Catching up ain't come to play school

OK, Big Ten: There won't be any suspension for the Michigan State eye-gouging thing because, according to the Big Ten, there was no Michigan State eye-gouging thing:

Michigan State offensive lineman Jack Allen will not face disciplinary action after an incident with an Ohio State player and is free to play Saturday against Indiana.

"Michigan State values and respects the Big Ten's sportslike conduct policy, and both parties take any alleged violations of the agreement very seriously," Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis said in a statement. "There are procedures in place to review any alleged violations of the policy. After a thorough review, the Big Ten has determined that MSU offensive lineman Jack Allen didn't violate the conference's sportslike conduct policy.

"As athletics director, I had an opportunity to be involved in this review process, and while his actions 'weren't a football play,' this clearly wasn't an eye-gouging incident."

OK, Mark Hollis. I saw what I saw. BTW, why is Mark Hollis (a) part of the review process and (b) making this announcement on behalf of the Big Ten?

Nick Saban loves offense: You've probably seen at least some part of this quote, which came out of the SEC coaches' teleconference this week and pretty much encapsulates Nick Saban:

"I think that the way people are going no-huddle right now, that at some point in time, we should look at how fast we allow the game to go in terms of player safety," Saban said on today's SEC teleconference. "The team gets in the same formation group, you can't substitute defensive players, you go on a 14-, 16-, 18-play drive and they're snapping the ball as fast as you can go and you look out there and all your players are walking around and can't even get lined up. That's when guys have a much greater chance of getting hurt when they're not ready to play.

"I think that's something that can be looked at. It's obviously created a tremendous advantage for the offense when teams are scoring 70 points and we're averaging 49.5 points a game. With people that do those kinds of things. More and more people are going to do it.

"I just think there's got to be some sense of fairness in terms of asking is this what we want football to be?"

A few thoughts here. First: Yes. It's not what you want football to be but is definitely what some people (read: Chip Kelly) want football to be. Second: About 0.6 percent of all drives this season have featured 16 or more plays, and that has nothing to do with pace; players are actually gonna be on the field longer against an Alabama-style offense than an Oregon-style offense, albeit with more substitutions. Third: How can that "be looked at"? There's no way to put a limit on play frequency without mandating a specific amount of stoppage time before the ball is whistled ready for play, which would totally alter fourth-quarter playcalling in any hypothetical game that isn't a blowout and significantly alter the actual amount of football being played in all games. I mean, players would be safer if there were only one series per quarter, but that wouldn't constitute much of a game. Fourth: I'm skeptical that Nick Saban is legitimately concerned about player safety or "fairness." That is all.

Woo Los Angeles football: T.J. Simers (of the L.A. Times, which isn't even covering USC practices anymore since Lane Kiffin is either a giant douche or a turd sandwich) put on his snarky hat for this column that verifies the Times' desire to never have a credential to a local football game ever again:

You have to admire the way Mora sent the traditional "it's us against them" football message to his team. ... He berated an unassuming sports information assistant in front of the whole team for allowing a TV cameraman to stand in the wrong place.

In doing so, he gave the sports information assistant an earful of some very impressive obscenities, which of course the young players would expect from their demanding leader.

Then Mora forced the guy to make the walk of humiliation off the practice field.

It's what we've come to expect from our really good college coaches as they set out to make men out of the kids in their programs.

And you know the Bruins had to just love it, with UCLA fans no doubt also admiring Mora's drive to be the very best at whatever the cost of human dignity.

That's when a program knows it has the right guy, or as Mora put it: "I'm not going to jeopardize what we're doing as a football team because of the incompetence of some people."

I think it's pretty well understood football is the most important thing going on at UCLA, and every man, woman and child needs to understand that.

It continues along the same vein for about another thousand words, most of which are hilariously snarky and all of which are correct.

No way! Five Missouri players, including uber-freshman Dorial Green-Beckham, were suspended Thursday for this week's game against Vandy for getting caught smoking pot. Details:

The players were sitting in a white Lincoln Navigator in a parking lot near Memorial Stadium shortly before midnight when a patrol officer approached and smelled marijuana. Green-Beckham was the driver, Capt. Brian Weimer said.

That story is every story about every football player ever charged with pot possession.

Maybe if your team wasn't so bad: Charlie Weis is shocked and appalled that Kansas is getting coverage representative of its suckiness:

Team slammed by our own school newspaper. Amazing! No problem with opponents paper or local media. You deserve what you get! But, not home!
— Coach Charlie Weis (@CoachWeisKansas) October 4, 2012

Critical? Yes. Inaccurate? No.

