Despite all of the postponements and cancellations, this was a pretty good week for college football.
Top 25: Saturday, Nov. 28
Thoughts: - And just like that, Northwestern’s chances at the playoff are dead. They are a great story this year and they play really well together but ESPN pointed out a week ago that Northwestern had a talent deficit and it showed. - So are the PAC12s with Oregon going down to Oregon State. The Beavs backup QB took his first snap for the Beavs in for a QB sneak to win the game. Glad we can just most on from discussing the words PAC12 and playoffs in the same sentence again this year. It does make the PAC12 Championship game interesting though. - Texas A&M’s defense looked fantastic and fast. They were also playing a LSU offense that looked confused and disoriented. Good news for LSU, they get Alabama next so good luck with that. - The SEC Championship game will be the deciding factors for the “Award that Must Not be Named.” Trask and Jones seem to be on a breakaway from everyone else at this point. - Ole Miss can score points in a hurry. Not only is Lane Kiffin entertaining to watch, he’s also a pretty good offensive coach as well. Too bad he hasn’t found a defensive coordinator to match up with. - Clemson looked good as they start their warmups before the Notre Dame rematch in a few weeks. - Trevor Lawrence basically admitted that it was his final home game. I’m really excited to see how the Jets screw this up. - Notre Dame has a pretty darn good defense and their passing game has started to show signs of life. I still think Clemson will be the favorite in the ACC Championship game but it should be a good game to watch. - Buffalo’s running back Jaret Patterson tied a NCAA record with 8 touchdowns. His coach later apologized for pulling Patterson when he had a chance to break the record. - Syracuse spiked a 4th down play and lost the game. Tom Brady was proud. - Stop me if you heard this one, but Michigan lost again. This time to a garbage Penn State team. I can’t wait to see the Jim Harbaugh interview with the Jets after the season is over. - SMUs slide isn’t helping Cincinnati’s strength of schedule case but at this point it isn’t the killer it would have been two weeks ago. Tulsa remaining ranked should helped out a tad but A&M is sitting hard in front without challenge. - Georgia beat up South Carolina which isn’t really that hard right now. - Washington Huskies came back from a 21-0 halftime deficit to beat Utah 24-21. Previously, Pac-12 teams had been 3-148 when trailing by 21 at the half over the past 15 seasons. - The Chanticleers pulled off another big win against Texas State School of Automotive and Beauty Care and set up their big showdown with Liberty! - Nebraska’s Scott Frost cried about Iowa clapping on the sideline and Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz decided to mock Frost for it. - John Mayers booted a 30-yard field goal as time expired to lift Baylor over Kansas State, 32-31. Baylor lost the previous week when Texas Tech kicked the chip shot as time expired. Playoff Prediction for This Week. No changes to the four this week. 1. Alabama. Even without Nick Satan on the sideline the Tide are the most complete team in college football. 2. Ohio State: Didn’t play, again. 3. Notre Dame: The defense is legit and gives them a chance to stay in the game. 4. Clemson: Getting healthy at the right time, a few sparing partners before they meet ND for the ACC title. Waiting in the wings: - Florida: On track to meet Bama for it all. - Texas A&M: Needs a blowout in the ACC Championship game now that the PAC12 has removed itself. - Cincinnati: Just sitting still, hoping that magic happens. - BYU: While the playoff committee doesn’t love them, we might as well throw up some love to them. Mainly because I have no faith in ISU, Georgia, Miami or whoever else the poll puts in front of BYU.
