Less than a year ago, a young brash coach came into the SEC – loudly announcing his presence by calling out the best team in the league and employing a number of questionable recruiting tactics. Needless to say the brain-washed ideology-blinded boosters of his school jumped for joy while the rest of the conference seethed at the arrogance of the new arrival.

Amazingly I am not talking about John Calipari.

As the dominoes continued to fall from Pete Carroll’s epically bad decision to move to Seattle and coach the Seahawks, there was one domino I was not expecting – Lane Kiffin accepting the USC head coaching job.

Only a year into his tenure at Tennessee, I never expected Kiffin to leave one of the most passionate fan bases in the country to go back to USC. At Tennessee he had the backing of school re-emerging from the stagnating pool that was the final years of the Phil Fulmer era, played in the best conference in football, a backyard filled with the best players in the country and built-in headline inducing rivals in Alabama and Florida on his schedule every year. In short, he was on his way to becoming deified by one of the most ravenous fan-bases in the country like Nick Saban has been in Alabama.

Instead he returns to USC to become ‘the guy who coached after Pete Carroll’. Sure, he will have continued success as he slowly empties the cupboards of Carroll’s annual top-five recruiting classes but has anything this guy done foreshadowed him keeping USC at the level it is currently?

Not to mention the always on the horizon possibility that the NCAA could finally dust off their investigation of Reggie Bush and impose sanctions on the Trojans.

Looking at Kiffin’s career objectively and the best comparison I can come up with is that he is the Jay Cutler of football coaches. He is young, brash and has never won anything yet continues to convince people he knows what he is doing. He left his first job after a blow up with management that in hindsight appears to be as much his fault as the seemingly crazy owner.

By now, it seems like a lifetime ago but we must remember USC is not pre-ordained to be a college football powerhouse. Before Pete Carroll came they were an also-ran in the Pac-10 still trading on the glory days in the 1970’s.

they came to Florida State in 1998 and the most memorable thing about that 30-10 drubbing was that Giles Pellerin, who had attended every USC game for 75 years, was introduced and got a standing ovation from the Nole crowd. Really, that is it. Back then beating USC was on par with beating Louisiana Tech for us – just another patsy to practice on until Miami or Florida came to town.

Speaking of the Gators, it is pretty obvious they are the big winners out all of this. Beside the inevitable shifting of recruiting commitments from Tennessee to UF that will stream out over the next couple weeks, there is also the feeling that this is the anointing of UF as the owners of the SEC East for the foreseeable future. There are no challengers left for UF – whether “Tin Man” Meyer ever gets a heart or not. Georgia are perennial underachievers with a 9 win ceiling that are happy if they keep the losing deficit at the World’s Largest Cocktail party under 20. Steve Spurrier will never get the talent in Columbia to compete with UF. And now Tennessee is a colossal mess.

This doesn’t even factor in the psychological edge that comes along with the one person in the SEC that called out UF, scurrying with his tail between his legs back to southern California where football ranks on the priority scale just below a good fish taco.

So, in this one move, it seems to me that we have sealed the fate of two of the biggest programs of this decade. USC will spiral down into mediocrity while the beautiful people migrate away from the Coliseum to cheering on the new Los Angeles Jaguars in a couple years. And the Gators become perennial SEC Championship game participants and BCS Title game candidates.

Maybe I am being too kind to Lane by comparing him to Jay Cutler.

I had never thought about it before, but it seems pretty obvious now. The Athletic Directors of the major conferences that make up the BCS are fans of 1990’s rap. Whether it was Deion Sanders’ ”Must be the Money” or P. Diddy/Puff Daddy’s “All about the Benjamins”, the AD’s that decide the BCS bowls clearly only care about making money for themselves and their major conference constituents.

It is no secret that after the BCS Title game, all other bowl games are typically slotted based on maximizing the revenue of the individual bowls. Teams with large, active fan bases or teams with major national followings always get the nod over the up-and-coming, unknown feel-good story (see: Notre Dame, BCS appearances: 2005, 2006). However, this year the AD’s not only set up the bowls to make money this year but they also went to an extraordinary effort to ensure that those pesky non-BCS conference teams are marginalized as much as possible.

I am speaking specifically about the Fiesta Bowl match-up of Boise State and TCU. This is the biggest cop out in the history of the BCS. Every year we have a team or two from the non-BCS conferences that argue they are as good as the big boys. This year we have two of those. Yet, rather than matching them against BCS conference foes to help settle the debate, the geniuses at the BCS committee matched them up against themselves which proves….well nothing except that the BCS committee is scared to death of their mighty conferences getting taken down by another upstart.

