The College Football Thread
 

Well, before this year, I really had only a passing interest in college football, but now that I'm in college, and Michigan has a really good team, I've taken quite the interest. Plus, with an NFL thread going, I figured we could use an NCAA one, too. So, what does everybody have to say about this year's college football season?

I know I'm pumped for next week's Michigan-Notre Dame game. Michigan's coming off of two games where the opponent scored in single digits (45-7 vs Central MI, 50-3 vs Houston), but Notre Dame made a great comeback Saturday against Washington State. Can Michigan's defense hold back ND's big plays? Can Navarre actually make Michigan's passing game work where it really counts? We shall see. My prediction: Michigan 28,
Notre Dame 21.

Go Michigan!
 

Go ahead and beat them!...that way when they come to Purdue on the 27th we can beat em too ;)

Well, naturally I have to root for Stanford, my favorite since I was like 5, but I dont think theyll win the PAC-10. Maybe in a few years. They have great talent, and an excellent defense that will only get better with time. Trent Edwards, their QB is the real deal. The very inexperienced offensive line held its own last night against San Jose State, but thats not saying much.

I think USC or UCLA will win the PAC-10. I really dont pay any attention to the other conferences, so I cant say much there.

Cory

Oh man, I'm so happy that football season is finally here! I think UCLA is totally unpredictable this year, whether that's good or bad, but I still have much faith in them. Though we're not ranked like usual, we did have a pretty close game with no. 23 Colorado despite the fact that we have a brand new coach and our inexperienced QB got hurt in the first quarter only to be replaced by another inexperienced QB. We're young so we have a lot of fresh new talent, it may just take a few games to get into the rhythm and have it all work together. If this happens sooner than later, we'll have a good run in the PAC-10 and all us Bruins really want even more than the PAC-10 title is a victory over USC...especially to redeem ourselves over the horrible loss last year.

And here's me keeping my fingers crossed that Matt Moore, the QB that got hurt, has a quick and full recovery. I graduated from high school with him :)

Go Penn State!!!!!!!




.... the Big 10 will once again put on good shows for all to enjoy :)

I was just at the Florida State vs Maryland game.

Right... especially when Michigan beats Ohio State and goes on to the championship game, undefeated *knock on wood* :p

GATORS -VS- CANES BabY!

whoo! Go Clemson! ^_^

Yea, I'll prolly be the only one thats said this on this thread, but Clemson Tigers are my favorite team (I live 20 minutes away from the campus) and I'm looking forward to this years season. Even though they did not do to well their first game, I was able to go to the Furman game and they did excellent. I was wondering though, what does everyone think about Miami and VT moving over next year? I think its going to be interesting, plus I wouldn't mind seeing a tournament...

::puts his orange Clemson hat on::

~Jay

wooo!!!!
go USF!!!

Re: Go Michigan!
 

I agree. BOILER UP!

(I still wonder how we lost to Bowling Green though)

Go Big 10! Wisconsin and Michigan, home of 2 Cudahy, WI (my former home city) natives, starting QB John Navarre and RB Pierre Rembert.

All i can say is BOILER UP!

Cant wait for that Purdue-Notre Dame game is gonna be awesome....season ticket holders only too....

oh wait, i found some tickets on ebay...lol

Purdue vs Notre Dame Tickets

I know tickets for the Michigan-Notre Dame game are going for big bucks, too. A lousy seat in the student section is going for $75... I can't imagine how much people will be selling the good seats for.

Well, if we're all talking about the Big-10, then go Golden Gophers! :) Both my parents went there, most of my aunts and uncles, and I have to stay loyal to my home state of Minnesota.

Wow, Michigan brutalized Notre Dame. 38-0. could be even more if they stayed with the 1st string.

!
 

It was an absolute rout. The Michigan defense was like an immovable wall, and there was no stopping Chris Perry. At one point, the crowd even started chanting "Houston's better! Houston's better!", which I suppose is better than "F*** the Irish!" Interesting fact: it was the first Michigan shutout against Notre Dame since 1902. All in all, a good sign for the rest of Michigan's season.

I was in the student union eating dinner (here at purdue) w/ DJ and Anthony (friends from Kokomo), and it was great because everyone was cheering that Notre Dame got killed. Hopefully this gets them down enough so we can beat them on the 22nd :D

A quote from a former 201 teammate and current fellow band member:

When Michigan sends out a quarterback with the number 20 on his back to take a snap against Notre Dame, something is seriously amiss. Number 20, Mike Kaselitz, is a fifth-year senior and a fourth-string quarterback. He had taken one snap in his Wolverine career, and that came three years ago. A scout teamer took the last snap against the Golden Domers.

