Trent's Touchdown - Week 5

Welcome to Week 5, where conference foes face off to determine early season conference dominance. Repeat that in your head with Chris Fowler’s voice and you just might have the opening to College Gameday. Does anyone want to read my poorly constructed preview of my Extra Point on transfers or do you want to get on to my breakdown of the games? That’s what I thought. Here’s the Touchdown:

1) No. 9 Stanford at No. 4 Oregon – 8:00 on ABC

With the sanctions imposed on USC, the Pac 10 is a three team race, and this game will put one of the three in the driver’s seat. Of course, I’m going to try and get through this without making a “Mighty Ducks” reference (yet I fail miserably every time I watch Fringe).

Prior to conference play, Oregon had been beating up on teams pretty handily (we’ll forget about that 1st half against Tennessee). They have a very good defense, led by the running of LaMichael James. Defensively, they have been shutting down everybody and giving their offense plenty of time to rack up points. However, they were sloppy last week against Arizona State. They gave up too many points in the first half and the offense couldn’t get going. Oregon cannot afford defense lapses against Stanford or wasted opportunities on offense.

Stanford, on the other hand, has handled all opponents. Those include the UCLA team that beat Texas and a tough Notre Dame team (both games on the road). The high scoring Cardinal offense is led by Andrew Luck, who has been as good as you can get early on. The unheralded defense of Stanford has been able to handle all offenses they have faced with ease.

Basically, these are two high scoring offenses and two stingy defenses. Oregon has a nasty habit of being a bit lazy in the first half of games, almost wanting to play with a degree of difficulty. In order to win, they need to come out fast and not let up. Oregon, and whatever hideous jersey they break out for this game, will win, but it will be close. Remember, Ducks fly together (darn, so close).

2) No. 7 Florida at No. 1 Alabama – 8:00 on CBS

My thoughts on this game kind of parallel the Red River Shootout, you know, if Texas could have beaten UCLA. Anyway, before I start, I want to say that I like Florida, so Gator fans shouldn’t get too upset.

Five weeks into the season and Florida still lacks an identity. From week to week, you’re never really sure about the Gators. You know that the speed and athleticism of Florida will win games against lesser opponents, even if their QB is a little shaky and they lack that swagger of the Tebow era. They are a good team, but they aren’t last year’s Gators.

Alabama finally faced a challenge last week. I thought this was shocking because I never thought Arkansas was that good. I always thought Mallett could never be consistent enough to lead his team to a victory over a clearly superior team. The problem Arkansas had was they couldn’t contain the offense of Alabama all game long.

That will be the story of most games Alabama is in. The offense can be contained by a very good defense, but really can’t be stopped. They are too good at all aspects of offense to really be shut down. Plus, the defense is stingy enough to even let a lackluster performance by McElroy doom Alabama.

Florida will not be able to use their athleticism to beat Alabama, because the Tide have just as much on their side of the ball, if not more. This year isn’t the Gators year. ROLL TIDE! That never gets old (unless you’re an Auburn fan).

3) No. 22 Penn State at No. 17 Iowa – 8:05 on ESPN

The story of Penn State and Iowa is pretty much the same early in the season. Both teams beat up on lesser opponents before getting smacked down by the only quality opponent they faced. This should be fun.

Let me sum up the Penn State offense in as few words as possible. Those words are “Evan Royster”. PSU is going to lean on him early and often. Against less skilled teams, that just might work. They are going to need Royster too, since Bolden is downright terrifying….if you’re a PSU fan. PSU will also lean on their defense to stop Iowa and try and grind out the game.

Iowa can not only pass the ball effectively, but can run it too. Iowa learned from the Arizona game not to make stupid mistakes early and put yourself in an unwinnable situation, no matter how good you are. They also have one of the best defenses in the Big 10 and can handle one dimensional teams like Penn State. Iowa will focus on shutting down Royster and make Bolden throw the ball to win the game.

If you’re looking for a game with stellar defense and are not a PSU fan, this game is the one for you. Moderately low scoring affair, but Iowa wins by two touchdowns.

4) No. 21 Texas vs. No. 8 Oklahoma - 3:30 on ABC (in Dallas, TX)

The Red River Shootout at number 4?!?! Well, if Texas didn’t douse their drawers against UCLA, this would probably be number 1, but alas, here we are. Of course, the one year I can actually watch this game it doesn’t seem all that exciting.

Anyone who has seen Texas play, or at least seen highlights, knew that it was only a matter of time before they lost a game, and badly. I thought it would be against Texas Tech, and many others thought it would probably be Oklahoma. Not many thought it would be against UCLA.

