College Confidential

Nothing the Big 10 Did Over the Weekend Should Count

SUNDAY MORNING HANGOVER FROM COLLEGE FOOTBALL ... 

* TCU coach Gary Patterson said after his team’s win against SMU it was like “Alabama-Auburn”. Do you think Alabama coach Nick Saban will say, “It was like TCU-SMU” after the Tide play the Tigers in November?

(OK, it’s a cheap shot, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t take it. It’s sports. Have fun, people.)

* A huge win for UNT coach Todd Dodge against Florida Atlantic. The Mean Green, who have been beset by injuries unlike no other team in Division I, are 1-3 and 1-0 in the Sun Belt.

Dodge was down to his third-string QB, Riley Dodge, who won all of those games for his dad when the pair were at Southlake Carroll High School. Riley completed 10-of-15 passes for 146 yards and a pair of touchdown passes. He also ran 11 times for 67 yards.

TD lives to coach another day.

* Texas State is 3-1 for the first time since 2005 after it defeated Southern Utah, 42-28. The Bobcats, ranked No. 23 in the I-AA poll, ran for 224 yards.

* Now that Houston is without QB Case Keenum for the season with an injury, the Coogs may be a running team. RB Bryce Beal ran for 123 yards and four touchdowns in UH’s 42-23 win against Tulane. The Coogs are starting a true frosh QB, Terrance Broadway.

* BYU’s last season in the MWC isn’t terribly memorable, mostly the Cougars aren’t very good. BYU lost at home against future MWC member, Nevada, 27-13. True frosh QB Jake Heaps made his first start for the Cougars, and was 24-of-45 for 229 yards.

* Boise State better watch out - Nevada can play. The Wolfies are 4-0, and host the Broncos on Nov. 26.

* Lamar returned to reality. The first-year program was blown out at Stephen F. Austin, 71-3. SR QB Jeremy Moses threw for 353 yards and four TDs, and went over the 10,000-yard mark for his career.

* I have no idea what to make of CUSA. I know no one cares, mostly because the conference has no top 25 team now that UH QB Case Keenem is out. But for the sake of TCU’s strength of schedule, it needs SMU to win that conference. Even if the Ponies win though, the voting masses won’t care anyone beat the CUSA champs’ because no one is clearly better than the other.

* Alabama is the best team in the nation, but I don’t like its chances of running the table again in the SEC. Alabama’s next two games are vs. No. 9 Florida, and at No. 12 South Carolina. On Nov. 6, the Tide play at No. 15 LSU. And, of course, the Tide finish with Auburn. The Tide have to lose eventually, right?

* How much money is being spent on the ad campaign for the new Wall Street movie? I'm seeing that ad in my sleep.

* We don’t know exactly how good Oregon is because it plays in the Pacific Time zone. It’s more proof how badly you need to be in the Central or Eastern time zone, or be Los Angeles, to really get noticed. That said, the Ducks are a serious threat to reach the BCS title game.

* UTEP’s win against Memphis gives the Miners a 3-1 start, their best since 2005. It’s just the sixth time in the last 46 seasons the Miners are won three of their first four games. Lots of tradition in El Paso. But it could save Mike Price’s job.

The game was won after the Miners drove the ball 95 yards in the final minutes to set up Dakota Warren’s 18-yard FG.

* After handling Rice in rain-filled game, Baylor is halfway to six wins to qualify for the What Else Is There To Do In This Town Bowl. Can the Bears get there?

* The Big East is awful. Period. It’s only ranked team, however, No. 22 West Virginia, actually showed itself quite nicely in a 20-14 loss at No. 15 LSU.

* Auburn QB Cameron Newton may be better than Arkansas QB Ryan Mallett. Not as a pro, but as a collegian.

* Did any athletic department stuff their bank account on the backs of its football team more than San Jose State? The Spartans traveled to play at Alabama, at Wisconsin and at Utah; they lost those three games by the combined score of 131-20. If they didn’t clear $2 million off those three losses something is wrong.

