College Football Week 8

This week in college football didn't feature any overly important match-ups and was called upset weekend by many college football analysts. Personally I didn't think that there were many surprising results, I think the only truly surprising result was Georgia Tech beating Florida State, and that's only because of how it happened. Georgia Tech is 3-5 but those five losses came to #9 Notre Dame, #18 Duke, #25 Pittsburgh, #6 Clemson,  and a soon to be ranked 6-1 North Carolina team. So the best 3-5 team in the country Georgia Tech finally had things go their way, they blocked a field goal and took it back all the way for a touchdown. I wouldn't be surprised if Florida State ended up with 3 losses, as they still have to play Clemson and Florida.

The other major upset would be USC taking down Utah, but as I said in a previous blog, USC is still a dangerous team and had a chance to ruin a playoff contenders season and may have done that against Utah. The game was actually very even, USC out-gained Utah by only 27 total yards, USC had only one more first down, and Utah was still in it at half time. However Utah turned the ball over 4 times and USC had the ball for nearly ten more minutes. On Thursday UCLA pounded California 40-24 and this was also not very surprising to me, UCLA is a pretty good football team, and they will get better as their talented freshman quarterback Josh Rosen gains experience.  They can still win the Pac-12 South and even win the Pac-12 championship, but are likely out of the college football playoff. I think that the Pac-12's best chance at a playoff team would be Stanford. The Cardinal still have to play Notre Dame, but they are home for that game, and have a relatively easy schedule outside that game. I believe that the playoff committee would pick at 12-1 Stanford team over a 12-1 Utah team due to brand recognition, and resume.

I believe there are a few games where the winner of one game should make the playoff, games like Notre Dame-Stanford, Ohio State-Michigan State, LSU-Alabama, and possibly TCU-Baylor. Personally my top 4 right now would be 1. Clemson 2. Ohio State 3. LSU 4. Baylor. But with the big match-ups I named before and the fact that each Big 12 contender has to face each other I would not be surprised if those rankings change a whole lot by the end of the year. I believe the Big 12 will end up with no undefeated teams and will miss the playoff for a second consecutive year. So how I see it shaking down at the end of the year is 1. Ohio State 2. Clemson 3. Alabama 4. Notre Dame.

3 days until NBA

There are 3 days left until the 2015-2016 NBA season begins, and it should be a very interesting season. Last year the Warriors beat the Cavaliers in the NBA finals, and both of those teams should be top contenders again this year. The Warriors are the new team to bandwagon on, they have an explosive offense based around perimeter shooting and they have one of the best players in the league in Steph Curry. Last year it just seemed like it would be wrong if the Warriors didn't win the championship, they finished with a league best 67-15 record and won impressively throughout the year. The Cavaliers sort of seemed like the villain to people outside of Cleveland, Lebron left Miami to come back to Cleveland. Then the Cavs proceeded to form a super team of Lebron, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love, with a handful of other decent players like Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith, Tristan Thompson, Anderson Varejao. However the Cavs lost Anderson Varejao tore his Achilles in the regular season, and lost both Kevin Love (dislocated shoulder) and Kyrie Irving (broken kneecap) during the playoffs. Injuries are a part of sports so it takes nothing away from the Warriors championship run, but I would guess that Lebron brings Cleveland its' first ever NBA championship in 2016.

The 2015 season was greatly affected by injuries, Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, Jimmy Butler, Wes Matthews, Jrue Holiday, Kobe Bryant, Demar Derozan, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, Brandon Jennings, Jabari Parker, Julius Randle, Paul George, and Bradley Beal all missed significant time with injuries last year. Right now there are very few injuries so there is a lot of hope and it's definitely more fun to watch all the best players compete against one another. A couple teams to watch this year would be the Houston Rockets, Milwaukee Bucks, Oklahoma City Thunder, and the San Antonio Spurs. For the Rockets they still have superstar James Harden, plus they should have more depth at point guard between the addition of Ty Lawson and hopefully a healthy Patrick Beverly. The Milwaukee Bucks have a solid young core of Jabari Parker, Michael Carter-Williams, Greg Monroe, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, and should have another solid year in the eastern conference. San Antonio and Oklahoma City played each other in the 2014 NBA Western Conference Finals, but neither made any noise in the post season last year. The Thunder had trouble all year with injuries to their superstars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook and ended up barely missing the playoffs. The Spurs just couldn't keep up in the loaded Western Conference and ended up losing in the first round but they added a star in Lamarcus Aldridge and solid backup David West, both could help the Spurs chances this year.