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The first playoff poll is out and some people are happy and others are clearly not:
1. Alabama (7-0) 2. Notre Dame (8-0) 3. Clemson (7-1) 4. Ohio State (4-0) 5. Texas A&M (5-1) 6. Florida (6-1) 7. Cincinnati (8-0) 8. Northwestern (5-0) 9. Georgia (5-2) 10. Miami (7-1) 11. Oklahoma (6-2) 12. Indiana (4-1) 13. Iowa State (6-2) 14. BYU (9-0) 15. Oregon (3-0) 16. Wisconsin (2-1) 17. Texas (5-2) 18. USC (3-0) 19. UNC (6-2) 20. Coastal Carolina (8-0) 21. Marshall (7-0) 22. Auburn (5-2) 23. Oklahoma State (5-2) 24. Iowa (3-2) 25. Tulsa (5-1) Our Weekly Playoff Predictor from last weekend: 1. Alabama (1) 2. Ohio State (4) 3. Notre Dame (2) 4. Clemson (3) Waiting in the wings: - Florida: (6) - Texas A&M (5) - Cincinnati (8) - Northwestern (7) Not exactly hard to predict but going 8 for 8 is pretty darn good. Texas A&M is a lame duck 5 as Florida and Northwestern have clearer lines to the playoff than A&M and Cincinnati due at this point. Win their respective championship games and they are in. Thoughts: - The top four is not exactly surprising and pretty predictable. Bama, Notre Dame, Clemson and Ohio State. Ohio States close on the scoreboard win last week probably put them in forth. - Texas A&M is sitting on the outside looking in. - Cincinnati is the highest rated Group of 5 team in history at 7. There isn't anything more that - BYU is beyond pissed and is ranting and raving about it. Independents are at a huge disadvantage in this environment, which is what drove Notre Dame to join the ACC this year. BYU did turn down the chance to play Washington this weekend but they didn't want to follow PAC12 Covid rules and PAC12 wasn't going to share television revenue for the event. Understandable why BYU turned it down but when you go around screaming "Any team, Any Time, Any Where" and then turn teams down, it ruins your narrative to be willing to take on all comers. BYUs only hope is to find the highest ranked opponent to play December 19th and even that probably won't be enough. - Iowa State is probably the biggest surprise as a two loss team ahead of BYU. I would have thought the opening season loss to UL would have hurt them much more. - Georgia is probably overrated though they are kept up by losing to two quality teams. Overall, I think the Top 8 makes complete sense to me at this point. After that it is pretty debatable though I could have easily seen BYU at 9. I wouldn't be surprised if they rise next week as some of the teams in front of them start to add more losses. Top 25:
And the Bottom: - Penn State. What an epic train wreck for a team with such huge expectations. - Louisiana Monroe: Haven't watched them yet? Picture the NY Jets as a college football team. Then make them even worse. - Kansas: I love that they show more highlights for basketball when their football teams play than they do for the actual football team. - UMass: Their "Rent-A-Victory" scheme for teams wanting to pad their record is brilliant for adding funding to the UMass athletic department. Weekly Thoughts: - A bunch of games were postponed and will likely be cancelled but a solid weekend of college football with some great games being played. With the strange scheduling expect to see a ton of Friday night games next week with the holiday coming up. - Ohio State pulled it out against a game Indiana. Despite getting a 28 point lead the Buckeyes let Indiana get back into it. The big take away is that Ohio State's defense needs some work to get ready for the playoff. Indiana will be a fun team to watch with games again a resurging Maryland and an angry Wisconsin coming up the week after. - Indiana has some new believers even with the loss. They went toe to toe and stood their ground with one of the best teams in college football. - Huge win by Northwestern against Wisconsin. - Northwestern seemed to get some motivation from ESPN's Joey Galloway. When asked about his thoughts on Northwestern, he remarked to his co-host Rece Davis, "Honestly, they've got a bunch of Rece Davises running around out there" in discussing Northwestern's athletic disadvantage against some of the schools with less stringent academic requirements. Northwestern took it to heart and were joking about it after their win. - BYU won big against North Alabama but only has a single game left on its schedule. If they want to keep the voters interest then they'll need to magically find a top 25 team to play additional games to raise their strength of schedule. - Chanticleers won again! Looking good for their monster showdown with Liberty coming up in two weeks. - But too bad those same Liberty Flames flamed out against NC State in a close won. Another unbeaten juggernaut goes down on a blocked 39 yard field goal attempt in the last 90 seconds of the game. - Georgia beat Miss State but I'm going with the kuddos to Miss State. Miss State had less than 50 scholarship players available for the game which would have allowed them to cancel the game if those chose to. I'm pretty sure that every other college football team that was below 50 has cancelled their games so good on Miss State for showing up and not crying. - Auburn beat Tennessee and set up their matchup with Alabama with the Tigers having a Top 25 ranking. - If you haven't watched Iowa State this year you are missing out on a solid football team. - Good article by ESPN on the downfall of Florida State Football over the last few years. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/30331494/deep-deep-hole-6-year-unraveling-florida-state-football - When did U of Okie remember how to play defense? Combining a solid defense with that offensive system and you have a solid future. As long as Lincoln Riley doesn't leave. - Perdue got screwed by a weak pass interference call against Minnesota. Not a good look from the Big 10 refs. - Illinois pulled out the big win against Nebraska. Scott Frost continues to be a huge disappoint but his buyout is around $25 million so expect him to hang around for a big. If you haven't watched the video on the fake punt from the game, I recommend it as it is the easiest first down fake punt run ever. (https://twitter.com/i/status/1330228469670830086) - Also with the SMU video about their game being posponed. (https://twitter.com/SMU_Football?