The best tweet ever: Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones' inability to spell his own first name largely explains this tweet, which has since been deleted along with his entire account:

Ummm ... yeeeaaahhh. Classes are probably pointless for Braxton Miller. Classes are not pointless for third-stringers who will almost definitely actually need a degree at some point yet apparently lack basic grammatical and decision-making skills. Exception: the SEC, where classes aren't really classes and thus probably are pointless.

The best picture ever: This is almost a week old now. It doesn't matter.

I have nothing to add.

When the SEC didn't have all the best teams

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Mostly the worst of times. Entirely the worst of times, actually, since the choices back then were (a) the houty-touty-est of the houty-touty and (b) whatever non-racist description could possibly be used* to encapsulate the Jimmy Johnson-era Miami teams (I got nothin'). But Notre Dame and Miami were good, man. They were so good. How long ago was that, anyway?


I was the same age my kindergartner is now? I see.

*Patrick Walsh should still be collecting royalties from the "Catholics vs. Convicts" thing; the only informative/insightful Yardbarker post in the history of ever tells the story of the t-shirt he came up with as a Notre Dame student and sold before the 1988 game against the school's permission, resulting in him getting dismissed from the basketball team and the game having a name that's still ubiquitous despite the teams involved not having played an actual game (pointless bowls don't count) in 22 years. Impressive.

Casey Pachall needs help; TCU needs a QB

Bad news for TCU:

TCU starting quarterback Casey Pachall has been suspended indefinitely after he was arrested for suspicion of driving while intoxicated early Thursday morning.

Coach Gary Patterson announced the suspension hours after police say Pachall was pulled over for running a stop sign near TCU's Fort Worth campus.

"I've got ... a person who obviously needs help," Patterson said. "Until I can come up with some answers, it's not about one season, it's about a lot of seasons."

Yeesh. As you may or may not recall, Pachall also admitted to failing a drug test about eight months ago after that massive bust at the house he was living in with linebacker Tanner Brock, who got charged with some serious stuff and booted from the program. Pachall reportedly had to attend some rehab classes; that was the extent of his punishment.

That turned out to pretty fortunate (or something) for TCU seeing as how Pachall is currently fifth in the country in pass efficiency; he's completing 66.0 percent of his passes with 10 touchdowns and a pick for a team that lost one of its two starter-type running backs halfway through the second game of the year. FYI, those numbers are almost identical to the ones he'd put up at this point last year, when he finished 12th in pass efficiency and had 25 touchdowns and seven picks. So he's pretty good and pretty valuable, especially since the nominal backup is Trevone Boykin, a redshirt freshman who had started taking reps at running back this week until the Pachall news broke.

Given the complete lack of other alternatives, Boykin will be starting Saturday against Iowa State. Expect a lot of the veer, which TCU had largely gotten away from with Pachall but was a significant part of the offense with Andy Dalton around. Boykin's established himself as a good enough runner (129 yards and a touchdown this year) to make himself useful in that regard; it's the passing game that will suffer to some degree, and that probably won't be totally offset by the presumed improvement in the run game.

If there's any good news, is that's the schedule increases in difficulty almost linearly: Iowa State, at Baylor, Texas Tech, at Oklahoma State, at West Virginia, Kansas State, at Texas, Oklahoma. It would obviously be beneficial if Pachall could get himself together sufficiently to be back for some of those latter five games. Actually, there is other good news: TCU's defense is legitimately excellent. TCU struggled for a while last week and finished with a meh 24 points against a crappy SMU team yet was never really challenged, mostly because of a defense that's now giving up 7.25 points per game (albeit against some admittedly terrible offenses thus far).

So the margin for error at quarterback is larger than it would be at a lot of other places; it's still not large given the aforementioned schedule. Until/unless Pachall comes back, incrementally downgrade expectations for TCU and incrementally upgrade expectations for the various Big 12 teams on the schedule that appeared to be of comparable quality to the Pachall-quarterbacked version of TCU.

In conclusion:


Mmmkay.

Catching up gets taken home down country roads

Georgia receiver depletion: Michael Bennett is done for the year:

Georgia wide receiver Michael Bennett is out for the season after tearing the ACL in his right knee during Tuesday's practice.

