With Rutgers’ loss to West Virginia, the Louisville Cardinals will head to their first BCS bowl in school history by virtue of a tiebreaker (the Cardinals beat West Virginia and Rutgers lost to West Virginia a few minutes ago in a classic thriller in Morgantown).
In addition to the Cardinals, the Oklahoma Sooners will punch their tickets to the BCS by winning the Big 12 championship over Nebraska this evening.
So start the debating of who will face the Ohio State Buckeyes in Glendale.
I once had an interest in going to West Virginia University when I was a junior in high school, one could imagine how my life would have been.
The game between Rutgers and West Virginia has gone into the third overtime, with the score knotted at 33.
UPDATE 10:21 pm.-Brandon Myles just scored a touchdown on a pass from Jarrett Brown to give the Mountaineers a 39-33 lead.
10:23 p.m.-Play was under review and touchdown still stand. They just added a two-point conversion to make it 41-33 West Virginia
Florida delivered the program’s first SEC championship since the end of the Steve Spurrier era by defeating the Arkansas Razorbacks 38 to 28 in Atlanta.
With that being said, it’s no telling how the BCS will play out tomorrow.
The Bruins for the first time in Karl Dorrell’s tenure at UCLA dashed Southern Cal’s hopes for a national championship by beating the Trojans 13-9 in Pasadena.
With the loss, the Trojans will more than likely play in the Rose Bowl and face LSU possibly on New Year’s Day.
I feel bad for those pollsters.
Every time I listen to Mike Valenti’s historic rant when Michigan State gagged in their matchup against Notre Dame in September, denying us of a Notre Dame-free society in the world of college football, I can’t help but ask myself what would have happened if Michigan State had won that game against the Fighting Irish.
We wouldn’t be talking about Brady Quinn for Heisman for one thing.
Heck, he shouldn’t been mentioned after what he did when the Irish faced the Wolverines in South Bend and got spanked by almost three touchdowns, which should have eliminated any talk of him being mentioned for the Heisman because he didn’t win any big games.
Emphasis on the last three words of the previous paragraph.
Quinn went 24 fo 48 in that game against Michigan, running up 234 passing yards with 3 touchdown passes and three picks.
In tonight’s game, the senior quarterback threw for three touchdowns and no picks, while running up 268 yards in the air.
So if you add the two games that are the marquee matchups for the Irish, you would get 502 yards, an average of a 251 yards, which is respectable by all means.
But the important thing that the Heisman voters will look at is this, did Brady Quinn win those two games?
No.
What people outside of East Lansing don’t know is that Quinn had to bring the Irish back from a 37-21 deficit (which is possible when you’re playing Michigan State) and win 40-37.
So you really can’t say the Irish won that game, because as we all know, Michigan State handed it to them like a scared tourist handing over a million dollars to a robber in Downtown Memphis because of the coaching staff’s inabilty to coach with a lead.
The only big game that I would look at if I was a Heisman voter would be the game against Penn State, when he lit up the Nittany Lions for 287 yards in a 41-14 rout in Happy Valley.
1-2 against Penn State, Michigan, and USC.
Which says it all for Quinn.
Not Heisman worthy.
When you get pasted by 26 against Michigan at home and 20 against Southern Cal on the road, don’t expect to be standing on the podium in New York City when the Heisman is given out.
The reason why Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, Desmond Howard, Ricky Williams, and others have won the Heisman in the previous 15 years, is because they performed well in big games while their teams won those big games they performed well in.
Quinn has not done that in a big game this year except once when the Irish went on the road and pasted Penn State in the beginning of the season.
Don’t get me wrong, he performed well against Michigan and Southern Cal and didn’t even throw a pick against the Trojans in tonight’s game.
But did the Irish win those games against the Wolverines and the Trojans?
No.
Enough said, then.
I was supposed to do an afternoon flashback on this year, but since the University of Miami screwed up my ideas for a late afternoon post by firing coach Larry Coker, I figured that writing about Thug U (which is what most people call the University of Miami) football would be way more important than writing about my year.
And garner some debate over the firing of Coker by comments left by many of my readers.
Seriously, I don’t think a guy who coaches a team to a national championship, which would guarantee you a lifetime contract with the university that you coach at, should receive a pink slip.
If that was the case, then Lloyd Carr, Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, Steve Spurrier (when he was at Florida), Philip Fulmer, and Bob Stoops would all be gone from their respective universities for the seasons following their national championship seasons.
But for Miami, it’s a different story.
The 2001 national championship team, true enough, was stocked with players that were recruited by current North Carolina coach Butch Davis and included such players as quarterback Ken Dorsey and linebacker Jonathan Vilma.
But still, even though the Hurricanes were consistently in bowl games and contending for the Big East championship (and much later on the ACC) after 2001, the talking heads in the media and even some Hurricane fans were calling for Coker’s head, especially after the brand of supposed thuggery the Hurricanes showed when they played LSU in the Peach Bowl at the beginning of this year, when they went on the road and played Louisville and stomped on their logo in midfield, and of course, the brawl against Florida International, which showed the entire country the supposed thuggery of the Miami football program.
Or so they thought.
From what I’ve heard over the years about the program, the University of Miami has had a pretty clean program over the last ten years, a long way from the renegade days of Dennis Erickson and Jimmy Johnson and the days when Miami once came to the Fiesta Bowl in fatigues to play Penn State when Michael Irvin and Vinny Testervarde was there at Miami.
One of the things that I have looked at through the last few years that I have written aout college football through my blogs was that Miami has had few arrests that made the news, the same that couldn’t be said at schools like Ohio State, Tennessee, Michigan State, or any other big time school.
As I recall, Alabama had a bunch of stupid boosters that couldn’t keep their passions for Crimson Tide football in their multi-million luxury boxes a few years back by buying recruits for the Tide.