Iowa Disrespect

Iowa is 7-0 to start the season, and following every win they keep getting more attention. It doesn't surprise me that it took seven wins and a 40-10 win at Northwestern to get peoples attention. People still doubt Iowa, they don't say "Iowa has a chance to go unbeaten because they are a good football team", they say "Iowa has a chance to go undefeated because of their schedule". I am a huge Iowa fan, and I believe that my team can win every single week, but given what I've seen, even I would be shocked if Iowa made it to the college football playoff and won the national championship. Iowa just doesn't have the talent to take it that far, in my opinion.

However it annoys me that the first thing that everyone mentions when they talk about Iowa is the schedule. Yes, the remainder of Iowa's schedule isn't very tough, but some analysts seem to be blaming Iowa for this in some way. Iowa had no say in its' conference schedule. They had no say in their draw of Maryland and Indiana for the teams they had to play from the Big Ten East. Iowa also had no impact on the the skill level of the remaining teams on their schedule. It is up to Maryland, Minnesota, Indiana, and Purdue to turn their programs around and have consistent winning seasons. Iowa has 10 teams from power five conferences on their schedule and the fact that only about 3 of those teams are top 25 material isn't their fault.

Iowa has already gone through the most difficult part of its' schedule, Iowa beat rival Iowa State on the road, beat a Pittsburgh team who is currently ranked 25th, went on the road and beat then #17 ranked rival Wisconsin, then last week blew out a #20 ranked Northwestern team 40-10. There are plenty of other teams with fairly soft schedules, Baylor, Ohio State, Florida State, and it gets very tiring when the only thing that people ever say about your team is their schedule.

"Kick-Six 2"

This weekend if you were watching the Michigan State-Michigan game, you saw one of the top 10 craziest finishes ever in college football. I will link the video here because it is hard to explain, but I will still try. Michigan had a 2 point lead on Michigan State with 10 seconds left in the game. Michigan had failed to get the first down so they faced a 4th and 2, all they needed to do was punt it away and play safe. Michigan State was bringing 10 players in hopes of blocking the punt. Many will want to blame the punter (I did originally) but there many other places Michigan went wrong. First off Michigan released 4 guys to go down the punt when they could've easily sent one or two and had more protection. Secondly it was a low snap by the holder that originally caused the punter to drop the ball. Third, the only thing the punter did wrong, he should've just fallen on the ball instead of trying to punt it. However in the heat of the moment it's understandable that he did what he did, plus the same punter had an 80 yard punt earlier in the game. And the result was a Michigan loss, and plenty of very sad and some hateful Michigan fans.

Now the question is, was that "kick-six" better than the original "kick-six"? They both took place in huge games, although #1 Alabama vs #4 Auburn was probably had bigger implications, it decided who went to the SEC championship game. Plus Chris Davis (the Auburn player who returned the kick) had to go about 110 yards to score. The first kick six was not the only miracle that happened for Auburn that season, they defeated Georgia earlier in the season on a miracle. Both of these teams seem to have had a lot of luck.

In my opinion the Alabama-Auburn "kick-six" was not only better than the Michigan State version, but might be the best play ever in college football history.

Saturday's Results

The one game everyone will look at from Saturday was Michigan vs Michigan State, and the crazy final play, but there were plenty other important results. Michigan State managed to stay unbeaten on a miracle play, in a game that they should've lost. The Spartans have gotten are either really good at finishing games, or they have had the best luck of any team, between beating Oregon by 3,Purdue by 3, Rutgers by 7, and Michigan by 4. The other contender in the Big Ten East, Ohio State, won 38-10 versus Penn State. Ohio State didn't play a perfect game, but beating a 5-1 team by 28 points is something people expected Ohio State to do going into this season. The Buckeyes have back to back games against Michigan and Michigan State, but also have a potentially difficult game at Illinois before those huge games. Elsewhere in the Big Ten, my Iowa Hawkeyes handled Northwestern 40-10 behind 24 unanswered points in the second half. In other words, I am happy, Iowa has five very winnable games left on the schedule and can afford at least one loss and still get to the Big Ten championship game. The toughest game remaining for Iowa would probably be either Nebraska or Indiana. Indiana isn't a great team but they also give Iowa troubles, they nearly beat Iowa in 2009 another big season for Iowa. Nebraska is the last game for Iowa and it's a rivalry game on the road, the Huskers seem to be getting better and that game will be huge for both teams.