Bennett leads the fifth-ranked Bulldogs with 24 catches for 345 yards and four touchdowns. The sophomore from Alpharetta, Ga., will undergo reconstructive knee surgery at an undetermined date.

OH THE IRONY:

Addressing reporters Tuesday morning, Georgia coach Mark Richt had discussed the Bulldogs' good fortune up to that point regarding injuries.

"We have been very healthy," Richt said. "We have been blessed without question. Going into the season, we were pretty healthy. Now we are probably healthier at game six than we were when we started the season. So that is a good thing."

Guh. Bennett is/was a pretty effective outside guy with an ideal 6-foot-3 frame and pretty good hands; he was no A.J. Green but had become a proverbial go-to guy and was one of Georgia's three clearly established starting receivers, with Marlon Brown being the other outside dude and Tavarres King being the slot guy. Nobody on the team other than those three guys has more than six catches; howeva, one of the guys with six catches happens to be Malcolm Mitchell, a crazy-good athlete who's been playing both ways (mostly at corner) after finishing second on the team last year with 45 catches as a true freshman. Richt said about seven seconds after Bennett's injury that Mitchell will be playing mostly offense this week, which makes sense given that 2011 starting corners Branden Smith and Sanders Commings are now both back from suspension. That's fine from a talent standpoint (Mitchell probably represents an upgrade in that regard) but might not be so fine from a comfortability standpoint seeing as how Georgia has one of its two most meaningful games of the year in three days.

Alabama depth depletion: Alabama will be without wideout DeAndrew White and backup running back/punt returner Dee Hart for the rest of the year due to Perry the ACL-ephant transferring from Purdue to Bama last week.

White's loss is probably the more significant one since he was a starter and the fourth-leading receiver on the team; he was averaging about two catches a game, which is pretty indicative of the run/pass distribution in Bama's offense (for the record, it's about 65/35 right now). Interestingy, the guy who's next in line for White's spot is Amari Cooper, a nominal backup who's easily Bama's leading receiver this year with 17 catches for 222 yards and three touchdowns, with about half of each of those numbers getting added last week against Ole Miss after White blew out his knee. Given that performance, the drop-off from White to Cooper would seem to be negligible.

As for Hart, he was a one-time mega-recruit (who also missed all of last year with a torn ACL) who was fourth on the depth chart behind Eddie Lacy, T.J. Yeldon and Jalston Fowler (also done for the year with a torn ACL) and the backup punt returner behind Christion Jones. He didn't have a meaningful carry this year but could've become meaningful in a hurry in the event of a Lacy/Yeldon injury; alas. Bama will probably be fine but, as noted in the previous sentence, is an inconvenient injury away from having a serious depth problem.

Something about jean shorts: This was pointed out in a tweet that I can no longer find: Florida's remaining schedule includes the teams currently ranked third, fourth fifth, sixth and maybe first (pending an SEC title game appearance). That's ... like ... I don't even know, man. Somebody needs to consult the internets and find the most ridiculous schedule in the history of schedules; that one's gotta be comparable.

Stop the bad man: Ohio State wasted zero time filing an official complaint with the Big Ten regarding the Michigan State eye-gouging thing, probably since that's the only way anything will get done seeing as how Mark Dantonio is Mark Dantonio and Michigan State is Michigan State. I'll still be a little surprised if anything comes of it but wouldn't be totally shocked if Jack Allen ends up with a one-game suspension since that's been the Big Ten standard for punches and whatnot. There'll presumably be a decision by Friday that won't really matter to anybody since Michigan State is playing Indiana this week. Regardless, it's not just a Michigan thing: Michigan State is the dirtiest of the dirty.

Tangentially related injury update: Ohio State's Jordan Hall -- who just came back three weeks ago from a pretty serious (and weird) offseason foot injury -- has a partially torn PCL and is doubtful for this week's game against Nebraska (and maybe others). That might be problematic for Ohio State seeing as how Hall is unquestionably the No. 1 running back (not counting Braxton Miller) and is second on the team behind Miller with 224 yards on 40 carries, giving him a pretty healthy 5.6-yards-per-carry average. Miller's legitimately terrifying but can't handle 40 carries a game; Hall's a guy who can take 20 of those and be a plausible threat to do something meaningful with said 20 carries, which can't be said for the other guys on the roster (Carlos Hyde has been OK this year but would probably be a short-yardage back in an ideal world in which truckers were aristocracy and Columbus were something other than a hellhole). Anyway, Hall will reportedly be "evaluated" each week; that's worth keeping an eye on depending on your interest level in Ohio State.

