Trent's Touchdown: Six Week 6 College Football Games to Watch

It’s Week 6 of the college football season. Another week, another round of conference realignment talk. Also, another round of suspensions at Ohio State, but we can talk more about that later. Now, on to the touchdown:


1) No. 3 Oklahoma vs. No. 12 Texas – 12:00 PM on ABC (at Dallas, TX)

Can we have a moment of silence for Garrett Gilbert’s career at the University of Texas? I guess it’s pretty sad when your high point is a four interception performance in the National Championship Game. May he have better luck at SMU or wherever he ends up.

Enough about that, it’s the Red River Shootout! Oklahoma is the overwhelming favorite, but the game will be tougher than it looks. While the rotating quarterback situation is normally a distraction, the two headed monster of Case McCoy and David Ash seem to work well for Texas.

The team has really started to click since the benching of Gilbert during the BYU game. You can expect Texas to attack the Oklahoma defense with a balanced run and pass attack. Defensively, the Longhorns are going to have to slow down the pass attack of Oklahoma and try and create turnovers.

The turnovers should be an issue. While everyone wants to slobber over Landry Jones’ ability to throw, people seem to turn a blind eye to his 2 to 1 touchdown to interception ratio. My suggestion would be to go off-script and use Dominique Whaley to soften up the Texas defense, than use Jones to pick apart a defense looking run first.

While I think that Texas is overrated at this point, I think they can pull this off. The simple fact of the matter is that Texas has really seemed to have rallied around McCoy and Ash. Texas is also on a whirlwind tour of beating up on teams they lost to last year. Plus, if college football has taught me anything, it is to never bet against a McCoy.


2) No. 15 Auburn at No. 10 Arkansas – 7:00 PM on ESPN

The fight for third place in the SEC West heats up! Normally, I wouldn’t put a third place game this high up, but when four teams in one division are in the top 15, you make special exceptions.

While I’m sure all the Auburn fans are celebrating after their team beat South Carolina last week, they shouldn’t break their arms patting the Auburn defense on the back. The Gamecock offense is centered solely on the running of Marcus Lattimore. The Arkansas offense is centered on the arm of Tyler Wilson.

Auburn has a horrible pass defense. Last game they were effective at stopping the pass, but that was against Stephen Garcia, who finally got benched for Connor Shaw. Look at the numbers that Tajh Boyd put up in the loss to Clemson. Tyler Wilson is expected to put up comparable numbers to Boyd.

You have to give Arkansas a lot of credit. They got beat up by Alabama two weeks ago and go down 35-17 at halftime to Texas A&M before storming back to beat the Aggies by 4. While the Arkansas defense has been serviceable, the offense is what really drives the team.

In order for Auburn to win, they are going to need to score early and often and never let up. They are going to need their defense to come up big and make key stops. That is do-able, if this was last year’s Auburn team. It’s not happening this year. Arkansas is going to try to light up Auburn and will, for the most part, succeed.


3) No. 17 Florida at No. 1 LSU – 3:30 PM on CBS

Les Miles recently said that he wants to get Jordan Jefferson more involved in the LSU offense. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. While Jarrett Lee is not exactly Heisman material, he is an effective game manager for this LSU team. By game manager, I mean that he won’t win you any games and he’ll make mistakes, but not enough to have you lose to inferior teams.

This game was a heck of a lot more interesting before John Brantley went down with a leg injury during Florida’s big loss to Alabama last week. Now, the Florida offense is being lead by a freshman quarterback who trouble getting the snap last week. Basically, the Florida offense is going to be about running early and often.

I don’t completely discount the Gator’s ability to move the ball. Charlie Weis has shown the ability to dumb down his offense for a quarterback who is being called on to replace an injured starter (Tom Brady in 2001). However, Weis wasn’t game planning against the LSU defense.

LSU has one of the best defenses in the country. Their specialty is stopping the run. LSU is going to ride this defense for as long as they can. They will win or lose games based on just how well the defense does. The Tigers defense will try and shut down the Gators and give Jarrett Lee (or Jordan Jefferson) good field position when leading the offense.

Add in the fact that this game is being played at LSU and things do not shape up nicely for the Gators. While I don’t think LSU will do all that much offensively, their defense will handle Florida and win the game for the Tigers.


