By
Dave
Hershorin
November 21, 2006
The
game of the year lived up to all of the hype, didn’t
it? I mean, that was a toe-to-toe slugfest that was
up for grabs until the end. The Buckeyes won the running
battle (187 yds vs. 130) and were a hair ahead most
of the last three quarters. Michigan converted two of
OSU’s three turnovers for 10 points, but even
winning the TO battle 3-0 didn’t mean winning
this classic. It was Jim Tressel’s fifth win in
six tries against Lloyd Carr. Who didn’t think
that the spirit of Bo Schembechler could possibly guide
the Wolverines to an uplifting upset in Columbus after
he passed Friday, the day before the game? It seemed
like a fairy tale scenario for this to take place, and
Michigan scoring right off the bat must have woken the
snoozing Buckeyes as they then reeled off 21 straight
points after that. Senior QB Troy Smith shored up the
Heisman by going 29-of-41 for 316 yards and four TDs,
his first 300+ effort of the season. He has
always saved his best for Michigan. Smith was
sacked only once and threw his fifth interception of
the year, but he also has 30 TD passes to offset that
modest INT total. Let me be the first to tell anyone
who has been living under a stump somewhere for the
past 12 weeks that Troy Smith has been such a rock of
consistency and has run the Buckeye offense with the
precision a senior should have by now. Troy goes out
3-0 against UM, and he leads OSU to three-straight against
UM for the first time since 1960-63. Ted Ginn had eight
catches, but it was junior Antonio Pittman and freshman
Chris Wells that gashed the Wolverines for a combined
195 rushing yards after UM’s then-No.1 rushing
D had been allowing an average of under 30 yards per
game (now they rank second to Texas by one yard per
game). The Wolverines played too many in the box, which
allowed Wells to get a 52-yard TD run in the second
and Pittman a 56-yarder for six in the third. But, regardless
of how many big shots each landed, what concerns me
is how much this game reminded me of the Louisville-WVU
game – no defense!!! The two team combined
for 900 yards (503 for OSU and 397 for UM) and 81 points,
making one wonder what a solid defensive team could
do against them. OSU was held under 30 by three teams
– Texas (24), Penn State (28) and Illinois (17)
– and isn’t a lock in any way in the BCS
national championship game in Glendale, no matter who
proves to gain the second spot. Ohio State hadn’t
won an outright Big Ten title since 1984, and this is
their 31st overall. Ohio State (12-0, 8-0) has the nation’s
longest winning streak with 19 games, which constitutes
the second longest winning streak in school history
(the longest was 22 games from 1967-1969, broken by
Michigan 24-12 in the classic second epic battle of
the Hayes-Schembechler 10-year war). The Buckeyes have
a 12-game home winning streak as well as a 14-game steak
in the conference and have scored at least one TD in
125 straight games. When any No.1 team has played the
No.2 team, the No.1 holds a 23-13-2 edge in those 38
instances. OSU will get its third No.2 opponent of 2006-07
in the big finale, and they will set a single-season
record by doing so. And the latest polls have not seen
Michigan fall one single notch!!! The rematch everyone
has been trying to avoid may just loom. I think the
Wolverines need to fall a few more places, no matter
how much respect pollsters are giving them for playing
OSU so tight. A second meeting is unfair to the other
one-loss teams that deserve their shot, as well as the
Buckeyes. Michigan had their shot and missed, and should
fall to somewhere around 5th. UM could then still rise
back up if/as each one-loss team falls again before
2006 closes out, but to stay No.2 is not cool and cries
for a better system to be found so as to avoid the profit-making
entities from promoting such a redundancy for profit’s
sake.
Wisconsin
has quietly crept up to the No.8 spot in the latest
BCS poll. These Badgers finished 11-1, but not
much is to be made of their prowess with non-cons like
Buffalo and Western Illinois defining a pedestrian
schedule. No Ohio State meant their only blemish came
in a 27-13 drubbing at Ann Arbor. Wisconsin will wait
to see how the rest of the country does in some key
matchups before allowing hope to make any BCS promises.
They will be rooting for Southern Cal and LSU this weekend,
to be sure.