Woo John Denver: This video was taken several minutes after the completion of the West Virginia-Baylor game (note the still-almost-totally-full stands):


You just moved up a notch in my book, West Virginia fans. That puts you at notch one.

ACC scheduling shenanigans: The ACC won't be going to a nine-game conference schedule:

The ACC has decided to stay with eight league football games for the foreseeable future instead of transitioning to nine conference games in 2013 as originally planned, the conference announced on Wednesday.

The decision was made at the ACC's recent fall meetings in Boston as a result of the new agreement with Notre Dame, in which the Irish will play five games against the ACC annually.

This move was made in large part to help Florida State, Georgia Tech and Clemson, all which already have built-in SEC rivals.

That pretty much says it all; blame Notre Dame. Or blame the ACC for making Notre Dame a member but not really a member and thus giving its actual members no scheduling flexibility in the Notre Dame-is-on-the-schedule years. Whatever.

FYI, the Big 12 and the Pac-12 are the only major conferences that have already implemented nine-game schedules; the Big Ten and SEC both talked about it and said, "ehh maybe but not right now," which basically means "ehh more money's better." 

Obligatory black uniforms: BYU has them.

Sigh. It's BYU. BYU can't wear black; it's BYU. /shakes old-man fist at sky

Etch-a-Sketch Freek? LSUFreek has won the internets so, so many times. Srsly. The guy is an artistic genius. He's also a bellhop in the French Quarter who actually is an artistic genius via the lesser-used medium of the Etch-a-Sketch. Who knew?

Geno Smith hasn't already won the Heisman

So I clicked on a Heisman Pundit link last week and noticed that his straw poll (which is usually an uber-accurate indicator of actual voting since the straw-poll voters are all actual voters) had Geno Smith with a lot of points, Collin Klein with a lot fewer points and then a whole bunch of guys with a point or two or three. Said bunch of guys definitely included E.J. Manuel and De'Anthony Thomas and maybe Marqise Lee and Manti Te'o; Matt Barkley was not present, meaning he had zero votes.

The post-West Virginia Insane Numbers poll isn't posted yet but presumably looks similar since lol 20 touchdowns no interceptions wwwhheeeeeee. Right now, Geno Smith deserves (and is getting) ALL OF THE VOTES. Matt Barkley probably doesn't deserve any.

But here's the thing:

9/01/2012       MARSHALL (W 69-34)
9/15/2012       JAMES MADISON (W 42-12)
9/22/2012       MARYLAND (W 31-21)
9/29/2012       BAYLOR (W 70-63)
10/06/2012     @ Texas            
10/13/2012     @ Texas Tech            
10/20/2012     KANSAS ST.            
11/03/2012     TCU            
11/10/2012     @ Oklahoma St.            
11/17/2012     OKLAHOMA            
11/23/2012     @ Iowa St.            
12/01/2012     KANSAS

Bolded for emphasis. West Virginia has played four games, none of which was against a team that's gonna end the year ranked; the five most meaningful games on the schedule have yet to be played. Smith's quarter-pole statistical hilarity has become pretty much ephemeral but will be immediately rendered X arbitrary percentage points less impressive as soon as West Virginia loses a game, which will almost definitely happen (maybe two or three times) in the next six weeks. The question is whether his primarily numbers-based resume at the end is gonna be so good that the losses won't matter (unless West Virginia doesn't have any losses, in which case it's gonna be a Desmond Howard-esque obliteration come vote-tallying time).

The obvious comparison everybody's been throwing out: RGIII, who had similarly ridonkulous numbers last year and ended up winning the thing despite his team going 9-3 because (a) he continued having ridonkulous numbers all year and (b) there was no obvious alternative. And as for the 9-3 thing, keep in mind that Baylor's last loss last year was in October against Oklahoma State, and that was followed up a couple weeks later with maybe the statistical performance of the year (considering the level of competition), when RGIII went off against Oklahoma for 479 yards and four touchdowns, the last of which was a Season-Defining Moment TM and probably the play that won him the Heisman. There was also the regular-season finale against Texas, a game in which RGIII accounted for four touchdowns in a 24-point Baylor win. As for the aforementioned lack of obvious alternatives, the other guys last year were Andrew Luck, who was pretty unimpressive against Oregon in a three-touchdown loss in the one Stanford game everybody watched (and was doing literally nothing while RGIII was destroying Texas), and Trent Richardson, who didn't do anything of significance in SEC Game of the Millennium I, scored three total touchdowns in November and didn't have a conference championship game to strengthen his case.

