This past weekend of college football was probably one of the more chaotic weeks in the last few years. Not only were there several upsets across the country, there was also a plethora of upsets across the SEC Eastern division, and it gives fuel to the idea that the SEC is the best conference in the game — although Bill Connell and F/+ disagree. These upsets mean that the predictions of many people were thrown into chaos; and one of the victims was our own Arthur Wilson. Arthur’s prediction record now stands at 24-21, and he stays above .500 for another week…but just barely.
THEY ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE
Clemson Tigers: Clemson has struggled in big games the last few seasons, and it has led to the school getting its own moniker on Urban Dictionary; this moniker is “Clemsoning”:
“The act of delivering an inexplicably disappointing performance, usually within the context of a college football season.”-Urban Dictionary
This moniker was confirmed in week eight as Florida State — ranked No. 5 by the Coaches Poll coming into the game — boat-raced the Clemson 51-14. The Seminoles put up 565 yards of offense on 73 plays (that’s good for 7.7 yards per play); the ‘Noles also forced four turnovers that kept the Tiger’s offense from doing much of anything.
Arthur had Clemson winning this game; he choose poorly.
Florida Gators: The Gators have earned a reputation of offensive futility under Will Muschamp, and their last two games have only confirmed against the Tigers on Saturday. Florida only put up 151 yards of total offense, that’s a putrid level of offensive output and it looks even worse when you compare it against the 500 yards of offense that Missouri put up. Missouri also ran more plays than the Gators — the Tigers ran 73 plays compared to the 60 plays that Florida ran. Missouri won the game 36-17.
Arthur had Missouri winning this game; he choose wisely.
RECOVERING FROM AN UPSET
Stanford Cardinal: Stanford’s loss to Utah crushed any hopes that Stanford had of a national championship; but it didn’t hurt the Cardinals conference championship chances. To have a shot at winning a conference title, Stanford had to beat UCLA in Palo Alto. And boy did the Cardinal show that they aren’t dead yet; Stanford had more total yards (419-266) and it forced more turnovers (2-1) than the Bruins. The Cardinals won 24-10.
Arthur had Stanford winning this game; he choose wisely.
Tim’s Computer Rankings
For those of you who missed the radio show on Monday, we interviewed Tim Stewart of Football Computer Rankings. It is on this site that Tim uses a secret formula to rank the top-40 college football teams; now in the interview we did with him, he did not give away his exact formula but he did go into some great detail about the factors that go into his formula — he actually went into a lot more detail than he does on his own blog.
To me his rankings, and the factors he uses, make sense; and I am going to add his top-25 to this post every week.
- Florida State
- Alabama
- Oregon
- Ohio State
- Baylor
- Texas Tech
- Missouri
- Miami (Fl.)
- Northern Illinois
- Stanford
- Oregon State
- Oklahoma State
- Virginia Tech
- Fresno State
- Wisconsin
- Michigan
- Auburn
- Michigan State
- UCLA
- Nebraska
- Clemson
- UCF
- Texas
- Louisville
- Notre Dame and Arizona State
We should have the full interview up on next Monday (technical issues in the studio), and it will be posted at the end of the week nine round-up.
Categories: NCAA Football
Particularly after this weekend, we SEC fans are left speechless.
We can’t help but wonder if this isn’t the year we’re finally knocked from our perch.
If it doesn’t happen this year, it’ll happen sometime during the playoffs.