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The BCS begins its annual charade + NFL recap and the picks
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The first BCS poll of the year came out yesterday and as you would have expected, Florida sits at the top of it. After all, the national championship is the Gator’s to lose…..isn’t it??? They were anointed before the season ever started and that is the way that things will be until they lose.
The problem is this: The Gators are not the best team in the nation.
There is something that is not quite right with their offense. I can’t put my finger on it, but the Gator offense just looks….palsied…for lack of a better word. That is in comparison to Gator offenses from recent years. Outside of that, the Gators only test, (other than the one that they had Saturday), has been against LSU….and I am not sure how tough of a test that that will prove to be in the long run, because LSU has been ridiculously over rated all season.
Extended Side Note:
Florida should have lost to Arkansas on Saturday. The Razorbacks continually shot themselves in the foot and left at least fifteen points on the field. That is of little concern to me. What is of concern is that when the game got down to the nitty gritty and the fat began to sizzle in the fire; the Gators got an inordinate amount of help from the boys in black and white.
A bogus call for unnecessary roughness on a Razorback defender, who leveled a charging Florida offensive linemen kept a Gator scoring drive alive. That’s right, the Florida O-linemen was charging the Arkansas defender and when the defender decided to deliver a shot instead of taking one, he was called for unnecessary roughness. This happened a good twenty yards away from the ball.
On the same drive, a phantom pass interference call against the Razorbacks gave the Gators the ball at the Arkansas 21. Florida scored two plays later.
Lastly, a blatant case of offensive pass interference on Gator receiver, Riley Cooper in the Arkansas end zone was ignored by the officials and allowed the Gators to keep the game winning drive alive.
The Gators ended up winning by three points.
It is also possible that the buffoonery of Gary Danielson may have helped UF out. I am almost sure that it did in some way, shape or form.
During the broadcast of the Florida - Arkansas game Danielson informed us that Tim Tebow threw a pass off of his back foot, but that Aaron Hernandez was so wide open that Tebow could have thrown the pass off of his back rear end.
Outstanding analogy, Gary…….simply outstanding.
You could have left it at back. You could have used back side, back forty, back yard or even back and to the left. But you, Mr. National Television Color Guy came up with back rear end. I guess that Tebow’s back rear end is in direct opposition to his front rear end.
Later, in a fit of inspiration, Daniels informed us that a Tebow pass could have been thrown to Riley Cooper, but Riley Cooper wasn’t on the field.
If that’s the case, any Tebow pass in that game could have been thrown to J-Lo, Beyonce, Humphrey Bogart or Andy Samberg. They weren’t on the field either.
Back to the article:
I don’t know how the BCS can come up with a ranking at all. Determining who the best teams in the land are is an exercise in futility. All of the teams at the top of the BCS poll are deeply flawed in some way. The exceptions are Boise State and TCU, who cancel each other out because of the BCS’s inane rule that only one Non-BCS conference team can go to a BCS bowl.
We’ve already looked at Florida.
Alabama can’t throw the football and the Crimson Tide is one injury to Mark Ingram away from being a seriously ineffectual offensive team.
Texas struggles against competition stiffer than Baylor.
Cincinnati lost Tony Pike, their starting quarterback last Saturday and Zach Collaros, the kid that will take his place is a gunslinger. He will do as much harm as good over the course of the season.
Iowa is simply uninspiring and they play to the level of their competition. On top of that, they’re a Big Ten team, so they are not to be taken seriously on a national scale.
USC has managed to sneak back into the mix, despite losing to an unranked Washington team. The issues with USC are that they play in the PAC-10 and that their freshman quarterback could go south the way that he did against Washington at any moment.
I just can’t believe that someone at the NCAA hasn’t simply thrown the BS flag and decided that this is the year that we have a playoff. There is not one team out there that stands out as being the best.
I do not care how it is justified or what machinations that are used to justify it. The system is broken and it needs to be fixed before it can be taken seriously.
In NFL Action:
Andy Reid drives me up the wall. Every team that has played the Raiders this season, (except San Diego….could be a coincidence), gave Reid a blueprint of how to dismantle the Raiders. Just last week, the Giants gutted the Raiders with the run. The G-Men put up 44 points running the ball. It is obvious to anyone that the Raiders cannot stop the run. So what does Andy do??? He throws the ball forty six times and loses the game. Simply amazing. The pigeon that was on the field had more damn sense of what was going on in that game than Reid did.
I will give Reid the point that the Eagles O-line mailed it in yesterday. But for the love of god, isn’t it easier for an offensive line to run block than it is for them to pass block???