Will there be an obvious alternative this year? I have no idea. It's four weeks into the season. E.J. Manuel had almost 500 yards last week against Clemson and will have meaningful November games against Virginia Tech and Florida (and won't have to be that great to get a sizable chunk of the Best Player on the Best Team vote). Aaron Murray's gonna have some crazy-for-the-SEC numbers on a team that might be 12-0 and playing Bama for a spot in the national title game about the time most people are sending in their ballots. Matt Barkley might be this year's Andrew Luck but also might have USC at 12-1 and playing for the title pending a couple wins over Oregon and a win over a top-10-ish version of Notre Dame, and a couple wins over Oregon and a win over a top-10-ish version of Notre Dame would be more than sufficient for a cumulative "oh hai Matt Barkley he's good mmm song girls."

Anyway, identifying a hypothetically obvious alternative isn't as important as establishing the possibility of an obvious alternative. There might be one; there might not, in which case any alternative will do if necessary. Whether it will matter is largely up to Smith and, to some extent, West Virginia (again, all of this is moot if West Virginia runs the table).

A couple good points from Heisman Pundit:

Projecting his stats out to the whole regular season, he’s on pace for 5,184 passing yards and 60 touchdown passes (and no interceptions). If he comes anywhere close to those numbers come December, the Heisman is his, simple as that. ...

By throwing for so many yards and touchdowns against Baylor, it gave him some statistical wiggle room as the season progresses. Smith essentially crammed two games worth of numbers into one game, which means it’s almost like he’s playing 13 regular season games instead of 12. 

Agreed on both counts; losing a couple games 67-63 won't stop him from winning the Heisman considering (a) the mind-bottling numbers he'll finish with and (b) the lead he's already established among most of the voters. The aforementioned arbitrary-percentage-points drop in the collective hive mind won't be significant if the numbers he's starting from are laughably superior to everybody else's. But doing what Luck did last year and putting up a couple meh performances in losses to Texas/Oklahoma/whoever might stop him from winning it by making the hypothetically obvious alternative the preferable alternative.

To be clear, I don't think that'll happen. I'd rather be Smith (from a Heisman-winning standpoint) than any of the other dudes right now; I'd also much rather be Looper-ed about six weeks into the future, at which point I'd be able to assess what's actually happened in the Games That Matter rather than extrapolating from four largely meaningless games and comparing said extrapolated resumes to the extrapolated resumes of a bunch of guys whose quality/significance/value has yet to be sufficiently determined.

Upshot: September does not a season make.

Y U SO SNARKY, IOWA?

This Iowa promo-type thing includes possibly the greatest and most all-encompassing assortment of snarkily snarky smack talk in the history of smack talk:


Wowwwww. I'm trying to decide whether I prefer "oh yeah, I forgot about the cheating" or "it only makes sense if you're Nebraska" or maybe "they hadn't won a football game since 1998"; I'm leaning toward the former but appreciate the veracity of the latter

BTW, I have lived in Iowa, and it was basically constant that from a fan base whose team has won one (shared) Big Ten title in the last 20 years. I know. But it's OK because Central Michigan is a really good team. Srsly.

Week 5: That was mildly entertaining

LOL WWWHHEEEEE!!! I'm gonna start with the qualifiers: Baylor's defense is turribly turrible -- the pass defense was 109th in the country before Saturday after having played three steaming piles of mediocrity -- and West Virginia's defense is only marginally better. That said ... I mean ... wow. To the numbers! Geno Smith went 45 for 51 for 656 yards with eight touchdowns and no picks (that's eight touchdowns and six incompletions), and Stedman Bailey had a similarly ridiculous line with 302 receiving yards and five touchdowns (!!!), which made Terrance Williams' Big 12-record 314 receiving yards and two touchdowns look meh. I don't even know which aspect of the previous sentence is most ridiculous. West Virginia finished with 806 total yards; that's about 60 yards more than Tulane has this season in four games. Once West Virginia went ahead by 14 in the third quarter, the game was effectively over since there was zero chance Baylor was gonna be able to stop West Virginia from throwing for a first down whenever necessary. So ... West Virginia's pretty good, largely because of Geno Smith (I'm gonna write something separate about him and the Heisman tomorrow) and largely because of a Dana Holgorsen system that's getting guys hilariously open all over the place. The weaknesses are obvious, though: The interior running game is nonexistent and the defense is not good at all, which is gonna result in some more games like that one but against teams with better defenses. Here's West Virginia's upcoming schedule: at Texas, at Texas Tech, Kansas State, TCU, at Oklahoma State, Oklahoma. Yeesh. There won't be any question about this team's legit-ness by the middle of November; there will either be absolute legit-ness or, like, something else. There will also be fires. So many fires.