* Suspend the idea that the best RB at Alabama is backup Trent Richardson. He’s good, but JR and defending Heisman winner Mark Ingram is better.

* Texas A&M’s best chance to beat Arkansas in two weeks is to get pressure on Hogs QB Ryan Mallett and hope he throws picks the way he did against Alabama.

But the way the Tide ran on the Hogs should give Aggies hope that Christine Michael and Jerrod Johnson can score points.

* Texas’ big home loss to UCLA has to have the people in Lubbock worried. This was the same Texas defense that dominated the Red Raiders.

* Oklahoma had to be looking forward to next week’s game against Texas. The Sooners probably should have lost at Cincinnati on Saturday night, but they were the better team.

* I’ll keep saying this - Nebraska is going to win the Big 12 title game in its last season in the conference. And no one will be grinning any bigger than Tom Osborne.

* The Big 12 North is almost as bad as the Big East. In fact, the whole Big 12 is a bit down this year.

* What the Big 10 did this weekend was shameful. The conference finished a collective 8-2, all at home, against a schedule that was so weak and so lame that fans should have been admitted for free.

The opponents were: Northern Illinois, Central Michigan, Bowling Green, Northern Colorado, Ball State, Austin Peay, Toledo, Eastern Michigan, Akron, Temple.

The eight teams that won did so by the combined score of 385-109. Two teams scored 70 points.

Lost in these stupid numbers is that two of schools from this “power” conference actually managed to lose. How?

Purdue should be kicked out of the conference after losing 31-20 to Toledo in West Lafayette. And Minnesota coach Tim Brewster all but signed his “fired” papers after the Gophers lost 34-23 to Northern Illinois.

* TCU needs more style points. Every margin needs to be at least 20 points.

 

- Mac Engel

Patterson Should Have Gone for the Late Score Against the Beavers

Accessing the reality after No. 3 Boise State's convincing 37-24 win tonight against No. 24 Oregon State.

- This is the only common opponent both No. 4 TCU and No. 3 Boise played. TCU defeated the Beavers, 30-21, in Week 1.

- First reaction is that TCU coach Gary Patterson made a mistake when he elected not to go for a late score against the Beavers in the season opener when the outcome was already decided in the fourth quarter. The size of the final score matters.

- Oregon State was never really in this game the way it was in the first half against the Frogs. OSU QB Ryan Katz remains too erratic. Both TCU and Boise State are clearly better than the Beavers, especially up front.

- The difference between Boise State and TCU is in two areas - the Broncos defense is more experienced, and it shows. And their JR QB is better than TCU's SR QB. Broncos passer Kellen Moore is having a better season than TCU's Andy Dalton.
This season, Moore is 43-of-68 passing for 585 yards with 5 TDs and 1 int. He's been sacked twice.
Dalton is 67-of-97 passing for 798 yards with 5 TDs and 4 ints. He's been sacked three times.
But these things are fluid.

- TCU has a tougher remaining schedule of the two. The Frogs have Air Force and No. 13 Utah.
The only game Boise State may be seriously be challenged from here out is at Nevada, which is Nov. 26.

- I am tired of hearing how Boise State beat TCU last year and how that should have a factor this season. The two teams are different, and results from any season other than this one should be irrelevant.

- Boise State is not apt to be jumped in the polls just yet; TCU is vulnerable to being jumped by Oregon and Nebraska.

- Mac Engel

G-Patterson Has No Style

S-T columnist Randy Galloway suggested that TCU made a huge mistake in its Week 1 win against Oregon State when it elected not to go for another score late in the fourth quarter of a game that was decided.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/09/08/2454147/tcu-coach-could-use-a-little-snake.html