Even a new coach was run out of Tuscaloosa before his first practice by going to a strip club in Pensacola and the school had to scramble to find a new replacement for him.
Notre Dame had a highly publicized incident in which a new coach lied about his background on playing football at the University of New Hampshire, causing the coach to resign and hire the school’s first African-American coach, which they got rid of because of subpar performances on the field, yet the fact that Notre Dame had always kept their football coaches for at least five years until they could make a decision on them.
Problem was, the coach was the wrong color.
At Florida, the adminstration and fan base ran a coach out of Gainesville, yet the Gators were always contending for the SEC East title and went to a bowl game.
The problem was that the coach was not Steve Spurrier.
At Florida State, there was a highly publicized incident in which two star wide receivers were caught buying stolen merchandise from a mall in Tallahassee for 50 dollars, one of whom got kicked off the team and is currently playing in the NFL while the other one is still looking for a job in the league given the fact the guy was reinstated a few weeks after that incident.
The list goes on and on about the trangressions of big-time college football programs like Ohio State (see Maurice Clarett for proof), Michigan State (fighting with the Illini after they put the school flag in the middle of the field, arrests, substance abuse), Ole Miss (recruiting violations), Colorado (rapes, sexual harassment), and others.
The main problem with Coker’s tenure at Miami was this, too many people in South Florida expected him to win national championships year in and year out and the fact that the team had a 3-loss season last year, it shouldn’t give the Hurricanes a sedgeway to fire the guy who had given the university 12 years of service in their football program.
The problem did not lie in the supposed thuggery of the players (one of whom happens to be from Memphis and I actually attended school with him) nor the renegade atomsphere that was perceived by the media.
Just the fact that Coker couldn’t sustain the success of the 2001 national championship team and they couldn’t build on what Butch Davis created when he arrived there to replace Dennis Erickson.
Before I begin, I should let you know that I hate shopping.
No surprise, because I’m a guy.
But for millions and millions of people around the country, today is the first day of Christmas shopping, meaning that there will be long lines and short tempers.
Which equals catfights and mayhem when the doors open.
Fortunately, for most of us (including myself), we have an antidote to the chaotic scene at shopping malls across the country.
College football.
And a way to put those Thanksgiving leftovers to use as we watch the bitter rivalry of Texas and Texas A&M and see if the Longhorns can wrap up the Big 12 South.
The “Battle For the Boot” between Arkansas and LSU, which was always my favorite Thanksgiving rivalry game because of the atomsphere you would get at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge (I’m sure Kate’s at that one) and the game that got me serious about SEC football, which was back in 1997 when the two faced each other in Little Rock on the day after Thanksgiving.
Even the Mid-American Conference got some interesting alternatives to Christmas shopping.
Miami of Ohio versus Ohio University, the “Battle for the Bricks”, which is a game that I am watching right now as I write this.
Northern Illinois with Garrett Wolf (should get an invite to New York City) against Eastern Michigan in Ypslianti, with a possible bowl invite on the line for the Huskies.
And later on, Western Michigan (my friend Jennifer’s school) against Akron in Akron, which should be an interesting matchup in its own right.
Of course, if you don’t watch those games that I mentioned, you can always do the next best thing.
Shop and wait in long lines.
Hawaii 61 Louisiana Tech 17
#7 USC 35 Oregon 10
San Diego State 21 UNLV 7
Arizona State 41 Washington State 17
Kansas State 45 #4 Texas 42
Central Florida 26 Memphis (sorry, Miss Candy) 24
#18 Wake Forest 38 Florida State 0
#12 LSU 28 Alabama 14
Louisiana-Monroe 35 Florida International 0
#11 Arkansas 31 #13 Tennessee 13
#22 Boston College 28 Duke 7
#17 Oklahoma 34 Texas Tech 24
UCLA 25 Oregon State 7
#14 Boise State 23 San Jose State 20
TCU 27 New Mexico 21
Middle Tennessee 38 Arkansas State 10
North Texas 16 Louisiana-Lafyette 7
Fresno State 23 New Mexico State 18
I’m 3-8 today, meaning that I will not rely on a magic 8 ball to pick my games for me again.
But to update the scores that are now final, here’s the list of games that ended about 45 minutes ago:
#1 Ohio State 54 Northwestern 10
#2 Michigan 34 Indiana 3
Nebraska 28 #24 Texas A&M 27
#23 Maryland 14 Miami (Fla.)13
#9 Notre Dame 39 Air Force 17
#20 Va. Tech 23 Kent State 0
Kentucky 38 Vanderbilt (sorry, Kasi) 26
Utah 35 Colorado State 22
Southern Miss 31 Tulane 3
Rice 41 Tulsa 38
Houston 37 SMU 27
Colorado 33 Iowa State 16
Stanford 20 Washington 3
Arizona 24 #8 California 20
Penn State 47 Temple 0
Connecticut 46 Pittsburgh 45
#6 Florida 17 South Carolina 16
Troy State 24 Florida Atlantic 17
Nevada 42 Utah State 0
With a week to go until the big game between Michigan and Ohio State, this Sautrday is not short of any drama as the regular season draws to a close.
Anyway, here’s the final scores with the early games:
#19 Georgia Tech 7 North Carolina 0
#10 West Virginia 42 Cincinnati 24
#16 Wisconsin 24 Iowa 21
Georgia 37 #10 Auburn 15
Purdue 42 Illinois 31
Minnesota 31 Michigan State 18
Clemson 20 North Carolina State 14
South Florida 27 Syracuse 10
Oklahoma State 66 Baylor 24
Navy 49 Eastern Michigan 21
East Carolina 33 Marshall 20
