Ten Piece Nuggets-NCAA Football

The new AP Top 25 Poll is out.  College football is getting deeper into November and the “what if” scenarios are getting a bit more interesting.  Take stroll across the football and as you digest the Ten Piece Nuggets below.

  1.  The top three remained in order LSU, THE Ohio St. U., and Clemson.  They put 58, 56, and 52 points respectively on Ole Miss, Rutgers, and Wake Forest.  No respect at all actually.  They won by 21, 35, and 49 points.
  2. The schedule toughens (finally) for THE.  They host Penn St this week, then travel to Ann Arbor to close out the regular season.  The oddsmakers don’t think the schedule toughens too much though.  THE is favored by a big 18 points over the Nittany Lions.  Clemson is off after their 11-0 start.  They travel across the great state of South Carolina to face South Carolina in two weeks.  They’ll be favored by a similar big number we suspect.  LSU is a huge 43 1/2 point favorite at home hosting awful Arkansas Saturday.  Arkansas was off last week after firing their head coach earlier in the week.
  3. Georgia, now #4, and Alabama, now #5, flipped spots.  This matches their position in the playoff poll.  Georgia played tough D for 60 minutes and held on 21-14 at Auburn.  If you like punting it was the game of the month for you.  There were 18 punts in all with Georgia punting 11 of those.  Georgia punter Jake Camarda averaged 50.7 yds/punt and dropped more than a few inside of the ten.  Can a punter win player of the week honors?  Punters get no respect.
  4. Alabama won a one sided game 38-7 and lost a great QB.  Shortly before halftime Tua Tagovailoa went down hard underneath two Mississippi St. lineman and was in obvious severe pain.  He’ll need hip surgery and his season is over.  His NCAA career is likely over as well.  Questions abound.  Should he have been playing at all?  He looked ok v. LSU after a high ankle sprain procedure, but those things do take time to heal and sing along ” the hip bone is connected to the knee bone and the knee bone is connected to the ankle bone.”  Up 31-7 should he have been pulled already?  Or, don’t injuries happen anywhere and at any time and are just an unfortunate part of the game?
  5. Questions abound for the playoff committee as well.  They consider the “eye test” when voting on rankings.  Does the loss of Tua make the eye wander?  They have publicly said in the past that certain injuries to key players affect their decisions.  This one, with Alabama lurking at #5 as of this moment, is an interesting one.
  6.  Oregon at #6 and Utah at #7 are watching to see what the committee has to say about the loss of Tua.  The two PAC 12 front runners from the North and South Division remain on a one loss only collision course for the conference championship game.  Assuming they do, and for the moment assume Georgia losses to LSU in the SEC Championship, the path is paved for a one loss PAC 12 winner to jump a 2 loss Georgia in the final four.  Too early you say?  Probably it is too early to speculate, but speculate we will.  If Georgia beats LSU does a one loss PAC 12 team get in at all?  Georgia has A&M and the wreck that once was rambling Georgia Tech left.  LSU has aforementioned weak sauce Arkansas and  pesky A&M left.
  7. Oklahoma’s comeback in Waco, down 28-3 and winning 34-31, was quite the game.  The Baylor loss leaves the BIG 12 on the outside looking in for now.  Oklahoma is ranked #8 while Baylor slipped only one spot from #12 to #13.  Each have one loss.  There was no respect for Baylor to begin with for some reason.  The path to the playoffs for a BIG 12 school is filled with too many potholes it seems.
  8. The Minnesota Golden Gophers were looking golden at 9-0 after last week’s home victory over Penn St.  But, a trip to Iowa tested their mettle and tarnished their gold a bit.  Iowa at 6-3 entering the game was a three point favorite somehow.  No respect at all for Minnie.  Those Vegas cats know their business though.  The Hawkeyes prevailed 23-19 in the nation’s farmland.  Why does Iowa grow so much produce and yet their football field is artificial turf?  We digress.
  9.  This week we are doing a piece on the most disappointing teams this year.  Here’s a hint at who one of them might be.  Texas.  They say football is big time in the great state of Texas.  Heck there even is a show called Friday Night Lights.  But, in Austin, the flagship school of the state sits at 6-4.  They’ve beaten no one that is very good and lost to everyone that they’ve been a Vegas underdog to.  Tom Herman, in year two, has underwhelmed.  Texas is unranked and received less top 25 votes than nine other unranked teams.  So that makes the Longhorns #35 sort of.  The Longhorns make the quick trip north on I-35 this week to face a four point home favorite Baylor Bears team.
  10. Appalachian St., Texas A&M, and Virginia Tech jump in at #23, 24, and 25.  As mentioned above A&M closes at home v Georgia and on the road at LSU.  They could really make some late season noise, or they could join Texas as a year long disappointment.  Georgia is a 13 1/2 point favorite to minimize the A&M late season noise opportunity.  A&M is looking for some respect, that I can tell you.

It’s Monday.  Go to work.

Find a boss who is very tall that way you don’t have to bend over very far to kiss his ass. -Rodney Dangerfield.

No respect at all.