Teams that need to impress voters, or computers, do sometimes need a few extra touchdowns here or an extra field goal there.
Because "the game" isn't always decided by "the game" in college football, style points matter. It's a fact that TCU coach Gary Patterson doesn't particularly like.
"I tried to get out of this philosophy of people thinking you have to have style points to be a great program. We tried not to be that here," GP said this week. "I don't think they matter as much as they did unless you have a bad game."
It took one week for Boise State to lose votes because its Week 1 opponent, Va Tech, lost at home to I-AA James Madison.
I asked GP if such scenarios caused him to re-think his decision not to add another score against the Beavers.
"No. At the end of the day I have to be able to sleep at night," he said. "If it comes down to me running up the score or score seven more points to win a national championship, if that's what it takes for the people out there ... in some ways that's wrong with society that you'd have to do those kinds of things. A win is a win. In this day and age, as much parity as we have in college football, to get one more point 12 straight games is hard to do."
I like the answer, but unfortunately the voters don't seem to agree. In an AQ world, points matter for the non-AQers.
So even if TCU is in a position to blowout Baylor this weekend - Vegas installed the Frogs' as a 21.5 point favorite - don't expect GP to go for two unless needed.

- Mac Engel

TCU Did Not Want Baylor In the MWC

Because it's Baylor Week around TCU it's time to re-visit a fun story from June to add something to a game that really doesn't need many additives.
On June 13 I wrote: "On the same day the Mountain West officially added Boise State, sources said TCU will lobby the conference against Baylor's inclusion should the Big 12 school be left out of the impending conference realignment."
You might remember that time - the Big 12 was busy imploding, and MWC boss Craig Thompson was trying to be there to grab whatever schools he could when the rich and mighty fled to the Pac 10, or SEC.
TCU AD Chris Del Conte passionately denied the school did not want Baylor in a conference with the school. In his defense, what was he going to say?
I stand by what I wrote - there were "big timers" and officially-affiliated higher ups at TCU who did not want Baylor in their conference, even if it makes geographical sense, and planned to fight it. Doesn't mean they would have been successful, but there would have been a push.
The logic behind it had little to do with the bad feelings generated from the breakup of the Southwest Conference, and the inclusion of Baylor in the Big 12 and the exclusion of TCU. The reason to fight had everything to do with football recruiting. Had Baylor been stuck looking for a new home there were those at TCU who did not want to invite the Bears to join the MWC. From a recruiting standpoint, TCU would have been in a better position against Baylor because its conference affiliation would have been stronger, and perhaps closer to a potential BCS Bowl. Baylor, potentially, would have been left to join Conference USA, which is a non-AQ conference and has yet to place a team in a BCS Bowl. TCU has a clear advantage over rival SMU, a CUSA member, in recruiting in conference affiliation; the MWC is closer to AQ status than CUSA, although it can be debated how close either actually is.
Had the Big 12 breakup happened, this would have been a fascinating back cat fight between athletic departments, two of the state's most prominent private universities, politicians, wealthy boosters and conferences.
History changed its mind and Baylor remains in a Big 12 that lost but two members. TCU remains in a MWC that seems to change by the month, continually losing and adding. Perhaps one day they will be back together again in the same house, but it's likely if that day should happen not all of the roomates will be thrilled with the living conditions.

- Mac Engel

Thursday Night's Game ... What's on PBS?

Cincinnati of The Big East plays at North Carolina State of the ACC tonight on the four-lettered. Two teams from both of these joke conferences will "earn" a BCS berth in January.
Boise State or TCU in the BCS? Only if they're perfect, and they beg.

But a three-loss Florida State or a two-loss Pitt in the BCS? Absolutely.

Because that’s fair.

The Bearcats are trying to move on after coach Brian Kelly did the smart thing and took the ND job.

This game generates so much buzz I’ll be watching “Law and Order” episodes on the TV machine to see how Jack McCoy wins yet another case that somehow I haven’t seen yet.

(BTW - How did a big NYC law firm never hire McCoy? No one, save for Elaine from Seinfeld, did confrontation better than McCoy.

 

How did the NYC DA’s office have the market cornered on models turned lawyers?

Did you know that some of the former L&O ASAs have Texas-ties?

Angie Harmon (left) was born in Dallas and attended Highland Park. On her office wall on the show was a degree from Texas.