After seeing Bama trounced by Utah last year and Boise’s miracle against OU a few years ago, the last thing the BCS committee needs is another proof point that says they can’t treat the WAC and Mountain West as second class citizens. If pollsters and the public begin to believe that those conferences have teams as strong as the major conferences, then the BCS committee fears the day when we will be arguing for a one-loss BYU team over a two-loss USC or Florida team.

Given that the members of the BCS represent those very same major conference teams, it is obviously in their best interests (of their conferences and the guys who want to keep their jobs) to get as many major conference teams in – which means keeping non-major conference teams out. If it is proven that those teams are as strong as the major conference teams, then the BCS as set up spirals into self-destruction. What happens to their precious BCS championship if TCU goes into the Sugar Bowl and routs an uninspired, disjointed and dispirited Florida team?

No, the only way to ensure that the non-BCS teams remain second class citizens and therefore can be routinely overlooked and marginalized is to just pit them against each other. Then the winner of that game is no more important than the winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

For the record, I think Boise State would get trounced by any of the other major conference BCS teams – sort of like Hawaii a couple years ago; they played an incredibly weak schedule and gave up way too many points.

But I sure would like to be able to prove it.

On to some other thoughts from Championship Saturday:

- Obviously we have to start with UF/Bama. I can’t remember a more dominating performance by a college team over another highly ranked team. There was literally only one time in the entire game where I thought UF would win. After UF scored to make it 12-10 Bama, I made the assumption that this is when UF takes over and Bama folds like a cheap lawn chair. But on the next offensive play, Mark Ingram took a perfectly called screen pass 69 yards and Bama scored a play later. After that, UF never had a chance, the Tebow Crying group was formed on Facebook and I spent all Monday morning trading emails with funny pictures of Tebow crying on the sidelines. Really, it was a perfect game in every way.

- This despite the best efforts of Gary Danielson. They often say Tebow wills his team to victory. On Saturday, Danielson was the one willing the Gators. For three quarters, he kept claiming this game was similar to last year’s when Bama lost a 3-point lead going into the 4^th quarter. Except this time it was a 13-point lead and Bama had been utterly dominant on both offense and defense the entire game. Other than that, it was the exact same Gary.

- Mark Ingram will probably win the Heisman this weekend but shouldn’t it be taken into consideration that (1) he wasn’t most the important reason Bama won this game and (2) there is a decent chance he isn’t the best player at his position on his own team. After watching Alabama the last two weeks, I am convinced if Tony Richardson was given the ball instead of Ingram, he would have as good if not better stats than Ingram. Can we really reward a guy with the Heisman for just being first string?

- While Ingram is at the podium next weekend in New York I hope he thanks his quarterback and offensive coordinator. This game was won by Greg McElroy’s flawless playing and the play-calling of offensive coordinator Jim McElwain. McElroy did more than was asked of him, making perfect passes and even taking off on two clutch runs that may have been the difference in the game (or as only Gary Danielson would say “he out-Tebowed Tebow”). Combine his flawless execution with McElwain’s play-calling and UF never had a chance. The UF defense was unprepared the entire game – except for one Wildcat play in the first quarter that (not so coincidentally) led to a three and out by Bama. After that play, UF never knew what was coming. Each new drive brought a new wrinkle and UF was reacting one step late all day.

- Each year there is a question of conference superiority and each year I argue against the SEC. Well, I may need to change that stance this year. Did you see that halftime contest of throwing footballs into giant Dr. Pepper cans? At the SEC game, a female med student from Bama hit 9 of 10 to beat a taunting, idiot from Gainesville (is there any other kind?) who made 8. In the Big Twelve game later, a woman from Nebraska won by making 2 over a woman from Texas who made zero.  9 to 8 versus 2 to 0? That sums up the SEC versus the Big Twelve better than I ever could.

- Speaking of the Big 12, am I the only one that was underwhelmed by Texas needing a last second field goal to beat a team with possibly the worst offense in America? Seriously, Nebraska had a better chance of winning if they had just punted on first down every time they got the ball to get their defense back on the field. The Bizarro Bama offense combined poor execution (my 70-year old mother has a more accurate arm than Zac Lee) with poor play-calling. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result? Then what do you call a coordinator who calls the same off-tackle running play, 3 times every offensive series for an entire game when it didn’t work once?