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1330197418118418434%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.espn.com%2F) - Oregon beat UCLA but has pretty much shut the door on making the playoffs with their play. Needing UCLA to go full moron on a pointless Hail Mary to make the scoring difference won't inspire voters to dislike the PAC12 less. - I really don't enjoy watching PAC12 football, even more so this year than most. Very sloppy which is understandable because they just started but its awful to go from a back to back well played games to watching poorly played 7-on-7 with four additional players on each team. - Neat Senior Day by Pitt. With restrictions limiting contact with families the players came out to cameos from their families on the big screen. Playoff Prediction for This Week. No changes again this week to the Top 4. 1. Alabama. Not playing the best, but they looked pretty good. 2. Ohio State: Smooth sailing until the Big East Championship game against Northwestern. 3. Notre Dame: North Carolina, two cupcakes (Syracuse and Wake) and then Clemson again 4. Clemson: Two mediocres (Pitt and VTech) and then Notre Dame again. Waiting in the wings: - Florida: Another easy win. Smooth sailing until they meet the Tide. - Texas A&M: Still needs Clemson to lose the ACC Championship game if it wants a shot at the 4th spot. Expect to see this for a few more weeks because there isn't much in A&M's way at this point beyond that loss to Alabama. - Cincinnati: The Bearcats pulled out the win but it was really close. The first decent team they played (UCF) took them to the wire. Put them in the ring against an Alabama or Clemson and they lose by 30 points, easily. - Northwestern!: Yup. It is a simple path now for the Wildcats, just beat Ohio State and they are in the playoffs. Good luck with that. First, we've already had two nights of MACtion, as the Mid American Conference has elected to play their games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, in order to hopefully get more TV games... Then, we have a bunch of games that have gotten postponed or cancelled. And here we are, as of 3:52pm EST, here are the games still scheduled to be played this weekend: A slow week in college football due to covid postponements and cancellations. My original thread disappeared when posting so you get this version instead. I swear the other one was much funnier. Oh well, lesson learned.
Top 25:
Thoughts: - Jim Harbaugh sucks as a coach and needs to be fired. The Wolverines get worse every week. But for some reason there are people who love him so I expect Jim to fail into success so get ready for Jim to be announced as the Jets new head coach in January. - Kyle Trask is a legit Heisman candidate. Especially this year. If Florida continues to perform like this then Bama won’t have a walkthrough in the SEC Championship game. - Kentucky had an emotional victory in a 38-35 win over Vanderbilt. The game was two days after the death of longtime offensive line coach John Schlarman. The Wildcats only had four offensive linemen for their first play as a sign of respect. The next play the Left Guard came into the game wearing Schlarman’s old number from when he played. - Marshall won 42-14 over Middle Tennessee State. The win, which improved the Herd to 7-0 on the year, came 50 years to the day after 37 members of the Marshall football team and eight coaches were among the 75 people killed in a plane crash on the way back from a game at East Carolina. - East Carolina got roughed up by a talented Cincinnati team. My first chance to really watch the Bearcats and they were really legit. Their week strength of schedule hurts but I’m convinced they could play against most top 10 in college football and hold their own. - North Carolina’s awful defense is hiding that the Tar Heels offense is pretty good. - Who had Indiana as undefeated for the first time through 4 games since the Reagan administration? Huge game next week with the Hoosiers against Ohio State. - Northwestern is undefeated as well, setting up an interesting game next week against Wisconsin. Wisconsin continues to look pretty good. - Rutgers was a favorite for the first time since 2015 in a Big 10 game because Illinois was starting its third string QB. Of course they lost. But hey, small victories. - Tulane beat up an Army team that had been having a good season so far. Army can’t come back once it falls behind and just embarrasses itself when it tries to come back. - Ragin’ Cajuns are in the Sun-Belt Championship game. They’ll play the winner of the Appalachian State-Coastal Carolina match-up. - Minnesota looked awful. I love the calling for time outs from Iowa late in the game. - The only thing worse than PAC12 football, are PAC12 ref’s. 4th and 1, QB gets two yards and its short. Look forward to the apology from the PAC12 this morning. - Ole Miss gained 700 yards of offense against the Gamecocks. The video of Lane Kiffin knowing it was a touchdown before his QB throws the ball (from near his own endzone) is entertaining. Clipboard goes 30 feet into the air and Lane sprints down the sideline 60 yards. - Ian Book keeps getting better each week. The Irish will need that passing attack if they want a chance against a healthy Clemson. - Miami’s punter won them the game averaging 52 yards per kick for his seven punts. - Merchant Marines beat Coast Guard for the Secretaries Cup. Yup, DIII making the highlights shows you how weak this week was for college football. - There are talks about pushing back the college football playoff so teams can get in more games. Nothing settled in stone just yet. - The deadline for Heisman voting is Dec. 21. Finalists for award will be announced during a 30-minute special on Dec. 24 at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN. In normal years they would award before the championship games. - Don’t forget you have Cal and UCLA playing today. When their opponents fell off due to Covid they signed up for a last minute game. Good for them trying to just play. Playoff Prediction for This Week. No changes to the four this week. 1. Alabama. Don’t expect the postponed LSU game to be made up. 2. Ohio State Big game against Indiana this week. Yup, Indiana. 3. Notre Dame: Getting better each week on offense. 4. Clemson: Just waiting for Lawrence and the defense to get back on the field. Waiting in the wings: - Florida: Trask is looking like a strong potential Heisman candidate. - Texas A&M: Still needs Clemson to lose the ACC Championship game if it wants a shot at the 4th spot. - Cincinnati: Falls due to Army getting trounced and one of their rare “quality” wins disappearing with Army being exposed by Tulane.
