Sunday, September 6, 2009

College Football: 2009's First Impressions

So, this weekend marks the beginning of the 2009 College Football season. With the first Saturday of action in the books, it raises some questions about the rest of the season.

Is Oklahoma State a legitimate contender?

Oklahoma State has been in the shadows of Oklahoma since pretty much forever. What I had read about the upcoming seasons suggested that 2009 could be their season to go from good to elite. Beating Georgia is a good first step. Oklahoma State plays in a deep and ultra-competitive Big 12 and they have already demonstrated that they can beat an elite team before we even hit Labor Day.....i'd say they have a fighting chance


Mark Ingram for Heisman?

In the Alabama-Virginia tech game, Alabama's Sophmore running back ran all over Virginia Tech's defense and stepped up when it mattered. If he can put up 150 yards against a strong Tech defense, it's just about guaranteed we haven't heard the last from him.

Alabama in the national championship ?

Despite being in the top 2 for much of the season and about 15 minutes away from playing in the BCS Title game last year, Alabama hasn't gotten as much preseason hype/love despite being ranked #5. The way the experts are talking, they sometalks talk about in the way that Florida is leaps and bounds against everyone else. They may be a great team, but they're not the only great team.

Will Someone finally give the Non-BCS conferences a shot at the title game?

Following up from last year when Utah was the only undefeated team (and dominated an excellent Alabama team in the Sugar Bowl). Utah definitely got disrespected due to not being a BCS conference and were not allowed to play in a national championship game that they deserved to play in. This leads to this first weekend where, two non-BCS schools (Boise State and BYU) upset nationally ranked BCS conference teams (Oregon and Oklahoma).

While Boise State is the only major player in the WAC, the Mountain West conference deserves more attention as an elite conference and arguably is stronger than two-BCS conferences (Big Ten an Big East at the moment). They have 3 perennial top 25 teams (TCU, BYU and Utah) one team chronically right below the top-25 (Air Force) and even "bottom feeders" aren't that bad and can play some competitve ball (Colorado St., San Diego St., UNLV, etc.). Point being running the table in the Mountain West is no small task and if you get through this unscathed, you definitely deserve the chance to play for the title

IS BYU over Oklahoma that big of a shocker?

The way ESPN was talking about BYU beating Oklahoma you'd think it was a shocker of the century. It's a mild upset but not a huge one. The rhetoric coming from this seems to be to discredit BYU for being a mid-major and trying to discredit it down to them having one good game as a whole.

I have two problems with this 1). This is a RANKED team. This wasn't Temple or one of those horrible directional Michigan schools (or Michigan for this matter). This was BYU. A BYU team that's consistently been in the top 25. A BYU team that even managed to win a national championsip once. A BYU team that annually fights Utah and TCU for Mountain West conference supremacy. If this was another big-12 team ranked 20th (say, Texas Tech for example) there is NO way we'd be hearing about how shocking this victory is.

2) It's not like Oklahoma has ever lost to a non-BCS team before....(Boise State anyone)

What happens to Oklahoma now?

Oklahoma had high preseason expectations placed on them with the return of Sam Bradford. Now both of these expectations are in question. Oklahoma lost a close game to BYU and. Also, it's remained undetermined how Bradford's sprained AC joint in shoulder injury will impact Oklahoma as a whole. How much will he play? How much will it affect his play on the field? Either way, things don't look as good for Oklahoma now as they did a couple weeks ago. On the bright side, they get to take their frustrations out on Idaho State next week.

Will UCD football score a touchdown and/or hold a team to under 50 this year?

Probably.....but neither of these things happening in the first game isn't a good sign. 51-0 to Fresno State.....ouch well at least they get another crack at an epic upset on October 3 against Boise State



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