- Last week, a local columnist here in Denver wrote an article arguing that Nebraska defensive lineman Ndamukong Suh deserves the Heisman. I thought it was just precious – like when a little girl asks for a Unicorn for Christmas. That changed on Saturday night, when Suh took over the Big Twelve title game. Really his only two mistakes were not lobbying to come in to play quarterback for Nebraska and rushing McCoy on that final play. If he hangs back, McCoy absolutely runs the clock out. The imminent Suh sack was the only reason McCoy threw the ball out of bounds when he did, saving the one second Texas needed to make it into the title game.

- The other Heisman trophy candidate who really stood out to me on Saturday was C.J. Spiller. If a Heisman candidate rushes for 230 yards and 4 touchdowns in a conference title game and no one sees it, did it actually happen? How mad is C.J. today that someone decided the schedule the ACC title game opposite the Big Twelve title game? He has a true statement game, and yet I am pretty sure no one outside the Atlanta/Clemson corridor watched more than a snap.

- I guess rather than complaining about all the deserving players that won’t win the Heisman (see: Suh, Ndamukong; Gerhart, Toby; Spiller, C.J., Ponder, Christian…ok, just testing to see if you are paying attention), we should congratulate Mark Ingram on being the first running back to win a Gino Torretta memorial ‘best player on the best team’ Heisman award this year. Groundbreaking indeed.

And only fitting that our Heisman trophy winner, much like our BCS Title game, was chosen more based on uniform than qualifications.

Sunday afternoon, sitting through my 16^th hour of watching football in the Mandalay Bay sportsbook my throat started to get scratchy. I wasn’t sure if I was feeling the onset of swine flu, a minor cold or the aftereffects of sleeping 5 hours a night and inhaling approximately 4,279 cigarettes worth of second hand smoke since arriving on Friday.

After a rest day on Monday, I awoke yesterday and still felt like I had been beaten about the head all weekend by Manny Pacquiao. No matter what the biological reason for this feeling – it can only be known as one thing – the Vegas Flu.

As a wise woman once said – back to life, back to reality. It is hard to come back from Vegas. After spending roughly 60 straight hours focused solely on either making money or not losing any more money while never once actually seeing the daylight, coming back to work can be a serious letdown.

As Shadow said in an email yesterday: “I miss Vegas. And Manute Bol is still F*ing purple” (an inside joke and what I am absolutely getting Bill Simmons to sign in my copy of The Book of Basketball on Friday). Add in the aftereffects of no sleep, a horrendous diet, too much alcohol and the steady stream of second-hand smoke and you invariably feel wiped out physically and mentally.

 But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a blast while there. Therefore below I present the highlights of our trip to Vegas. Turner and Shadow can add anything I may have missed as when I went back last night to find some of the notes I scribbled on a hotel notepad I couldn’t find them.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a trip to Vegas if you didn’t have at least one casualty. On to The Hierarchy of Hate Vegas Road Trip – Fall ’09 edition.

As a frequent flyer I have many pet peeves related to travel – for example: people getting on planes and bringing absolutely nothing to do (You know for a fact you are sitting in a chair for the next two hours, a portion of which you can’t even use electronics, and you bring nothing to do? That is quite a monument to your lack of intelligence and foresight – spend 50 cents and buy a paper!) – but flying to Vegas is a unique experience. Is there any other flight more full of people with limited flying experience than a trip to Vegas? Ok, maybe a flight to Orlando but that is it. All of this is a long way of saying that when the guys sitting next to Turner and I showed up in matching Hawaiian shirts, we shouldn’t have been surprised.

Our trip started on Friday with lunch at Tacos and Tequila where we learned that ‘no two tacos are the same’. It was then followed by our blackjack dealer Kathleen telling us that one of her rules of play is to ‘whack it till it’s hard’. Let’s just say that Vegas has never met a double-entendre it didn’t like.

Speaking of Kathleen, if you ever wondered what Turner is like to gamble with, I will just say this. After Turner lost his stack to Kathleen and wandered off, she actually asked Shadow and I to buy him dinner. Yes, a Vegas dealer was concerned about Turner after she took his money. This either speaks to his incredible charm or devastation upon losing money. I will leave it to you to decide which.