Little seems to be going right for Texas coming into this game. The loss to UCLA was not a fluke. The Longhorn’s vaunted defense gave up 264 yards rushing. The Bruin’s only attempted 8 passes for 27 yards. Of course, the offense didn’t help with 4 first half turnovers. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong for Texas. Don’t expect these problems to magically disappear this week.

Speaking of problems, Oklahoma has its own problems on defense. They have the worst defense in the Big 12 in yards against. Every game has been close except FSU (who we have established isn’t that good). Seriously, they beat Air Force, Utah State, and Cincinnati by a combined 12 points. That’s not exactly a murderer’s row of teams.

Picking a winner for this game is like trying to figure out which team isn’t going to screw up the most. I personally think the Oklahoma wins it, because Lord knows Texas can’t take advantage of the inept Oklahoma defense.

5) No. 11 Wisconsin at No. 24 Michigan State – 3:30 on ABC

Not to disparage either one of these teams, but this right here is the battle for third place in the Big 10. Neither one of these teams are getting by Iowa or Ohio State (no matter how much I think OSU is overrated).

This game is weird since both teams are pretty evenly matched. Both have good, Big 10 quality QB’s, though I think the edge goes to Tolzien at Wisconsin. I’ll give the edge to Michigan State at RB, as I think their collection is slightly better than Wisconsin. Both have fairly good defensive teams.

If you look at schedule, both faced challenges against underrated, quality teams (Arizona State for Wisconsin and Notre Dame for Michigan State). So, how do you competently choose a winner in this game without flipping a coin?

Michigan State is playing at home, so they have the crowd. Plus, MSU coach Mark Dantonio will be in the coach’s box, taking his first steps to regaining the reins of the team. If that doesn’t fire up a team, I don’t know what will. MSU wins it for their coach, but it’s a close one.


6) Notre Dame at Boston College – 8:00 on ABC

HOLY WAR! If you live in the Boston area, welcome to the prime time game on ABC. Since my internet access at home is not available, I’m left hoping ESPN2 carries the Oregon/Stanford game, or else I’m stuck watching BC try and get out of its way and ND trying to blow the game in the last few minutes. Fun times!


Extra Point:

I was watching the Boise State/Oregon State game last week and glancing at the score-line along the bottom of the screen and noticed the ASU/Oregon score. It then gave me the stats for ASU QB S.Threet. That name sounded so familiar and I just couldn’t place it. I used my iPhone to look it up and realized that he used to be the starting QB for Michigan before he transferred to ASU due to the Rich Rodriguez hiring.

It made me start thinking about all the notable transfers of late, especially among QBs. When did this become common place? I remember when Brock Berlin transferred from Florida to Miami and it was huge. You couldn’t watch a Miami game without someone mentioning it. If you really look at it, I guess it makes sense. There are a number of reasons it happens.

The first is coaching change. Either the new coach has a different system than you play in or the coach who recruited you left and you want to leave too. Both of these happened to Threet, who started at Georgia Tech, then to Michigan, before landing at ASU. Ryan Mallett is another big name that left Michigan after Rodriguez signed on.

The second would be playing time. Robert Marve transferred from Miami to Purdue looking for playing time, which worked out before he got injured. Mitch Mustain left Arkansas after being replaced as starter by the horrible Casey Dick and went to USC. He still rides the pines, watching Matt Barkley throw touchdown passes. I remember when Clemson fans got scared that C.J. Spiller was going to transfer to Florida because he was playing second fiddle to James Davis. Those were bad times.

The third reason would be when you get booted from the team. Cameron Newton was back-up to Tim Tebow before he bought a stolen laptop and was looking for a new place to play, finally ending up at Auburn. Jeremiah Masoli got the boot from Oregon after robbery and drug possession charges were brought against him. He is currently taking snaps for Ole Miss.

So, are all the transfers a good thing or bad thing for college football? With coaching changes, it makes sense. If they system changes on a kid, he should be able to transfer someplace where his skills will be of more use. Playing time is sort of a gray area. Kids should know that they will have to compete for their position. The entitlement these kids feel sometimes doesn’t jive with the real world. As for getting booted off the team, this country has a long history of embracing rehabilitation of our athletes.

For the most part, transfers are a good thing for the sport as long as it doesn’t get taken too far. I don’t want Bob Stoops to be able to call up some freshman QB at Florida and ask him if he wants to play for Oklahoma. On the other hand, I don’t want a player like Robert Marve handcuffed like he was by Miami when he decided that Miami wasn’t right for him. I guess the point is that it’s good for these kids to have an out, but they should think long and hard before actually committing somewhere.