Kinda funny, wouldn't you say?

After review... it comes from a column on ESPN.com, still funny, though.

Yeah yeah, Michigan might have their impressive 38 pt margin win over the fighting Irish but beware of UCLA! Even though we lost our first game against Colorado...boy did we come back this week. We beat the Illinois Illini (Illini....seriously, how funny is that mascot) 6-3. Ohhh yes, that's the score of our FOOTBALL GAME. Watch out for us, we can't even hit double digits with the combined score.

Well...um, on the bright side our defense did well I guess (especially considering they were out there on the field the whole game since we couldn't make a first down) and our kicker got a workout. Oh well...here's to hoping we do better next week against #1 ranked Oklahoma at Oklahoma. Eek...

BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Rember - I grew up with this - THERE IS NO TOUGHER FOOTBALL THAN MICHIGAN FOOTBALL!!

GO Maze n' Blue!! :D

No one can hold a candle or anything to Michigan! Go Michigan!!

Only one game matters.

Go Navy, beat Army!

Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~
Guess where my dad went to school.

All I can or need to say:

VIRGINIA TECH BABY

Thursday night games are the best....Texas A&M doesn't have a chance.

I was there working a stand for our team. It was chaotic (not to mention HUGE!) The stands were PACKED. There would be no room to even live there (biggest stadium-fill since 1902 I think it was).

Honestly, I think Michigan is the best team in the nation right now.....if they beat OSU they'll prove that for sure

Well, coming from the mouth of the great D.J. Fluck, it must be true :p Honestly, though, I don't think Michigan's getting anywhere near the credit they deserve. The rest of the country's still too distracted by OSU and a few others, but they'll see we're the best in due time.

My bad...:rolleyes:

59-7
 

The 59-7 blowout against Arizona was great today!! Overall it was a pretty fun game to watch with a lot of interceptions turned into touch downs, as well as a few long passes that always get the crowd going. The whole game was like this


Now hopefully, Notre Dame can continue their "nice streak", so when they come to Purdue I can have a good birthday present... :D

Looks like the gold home jerseys are gone (good!). I like the black ones better.

Trying something here...
 

Right now Oklahoma is the best team in the nation.

So how 'bout those Boilermakers keeping the Irish losing streak alive!!

Great Game!
 

The Purdue game was great!! Great weather! Great crowd! (little crowded though), Great game!! woohoo!!

all i can say is...GO EAGLES!!!!

As long as Louisville Wins, I have no physics test...
That is all I care about college football for :p

Purdue smashed Illinois this weekend. 43-10 w00t

The Illinois Illini! I will never be able to forget their mascot...or our amazing 6-3 win over them. Ok, it may not be as impressive as Purdue's margin of victory over them but hey, UCLA just beat #18 Washington 46-16...I'm a happy girl.

all i know is i cant wait for the oklahoma texas game this weekend!!!!!!!
hook em horns!!!!!!!!!!!

Not likely, my Wolverine rival. For as you see, OSU is currently on a 19 game undefeated streak. After we crush all of our next opponents, only you will be left. And we shall anhiliate you as if you are a pebble challenging a mountain. Then we'll riot (again), but again it will be a riot of joy, as man comes together with his fellow man to light a couch on fire and throw it out a dorm window. Then, we'll probably grab a beer and some nachos, take a nap, and do our laundry. And so it is said, so shall it be done.
Hoo-ah!

Uhh...Wouldn't it be much easier to do all that if you were in college first? Just wondering....

Oh....Purdue will continue their little streak and get miracle wins against both of your teams! :P

To the first: Yeah, and considering I actually go to Michigan... :p

To the second: Yeah, right :p

Oh, and tonight is Michigan@ Minnesota, a rare Friday-night Big Ten game. I'm excited...

From today's Detroit Free Press:

Michigan wins 38-35, after a 31-7 4th quarter comeback!! Hmm... haven't we seen one of these already, this week...

I for one, am quite relieved. I turned on the TV, and Michigan was losing 28-7 at the end of the 3rd. I was disgusted and disappointed, to say the least. I don't even know why I kept watching, but I did, and was quite rewarded by an amazing 4th quarter. For once, a Michigan comeback drive worked! Well, with this, there's still a Rose Bowl hanging in the balance...

Maybe Stanford will see you in the rosebowl :-D

Cory

Right....though, if Stanford beats U$C tonight, I'll give them a lot of credit and much much praise.