In a twist, however, the most recent ASA on the show, Alana De La Garza, lived in Texas and actually attended UT.

There needs to be a network dedicated towards L&O.

 

- Mac Engel

 

 

 

Wilbon Is Wrong; Cowboys Not America's Most Overrated Team; Boise St. Is

Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon wrote this after the Dallas Cowboys' season opening loss at Washington on Sunday night:

"The Dallas Cowboys could be the single most overrated team in football ... maybe the single most overrated team in all of professional sports in America. The franchise has won one playoff game since 1996. Every acquisition they make, every game they win is overstated. Their players are overly praised. They haven't mattered in a decade nearly as much as the New England Patriots or Pittsburgh Steelers or Indianapolis Colts or even the New York Giants or Philadelphia Eagles in their own division.
Every single thing about the Cowboys, in recent years anyway, has been overdone. They come into every season being picked to win something between a division and the Super Bowl but limp out to great disappointment annually.
This season the hype has been attached, most specifically, to the Cowboys' offense, to the supposed damage Romo and Miles Austin, Dez Bryant and Felix Jones are going to do, blah, blah, blah. Yet, the Cowboys looked like a bunch of stumblebums in the preseason, and pretty much the same through three quarters of the regular season opener Sunday night."
"... this serves as a reminder why these Cowboys cannot be trusted, no matter how good they look on paper. ... These Cowboys aren't talented enough or resourceful enough to be a lock to win anything."

Wilbon is wrong; after James Madison took out Va Tech over the weekend the most overrated team in America is Boise State. There is the prevailing national thought that if you aren't in a BCS conference you're overrated, and that Va Tech's second loss damages Boise's win against the Hokies in Week 1. It will on the computer, but I'm not buying that argument. Not in this era. After watching the Big East and ACC see all of its "flag ship" programs such as Va Tech, Pitt, North Carolina, Fla State, Ga Tech all lose in the first two weeks it's hard to argue that these AQ conferences are any better than the MWC or CUSA.
Those latter conferences are top heavy, but their big hitters such as Boise, TCU or Utah are every bit as capable as the celebrity schools of the ACC or Big East.

- Mac Engel

Why is Baylor Playing TCU?

From a selfish standpoint, you have to love the fact Baylor agreed to this series against TCU. This is good for the state of Texas college football when non-conference Texas teams agree to play each other.
But from a competitive standpoint, why is Baylor doing this?
The Bears are in the Big 12, the "power conference" and seemingly have little to gain by defeating TCU. Baylor doesn't need this in terms of recruiting, or perception.
Are such results not used in recruiting?
"The thing about schedules is that they are in placed many years prior," Baylor coach Art Briles said today when I asked him what Baylor has to gain in this game on the Big 12 conference call. "It's a good intra-state game, without question. We're both former members of the Southwest Conference, and it's regionally attractive. For fans, it's a good matchup. From a recruiting standpoint, recruits go to different universities for a variety of reasons. That part of it, I think, is a little overrated."
I asked if this series had already been agreed to before Briles took over as Bears coach, and he was not "100 percent sure" but he thought it was.
The way the system is set up, which school has a better chance of reaching a Rich Kids Club BCS bowl? Baylor as the automatic ticket because it's affiliated with the BCS conference, but TCU right now has the inside positioning because it has figured out how to play this stupid system.

- Mac Engel

Stoops names walk-on Patrick O’Hara the starting kicker

Walk-on Patrick O’Hara, who took over place-kicking duties in November for slumping Jimmy Stevens, will begin the season as the starter.
Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops picked the sophomore over a few candidates although he has expressed disappointment over the group’s inconsistency during August camp.
“[O’Hara] in my eyes has been a little more consistent than everyone else and needs to be given an opportunity to keep [the job] and improve with it, as opposed to some knee-jerk reaction after every kick,” Stoops said.
O’Hara is a former soccer player who converted 6-of-9 field-goal attempts and all 15 of his PATs.
—Mike Jones

Thoughts from Saturday

A few thoughts about Saturday's games while waiting for the (drum roll please) first announcement of the BCS standings about 3:40 p.m. today on Fox.