Outside of the Big Ten Alabama, LSU, Memphis, and Stanford got big wins. Alabama won impressively versus Texas A&M and in my opinion are playing like one of the best teams in the nation. If they can get past LSU I see Alabama getting their second consecutive playoff spot. LSU has a tougher road than Alabama because they probably can only afford one loss, while they still have to play Alabama, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M. Memphis beat Ole Miss at home and are now 6-0 and have the best chance of any non power conference team because of their win. They definitely win out, but still have tough games against Houston and Temple. Stanford blew out UCLA and are playing very well but still have games left against California and Notre Dame. I feel like either Stanford or Notre Dame will end up making the playoff, they are both really solid teams and both have chances to strengthen their resumes for the playoff. Both teams have "good" losses and I wouldn't be surprised if a college football playoff spot is up for grabs when they face each other at the end of the year.

When looking at the playoff there are only teams I believe can make it those teams are Ohio State, TCU, Baylor, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Stanford, Utah, Michigan State, Alabama, LSU, Clemson, and a toss up between Houston and Memphis. My current top 4: 1. Baylor 2. Ohio State 3. LSU 4. Clemson.

Seperation Saturday

This weekend there are multiple huge games between ranked teams and a couple games that have potential for an upset. In terms of ranked match-ups there are 3 huge top-15 games, #8 Florida travels to Baton Rouge to take on #6 LSU. In my opinion I see LSU pulling out victory on Saturday for a couple reasons, first off LSU is at home and it's pretty difficult to walk into Tiger Stadium for a night game and walk out with a win. Plus Florida's starting quarterback Will Grier was suspended for taking PED's (Performance Enhancing Drugs), which hurts Florida a lot because Grier was a big part of why the Gators are undefeated. Prediction: LSU 24 Florida 20. Another game to look forward to in the SEC (Southeastern Conference) would be #9 Texas A&M vs #10 Alabama. This is a big game for both teams if they hope to get into the College Football Playoff, but more so for Alabama, because it's pretty tough to get a playoff spot with 2 losses. Texas A&M could really prove themselves in this game not only because it would be a top-10 victory that would move them to 6-0, but a win over possibly the most successful and popular program in college football would make a huge impact.

There are also two games in the Big Ten that have a lot riding on them, first Michigan State and Michigan battle for the Paul Bunyan Trophy. Michigan has really surprised this year and their only loss has been at #4 Utah, plus the Wolverines are coming off a 38-0 drubbing of #20 Northwestern. Michigan State has not impressed, in fact they have greatly disappointed they have not had a dominating and convincing win over anyone this year. They only beat Purdue by 3 and Rutgers by 7 on a late touchdown drive. However Mark Dantonio is a very good coach and a win is a win no matter how close it is, I think Michigan State will still compete for the Big Ten East crown. But, I still pick Michigan to win, 27-14. Of course the other big game in the Big Ten is between my Iowa Hawkeyes and the Northwestern Wildcats. This game is important because it has huge implications for who will win the Big Ten west. At this point it's a 3 team competition basically, between Iowa, Wisconsin and Northwestern. Iowa could jump into the lead with a win against the Wildcats. If Iowa won they would have wins over Wisconsin and Northwestern which gives them the tiebreaker. But the Hawkeyes also have a pretty easy schedule after Northwestern. Now my slightly biased prediction, Iowa 20 Northwestern 17.

