College football weekend observations

by WCT, The Ship of Fools

pic: Dr. Saturday

The cliches and hyperbole will by flying out of the mouthes of talking heads and off the pages of newspapers and websites all over the place, so get ready. "The craziest weekend of the season," "BCS shakeup," and "No one is safe!" are all we are going to hear following a weekend that saw 3 of the top 5 ranked teams lose.

You will not find any such nonsense in this space.

Not that the outcomes were not surprising, because some of them were. But it boggles the mind that we assign seemingly arbitrary rankings to teams based on how they look in spring games and preseason workouts, and are surprised when those rankings don't hold up. Maybe we should wait more than two games before proclaiming USC as the greatest team Pete Carroll has ever coached. Perhaps we should let Georgia beat a legitimate 1-A opponent before calling them the best team in the nation. Why do we ignore the repeated collapses of teams like Clemson and put them in the preseason top 10?

While everyone else is talking about how shocking it is that so many ranked teams can lose, I think we should be looking at the absurdity of the rankings that those teams had to begin with.

- One last point on the ridiculousness of the rankngs: Yes, USC looked like crap in being upset by lowly Oregon State on Thursday night, and yes, they deserved to fall and fall hard in the rankngs. But does anyone, anywhere think that on a neutral field, right now, they wouldn't be favored to beat Texas Tech? Or Penn State? Or BYU?? I hate the rankings. They make no sense.

- Finally, FINALLY, all my seemingly ill-fated and at times cockamamie proclamations about the Ole Miss Rebels paid off Saturday!

- Staying with that game, step away from the ledge Gator fans. Florida, unlike USC, still has a legitimate shot to end up in the BCS Championship Game. The Gators still have ranked opponents in LSU, Georgia, and Vandy(??) to impress the voters and climb the rankings. They will also play Florida State, who may very well be ranked in late November when they play, and, should they make it, the SEC West champ in the conference title game. So all is not lost.

- What in the hell happened to East Carolina? Two losses in a row to the likes of NC State and Houston? That is called not being able to handle success. I have never seen a team go from the outhouse to the penthouse, back to the outhouse in less than a month.

- Right now, its anybody's guess who the best team is in the worse-every-week ACC. Wake Forest, who I thought was the clear leader, lost to lowly Navy at home. Clemson completed their Clemson Collapse (or if you like, they "pulled a Clemson") and lost to Maryland at home and are now unranked. Virginia Tech's loss to East Carolina no longer looks that good with the Pirates getting crushed by Houston.

- Here is a prediction for you: Notre Dame is going to end up in a BCS Bowl. Book it.