What
else is to be made of Michigan not slipping even one
slot in the BCS standings? Southern Cal is definitely
now in the spotlight against Notre Dame. The Trojans
will have to win big to convince enough of the computer
polls that they deserve the second spot, something that
the human polls already realize. I figure USC has to
win by at least four TDs to overcome the .0075 deficit
presently separating them from the Wolverines. Michigan
already beat the Irish 47-21 in South Bend, ergo the
needed point spread to convince pollsters. Pete Carroll
& Co. proved they are the best in the west by beating
Cal, the only other team that had a shot at the Pac
Ten title, 23-9 in Los Angeles. Cal hasn’t worn
the conference crown since 1958, and they gave three
quarter’s worth of resistance to keep USC from
their fifth-straight automatic BCS bid (first team to
win five in a row). Ahead 9-6 at the break and tied
9-9 after three, Cal was held to 111 second half yards,
18 yards on four of their six possessions, and lost
the last 30 minutes 17-0. Southern Cal has a much more
impressive array of non-cons than Michigan, having
beaten Nebraska and Arkansas (in Fayetteville) while
Michigan has handled Central Michigan and Vandy, but
struggled to beat Ball State. This may just
wind up being one of those years when injustice prevails
enough so that we inch closer to a playoff in some of
the chancellors’ minds. Just like in politics,
things often have to mess up going one way so that we
finally see the light to embrace another way, and only
the BCS not working like a charm will eventually push
us into a needed playoff system.
LSU
and Arkansas will play out their big rivalry this Friday.
It won’t be for a spot in the SEC title game,
for the Hogs already have that sewn up and face Florida
December 2nd in Atlanta. But it could be part of a sequence
of results that lands another SEC team in the BCS. SEC
teams have pretty much beaten each other up in their
round-robin action, with the UA-UF winner likely getting
the conference’s only spot in the BCS. So Arkansas
has to win against the Bayou Bengals and then play a
close one with the Gators for neither team to dip far
enough in the polls (ala Michigan this past weekend)
so as to be out of the final BCS tally. Florida and
Arkansas also have to hope Notre Dame loses to take
their at-large spot away, for Michigan already
seems to have one of the four at-larges, as does Boise
State. No.8 Wisconsin and No.9 Louisville are
primed for the UA-UF loser to drop below them, hence
the need for the SEC finale to be a close, well played
contest and for the Razorbacks to win this weekend.
The jockeying won’t end until the first weekend
in December, so keep your eyes on the prize as you follow
along at home.
Rutgers
had its bubble burst in Cincinnati Saturday by losing
30-11 to the upset-minded Bearcats. The Scarlet Knights
were trying to set up a winner-goes-to-the-BCS scenario
for their game with West Virginia, and that can still
be true if Rutgers can beat the Mountaineers and then
find themselves ahead of Louisville in the final regular
season BCS poll. But losing to Cincinnati was the one
thing that now gives pollsters an excuse to keep these
New Jersey upstarts out of the 10-team BCS hierarchy.
No.6 heading into Cincy, Rutgers was outplayed
on both sides of the ball. The Bearcats turned
four INTs into 13 points while holding Rutgers to only
three points after they had committed their three fumbles.
So now, even in the case that Rutgers wins out, they
will still have one conference loss and will then be
in a tie with Louisville (who they beat 28-25) atop
the Big East. The tie-breaker will be which team is
ranked higher in the BCS, most likely ushering in the
Redbirds and keeping the flash-in-the-pan Scarlet Knights
out of position for an at-large bid. If WVU wins this
season-ender, the Mountaineers would get the automatic
Big East birth over Louisville since they are ranked
higher, even though UL beat WVU. This time, the computers
seem to get it right – all six have one-loss Louisville
ranked higher than one-loss West Virginia, while the
Cardinals trail the Mountaineers in both the Harris
Interactive and USA Today/Coaches polls. What
in the world are some of these pollsters smoking to
not have Louisville ranked higher…did they somehow
miss the November 4th nationally televised Thursday
night tilt? What could possibly justify one team claiming
to be better than another more than a head-to-head result?
Both UL and WVU lost to a team that had previously been
undefeated, so the transparency of any other reasoning
falls to the wayside against the logic listed here.
As listed in the above-paragraph, sometimes the pendulum
has to swing far to one illogical side before prevailing
fairness is then applied to make it swing back the other
way. It is just too bad – especially for deserving
teams like Rutgers and Louisville – that their
efforts are not deemed worthy due to archaic systems
of thought and, moreover, idiotic pollsters.
With
little implications towards the BCS other than their
one guaranteed spot, the ACC took another step towards
straightening out who will be its representative come
January. The high-octane showdown between Maryland and
BC played itself out, revealing the Terps as wanna-be’s
in their 38-16 loss to the Eagles. Boston College now
looks to Maryland to beat Wake Forest while BC has to
go into Coral Gables to face the surprisingly marginal
Hurricanes. Boston has to win, of course, and hope that
the Terps can pull it out over the Demon Deacons so
that the Eagles will wind up in the ACC title game against
Georgia Tech. BC hasn’t beaten their former
Big East brethren in 15 tries, since they went down
south for a 47-45 win in 1984, when both were independents.