UCLA: 2-0 in the Pac-10 :)

Re: The College Football Thread
 

Well, with the bowl season coming up, I decided to revive this discussion. So, what do you think of the BCS bowl pairings (and other pairings, too)?

Personally, I think it's pretty messed up. As glad as I am to see a traditional Big Ten-Pac 10 matchup in the Rose Bowl, USC really got the shaft from the BCS. To be ranked #1 in both polls and not make the championship game shows that the BCS has failed. I think the only fair way to go, while keeping the bowl system, is to have a one or two round playoff after the bowl season, taking the top two or four bowl winners, to play for an actual championship. That way, bowls like the Rose Bowl can keep their traditional matchups, but there's no risk of a split championship, or any other funky results like this year's.

That being said, however... I'm VERY excited for the Rose Bowl. Yesterday's results should only make it more interesting. I can't wait to go to Pasadena and beat the Trojans :D I've been given a mission by a certain UCLA student (*cough* Kristina *cough*), so I can't let her down :p

Re: The College Football Thread
 

I agree that a play-off is the best solution for Division I-A football. They could easily have eight teams make the play-offs: one team from each BCS conference and two "at large" bids from non-BCS conferences.

I disagree, however, that this year's BCS was a failure. USC may have been ranked number one, but they played some *REALLY* bad teams. LSU and Oklahoma had tougher schedules, but ended up with the same record. The BCS and its formulas were put there to take into account things like strength of scedule and to make sure teams with piece-of-cake schedules didn't get unfair advantages.

Mission accomplished.

Re: The College Football Thread
 

I think you mistook USC for LSU. The worst team that USC played was Arizona. LSU also played Arizona, and at least 3 teams worse then Arizona.

LSU had the #1 scoring defense in the country, averaging 10.8 pts per game. Great defense, right? Then how come USC shut out Arizona and Auburn, while LSU gave up 13 and 7 points to those teams, respectively?

:p

Re: The College Football Thread
 

LSU had the 29th toughest schedule and OU had the 11th toughest schedule. USC had the 37th toughest.

Also, look at the losses for each team. LSU lost to Florida (ranked 15th) and OU lost to Kansas State (ranked 10th). USC lost to Cal (unranked and finished with a 7-6 record).

I have complete confidence that the two best teams will be playing.

Re: The College Football Thread
 

I think the BCS system is doing exactly what it was made to do. It picked the two best teams in college football. First of all the human polls have to be taken with a grain of salt, all of the people voting have at least some bias. Personally, I wanted to see USC beat up on OU, but I'll have to settle for an LSU-OU matchup. And who isn't gonna love Michingan and USC in the rosebowl, two of my favorite teams in college football (Canes still rule all ;) ).

A playoff system is not the answer. These guys are in college and adding games to their season is just making it more brutal and risking a lot more injury (not that they go to classes anyways--joking). I don't know if any of you have played college or high school football, but near the end of the season, well you just want it to kind of end allready.

Whether you like it or not the BCS is here to stay.


But i do think they should have used their "administrative powers" and sent Florida State to the Fiesta Bowl, and brought OSU to Miami for a rematch of last year's nat'l championship, ohh what a sweet revenge that would have been.

Re: The College Football Thread
 

I really hope you dont truly feel that way. Apparently you must be around colleges that are jokes. I can name many many colleges that do not give special breaks to their student athletes. Stanford, Cal, and UCLA are just a few of the many that come to mind. Im sure its not just some west coast thing either.

Perhaps you should tell all the student athletes at Stanford that they need to stop going to class. Did I mention that Stanford has the best Division I-A athletics program? (No, that is not my opinion, it is a fact) *ALL* Stanford athlete applicants must meet the same minimum requirements as any other regular applicants. They cant just cut all their classes and expect to continue playing sports. Yes, Stanford's football program is not one of the top in the country (right now:D) but Im sure that everyone would agree that they are becoming much better people than if they just let in anyone who could catch a ball, even if they couldnt spell their own name...

Please dont make generalizations like that...

Cory

Re: The College Football Thread
 

While I agree that it isn't right to make generalizations, I will admit that the majority of colleges do treat their student athletes differently. Going to a Division I-A school which most people don't consider a "joke" I can attest to this.

Admissions wise, it's a whole different ball game. They're just approximations but the average unweighted GPA of undergrads here is around a 3.8, for athletes it's a 2.7. Many times the only requirement that the athletes have trouble with is meeting the 860 minimum SAT requirement. I personally know 2 football players here that had to take the SAT's 3 times a piece to get that.