Player of the Week: Hahahahahahaha. In the Not Geno Smith Category, winner winner chicken dinner to Miami (Ohio) quarterback Zac Dysert, who went ham against Akron, going 34 for 49 for 516 yards and six touchdowns to go along with 106 rushing yards, in the process becoming the first player in NCAA history to throw for 500 yards and run for 100 in the same game. Great googly moogly. Paging Denard Robinson to Aisle Insane Records.

SEC defense woo: Georgia and Tennessee played a game resembling the one above but with a semblance of defense and a bunch of inexplicable turnovers. When I say "a semblance of defense," what I mean is that Georgia didn't get lit up the way the score would imply; Tennessee had 30 first-half points, but 24 of those came on a pick six and three drives that started in Georgia territory, and Tennessee's 14 second-half points were largely negated by three Tyler Bray picks and a strip sack to end the game. So Georgia's defense isn't that bad; it's just average-ish. Tennessee's defense is pretty bad, though, and Georgia's offense is really good, hence 51 points. Aaron Murray is Aaron Murray yadda yadda, but man ... the Georgia running game. Wow. Todd Gurley and Keith Marshall went for a combined 294 yards (!) and five touchdowns (!!!) on 34 carries, which averages out to 8.65 yards a pop and puts the two of them at a cumulative 992 yards and 14 touchdowns through four games. All that stuff about the massiveness of Isaiah Crowell's loss has turned out to be pretty much wrong. And between those dudes and a pretty good O-line and Aaron Murray, Georgia's paddlin' everybody offensively right now. Whether they can paddle South Carolina this week and/or Florida in three weeks is what really matters, though. Those two games are gonna largely determine the SEC East, and if Georgia gets through both of 'em, 12-0 would become a legitimate possibility since (for some reason) the schedule includes neither Bama nor LSU. As for Tennessee, Tyler Bray is amazing in so many ways. Some of those ways are good and some of them are bad; all of them are spectacular, especially the standard 12-step drop and the rocket launcher attached to his shoulder that will be deployed about 40 times a game, "destination unknown" and consequences disregarded entirely. He makes Tennessee worth watching despite the inevitability of 6-6.

Ohio! I was fanatically obligated to root for Ohio to beat Michigan State since every Big Ten loss for Michigan State incrementally increases Michigan's chances of winning the division and thus the conference. I didn't like it. Anyway, Ohio: The defense is pretty good and the offense is basically Braxton Miller doing creative things, which makes for a pretty good team that's still prone to bouts of offensive ineptitude (relying almost entirely on a sophomore quarterback tends to do that). In other words, Ohio is Michigan. They're probably the two best teams in the Big Ten, which would make the end of the year really interesting if Ohio were actually, like, eligible to do anything. As for Michigan State, the offense is still terrible and won't be getting any better now that two linemen are done for the year. Andrew Maxwell looked marginally better than in the previous two games against legitimate competition but still wasn't very good and got no help whatsoever from his crappy receivers. I'm honestly not sure why Michigan State doesn't just go all Wisconsin on people and give LeVeon Bell 40 carries a game; he's good enough to just truck people for about five yards a carry, thus generating yardage a lot more consistently than the passing game. Whatev. BTW, Michigan State's defense is really good (and stylistically comparable to Alabama's) but probably not good enough to make up for that offense, especially since any more Big Ten losses will probably result in de facto division elimination and there's an upcoming stretch featuring the following: Iowa, at Michigan, at Wisconsin, Nebraska, Northwestern. None of those teams are great; all of them are good enough to beat Sparty, and a loss to either Michigan or Nebraska probably wouldn't be overcome-able.

Eye Gouging of the Week: This is pretty much the norm for Michigan State:


I'd link to some comparable examples but wouldn't be done for hours.