I told you that the Chiefs would beat the ‘Skins.
I do not know what to say about the Titans anymore. When you get beat 59-0, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
Jay Cutler is back up to his old tricks. He can’t get an offense from the red zone to the end zone. This will eventually start costing the Bears games….in fact it cost them one last night.
Drew Brees and the Saints offense continued their tour de force yesterday by giving the Giants a taste of the whip in a clash of unbeaten teams. After, the Andy reid debacle, the Saints have become my NFC pick to go the distance.
Brett Favre pulled a little bit more magic out of his arse, (or maybe his back rear end), to get the Vikings within field goal range to lift them over the sinking Ravens 33-31.
Houston may have exposed the Bengals as the opportunists that they have been all year. I guess that if another team puts its foot on Cincy’s neck and doesn’t let up, that the Bengals will still act like the Bengals.
Detroit simply did not bother to show up to play the Packers.
Carolina beat Tampa on a last second touchdown by Deangelo Williams, who I had finally had enough of and left out of my fantasy line up.
Jacksonville squeaked by Saint Louis. If Jack Del Rio is not asked to find other employment after this season, I will be shocked.
Arizona went into Seattle and whipped the stuffing out of the Seahawks. For the life of me, I cannot figure the Seahawks out. One week they play like contenders. The next week they don’t show up.
Finally, Mark Sanchez is beginning to really let the rookie in him come out. He was pathetic against the Bills yesterday in a 16-13 overtime loss. It seemed like half of his passes floated on him, or got caught up in the wind. I do not know how the guy is going to be the Jets QB if he can’t throw in Giant Stadium.
Random Notes
I haven’t watched Grey’s Anatomy for a couple of seasons. I simply can’t keep up with serial shows. The idea that you can completely lose track of a plot line if you miss a couple of shows just doesn’t work for me.
I quit watching The Sopranos for the same reason. Well, that and the fact that HBO couldn’t make up its collective mind as to when or if the Sopranos new season would ever start…..that happened every season after season three.
However, last week I did watch an episode of Grey’s and it was worth every excruciating second of my wife bringing me up to date on this soap opera just to hear Sara Ramirez, (the actress that plays Callie Torres), repeatedly yelling “You can’t pray away the gay” at Hector Elizondo, who was playing her father.
The kicker was that Elizondo showed up with a priest to try and pray away the gay. I’ll let you insert your own joke here.
There is no such thing as momentum in college football anymore. Replay kills it before it can get started. A team simply can’t build momentum when they have to wait five minutes after every touchdown or every play that may be a close call to be confirmed.
Replay has started to directly affect the flow of the game. EVERY call, EVERY touchdown and EVERY thing that happens on the field has to be reviewed endlessly. I am a huge proponent of getting the calls right, but this thing has gotten out of control.
I can’t believe it. I actually agree with talking haircut, Mel Kiper Jr. about something. We both believe that major college football is in desperate need of a playoff.
Note to Kirk Herbstreit, who reported to us that Bob Stoops has been repeatedly and falsely accused of not being able to coach in big games:
No one ever said that Bob Stoops could not coach in big games. It is apparent that he can. The BCS has given him chance after chance to do so. We just pointed out that he doesn’t do it very well.
Flipping around the channels the other day looking for the UCLA – Cal game, I came across a California of Pennsylvania – Edinboro game. First off, I was amazed that I could get a California, Pennsylvania - Edinboro game, but couldn’t find UCLA – Cal.
Secondly; I was stupefied by the fact that the Cal, PA team is called the Vulcans. I almost watched this thing all the way through just to see if one of the Cal, PA players tried to do the Vulcan mind meld on the Edinboro quarterback. I wanted to see a Cal, PA knock an Edinboro player out of the game simply by grabbing him by the collarbone. I wanted to see if the Cal, PA kids gave the Spock “live long and prosper” salute to start the fourth quarter. I wanted to see if their cheerleaders gave the “live long and prosper” to the crowd the way that Texas cheerleaders do “Hook’em Horns”. I wanted to see if every kid on the team had a Moe Howard haircut.
This is just how my mind works.
I will say this; Tyrod Taylor has become a very efficient passer compared to what he was last year, or even at the outset of this season. My apologies to him and to VT fans for my searing criticism of his passing skills.
Watching CFB Saturday was awesome. I especially like the Sam Bradford updates that crawled across the bottom of the screen every thirty seconds or so.
Tonight’s picks:
Phillies straight up
Angels straight up
Denver -3 over San Diego
As usual, thanks for stopping by and reading this tripe.
Peace
