Monday, October 15

Knee-Jerk Top 10 (Week 8 or something?)

So, I think this college football season is shaping up rather well, lots of exciting upsets and if everything goes well perhaps the fall of the BCS!! Ok, follow my logic here, in the top 20 there are 10 one-loss teams and 6 zero-loss teams. Included in the 0-loss teams are the following: Arizona St, Hawaii, South Florida, Boston College, and Kansas. Not that I doubt these teams, ok, I do. Four of them WILL LOSE BEFORE THE SEASON IS OVER, in fact, likely 3 this weekend (BC, USF, ASU). Of the other two, only Ohio St has to lose to fell the great BCS. If Hawaii is undefeated they likely won't make the title game (if they do, and get stomped, even more outcry which is good). Basically Ohio St has to lose some time over the next 5 weeks (Mich St, @Penn St, Wisconsin, Illinois, @ Michigan), to leave (and I'm assuming here) roughly 8-10 teams with one loss as of bowl time. In the past, there have been easy decisions to make to set up a national chamionship (last year the only undefeated teams played) or any one-loss controversy has only plagued one of the two spots (see 2000 & 2001 where a controversial one-loss team was picked to play an undefeated). Hopefully this year, there will be up to 5 or 6 teams claiming the right to play for the national championship and the powers that be might realize that a playoff is the best system for all parties involved (fans, schools, sponsors, etc)

Edit: Ok, for some reason I didn't catch that the other 2 undefeated teams I predicted to lose are both idle, and playing in fact NEXT weekend, oops. At least I was right about USF

1) Ohio St - as I've said, they've been improving in leaps and bounds this season, which has been full of OTJ training for the offense, now some losses (Cal, LSU) have them atop the polls (Mich St)
2) USF - well, they haven't lost yet, and their resume is quite impressive, they've got a rough mathup comin this week (@ Rutgers, Thurs)
3) Kentucky - the lovely SEC Beatloop (LSU>SC>KY>LSU...), luckily the two SEC East teams have yet to play Florida, hopefully that will help settle things out a bit in the comparative rankings, but until then we're just have to guess, or go with the hot hand, hence the whole "knee-jerk" gimmick, they'll get a chance to prove their ranking this weekend (Florida)
4) Oklahoma - dispatched upstart Missouri this week to help everyone forget about the stumble at Colorado, they should coast (and steadily creep up the AP rankings) until a game at Texas Tech in November (@ Iowa St)
5) LSU - rough loss at Kentucky, its looking more and more like an undefeated season for any BCS conference team will punch your ticket to the national championship game, well, it usually does, but it seems especially certain this year, with the polls favoring them winning out should get them a date with Oklahoma (guessing here) on Jan 8th (Auburn)
6) WVU - just like Florida they benefit from the bye week (Miss St)
7) SC - quite impressive in the first half against UNC, and quite not in the second, I feel like the real Gamecocks were the ones playing the first half, but their running game has to improve if they want to put away teams in the fourth quarter (Vanderbilt)
8) Florida - I've returned them to the top 10 because everyone else seems to be mired in suckatude, that and I'm anticipating a win over Kentucky since it would only cloud the picture in the SEC (@ Kentucky)
9) Missouri - Losing by 10 to a top-10 ranked team, on the road isn't that bad, we'll leave them here for a bit, could have some trouble with Texas Tech's system offense this weekend (Texas Tech)
10) BC - #2 in the AP, finally a loss comes this week, I really hope they don't tear down the goalposts in Blacksburg (idle)
Would have been in if I didn't want to rant about the lunacy that is BC's #2 ranking) Oregon - they're looking like the best team in the Pac-10 right now (undefeated top-10 Arizona St is a CROCK a la BC)

Dropped: Cal, Illinois

Great story on Vinny here
Apparently the Red Sox Nation (which has elected a president) is none too pleased with Eric Gagne
College Basketball is just around the CORNER!!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nicely done. I feel like that boredom at work really paid off.