The Friday Night Rundown....ALCS, Mountain West Showdown and ACC Thursday Nighters

Sports-Related Things In my Mind

We could be two games away from another Yankee Collapse:

This would be good for baseball. While the Phils and the Angels don't even come close to being small market teams....the Yankees are the poster children of why salaries, tickets, etc. get progressively more expensive and a lot of other things wrong with baseball. The way Yesterday's game went suggests that the Yankees aren't automatically going to punch their World Series ticket. 1) The way they lost last night: They were shut down for six innings....exploded for 6 runs in the 7th to take the lead and can't even hold that lead for half an inning 2) The Angels seem to have a penchant for sending the Yankees home early....

Mountain West Showdown.......

To think tomorrow, the best game (based on National Ranking) is the showdown between TCU-BYU. For those that don't have Versus......they wont be able to see the best of the Mountain West on display.....I do have Versus so theres a good chance I will tune in to see these teams in Action.......if TCU wins.....it helps bolster their argument for a BCS Bowl Berth......if BYU wins it will likely be another year until the Mountain West Conference gets its due.....

Christian Ponder and FSU coming from behind

This comment has element of real life/my fantasy college team blended ...........while it can get too passe talking about fantasy teams......the one good thing about it is you know more about other teams and are more interested in games that you otherwise wouldn't.

Last nights Florida State-UNC game is a perfect example. If it weren't for the fact that I started Ponder and picked him off the waiver wire a few weeks back...I couldn't have cared less about a Thursday night ACC game (seriously this conference gets an automatic BCS bid and the MWC is snubbed) against two teams going nowhere and performing below expectations. Florida State's season to me boiled down to two things 1) Being a spoiler to BYUs BCS Bid 2) Making headlines more for the contentious head coaching system and when/if Bobby Bowden was going to retire 3) Wow FSU has fallen HARD

Thanks to my team the Cheddar Squad.....i'll add another thing to the list 4) Christian Ponder exploding for 300-plus yards 34 points and giving me a better chance to snap out of 1-3 funk im in.............

The College Football Review: Bad Day For Mid-Majors

Well, a third week of college football is in the books. Didn't seem as exciting as the first two weeks, but it did serve the purpose of thinning out the ranks of the unbeaten It still raises some interesting questions such as

Does USC's loss to Washington take them out of the national title chase?

If it were just about any other school, yes. While USC won't be in the discussion (for now)....once the ranks of the undefeated thins out to 2 or less (and assuming USC wins the rest of their games) we will be hearing about them again (rolls eyes).....they've become the New York Yankees of college football and since they get the benefit of a doubt that has evaded undefeated teams of the past such as Boise State/Hawaii/Utah, etc....we will be hearing about them more come November

I still hold firm on my statement that the Mountain West is a great football conference but they didn't help their case yesterday.

Between Utah losing on the road to an Oregon team that showed signs of fight during the game and NOT after the game and BYU getting upset and manhandled at home by Florida St., it looks like there is a void to fill in the BCS party-crasher/going undefeated and getting shut out of the title game slot filled by Utah last year.

Despite yesterday, BYU and Utah are still great teams that will at least be Top 25 but their status as non-BCS schools leaves them zero margin for error. It looks like TCU is the conference's last hope of being the Mountain West school to run the table, be deserving at a national title shot only to be snubbed in favor of a 1 (or 2 loss) team.

All sarcasm aside, yesterday should NOT be an excuse for the Mountain West to be written off. The two teams just didn't do enough to win on their games but they will be back with a vengeance for the rest of the season.

Who becomes the non-BCS darling now?

As I mentioned in the last paragraph, TCU is the last undefeated elite standing in the Mountain West. They were in the mix last year finished in the top-10 but were atrociously relegated to the Poinsettia Bowl against an equally deserving Boise State Team.

So that leaves us with three non-BCS options.. a) Boise State--the hook and ladder darlings of the 2006 season--the only team to play on blue turf that looks extra creepy on HD---and most importantly coached by UC Davis alum Chris Petersen---they look to have the best chance to run the table but the weakness of the WAC works against them

b)TCU--If they can run the gauntlet of their MWC schedule they're probably the best hope or

c)Houston--Can they overcome most people not knowing about them to crash the party. Unlike Boise State and TCU who have gotten themselves high profile wins and have national profiles higher than the conference they play in, Houston hasn't been prominent in the national scene since the early 1990s.

However, they do have an impressive high profile win (AT Oklahoma State) and an explosive offense that should run circles around their Conference USA Schedule. While Conference USA will hurt Houston in the strength of schedule, if they're able to run up the score enough they could raise their profile quickly within the next couple months.

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