Big Ten randomness: Wisconsin briefly entertained the idea of fielding an offense against Nebraska; the first four drives produced 20 points, albeit with a lot of help. The first drive consisted almost entirely of a 54-yard completion, the second drive started immediately after the first one (and at the Nebraska 20) because of a fumble and the third drive should have ended on a fourth-and-18 but was extended by an OMG AWFUL roughing-the-kicker penalty. From there, Nebraska pretty much dominated, although "dominated" is kind of a generous term for a team that's starting from a 14-0 (and then 20-3) hole. But yeah: Over the final 41 minutes, Wisconsin had 181 yards and 10 points and Nebraska had almost exactly 400 yards and 27 points. Montee Ball finished with his now-standard 32 carries for 90 yards, and Joel Stave was crappy enough after the first few drives that he got re-replaced by Danny O'Brien for the final drive, which might have worked out great if not for a fourth-and-1 play at midfield that got utterly destroyed in the backfield, effectually ending the game. I'm still undecided about whether Nebraska's really good; I basically see Nebraska as Michigan except with occasional bouts of fumble-pocalypse and less consistency on defense, which doesn't lend itself to predictability. I still think the Michigan/Michigan State/Nebraska survivor wins the Whatever Division and thus probably the Big Ten title since the Other Whatever Division is totally mediocre minus Ohio.

Texas haz quarterback? Apparently. David Ash pretty much obliterated Oklahoma State's (admittedly crappy) secondary, going 30 for 307 for 304 yards with three touchdowns and a pick a week after doing basically the same thing to Ole Miss. Texas also haz very generous touchdown calls and a defense that might not be quite as good as previously believed. Oklahoma State did to Texas' defense exactly what Texas did to Oklahoma State's defense despite starting a redshirt freshman backup at quarterback; Okie State finished with 576 yards (Joseph Randle had 199 of those on 25 carries) and 36 points, which would have been enough to win if the officials had been able to see that Texas running back Joe Bergeron didn't actually have the ball when he "scored" to put Texas ahead with 29 seconds left. The problem: There were roughly 21 people in the pile that Bergeron went into. His head ended up at the goal line, his body ended up a little short and the ball pretty obviously ended up somewhere else since it was clearly coming out before he got anywhere close to the endzone; it just wasn't clearly recovered by anybody other than the guy who came out of said pile with it, which made the touchdown call not reversible by rule. I bet Mike Gundy is A MAN WHO'S 40 since Oklahoma State is 2-2 despite having a negligible drop-off on offense this season. Anyway, Texas: They have a little bit of a running game this year between Bergeron, Malcolm Brown and Johnathan Gray (five-star running backs ahoy) and have Ash playing well enough to be a pretty interesting team if the defense is closer to what everybody expected than what everybody saw Saturday night. If not, West Virginia will score a bajillion points; if so, Texas will probably beat West Virginia and will then have the Oklahoma game at the Texas State Fair for a 6-0 start (and probably a 10-0 start given the schedule).

Clutch ACC Game-Winning Touchdown Pass of the Week: Stephen Morris threw for 566 yards against NC State, with 62 of it coming on this play with 19 seconds left:


Pre ... vent?

Related Quote of the Week: Al Golden is very specific:


Yesssssss.

Equally Clutch ACC Game-Winning Touchdown Pass of the Week: This is spectacularly named Cincinnati quarterback Munchie Legeaux establishing that (a) Cincy might be the best team in the Big East and (b) Virginia Tech isn't Virginia Tech circa 2000:


BOOM MUNCHIE'D. What a freakin' throw.

ACC Awfulness of the Week: Georgia Tech lost to Middle Tennessee State by 21. At home. In a game in which Georgia Tech, a 27-point favorite, got outgained by a mediocre Sun Belt team 510-425 and outrushed (???) 264-238. Assumption: Georgia Tech will beat Clemson by 20 next week. Woo ACC!

Nice knowin' ya: Consider all Stanford-related concerns verified. Rushing for 65 yards (at 2.3 per carry) against a Washington defense that got absolutely trucked by LSU? Yikes. Scoring six offensive points and getting past the Washington 35 once? Yeesh. Stanford is now 92nd in rushing, 103rd in pass efficiency and 105th in total yards and has scored more than 21 points once (and that was against Duke). The offense: It's not good (that applies primarily to Josh Nunes and an O-line that isn't even close to what it was last year). The defense: It's very good. Summary: Stanford is the Pac-12 version of Michigan State. I'm putting the over/under for the Notre Dame game at 13 points.