Kathleen also asked us if we knew about the strippermobile. Umm…no we do not, can you elaborate? Apparently there was a story running around town about a truck like vehicle with a see-through back that enclosed two strippers – acting as an ad for a strip joint. Upon coming home, one quick Google search confirmed the story. Which begs the question – how does the club staff the truck? Do they pick their 2 best looking women? If so, are the women happy to miss out on an evening’s tips? Do people show up disappointed by the other ladies? So many questions.

During our last trip to Vegas, whenever I was in a cold streak of hands I would change up my bet – so if at a $10 table, I would throw $15 or $20 for a hand or two to change the momentum. This trip we christened this move the Sproles – after back-up Chargers running back Darren Sproles. This had lots of benefits as we could confidently announce “I’m going Sproles”, to the delight of the other two and the confusion of everyone else at the table. There are also the variations. A move to a $25 chip became the Jacob Hester. When I went to an almost exclusive $15 betting strategy at a $10 table, I told Turner I had ‘benched LT’. If this can become a standard phrase and philosophy I consider my work here done.

On second thought though maybe we should have labeled this the Chester Taylor. Then when we leave a table where we are doing poorly and try our luck at a new table we could say we are pulling a Favre.

Friday night we walked over to the MGM Grand to watch the Nuggets / Lakers game (which required crossing a pedestrian bridge over the strip). I am 94% convinced Shadow only wanted to go to MGM Grand to try and catch sight of the strippermobile while walking over the Strip.

We then went up the road to the Hooters casino. I like to believe we did this only as a sociological experiment. Hooters is like….well a Hooters with gambling tables. It is fascinating to see the demographic change from Mandalay and MGM Grand to Hooters. We went from a combination of moneyed older folks, a smattering of tourists and LA club kids to a fraternity house.

At Hooters, Shadow and sat at a single deck blackjack table where our dealer was named Ashli – yes with an I.  I put the over/under on the chance she dots that I with a heart at 100%. I would take the over.

The majority of the weekend was spent losing money in the sportsbook. This was our first time trying to watch a whole slate of games at a sportsbook and I would like to make a suggestion for any virgins planning a Vegas football weekend. Trying to watch approximately 10 games is overwhelming. Pick one game and focus on it. Only change your attention during commercials. Trying to track all of the actions on all the screens will leave not seeing any of it.

It wouldn’t be a post without my, at least briefly, discussing FSU. They were an early game on Saturday (starting at an ungodly 9 am Vegas time) and on Friday I couldn’t tell Turner and Shadow enough that picking Wake to beat FSU was a lock on par with my correct pick of Nuggets over Lakers. I mean – the pathetic FSU defense and a freshman QB getting his first start on the road versus a team that had beaten FSU three straight years? It was a gimme right? Oh well, I have never been happier to be completely wrong about a game. Maybe it takes me laying money against FSU for them to come through. If this is true, I should get back to Vegas to put some money on the Gators before the FSU/UF game in a couple weeks. Anyone want to donate to the cause?

Speaking of UF, my other highlight of Saturday was cheering and betting against them. Although after South Carolina came out with the core values of the military in place of names and a small section of camo on their jerseys  in honor of Veteran’s Day – how could anyone cheer against them? Why doesn’t Fox News get on this – spend a little less time worried about where Obama was born because there is nothing more unpatriotic than cheering for UF.

While I was enjoying winning money against UF, Shadow was dying a slow death for the Iowa/ Ohio State Rose Bowl playoff game. To get so close with an untested freshman QB in the Shoe was a great testament to Iowa. Though that didn’t stop Shadow from taking a little walkabout after the disappointing OT was completed. I can’t blame him. My team had won and even I was going cross-eyed after watching all of those screens for at least eight hours. Losing money the whole time.

But whenever we started feeling guilty about the money we were losing we only had to remember the kid that dropped $4000 at a blackjack table and another guy who stood in front of Turner dropped $5000 on the Broncos.

If I have the Vegas Flu this week, those guys must have the Vegas Plague.

There are many, many reasons why sports are great. One of the reasons right at the top of the list, is that unlike many parts of our world, sports gives us a definitive outcome.

Compare to something like politics, in which there is rarely a right or wrong, a winner or loser. Even if some legislation was passed, how do we know who the winner was? What if that legislation was so watered-down as to make it completely ineffective? What if that was passed in lieu of more important legislation that couldn’t be passed? There are no winners in politics.

Yet, strangely we are all losers.

Sports on the other hand are much clearer cut. Each game ends with a winner and a loser. Each season crowns a champion that can unequivocally say they are the best at their sport. Well, except the BCS of course.