1. Texas will probably be third in the first BCS rankings behind Florida and Alabama, especially with Virginia Tech's loss. Anything lower will be a shock. It will be interesting to see how the computers view the Longhorns. Texas proved it could win a defensive game against Oklahoma even though it registered few style points. The next two games, at Missouri and at Oklahoma State, will define the Texas regular season.

2. We don't know if we've seen Sam Bradford's last game in an Oklahoma uniform. That's his call. Hopefully, we did. He came to Oklahoma when he could have been a Top 10 (and maybe higher) NFL pick. He bounced from a serious shoulder sprain to return, showing grit. Now he's hurt again. He has nothing left to prove at OU and nothing he can prove to the NFL. Shut it down, heal, get surgery if necessary and get ready for the draft.

3. A couple of weeks ago, the pirate ship at Texas Tech looked to be taking on water. Now, the Red Raiders can make a legitimate claim, along with Oklahoma State, to being the second best team in the Big 12. (Hey, both lost to Houston). Backup QB Steven "Sticks" Sheffield was unfazed by a road start in Lincoln. And the defense - yes, the Tech defense - absolutely dominated with five sacks. Ndamukong who?

4. Speaking of a ship that may be sinking ... yeah, that's a transition to Texas A&M. At worst, I figured the Aggies could get two or three wins against the worst of the North and get to a bowl. After Saturday's 62-14 loss at Kansas State, the Aggies could be descending beyond the 2008 depths. "We got our butt kicked every which way," A&M coach Mike Sherman said. Unless Michael Bishop just gained some more eligibility, this isn't exactly a vintage Bill Snyder team. The Wildcats were coming off a 66-14 butt kicking of their own at Texas Tech.

5. SMU is 3-3 but could easily be 5-1 and a win away from bowl-eligibility. The Mustangs held second-half leads against Washington State and Navy and then lost in overtime in both games. SMU could still cobble together six victories, if it can post home wins against Rice, UTEP and Tulane. 

6. TCU has done pretty much everything it has needed to do as a potential BCS Buster. The Horned Frogs' biggest test comes Saturday at BYU, which has regrouped since that loss to Florida State. Since joining the Mountain West, TCU has split at Provo, winning 51-50 in 2005 and losing 27-22 in 2007. A win over Max Hall and Co. would be a major boost as TCU tries to climb past Boise State.

-- Chuck Carlton

TCU's OU experience might have helped Florida

TCU might have been a major help in how Florida's defense attacked an Oklahoma offense that had scored 60 or more points in five consecutive games entering the BCS National Championship.

Before Thursday night's game, Gators coach Urban Meyer said in a news conference that there was more to decoding OU's offense than watching it on videotape.

"You don’t understand you have substitution limitations because of tempo, you have the fatigue factor and you have the chaos factor where you like to line up", Meyer said. "The positive is we’ve had three weeks to prepare and we’ve been operating at a very high level of chaos on defense trying to get lined up and be ready to go. They create a lot of plays because teams are misaligned.

"TCU is a perfect example. They were playing their tails off and even the coach, Gary Patterson, made a comment he screwed them up because he was talking when the play was snapped. We have to get lined up and get ready to go. That’s a problem."

Maybe that warning was why you didn't see Florida looking at the sidelines a lot while the Sooners went through their play selection at the line of scrimmage.

Patterson publicly flogged himself after the Oklahoma game, saying "I didn’t get some guys lined up in time. When I stopped being a 'guru,’ we played better."

The Horned Frogs, in fact, held the Sooners to 116 yards and one touchdown in the second half of the game Sept. 27 in Norman. And that was with Sam Bradford playing into the final minutes. OU, however, led 28-3 at halftime, burning the Frogs on the very kind of vertical strikes that the Gators were able to avoid, or dodge, Thursday night.