conference in the land.

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. 

Maryland 20, Clemson 17

So many things to say I don't even know where to start. Listen to the show on Wednesday when we will cover this entire thing in much more depth, but some quick hitters from the game:

First and foremost, the MD defense deserves this game ball, and if I had to pick a player it would probably be Alex Wujciak. To hold the offense that ran all over them in the first half to 0 points in the second half is absolutely unreal. Phenomenal. 

I've already said it, but what a microcosm of our entire season. Hopefully, the rest of the season will be more like the second half.

Props to Chris Turner on the final drive. He had a rough game, but threw two perfect balls to complete third and longs and made sure Clemson did not get the ball back.

Were it not for the MTST debacle, MD would be 5-0 with two wins over top 25 teams. That would probably put us in the top 15. As it is, I would not be surprised if we sneaked into the top 25 this week. We got a few votes last week, and I'm very interested to see how many teams around the 20-25 range have two victories over top-25 teams already.

Once again, congratulations to the Terps. 

What a great night

As Scott Van Pelt put it ever so simply, "What a great night in sports." It really was. Of course, the marquee story is USC - who has looked absolutely unbeatable thus far - losing at Oregon State. Yes, the same Oregon State that played Maryland in a bowl game last year. All you can really say about this is going back to conference rivalries. Oregon State plays USC almost every year. They know they can play with them. It's a confidence thing that rivalries give you. USC is still the best team in the country and, in my opinion, will win the national championship. But they won't do it undefeated.

And then there was baseball. It seems like someone does actually want to make the National League playoffs. Both the Mets and the Brewers - two teams fighting for their playoff lives - got walk-off hits (a shot down the line by Reyes for the Mets and a grand slam by Braun for Milwaukee) to put their teams one step closer to the postseason. At the end of the night, the Phillies cling onto a one-game lead over the Mets. The Mets and Brewers are tied for the wild card. If you're at all interested in baseball, stay tuned this weekend; it should be fun to watch.