Gainesville -- With a decent night's sleep to think on yesterday's games (including a late night watching Georgia-Arkansas and Texas-Texas Tech), here's what stuck with me:
*No offense to Washington fans -- for whom yesterday was the best win since the year current freshmen were born -- but the story is "USC lost."
*Jim Tressel takes a lot of grief for not being able to win the "big" games, but at least he beats the teams he is supposed to. Pete Carroll loses to teams he has no business losing to. Which is worse?
*Monte Kiffin is the smartest Xs and Os strategist in college football -- it's like he is taking a sabbatical from the NFL to show college coaches how it's done. He neutered Florida's offense.
*Lane Kiffin will get a ton of mileage out of his supreme expectations management -- that the Vols "only" lost by 10 at The Swamp. Never seen a home crowd in a rivalry win so subdued.
*Meanwhile, Florida is still unbeaten, but if that wasn't their wake-up call -- their "Ole Miss moment"-- to re-focus and stop listening to the hype, I'm not sure what will be.
*Heisman front-runner Tim Tebow didn't have a great game -- neither did co-front-runner Colt McCoy. Does the Heisman race get blown wide open after this? How about Cal's Jahvid Best?
*And that will be that for all the talk about BYU crashing the BCS national-title game. (Same with Utah.) Boise State (and TCU) are left, but Boise's schedule is a joke -- BCS-unworthy.
*I'm working on my BlogPoll, and I will tell you that neither Florida nor Texas will be No. 1. (It will be Alabama.) Several new teams will debut: Washington, Auburn, Iowa.
*Looking ahead to next week, the best games: Miami at VA Tech, Arkansas at Alabama, Iowa at Penn St (revenge!), Fresno St at Cincinnati.
Among non-CFB storylines: How about the Twins, beating the Tigers again and closing within 2 games of the AL Central lead?
BlogPoll ballot coming later this a.m.
-- D.S.
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1 comment:
Can't be too down on USC, Dan; this is Pete Carroll's playbook. The guy can recruit, but every time they come off a big win and go into a Pac-10 bottom feeding team that is on the rise, they are completely unprepared for them. Last year is was Oregon State, the year before it was Stanford, this year it's Washington. It's the same team every year, just a different school name.
Like last year and the year before, USC should be in national title game contention should they run the table after a disappointing loss. The odds of them doing that with a suddenly bad QB situation and Cal on the rise, though...
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