This black/white view of sports tends to bleed into other aspects of the game as well. I love my team and hate my rival team. When we play, only one of us can be a winner, therefore there is no collective-everyone wins kind of sentiment. For me to win, he must lose. If he wins, I lose. I don’t like to lose, so anyone that causes me to lose, I don’t like. Therefore I love the players on my team and hate the players on the other team. We love and cheer on players or loathe and boo players because of some perceived kinship. I may have much more in common with a player on the Florida Gators than I do with a player on my beloved Seminoles, yet because that player is wearing the nausea-inducing blue and orange, I hate him. To the core.

But beyond the (completely justified) hatred of players on rival teams, why do we hate certain other players?

If you ask me (and probably a large percentage of other football fans) to name the one player in each of college football and the NFL that I hate the most, I would immediately reply Tim Tebow in college and Brett Favre in the pros. But why?

While the Tim Tebow–UF connection is an obvious factor in my dislike of Tim, that can’t be the entire reason. There have been other Gators that have been successful: Danny Wuerffel, Chris Leak, Erin Andrews. I wouldn’t say I liked them but don’t feel an all-consuming disdain for them like I do for Timmy. Ok, I do like Erin Andrews. Not enough to spy on her, for the record, but I do like her.

Favre on the other hand, I had no feelings toward at all for the vast majority of his career. I actually liked the young gunslinger thing back in the 90’s – mostly because he seemed to be an underdog taking on the Cowboy juggernaut. In fact, I cheered him on as recently as two years ago.

Looking at Brett and Tim there is only one thing that explains my current loathing of them both: the media.

One of the longest-running jokes around here is the overwhelmingly, worshipful coverage of Tebow by the media. After last year’s BCS title game the following phrases were plugged into search engines to find this site: ‘why do announcers love tebow’;  ‘fox’s fawning over tebow’;  ‘announcer crush tim tebow’;  ‘tim tebow lovefest on fox’;  ‘riley cooper tim tebow lovers’. Ok, the last one doesn’t have anything to do with my argument but it sure makes me giggle.

Announcers of UF games tend to sound more like a follower describing Charlie Manson than analysts announcing football games. The compliments can’t come fast enough. Everything done by his team is a reflection on his greatness.

If announcers were able to actually have some distance and announce with some level of objectivity, would I feel as strongly about Tim as I do? Probably not. I would recognize him as a great player and hate it when he dominates my Noles, but would I find myself unable to watch any of his games, actively cheering for turnovers and possibly injuries or trying to decipher the masturbatory habits of Gary Danielson? I sure hope not.

Favre on the other hand, is the victim of his own narcissism with a significant assist from his willing accomplices in the media. In his repeated efforts to maintain the limelight, he has found partners in the media who use his annual indecision to discuss America’s most popular sport in the quiet spring and summer. Unfortunately, this off-season infatuation for a story turns into a regular season obsession with a player that 99% of the time should not be a big story, yet seems to lead NFL Countdown every Sunday morning. Despite what the members of the media seem to think, the vast, vast majority of football fans do not need to hear about him constantly or think Brett Favre is the most important person to ever play the game (that would of course be John Elway).

This pathetic worshipping at the denim knee of Favre reached a sad new low on Sunday. In the midst of the Vikings return to Green Bay, Fox announced that they had a ‘Favre Cam’, a camera trained on Favre for every moment of the game and streamed online. Why did this seem like a good idea? How pathetic does Fox think the sport following public really is?

Remember how Natalie Maines said about George W. Bush “He makes me ashamed to be from Texas”? In somewhat the same way Fox’s Favre Cam makes me ashamed to be a football fan.

So, who do I really hate? These accomplished players who just happened to enjoy the attention and are (or were once) good at their chosen fields? Or do I hate a media that in a never-ending lust for ratings and ‘the story’ will endlessly hype a player as being more important than the game itself?

Oh, but the Yankees, Cowboys, Notre Dame and UF? I would hate them even if they don’t appear on SportsCenter for the next two years.

Achilles was an ancient Greek warrior. The son of King Peleus and the Nymph Thetis, his mother decided upon birth to make him immortal by dipping him in the River Styx. Unfortunately for him, his mother had to hold on to him and chose to grasp him by his ankles while being dipped. Thus, his ankle was sheltered from the waters of the river and remained mortal.

