Ahh, another week, another week of football. Frankly, I'm getting a little bored. Texas, Alabama, and Florida all won and all stayed ranked in the top 3, despite the fact that I think we can safely claim that Texas is the only of those three that seems to want the ranking. While I've been a bit of a Florida booster for the last few years, I have to say I'm really starting to actively root against these guys. My dad likes to say that he vividly remembers during a Baltimore Colts game an announcer proclaiming that the Colts looked "like a bunch of tired businessmen." I'm starting to think the Gators have that same vibe: they look like they have senioritis ("ho-hum, I guess we'll win another national championship").
It's especially becoming more painful after watching TCU maul Utah last night. Apparently, a lot of people don't have CBS College Sports, so maybe everyone doesn't have the same images burned into their minds, but TCU is a team that looks hungry. I managed to watch all the Top 5 teams this weekend and, I can say, Texas and TCU are the two teams that look like they want to play in the championship. Alabama has flashes of desire, but only just that. Cincinnati, in their game against WVU, looked more confused than anything, like they weren't sure who invited them to the party. Anyway, so I think that's why I'm getting burned up on the whole season: the inevitability of Alabama/Florida vs. Texas for the national title.
Speaking of inevitable, looks like I won't be watching the Rose Bowl, again, this year. Every year, some mediocre team from the Big 10 beats all the other mediocre teams in the Big 10 and then loses to a Pac 10 team by 5 touchdowns in the Rose Bowl. Ohio State looks to be that sleepwalker, this year. Kirk Herbstreit on College Gameday yesterday morning said that he felt that no team in the country was playing like Ohio State. If, by that he meant, "playing awful, awful football yet, inexplicably, winning 10 games," I would agree. So, I'll call it now, Ohio State loses by at least three touchdowns in the Rose Bowl.
That said, who will they play? Can I say how excited I am by Stanford this year? I mean anybody that beats USC at home and scores 55 on them is going to get a gold star, but wow. Despite having three losses, they just beat the crap out of Oregon and USC, two highly ranked teams. Also, and I don't fully know what to make of this, after spending several years as a spread offense fan and really pulling for teams that ran it, it was really refreshing to watch Stanford line up with two tight ends and two fullbacks and run power on the SC defense. Two years ago, Stanford got lucky against a slumming USC team; this year Stanford just plain beat them. So, I'm ranking them, despite what the computer says (it ranks them #30). I feel like one of the things that gets lost in the computer polls is how teams are playing right now and Stanford is clearly pretty hot, at the moment.
Frankly, getting back to the Big 10 for a minute, my computer seems to have a hard-on for that conference. I'm tempted to tinker with its guts to get it to rank better teams, because, frankly, come on. It's the Big 10. Generally, the one routine in my Bowl picking algorithm that always, always works is "pick against a Big 10 team." I probably need to analyze it more, but I can't figure out why there are four Big 10 teams in my Top 25 (actually, I know why: it's called scoring lots of points against MAC teams). I think this suggests future revisions to the algorithm, but, seriously, I ranked two Big 10 teams b/c I can't figure out who to replace them with b/c there aren't that many good teams left with two or fewer losses (after watching LSU suck it up against LaTech am I going to rank them? No, I'm not). I thought about leaving the last two ballot slots blank.
Top 5
- TCU
- Boise State
- Alabama
- Texas
- Georgia Tech
Other 7
- Florida
- Pittsburgh
- Stanford
- Iowa
- Oregon
- Wisconsin
- Cincinnati
Computer Rankings
- Alabama 10-0 (619.306818181818)
- Texas 10-0 (547.6)
- Florida 10-0 (546.602272727273)
- Cincinnati 10-0 (525.657575757576)
- Texas Christian 10-0 (518.112121212121)
- Boise State 10-0 (455.652272727273)
- Georgia Tech 10-1 (427.503099173554)
- Pittsburgh 9-1 (419.663454545454)
- Ohio State 9-2 (349.030785123967)
- Oregon 8-2 (302.221818181818)
- Iowa 9-2 (301.148243801653)
- Wisconsin 8-2 (289.173333333333)
- Oklahoma State 8-2 (275.525454545455)
- Louisiana State 8-2 (265.861818181818)
- Penn State 9-2 (260.612975206612)
- Houston 8-2 (254.006856749311)
- Clemson 7-3 (242.001666666667)
- Temple 8-2 (241.614545454545)
- Virginia Tech 7-3 (241.456515151515)
- Brigham Young 8-2 (226.455696969697)
- Utah 8-2 (220.874242424242)
- Southern California 7-3 (217.132117768595)
- Nebraska 7-3 (215.426988636364)
- Central Michigan 8-2 (212.493545454545)
- Miami (Florida) 7-3 (204.130075757576)