College Football: Week 6

This week in college football went mostly to plan, unless you're a fan of Northwestern, Georgia, USC, or Oklahoma. Southern California lost to Washington 17-12 Thursday night, the Trojans had more total yards than Washington, but were only 1-13 on third down and had 3 turnovers. At this point I'm guessing USC is out of the playoff picture but could still ruin another teams chances, they play at Notre Dame next week, and are home against Utah on October 24th. Georgia just seems to be doing what they do every year, lose 2-4 games and never really emerge as a contender. To make matters worse for Georgia, their star running back Nick Chubb is probably out for the year after a gruesome knee injury Saturday. The future is slightly brighter for Northwestern and Oklahoma, both of whom only have one loss and still have an outside chance at a playoff birth assuming they win out. Northwestern still has a solid team and will play my Hawkeyes next week, but have a relatively easy schedule after that. Oklahoma has a tough schedule ahead of them, they have a three game stretch of at Baylor (ranked 2nd), TCU (ranked 3rd), and at Oklahoma State (ranked 16th), as well as tough games versus Kansas State and Texas Tech. However if Oklahoma were to get through the season with only one loss they would be in good position for a playoff spot.

Enough with the teams that lost, now for the teams that impressed, first lets start with Michigan. The Wolverines absolutely dominated a Northwestern team who many though was well matched with Michigan. Michigan has looked outstanding the past couple of weeks and could really solidify themselves with a win against rival Michigan State next week. Utah looked decent against California, however they forced 6 turnovers and only came away with a 6 point win. LSU is ranked 6th in the country, but I believe at some point running Leonard Fournette will fail them, possibly against Florida this week. Clemson looks good and has already won its toughest game of the year, I have no trouble seeing the Tigers winning out this year and making it to the playoff. And for the 6th straight week, Ohio State and Michigan State survive, but do not impress.

Uniform Frenzy

There is a new trend in college football that I'm sure a lot of people have witnessed. The uniforms they are getting crazier and crazier every day. Whether it be matte black helmets, chrome gold helmets, Louisville's terrible helmet design, or Louisville's awesome helmet design. Almost every major school has either switched to a new base uniform, or added several new alternate uniforms. I sort of remember what I recall as the start of it when Oregon started changing their uniforms every game back about 5 years ago. Then I believe in 2011 one of the first college games of the season Maryland emerged from the locker room wearing crazy "pride" uniforms that were supposed to represent the state flag. I recall the sports center hosts were completely baffled by the jerseys, and the uniforms ended up getting more attention than the actual game.

But nowadays it is a common occurrence (not for my team really, although Iowa has announced an alternate blackout uniform vs Minnesota) and no one really bats an eye at the crazy uniform combinations being created. Some of the uniforms are absolutely gorgeous, see Arizona State's grey uniforms, or Arizona State's throwback jerseys,  the Ole Miss powder blue, or Baylor's chrome kit. And some are simply terrible, see Colorado State's weird alternates, these unsymmetrical Notre Dame alternates, uniforms from Kansas which may have been cancelled they were so ugly, and just to poke fun at Iowa State, these. 

There are a couple reasons why these teams continue to pump out new combinations. One is for recruiting, having really cool uniforms like Oregon or Arizona State will impress the recruits more than say bland Penn State and Iowa uniforms. Some recruits will care more than others, but it's one more thing that a team can do to help themselves with recruiting. The other reason would be for publicity, whether it be within your fan base or throughout the country. It's fun for the fans of a team when a new uniform is announced, although it seems that whenever Iowa comes out with a new uniform all the older fans grumble about liking the regular uniforms better. Also it's never a bad thing to gain a new fan, and if the uniform leaves a good impression on someone they might recognize your team and maybe even become a fan.

It doesn't really matter what the reason is for making a new uniform, but it seems like if you aren't coming out with new looks, then you're behind the times.

College vs NFL

In my opinion college football is a better sport to take part in and watch. The NFL will no doubt have the better players and the Super Bowl is better than any college championship. However in college football there is so much more passion and authenticity. Tailgate and attend one college football game and you will see how exciting the atmosphere. The pregame atmosphere is pretty quiet up until about 45 minutes before the game. At an Iowa game you will hear a couple "Go Hawks", maybe some chants, and even heckling from bold opposing fans. On the walk from the tailgate to the stadium there are waves of people each popping out of different side streets on to the main street, where waves of people funnel into the stadium.