Naturally, in the midst of a battle during the Trojan war, an arrow struck him in his mortal ankle and he died. What is not explained by Homer in his re-telling of this story in the Illiad is how an arrow to the ankle is fatal, though obviously extremely painful (see that scene in the movie Pet Sematary and see how you react when Mr. Munster gets a scalpel to that heel from that little kid under the bed).

This ancient story has had several effects on society today. The tendon running down the back of our heel is still called the Achilles; the mere thought of the severing (or the gloriously, icky technical term ‘rupture’) of the Achilles makes grown men weak and the band Styx is now considered immortal.

One of these is not true.

It also has one other outcome, one that is a little more pertinent to our discussion today than the band that brought us Come Sail Away. A person’s or team’s weakness is often referred to as their Achilles Heel.

Watching football this weekend, I realized that all the great college and pro teams have a weakness. Whether an opponent ever exploits it or not, it is there. Keep that in mind each time they enter a battle for the rest of the season.

Let’s cover the college kids today, and return in a day or so with the pros

Florida – Even as the Gators defeat of Mississippi State this past week seemed inevitable from the opening kick-off, the fact that the worst team in the SEC (located in Starkville, the most depressing, yet accurately descriptively named college town in the country) hung with them for most of the game, demonstrated that the Gators aren’t invincible. In short, a poor offensive line has a domino-like effect on the rest of their offense. Defenses are stacking the line to shut down the inside running game that the Gators live on but unlike in previous years, they don’t have the playmakers to get open downfield. Tebow also doesn’t have the time to wait, as he is constantly scrambling and running for his life. The only offensive weapon to counteract this – the 3-step drop, rhythm passing game – seems to be as gone from Gainesville as Dan Mullen – coincidence?

Not so coincidentally this also exposed Tebow’s biggest weakness – his inability to let a play go and live to play another day. Having so much success for so long, Tebow refuses to give up on a play, scrambling from rushers, forcing passes, etc. This ends up leading to the occasional Gary Danielson pants-wetting play but it also leads to turnovers. The really great quarterbacks get rid of the ball and turn a 10 yard sack into an incompletion rather than a 100-yard interception for a touchdown.

Apparently when Tebow was dunked in the River Styx he was held by his brain.  

Alabama – Much like their SEC compatriots down in Gainesville, the Tide’s weakness rests on the offensive side. Frankly, they have an inexperienced quarterback and don’t seem to be able to pass the ball effectively. As defenses increasingly shut down Mark Ingram running the ball, the pressure comes on Greg McElroy to move the chains with his arm. With blanket coverage on He-man Julio Jones can he do that? Against a mediocre Tennessee team, he certainly didn’t. How will he do against LSU and Florida?

Sidenote: A quick tangent. When did a 40+ yard field goal become a gimme? A week after the Vikings nearly blew a game by trying to run out the clock to kick a 40-yard field goal with 2 minutes to play. This week, Tennessee gets to around the 30 yard line with over 30 seconds left and rather than taking a couple shots to shorten the field goal attempt for their shaky kicker (who already had a blocked FG and a missed 47-yarder on the day), they just stood around and let the clock run. Why? Contrast that with Clemson who was in the exact same situation 30 minutes later. The tigers kept the momentum going and got down to the 10-yard line for real gimme field goal that propelled them to OT where they beat THE U. Hey Lane Kiffin, why don’t you shut up whining to the media for a moment or two and realize your conservative, idiotic coaching was what cost your team the game.

Texas – I know Texas won convincingly this week, so I will go back to the OU game. As they are starting to find a consistent running game, the field should get opened up for Colt McCoy and his BFF Jordan Shipley to start completing more passes downfield. But, Texas has another problem – sloppiness. The Horns are plagued by turnovers and penalties. There are only so many weeks when you can overcome your own mistakes through sheer talent. UF almost lost at home to Arkansas due to turnovers – if the Horns start Plaxico-ing themselves with penalties and turnovers can they overcome them (for example) at a hostile Oklahoma State stadium?

Iowa – While I was cheering on the Hawkeyes and am thrilled that the ‘Autumn of the Shadow’ continues unabated, their performance at Michigan State certainly raised some concerns. I saw the Hawkeyes get inside the 10-yard line on 3 separate occasions. A combination of Pat Buchanan-esque play calling and poor run blocking kept them out of the end zone on 9 of 10 plays. Luckily, they were outside the 5-yard line on that final game winning drive so they were forced to think beyond the “does the back go over the left or right guard?” play-calling that plagued their other two drives earlier in the 4^th quarter.