Louisiana Tech might be good: Louisiana Tech is 4-0, which could be written off to WAC-ness if not for a couple things. The first: Louisiana Tech has scored at least 44 points in all of its games. The second: The two most recent games were against Illinois and Virginia, and outside of two make-it-respectable Virginia touchdowns in the last six minutes, Louisiana Tech outscored those two teams by a combined 48 points. I know. It should not go without notice that Tony Franklin (remember Tony Franklin?!?) is the O-coordinator there and (a) has implemented a more balanced version of his usual Air Raid craziness and (b) has designated playcalling duties to the center. Yeah: the center. Just click here for something resembling an explanation. Anyway, given the craptacularity of the WAC, Louisiana Tech has a legitimate shot at going 11-1; the rescheduled game against Texas A&M is really the only thing standing in the way of a Hawaii/Houston-esque run at a BCS game.

Illinois might be pretty bad: The four-touchdown loss to Louisiana Tech looks slightly less pathetic than it did a week ago; that said, the four-touchdown home loss to Penn State looks awful. I mean, it's possible that Penn State is just mediocre rather than terrible, but a team that's still (even after a 35-7 win) 86th in rushing, 71st in pass efficiency, 83rd in total offense, 46th in rush defense, 53rd in pass-efficiency defense and 47th in total defense -- after a stretch of five totally winnable games against nobody better than Ohio (not Ohio State) -- should not be capable of totally dominating a Big Ten team that went to a bowl last year. The problem: everything. Illinois is bad at everything. Excluding the one FCS game a couple weeks ago, Illinois is averaging 3.3 yards a carry, has three touchdown passes and seven interceptions (!) and is giving up 35 points a game. No additional evidence needed.

Arkansas is worse: If Bobby Petrino had a calculable WAR value, it'd be ... ummm ... really high. I Holy hell Arkansas is terrible. Texas A&M put up 714 yards (with a redshirt freshman quarterback and basically no running game)!!! Johnny Manziel had 557 of those! A&M scored 41 points in a span of 32 minutes! Aaaaahhhhh!!! The Arkansas defense wasn't great last year but was about average, which was plenty good enough when paired with a legitimately elite passing game that finished in the top 25 in every statistical category of relevance. This year's defense is mind-blowingly awful (113th in pass efficiency, 116th in yardage, 113th in scoring, etc.) and is paired with an offense that's 55th in yardage and 92nd in scoring despite the existence of Tyler Wilson (for all but one game), an apparently healthy Knile Davis, Cobi Hamilton and three returning starters on the O-line. The points-per-game number is skewed by the shutout loss to Bama but is also helped a lot by the opener against Jacksonville State, a meh FCS team. Excise those two scoring totals and Arkansas would be ... wait for it .. 100th. Awful. BUT AIN'T NO STOPPIN' US NOW.

LSU whateva: LSU went through the motions for about a quarter and a half Saturday, at which point Towson broke off a big run to take a 9-7 lead and LSU decided to start trying. From that point on, LSU went the length of the field on six consecutive drives (the only non-scoring drive among those ended with a fumble at the Towson 6-yard line) and allowed four first downs. Knowing that the offense is blah enough to get shut down for about 20 minutes by an FCS team affects my opinion of the team as a whole only marginally; I'm not convinced those 20 minutes were any more indicative of LSU's quality than the following 20 minutes.

Totally Unnoticed Game of the Week: Kent State 45, Ball State 43. Kent State led 42-29 with seven minutes left before Ball State scored twice in a span of three plays from scrimmage, both on touchdown passes from Keith Wenning, who finished a respectable 32 of 43 for 445 yards with five touchdowns and no picks. Kent State then went three-and-out, got a stop, got the ball back at its own 6 with 2:14 left and proceeded to go 86 yards in 15 plays, with one of those a 15-yard completion on a fourth-and-10 near midfield and the last of those a 25-yard field goal to win a game that Kent State had led at every point before Ball State's last touchdown.Woo MAC!

Post-Week 5 top 10: There are basically four tiers at this point: (a) teams that are Alabama, (b) teams that aren't Alabama but are legitimately very good, (c) teams that are definitely good but have some obvious and potentially problematic deficiencies and (d) teams that are good but aren't really distinguishable from the various other good-ish teams. Result:

1. Alabama
2. LSU
3. Oregon
4. Florida State
5. West Virginia
6. Georgia
7. USC
8.  South Carolina
9. Clemson
10. Notre Dame