During their stay here, athlete's have to maintain a 2.0 to stay on the team. I will concede that they work very very hard for their programs with hours on end traveling and practicing. However, they get a lot of privlidges such as their own private tutoring and access to all class notes and practice exams. Many athletes also are given advice on which classes to take and with the curriculum at UCLA, there are few easy classes but when there are, they are inudated with athletes. This isn't a generalization; it's a fact when you see +90% of a class come out with the blue athletic backpacks. With all this help and easy schedules, a great deal of athletes don't go to class.

So I know this is a tangent from the "College Football Thread" but I just had to make that correction. I'm friends with many athletes and most of them are really nice and there are even some here that are really smart. I'm just saying that most of them are at UCLA for a different reason and it's obvious.

Re: The College Football Thread
 

I hate the BCS and I am glad to see how screwed up it is by not letting the #1 team in the Nation play in the national championship game. This year's scenario makes the BCS the laughing stock of the NCAA's.

On one hand, I think that there should be a single level playoff. On the other hand, there should also be much less importance in sports... so what does it really matter? College and pro sports have both gotten so out of hand these days, that I am ashamed to be a fan. In a way, I don't really care who ends up the national champ, due to the level of ridiculousness in sports.

With that said, I love football, the sport. It is really a difficult game to play well. The strategy and specifics to play the game well requires some brains. I played it for many (too many) years, from pee-wee to college (Division II and III) and even semi-pro. I think that I put in 14 years of playing a sport that I can't ever play again. Now that I look back on it, that was pretty silly. But, it was fun.

As for college football players, even at the level of division II and III, players get special treatment. They do get special tutors and better treatment in many instances. While Stanford Univ. is a great example of how a school should treat their athletes, I am guessing that they are not in the majority in what they require from their students. In a perfect world, all students would be treated the same. However, since atletics is important to alumni support, marketing (recruiting), and revenue generation, then it will remain important. While we may not like it, this will continue to happen.

OK.. too much rambling.

Andy B.

Re: The College Football Thread
 

Of course, SOS is an arbitrary formula. Of the computer rankings that publish SOS, LSU is ahead in 2, USC ahead in 2. LSU's opponents were 3 games ahead of USC's opponents (1.10 percent in the winning percentage), and their opponent's opponents were 10 games ahead (0.15 percent ahead). Not a significant difference, and so that point is certainly debateable

OK, I will look at the losses. Oklahoma lost by 28, LSU lost by 12, USC lost by 3 in triple OT. USC is one play away from being undefeated. Can't say that about the other two.

I don't. I think each team has a very good argument at being #2, and no team has a good argument for being #1.


BTW, every time I bring up the shutout statistic, everyone ignores it.

Re: The College Football Thread
 

Take a look at the SOS column. That is the SOS formula that counts the most. A stronger schedule could have made up the 16 hundredths of a point between USC and LSU.

Margin of victory was removed from the BCS formulas. To my knowlege, there has never been a "margin of loss" in there either. Therefore, a loss is a loss (+1 point in the BCS) no matter by how much.I try to adoid mentioning specifics too much in BCS discussions. In my opinion, a good system must remain objective and use general statistics, two things that the BCS does well.

Getting too specific leads to circular logic. For example, team A beats team B, team B beats team C, and team C beats A. Who's best?

I suppose this is the point in the discussion where one of us says, "We'll just have to agree to disagree."

Re: The College Football Thread
 

A Prime example of this. Stanford lost to Washington. UCLA stomped Washington. Stanford beat UCLA. As Kristina will gladly tell you, the laws of syllogism just dont work with football :)

Cory

Re: The College Football Thread
 

Wow I can't believe I agree with that loud "It's awsome babay" moron, Dick Vitale. He actually said something smart for once. Maybe the winner of the Rose Bowl should play the winner of the Sugar Bowl for the true national championship. That would be a nice combo of the BCS and somewhat of a playoff series.

Re: The College Football Thread
 

With about 10 minutes until the Rose Bowl, here are my predictions for the 4 BCS games


Florida St over Miami. Florida St is playing better then Miami, plus its hard to beat a good team twice in a season.

USC over Michigan. This game could be an offensive shootout, but more likely each team will score 20-30 points. The teams have lost a total of 3 games by a total of 10 points. It will be close, and in close games (on grass) I like USC's punting and field goal kicking.

Ohio State over Kansas St. Ohio State's rushing defense isn't as good as people thought, but still very good. Kansas State is good, but not great. Another close game.

Oklahoma over LSU. Oklahoma was embarassed in their last game. Not so this time. Its debatable whether LSU or USC is better then each other, but Oklahoma is still a step ahead.