USC – USC is the most talented team in the country. When they are playing at their best, they are pretty much unbeatable – as they have been for the last several years. Unfortunately, they just don’t play at their best all that often. They seem to believe that opponents cower at the mere sight of the little dude on their helmets, rather than snickering at jokes about Trojans. In the last two weeks, they have squandered at least a 20-point lead in the second half before barely hanging on to win against lesser teams. If Pete Carroll could get his team motivated to play an entire game every week we could be looking a team that is on a John Wooden like run of national titles. Instead every year we have the same conversation: during the season we will wonder which week the Trojans will forget to show up and get shocked by a middle of the pack Pac-10 team and then come Bowl time we will loudly proclaim the Trojans as probably the best team in the country. Much is made of Pete Carroll’s laid-back California style, but no one ever asks if it is too laid-back. A coach instilling some discipline might have actually won more than 1 national title with the talent he has on hand every year.

As for the other contenders (Boise State, TCU, Cincinnati), they all have the same fatal flaw – a disrespected and underachieving conference. I don’t care how good they may appear on the field when you are playing the equivalent of Triple-A each week (or single-A in the case of Boise State’s embarrassing schedule), you don’t get much respect from SEC-brain washed pollsters.

Is it really fair to call a schedule of cream puffs a team’s Achilles heel? I am sure Achilles himself would have preferred a slightly lesser opponent back in the day.

Typically on a fall weekend in Colorado when someone discusses the radical differences between Saturday and Sunday, the topic is the weather. However, the same could be said of the football games played this weekend. On Saturday, almost universally the top teams played poorly against average competition and barely held on for a number of un-inspired wins. On Sunday, the best teams made statements, while the pretenders showed their Achilles heel. Let’s jump right into comments and observations from each day as I am sure I will come back later this week with a special Monday Night Football discussion of tonight’s Broncos/Chargers game. Though, unlike Jon Gruden I may actually say something negative about someone.

The biggest early game of Saturday should come with an asterisk, sort of like A-Rod’s career.  Actually isn’t it interesting that now that A-Rod is off the roids (presumably) he is coming through in October? Maybe all that talk about roids shrinking someone’s balls is true.

Anyway the Texas’s win over OU should come with an asterisk for two reasons. The first is that UT played poorly and really didn’t deserve to win the game. The second is that OU still could have won even with Sam Bradford getting hurt once again early in the game. You know it is a bad game when it could be argued that the healthy winning quarterback of the game did more damage to his Heisman chances than the injured losing quarterback.

The most interesting thing to me is the impact of losing Bradford. If you had asked me before the season, which of the big three teams could best withstand the loss of their quarterback I would have said OU, with all of the talent around Bradford and the history of success with mediocre quarterbacks (insert Jason White joke here). But if you compare OU to UF last weekend in Baton Rouge the difference is stark. Where UF could use an impaired Tebow as a decoy for the entire first half and let other players carry the weight of the game, without Bradford OU looks lost. Especially with an offensive line that blocks only slightly better SPF -8 and wide receivers incapable of getting open against the UT secondary.

With UT failing to impress, Nebraska getting trounced by Texas Tech and KU losing to the embarrassment that is CU football, the real question is whether any Big 12 team deserves to get to the BCS title game? Last year, after a season in which the Big 12 was touted (at least by me) as being as strong as the SEC, their performance was exposed in the bowls. This year from top to bottom they look even more mediocre. Really at this point, can anyone definitively say that the Big 12 is better than the ACC? Virginia Tech beat Nebraska, Miami beat Oklahoma. The only difference between the two if you ask me is that the ACC is deeper and the Big Twelve has a better PR department.

Moving on to the mid-afternoon games, we had UF survive their annual ‘lose a home game to a lesser SEC team’ scare. In fact, no one should have been surprised by Saturday’s game, here is what one leading football writer said in the pre-season:

While it is true that UF’s schedule is only slightly more difficult than SMU’s, everyone should remember that UF has the bad habit of taking off one Saturday each season – unfortunately not during their bye week. The obvious candidate would be at LSU. I would point out that their slip-ups tend to occur in the Swamp but the Gators home schedule is a joke. FSU may be the only legitimate team coming into the Swamp and not even the kids who he circumcised think Tebow is going to lose his final home game to a rival. Really, the only other team coming into the Swamp that could surprise would be Arkansas but I did some research and they are still coached by Bobby Petrino.