Top 25:
Saturday, Nov. 7
Thoughts: - If you watched it, you were impressed with both teams. Notre Dame and Clemson was fantastic it and it really gave you appreciation for how good the Notre Dame offensive line is. Trevor Lawrence being out was of course huge but Clemson missing a couple of starters on defense was bigger as the Clemson freshman QB DJ Uiagalelei passed for 426 yards (most ever against Notre Dame) and looked great. The Golden Domers offense is straight out of the 1970s with just enough throws to tight ends to move the chains as they the just chew up ground behind what is easily the best offensive line in college football. Yup, they are better than any Offensive line in the SEC, they are they good. This sets up the ACC to be an instant classic if Clemson and Notre Dame both win out and they meet again. - I've been saying it here, the Chanticleers are legit! Another big win this week! Chanticleers vs the Flames in the final week of the year for a potential playoff spot? - Texas A&M is looking awesome right now. Huge potential for them to threaten Clemson for the number 4 spot in the Top 25. Their win over Florida looks huge right now. - Speaking of Florida, they took the Bulldogs behind the woodshed. Georgia isn't good enough to make up for injuries and awful QB play. How can Clemson have a roster of starting QBs while Georgia managed to go from having three starters two years ago to having none now. I bet they'd love to have Fields back. Florida looks to have an easy ride into Atlanta to represent the SEC East with no ranked teams left on their schedule. - Oregon beat Stanford but I don't know if anyone actually cares about the PAC12 right now. Oregon need to have a signature game against a quality opponent if they are going to make a run at the playoff. Otherwise you're going to see either the ACC or SEC double up. Same goes for USC. - Ohio State looked alright. Lots of mistakes but their talent gap between them and the rest of the Big 10 is so big they can make up for the issues. It will be different in the playoff when they face teams who are just as talented but more disciplined in Clemson and Alabama. - Iowa State is now 5-1. Not that anyone really cares about any teams in that conference not from Texas or Oklahoma. - Oklahoma beat on Kansas for fun, which really isn't that hard. - Okie State had to make the comeback after struggling for parts of the game. - Cincinnati is legit and can play. A solid team that performs every week. They need SMU and Army to continue to win. With UConn leaving last year the American switched to a single conference with the two best records so it is likely to get the Bearcats and SMU again which would knock SMU out of the Top 25 and hurt the Bearcats strength of schedule. Army doesn't play anyone good the rest of the year so no real issue there. - Marshall beat up on a UMass team that is basically whoring itself out this year as chum. Being an independent is hard if you try to play after everyone else scheduled their games and you only get dates with the people who got stood up. - Michigan and Penn State are both awful. They probably wished they had cancelled their season right now. - Maryland looks like a decent team behind Baby Tua. - BYU looked good. Miami continues to play to their opponents level, which isn't a good thing against bad teams but they squeaked it out. - Mississippi State came out to their new state flag which looks pretty decent. Ole Miss did the same. - Troll of the Week goes to Clemson Fans for trolling their own QB. As Trevor Lawrence walked on to the field some of the Clemson fans were yelling, "J-E-T-S, JETS JETS JETS!" Maybe they are hoping if they tease him enough he'll be back for another year. - Virginia Tech iced a kicker and ended up losing because of it. Dumbest thing in football. Playoff Prediction for This Week. 1. Alabama. 2. Ohio State 3. Notre Dame 4. Clemson Waiting in the wings: - Cincinnati: Easy schedule the rest of the way ensures they will end up undefeated unless SMU gets really lucky in the championship game. - Florida can get in if it wins the SEC. - Texas A&M needs Clemson to lose the ACC Championship game if it wants a shot at the 4th spot.
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