College Football Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous college football thoughts and observations.

Week three in college football always seems to bring some big surprises and this year was no exception. The biggest surprise was of course USC getting beat by Washington. This was the 4th year in a row that USC was beaten by an unranked team. Two things about this game - first I hope that blame is not put solely on the shoulders of QB Aaron Corp. If freshman QB Matt Barkley comes back and leads USC to wins the rest of the way then Corp will be a target but it will be unfair. The whole team lost yesterday - not just the QB. Secondly, you have to wonder how this will effect Ohio State. It will be tough for voters to rank Ohio State ahead of USC for the rest of the way enabling maybe some lesser talented one-loss teams to leapfrog the Buckeyes in the rankings... Maybe the biggest winner of the weekend was Miami. First they dismantle 14th ranked Georgia Tech and then a team they beat - Florida State - dismantled number 7 BYU. Number 20 Miami will be sure to jump a number of spots in the rankings after the results of the past few days but the question is how many? The BYU loss causes a rankings conundrum. Oklahoma lost to BYU and is ranked 12th. Logic would seem to dictate that Miami be ranked higher with the thinking of Miami beat FSU, FSU beat BYU and BYU beat Oklahoma. But since when did logic and the NCAA ever really go together?... Notre Dame won yesterday but they did not cover the spread. Even with the win - many fans jumped off the Fighting Irish bandwagon. I know that Charlie Weis doesn't set the spread but his job nonetheless is to cover it (no I'm not bitter - much)... At gametime - Army was an 8.5 favorite over a fellow 1-A competitor Ball State. When was the last time Army was favored by that many points? With Army and Air Force victories yesterday - the service academies are now a combined 5-4 on the season. Good for them...