Random Thoughts on Week 4 of college football after a weekend of watching the DVR (and ESPN+ for that matter). This is what happens when your team plays on a weeknight.
I’ll begin by repeating something I’ve heard a number of national broadcasters say over the past week. There are about 12-15 really good teams in college football right now. You can then lump everybody else in the P5 with about 20 or so G5 programs that are all at about the same level. This weekend only made this point even more clear.
Tulane and the head coach's daughter
-Tulane’s dramatic win over Houston was truly one for the ages for the Greenie program. It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the season plays out in Yulman Stadium. It’s conceivable Tulane could win 10 games or go 5-7. The schedule the rest of the way is that difficult. Their next game is in two weeks at Army. The best part of the Thursday telecast may have been in the postgame where ESPN announcers mistook head coach Willie Fritz’s daughter Lainie for his wife Susan, giving the impression to a national audience that Willie was married to someone much younger. For the record here is a story from 2018 on Lainie. She is a sports reporter in Houston.
https://thespun.com/news/photos-of-t...re-going-viral
PAC 12 with huge statement win? Over Ole Miss? Really?
The Pac 12 continues to struggle as a league. Washington and Oregon look solid, but no one in the league can stay consistent. The league was getting more love with 6 ranked programs this week. Three of them promptly lost. A fourth should have lost. Cal’s win over Ole Miss was marred by an officiating blunder by a Pac 12 crew. Everyone has seen it by now. What made the game even more laughable than the officiating mistake was Cal linebacker Evan Weaver telling ESPN sideline reporter Taylor Davis after the game that “They’re (Ole Miss) from the SEC…they think they can bring it to everybody.” Color analyst Ryan Leaf – who worked for the PAC 12 Network before coming to ESPN said the Cal win was a “huge statement for the Pac 12 conference.” Really? Ole Miss is the SEC’s 11th best team and is currently on probation. How inconsistent is the Pac 12? The league favorite Utah was beaten by a USC team led by the Trojans’ third-string QB.
The consistently inconsistent ACC
-The ACC outside of Clemson just looks so inconsistent. UNC was pushed around for most of the game by App State. NC State struggled at times with a woeful Ball State squad. Miami struggled to beat Central Michigan. The Louisville-FSU game looked like a pillow fight with two bad football teams. I had flashbacks of a Kansas-Kansas State game from the 80s. The most interesting game in the ACC was the ODU-Virginia game. The game turned when Virginia went for it on 4th and 2 at ODU’s 8-yard line with ODU up 17-0. Virginia QB Bryce Perkins broke 2 open field tackles to get the first down before scoring. The entire game turned on that one play. This all comes one week after the league lost 6 non-conference games with Georgia Tech going down to FCS The Citadel and Virginia Tech needing an officiating blunder by an ACC crew to beat FCS Furman.
The dreadful MAC
-Of all the G5 leagues the MAC is the one that truly looks dreadful. The top half of the league hasn’t done anything to really stand out , and the bottom half of the league is just plain bad. Akron is probably the worst team in the FBS. They’re closely followed by Bowling Green and Miami. Just bad. Miami and Akron both just look like a mess on both sides of the ball. Bowling Green is trying to run a power offense with not nearly enough talent to pull it off. They look organized but woefully undermanned.
UAB comes to life
-Within CUSA the most interesting story is UAB. The Blazers get better by the week. They’re a zone read/RPO team whose offense gets more and more consistent with each game. They easily dispatched South Alabama. Blazer QB Tyler Johnston was 22/27 with 3 TDs. He was very accurate and just didn’t make many mistakes. The other interesting story might just be Rice. The Owl’s game with Army really wasn’t a fluke. Rice used a ground game featuring the I-formation and the pistol to play Baylor to a one-score game. They’re better up front than they‘ve been in years. They might be 0-4, but it’s easy to see where the program could be in the next couple of seasons.