And with only three total wins ever against the Canes,
this down year for them seems a perfect opportunity
for the Eagles to make it four. WF has dropped seven
straight to the Terps, so hopefully last Saturday’s
27-6 wakeup call against Virginia Tech will have them
ready for UM this time. Wake held their destiny in their
own hands going into the home tilt with the Hokies,
but they can still pull it out with a win this week.
The Ramblin’ Wreck goes into Athens to face a
UGA team strife with inconsistencies and question marks,
and without a win against their in-state rivals since
2000, this year seems ripe for senior GT QB Reggie Ball
to finally earn this important stripe. The No.16 Yellow
Jackets are at the top of a four-team log jam in the
AP featuring two-loss ACC squads ranked 16th to 21st.
This will mark the third consecutive year that the ACC
has failed to produce one of the nation’s elite
teams. Clemson might have been in the top 10, but, like
in the SEC, all of the top teams in this conference
showed too much parity in beating each other so that
the monkeys remain in the barrel clawing at
each other. With the Canes sitting 5-6 and
the Noles 6-5 – both unranked - and Virginia Tech
an unthreatening No.17, it may be a few more years until
this conference can get back to being top-heavy in the
national scene. Trivia Question –
When was the last time FSU, Miami and Virginia Tech
all failed to finish in the top 20 of the AP Poll? And
when was the last year all of them finished with losing
records? -see answers below-
The
only other BCS conference still uncertain as to who
gets its automatic bid is the Big 12. Texas collides
with in-state nemesis Texas A&M at home while Oklahoma
faces State in Stillwater to decide who plays the Cornhuskers
for the league title. Only a Sooner win coupled with
a Longhorn loss sends OU to the title game against Nebraska
in Kansas City December 2nd. This possibility was all
set up courtesy of Kansas State edging Texas 45-42 two
weeks ago. Kansas then won their in-state rivalry with
KSU 39-20 this past weekend, taking any elite luster
off of Texas’ claim of belonging in the BCS sans
a conference title. Texas has beaten A&M dating
back to last millennium (11/26/99 produced 20-16 Aggie
win at College Station). Like the ACC, the Big 12’s
best all seemed to beat each other just enough to keep
all one step away from national prominence. Whether
it’s Nebraska, Oklahoma or Texas in the BCS with
the conference’s automatic bid, the Big
12 still offers no pushover for a top five team in a
major bowl.
Lagniappe
Florida-Florida
State used to hold more suspense, but this weekend’s
game stands out only for the No.4 Gators, due to how
bad they have to win to keep any hopes of a national
championship alive. FSU can obviously play bigtime spoiler.
The Noles are 6-5 in the last ten years (they played
twice in 1996), but Urban Meyer is 1-0 so far in this
rivalry and he finds a 6-5 FSU squad searching
for consistency on offense ready to be lit up…Auburn
won the fifth Iron Bowl in a row 22-15 in Tuscaloosa
(6-0 all-time there), matching their longest streak
in series history (1954-58). Bama now leads the overall
tally 38-32-1. The Tigers are 62-4 under Tommy Tuberville
when scoring 20 points or more…LSU scored what
seemed like the go ahead TD with :14 seconds left only
to have the extra point blocked, keeping the score with
Mississippi level at 20 and headed to OT. The Tiger
D caused a fumble on Mississippi’s first OT possession,
and then LSU relied on a 26 yard FG to survive…West
Virginia ran for 371 of its 438 rushing yards in the
second half of their 45-27 romp in Pittsburgh. WVU went
in at the half down 27-24, but then it all came together
as they won the second half 21-0…Miami
had never lost to Virginia before last weekend’s
17-7 result…Northern Illinois senior
Garrett Wolfe broke out of his slump just in time to
keep WVU sophomore Steve Slaton at bay for the I-A rushing
title. Wolfe ran for 203 yards on 33 carries to help
carry NIU to a 31-10 win against Central Michigan. Slaton
had 215 yards on 23 carries (130 receiving yards) in
the ‘Backyard Brawl’. Wolfe runs for 157.82
ypg while Slaton earns 157.80 ypg…Six of the top
ten I-A rushers are underclassmen – four sophomores
and two freshmen…Hawai’i has scored 75 TDs
this season, and they are approaching the single season
record of 89 which Nebraska set in 1983. That was in
12 games, though Army set the ‘per game’
record of 8.2 when they had 74 in nine games in 1947.
The Warriors score 6.8 TDs per game through their first
11, the fairest way to measure such records when different
numbers of games have been played…Virginia Tech
has allowed only 11 TDs so far in their 11 games. OSU
had allowed only nine TDs in 11 games before allowing
five to Michigan…Trivia answers–
1978 was the last time Virginia Tech, Miami and FSU
all failed to finish in the AP Top 20. 1973 was the
last time they all had losing records in the same year.
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