During the game you can participate in team cheers and the crowd just feels like they are one. I don't think there are many NFL games where every fan is standing up and cheering for their team as loud as they can. Whereas that is a very popular sight at college football games. I think what separates the NFL from college would be the student section. The student section always brings it and always looks ecstatic. I think both high school and college fans are generally more connected to their team through the fact that a lot of the fans went to that school. There is no school for the Green Bay Packers or New England Patriots. An NFL fan simply chooses which team they like best. 

There are way more college teams, which means more games, which means more madness. More one handed catches, more big hits, more hurdles, more everything. In my opinion the NFL just seems more formal than college football. Everything from ESPN College Gameday, to the marching band, and to the fact that the players don't get paid, shows the informal nature of college football. There seems to be a formula that pro teams follow, they usually don't score over 40 points, rarely over 50. There aren't many upsets, the team that is supposed to win almost always does. There is just something appealing about a bad team somehow beating a good team. Which reminds me that there are never any times when the fans rush the field in the NFL. 

Bottom line, if you want to watch the best players and teams in the world play football watch the NFL. If you really care about where you went to college or want to watch a emotional, unpredictable, and exciting game of football watch college football.

College Football: Week 5

I made a post earlier about who the number one team should be, and with another week gone, there still, in my opinion, isn't a team who stands out as the number one team. However I think that a couple teams definitely showed some championship caliber. Starting in the Big 12, TCU stomped Texas 50-7, they beat them so badly that one player tweeted about transferring to rival Texas A&M during halftime. TCU impressed me, but I still have a feeling that they will eventually trip up in one of those Big 12 shootouts. Baylor handled Texas Tech 63-35, which is impressive given that the Red Raiders almost beat TCU last week. However part of this could be because Texas Tech just played TCU, it's very difficult to play in back to back games against top 5 teams. We will really find out if Baylor is a college football playoff contender come November when they play Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and finally on November 27,they have to travel to TCU. Oklahoma has also been impressive thus far, but they also have a tough November when the play at TCU, home against Baylor, and at rival Oklahoma State.

In the Big 10 Michigan State and Ohio State continue to leave something to be desired, and Michigan, Northwestern, and Iowa continue to impress. I would say those 5 teams are the best in the Big 10 right now. If I had to pick an East division and West division champion to play in the Big 10 championship, right now I would say Northwestern and Michigan. They have played the best up to this point, Ohio State and Michigan State still have time to figure things out and make it interesting, but right now it would be the Wildcats and Wolverines in my opinion.

High School vs College

If you go out and watch ten high school football games, there is a good chance that nine of those games the teams will have more running attempts and yards. Especially going back to pee-wee football, there are a lot less passing attempts than rushing attempts. This is probably because it's fairly easy to teach the quarterback to turn in either direction hand the ball off to the running back. It's a lot harder to teach a 3rd grader to read the defense and deliver the ball in the right place. For that matter, the wide receivers would also have to be taught how to run good routes and catch the ball properly. However at the high school level I'm surprised that there aren't more teams that are pass oriented. Especially when secondaries on high school are pretty bad, if a team has a tall wide receiver the quarterback can just lob it to him and there's a good chance it will be a catch.

Then there's college, in college football 96 out of the 129 teams have more passing yards than rushing yards, that's 74% of teams that are more pass oriented. This shows the big impact that the trend of spread offense has had. More and more teams are switching to a spread offense, these offenses generally have multiple wide receivers and an up-tempo attack. If you want to get a feel of how the spread offenses work, go look up highlights of last year's TCU-Baylor game which ended with a score of 61-58. A good spread offense like the ones that Baylor and TCU have are very hard to stop, because they can use short passes, screen passes, deep passes, and once the defense backs off they can run it up the middle. However the key to these offenses is having difference makers on offense, there needs to be a quick running back, there needs to be fast wide receiver, there needs to be a quarterback with a big arm. The spread offense is based on speed, and exploiting match-ups in space.

I think it comes down to the fact that a good spread or passing offense requires a fair amount of really good players. Whereas almost every high school has that one player who is either really fast or is just a beast who can plow over people when you give him the ball.