College Football

After watching UL hang 73 points on Murray State (it could easily have been 100), I was originally going to say that you can't take away much info when a BCS level team beats a I-AA team (now stupidly called Football Championship Subdivision by the NCAA). UL and UK fans were going to have to wait until next week when they play Middle Tenn and Kent State respectively to really begin to get an idea how good they can be. Then division I-AA Appalachian State goes to the University of Michigan and beats the fifth ranked Wolverines in front of 110,000 people. I'm sure soon-to-be-ex-head-coach Lloyd Carr is bitching at his athletic director wanting to know why they traded an opening game with Vanderbilt to one with Appalachian State. In fact, if I was App. State, I would cash that $400,000 check that Michigan paid them for the game before Michigan puts a stop payment for it. In theory, big teams pay small teams to come play them so they can get an easy win. Sounds like App. State breached the unwritten language. So, I have to change my opinion. You can tell something when a "top" I-A team loses to any I-AA team. Michigan sucks.

I remember Appalachian State from when my father was in the military science department at Tenn-Chattanooga which was a Southern Conference rival of App. State. They always had good teams, but that was for a I-AA squad. Schools in I-AA can only give 63 scholarships (I-A can give up to 85) and just don't have the exposure to get the top quality players. This was a point completely lost on Lou Holtz who is without a doubt the worst commentator in college football. He tried to say Michigan shouldn't be dropped in the polls because they were just having a bad day and there's lots of parity in college football. I would have dropped Michigan out of the top 25 even if they had pulled out a last second win. There's a certain amount of parity among conferences, but there is no parity between Division I-A and I-AA. Michigan has more money, better recruits and more players. While I wouldn't bet on Appalachian State beating Michigan in more than two out of ten games, it was really strange to see that App. State simply looked faster than Michigan. The Wolverines just lost and it shows that deep down, Michigan sucks.

Even stupider was Holtz and some others I heard on the radio or TV who weren't sure if this was the biggest upset they'd ever seen. One radio guy referred to it as "the upset of the day and possibly the season". Way to go out on a limb. No I-AA team had ever beaten a ranked I-A team. Ever. This was the fifth ranked team that had a bunch of top players returning because they wanted to win a national championship. Fortunately, even with the bizarre BCS system in college football, a suck ass team doesn't play for the national championship. Except Ohio State last year which lends credence to my theory that the Big 10 is consistently the most overrated conference in football. Still, they shouldn't be losing to the Appalachian State's of the world. So, yes, it was certainly the biggest upset of my lifetime.

I didn't see what Holtz had to say about another traditional "power", Notre Dame, getting their asses handed to them by a supposedly inferior team like Georgia Tech. I can't stand his voice or the stupidity that often emanates from it. I think the fact that Notre Dame scored only 3 points (at home) with an "offensive genius" as a head coach can only mean one thing: Notre Dame sucks, too. That Michigan-Notre Dame game in two weeks is looking like must-miss TV.

Some might call me heartless (although that wouldn't explain the stabbing chest pains when I eat a Grand Slam breakfast), but I kind of got sick of the whole healing powers of Virginia Tech football after that shooting last spring. I understand big group events can be cathartic, and Tech football is a major campus institution. However, the shooting was almost five months ago and there were massive campus rallies after that. I guess my biggest problem was ESPN beating the story to death. They made it seem like not rooting for a Virginia Tech win would just plain mean. The trouble with rooting for Virginia Tech is that another major sports story involved Tech's most famous football alumni, Michael Vick. Plus, Viriginia Tech served as a long time enabler to multiple offender Marcus Vick for quite some time.

Tennessee's success in getting blown out by Cal shows why SEC teams really don't like to go on the road against good teams. Actually, it explains why they don't go on the road against good teams too often. Outside of Tennessee and LSU, the only SEC teams who routinely face good teams on the road are UK, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, but only because they are practically forced to play in-state, out-of-conference rivals every year. It makes it easier to claim your conference is as strong as the NFC South when you only play each other and a bunch of scrubs then get confused when you go 3-3 in bowl games like 2005.

The fact that Auburn had to reach down to escape Kansas State at home probably means SEC teams are going to also try to get out of playing home games against even decent teams. They needed the crowd noise and home town officiating (if Florida can't get a call at Auburn, Kansas State certainly can't) to squeak out this win. Of course, Auburn has a rep for not going on the road to face tough teams. Not surprising, they've only had four out-of-conference road games in the past 10 years. The only game out of those four that they won was at Virginia in 1997. Auburn also has a rep for scheduling good teams (ie Fla St, Miami) and canceling later. UL called about Auburn having an opening on their schedule this year, but Auburn refused to agree to a return trip to Louisville so we passed on it. I've watched Tennessee, Miami, Florida State, Penn State, Texas, Texas A&M and other big programs play in Louisville (some at the old crappy fairgrounds stadium), but Auburn is "too good" to play at Louisville. Maybe I would be more impressed with them if they had won more than one SEC title since I graduated from high school. Ironically, that year they went undefeated, but missed out on playing for the BCS Championship because their out-of-conference cupcakes hurt their strength of schedule so they were behind other undefeated teams.

Even though Michigan lost to a I-AA team, I still don't think much can be learned from UL and UK beating up Murray and EKU. To begin with, EKU is decent, but they haven't even won their conference since 1997. Murray won it in 2002, but have been in a slide since. So, neither is near as good as App. State. Some have tried to find issues with both squads based on their first game. Reporters have made the point that Murray used short passes on their only two drives that went anywhere, so if UK (who likes those passes) had played them, they would have eaten that up. Well, is anyone stupid enough to think that UL would have played the same defense against UK? I didn't see a single blitz or even much stunting. Coaches don't just shut the offensive playbook when they face an overmatched opponent. They don't show much on defense either. By the same token, UK's biggest offensive concern is the inexperience on offensive line. Giving up a couple of sacks early like they did against EKU could indicate a season long problem. However, while I think the line is a big question mark for them, I can't say lack of ability was a bigger problem than overlooking a lesser opponent. So, I'll wait until after next week's game before doing any analysis of these two teams.