Yes, I am once again, quoting myself. What can I say, that guy is really smart. Other than that comment about FSU being a legitimate team of course.

A sidenote before actually discussing the game. Has anyone else noticed  that no UF commercials ever mention whether the school is any good? Whether it was that ridiculous “Go Gator” commercial or the new “When did you become a gator” commercial, they never discuss anything any Gator has ever accomplished other than making the rest of the world hate them for their undeserved feeling of superiority. Unless jean shorts and mullets really do make you better than the rest of us.

In the game itself, how bad was the reffing on the 4^th quarter drive when UF scored a TD to tie it up? There were two such blatantly bad calls on Arkansas that even head Gator cheerleader Gary Danielson (the man who forced me to devise the phrase ‘unzip for easier access’ to describe his analysis of Tebow) was disgusted by it. Apparently the SEC commish is as convinced as the Pollsters that UF is the best team in the country and will do anything he can to get them to the title game.

Unfortunately for Arkansas after settling for field goals (and missed field goal attempts) after too many bad throws in the red zone, there was never a doubt who would win this game after the final missed field goal. Seriously, the Razorbacks should have just headed for the buses and beat the traffic because there was no doubt that Tebow, his girlfriend Riley Cooper (and his blatant but never called offensive pass interference game plan) and the Gators were going to score.

In the pro game on Sunday, for the most part the real contenders showed who they were. The much-hyped Saints/Giants game was over before the second commercial break. When your team relies on strong defense and a running game and neither show up, it is going to be a long day. I haven’t seen wide receivers run that wide open since the last FSU game.

Up in Foxborough, the Titans appeared to give up the moment the first snow flake hit the ground. I know they were good last year, but that team is done. Jeff Fisher is a great coach but sort of like the Broncos of last year, the organization needs a good shaking up.

Really, there were only two really good games all day – and no Jets/Buffalo fans that ugly display was not one of them.

First in Minnesota, we had the highly strategic game plan I like to call Brett Favre and the hail mary offense. Once again we will hear endlessly about Favre, without noting he basically blindly chucked a ball 40 yards downfield and his receiver made a great play to catch it.

The more interesting part was what occurred after that catch. Brad Childress ran the ball three times to burn some clock and position the team for a field goal. A good plan with 30 seconds remaining. Not so good when you are lining up for the field goal (to only take a 2 point lead no less) at the two minute warning. Sure enough, after the made field goal the Ravens marched right down the field and had their own game winning field goal attempt. Only a horribly shank on that kick will keep Childress from being ridiculed for his horrendous game strategy.

Humorously, this all demonstrated how sometimes fans are smarter than coaches or their more conservative brethren in the announcing booth. Dan Dierdorf couldn’t understand at all why the Vikings fans were booing the runs up the middle. He laughed about the runs being good strategy to burn an extra few seconds that an incomplete pass would save. True Dan. If you choose to ignore that those precious seconds left over two minutes and only gave the Vikings a lead that wouldn’t hold up to a made field goal. The fans were right, you have to keep going for a touchdown or at least a first down to burn more clock. Childress is trying to keep his job by coaching like he wears a skirt. What is your excuse Dan?

Also, did you catch Favre’s reaction after the missed Raven field goal? He had to ask Tavares Jackson whether they made it. Boy, that is leadership! A quarterback who doesn’t even care enough about whether the team wins or loses to try and watch a potential game-losing field goal.

Between, Favre’s interest in only furthering his legend and Childress’s incompetence I am very excited for the Vikings to be the high-seed who gets beaten at home by a wild-card team this year.

Our nightcap featured two under the radar one-loss teams in the Bears and Falcons. I could take this time to gloat over Jay Cutler’s second failure in a nationally televised game (6 interceptions and 2 losses on Sunday nights this year) but I will not.

Instead I will note that every Bronco fan in the country was 98% sure Cutler would throw a pick on that final drive. So, from that perspective his game ending incomplete pass into quadruple coverage actually may have been a sign of maturity. Good sign Bears fans!

In a completely unrelated note through five games, Kyle Orton has thrown one interception– a meaningless pick on a hail mary at the end of the first half against the Patriots.

Actually, a real time update on Orton’s stats. 6 weeks, 1 interception, 6 wins.  I still need a couple days to process yet another shocking Bronco win, so we will pick up here next time.