4) Missouri at No. 20 Kansas State – 3:30 PM on ABC

It kind of says something about your team if you’re ranked and playing an unranked opponent at home and the unranked opponent is actually favored to win. Seriously though, the only reason Kansas State is ranked is because they had to be ranked, after beating an overvalued Baylor team.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how Missouri was one of the best two loss teams in the country. Offensively, they have a very potent running attack no matter who is carrying the ball. Not to take anything away from Henry Josey, but if it wasn’t for injuries he wouldn’t be getting the carries he’s getting. James Franklin is one of the more underrated dual-threat quarterbacks in the country, who can light it up on the ground and through the air.

Kansas State is going to try and lean on its defense, like it did against Baylor and Miami. They gave up a lot of yards to those two teams before making big stops late. The Wildcats are going to need luck on their side to stop Missouri.

Kansas State cannot afford to try and match Missouri offensively. I like Collin Klein as much as the next guy, but his passing numbers are nowhere near as good as they have to be. His main skill is running with the ball but he’ll need to throw to win this game.

Missouri has a lot of things going for them at this point. A win against Kansas State will keep them going in the right direction. I think the Tigers get by Kansas State by at least a touchdown.


5) No. 12 Michigan at Northwestern – 7:00 PM on Big Ten Network

I’m still not sure how Michigan is ranked so high. The only challenge they had was Notre Dame and if it wasn’t for poor defense and Tommy Rees, Michigan would have lost that game. Outside of Kansas State, is Michigan the most underwhelming top 25 team?

I never understood the allure of Denard Robinson. I want a Wolverines fan to rationally explain it to me. He is just a horrible passer. He has one skill set, which is running the ball. Don’t get me wrong, he is an exceptional runner, but that’s his whole game. It’s almost like Michigan runs the Wildcat offense on every snap.

As for Northwestern, Dan Persa is finally back from injury and ready to light the Big Ten on fire. There is a question about his ability to run the ball after his Achilles’ injury from last year, but he can still throw the ball. The main problem for Northwestern is the fact that their back-up quarterback is their leading rusher. They need Persa to be able to run the ball so their offense can click.

A lot of people will talk about the highly ranked Michigan defense. Again, I’m not exactly sure why. Their opponents this year have been Western Michigan, Notre Dame, Eastern Michigan, San Diego State, and Minnesota. That’s not exactly a murderer’s row. Plus, all these games have been at home, a distinct advantage.

In this year’s Big Ten, Michigan is a good team. That just doesn’t translate to actually being a good team against the rest of the country. Northwestern finally got their leader and quarterback back last week and lost on defensive lapses during the final two minutes. I think Northwestern pulls off the upset at home.


6) Ohio State at No. 7 Nebraska – 8:00 PM on ABC

This was supposed to be the game in which Ohio State got back Dan Herron and DeVier Posey. Looks like the NCAA had different ideas. It’s going to be a long month of October for the Buckeyes. Is it wrong that I’m smiling about that?


Extra Point:

I may have had a little fun with Ohio State, but what the heck is going on in Columbus? DeVier Posey and Dan Herron, who just finished a five game suspension for “Tattoo-Gate”, are getting at least one more game tacked on for receiving too much money for too little work for summer jobs.

But fear not, Athletic Director Gene Smith said that there wasn’t a “systemic” problem with Ohio State. He then proceeded to throw everyone but himself and the University under the bus. Is there anyone besides Smith who believes there isn’t a “systemic” problem at Ohio State?

According to Smith, this was about individual failures. Which I might have believed if it had happened to one or two players. However, this has been multiple players with multiple violations that lead to one of the better coaches in college football to have to resign in disgrace. This is an Ohio State failure.

Listen, the issue here is the sense of entitlement these kids feel. Ohio is a severely depressing place, so of course if there are players who make the population as a whole feel just a little bit better about their situation, those players are going to be looked upon as better than everyone else and given special treatment.

Ohio State has done nothing to try and dissuade them of this belief. This was evident after the tattoo incident came to light before the Sugar Bowl last year. Instead of suspending the players involved, the University allowed Tressel to let them play and serve their suspension for the first five games of the following year.

This was a joke, considering Ohio State’s only competition would have been Michigan State during that five game stretch. Basically the school was sending the message that you’ll get suspended if you do something bad, but not for any relevant games.

The University needed to come down hard on these players since they broke the rules, instead of giving them a slap on the wrists. Ohio State felt it was better to win the Sugar Bowl than to enforce the rules. In a cruel bit of karmic payback, Ohio State ended up vacating that Sugar Bowl victory, along with all the other games in the 2010 season. There is no one to blame but themselves.