The Sports Curmudgeon®

This is the Highway Patrol version of Mythical Picks. Therefore, I dedicate this week’s efforts to the late Broderick Crawford and his role as “Chief” Dan Matthews.

Division III Linfield College took a positive step toward their 54th consecutive winning record in football last weekend. Linfield had to go to OT to take down a win over Southern Oregon by a score of 14-7. That gives Linfield a record of 1-1 for the year with Northwest Conference rival Menlo College paying a visit to McMinniville, Oregon this weekend`. Menlo has played 4 games this season; after losing their first three, they won last week over Whittier College by a score of 38-20. It is Family Weekend for Linfield; they can use a win to make the parents of their student body happy; they can use a win as a step toward the five wins they need this year to earn another winning record. Go Wildcats…

No one should use any information herein to influence any decision he/she may make regarding the placing of a wager on a college football game or on which side of said game to place that wager. Only a dumb person would do that - - a person dumb enough to date a girl named Sarah Bellum because you think she’s smart.

General Comments:

I mentioned the USC debacle against Oregon State in “Tuesdays With The Sorries” earlier this week but that performance was so bad it bears mentioning again. Many teams spend a lot of time mastering the art of “winning the big games”; USC seems to do that better than most teams. What USC has done in the past several years is far more notorious; USC seems to have mastered the art of “losing the little games”.

This year, it was Oregon State as a 24-point dog. Last year, it was Stanford as a 41-point dog. The year before that, it was Oregon State again. Back in 2003, they lost to a really mediocre Cal team. That loss in 2003 knocked them out of the BCS Championship Game but USC claimed “half” of the national championship because one of the polls ranked them first. But they couldn’t beat Cal that year.

In all the time that Pete Carroll has been at USC, he has only lost 15 games and those losses have come by a total of only 65 points. But last weekend, the Trojans not only played with little fire/energy, they also found themselves being pushed around by an Oregon State team that could barely make a dent in the Penn State defense just two weeks before. Coming into the Oregon State game, USC had given up only 5 points per game this year and had allowed an average of only 52 yards rushing per game. Then the Beavers lit them up…

It is too early to write USC out of the BCS Championship picture just yet and if you want to channel Oliver Stone, there is good reason for the BCS folks to consider putting USC in the Championship Game should they win out from here. Here is the scenario:

USC wins out and is PAC-10 champion. Oregon State will lose somewhere along the way.

Ohio State wins out and is the Big 10 champion.

Ohio State can’t go to the Championship game with one loss – a stomping by USC – if USC only has one loss.

If neither USC nor Ohio State goes to the Championship game under this scenario, the Rose Bowl gets those two teams as a rematch - - and who really wants to see that?

Channeling Arte Johnson from Laugh In here: “Verrry interesting…”

On the other hand, if USC is the PAC-10 champion and the Rose Bowl loses them to the BCS Championship Game, then the Rose Bowl cannot take another PAC 10 team unless that second PAC-10 team is ranked in the top 14 in the country. That does not look probable at the moment so the Rose Bowl would have to find an at-large team to play there. Here is where a BCS party crasher could make hay. Potential candidates could be:

BYU: They play Utah on Nov 22.

Utah: They play Oregon State and then BYU on Nov 22.

Boise State: They’ve done it before

Ball State: The Rose Bowl Committee would rather lick a mouse.

Tulsa: Hard to see a Golden Hurricane blowing into Pasadena, right?

Fresno State: Even with one loss, they could be the pick and wouldn’t that be a treat to see the fanatic Fresno fans at the game.

For all football fans in Ohio and in Big 10 country, please remember that so long as USC and Ohio State have one loss apiece, Ohio State must – as in has to be – ranked at least one notch below – as in lower than – USC. Remember the score was USC 35 and Ohio State 3; it was not a nail biter.

One other news item with a USC flavor needs consideration here. They have a recruit named Maurice Simmons who will have to delay his USC career for a while because he was sentenced to four years in the hoosegow for robbery and assault with a firearm. No, I’m not going to make any commentary here about recruiting goons and thugs as opposed to student-athletes. We know that top-shelf football programs do not recruit a preponderance of student-athletes. I have a hypothetical question to pose here:

If Maurice Simmons spends three years in jail and is then let out for good behavior in prison, would those three years count as the three years after his high school class graduated to allow him to enter the NFL Draft?

By the way, for all of the news media who claim to adhere to lofty ideals of journalistic ethics, I want them to cease and desist any mention of the Associated Press College Football Poll. Remember, true journalism occurs when a news organization reports the news and not when a news organization makes the news. The AP Poll makes news when anyone else reports it. More to the point, the AP Poll makes news the way a gossip column makes news; it throws out irrelevant information for people to argue about. The only polls worth reporting are the Coaches Poll and the Harris Poll - - not because these polls have any greater insight than the AP Poll does but because those two polls are part of the BCS calculations and therefore they actually mean something. The AP Poll is irrelevant at best; its greatest success is in calling attention to the Associated Press.

A columnist for the Daily Gamecock suggested that South Carolina fire Steve Spurrier. Here is a seminal piece of his argumentation:

“With Spurrier’s coaching talent a thing of the past, all the University of South Carolina has been left with is a greedy, arrogant old man to whom they owe nearly $2 million each season.

“If the Gamecocks are going to win an SEC championship, they are going to have to do it under the leadership of a coach other than Steve Spurrier.”

Once again, let’s not get bogged down in the details of Steve Spurrier’s coaching talents (well above average) or his degree of arrogance (well above average). Allow me to point out that there is a false premise in this argument, which could render everything here moot. The Gamecocks are not going to win an SEC Championship.

The losses by Florida and Georgia last week were not happy times for either team or school, but the losses were not devastating - - if either team can win out the rest of the season. That would put one of those teams in the SEC Championship Game and the winner of that game will definitely be part of the BCS bowl mix and will also get serious consideration for a berth in the Championship Game.

Georgia wore black uniforms for the game with Alabama. Well, that surely did not intimidate or confuse the Alabama players even a little bit. In fact, it might have juiced them up a notch because at one point the score was Alabama 31 Georgia 0.

Some Tennessee fans are calling for Phil Fulmer’s head on a plate. He is certainly not the best coach in the country but he is hardly the worst either. Tennessee just isn’t that good this year. They have a win over UAB (one of my SHOE tournament possibilities) and losses to UCLA, Florida and Auburn. They gain less than 350 yards per game this year and seem unable to get any kind of consistent pass attack going. At the same time, Fulmer has won more than 75% of his games at Tennessee, one national championship, two SEC championships and he has had Tennessee among the top 25 teams in the country for most of the last two decades. Allow me to go alliterative here for a moment but these are tough times in Tennessee today…

The SEC teams have been cannibalizing each other; the Big-12 teams have yet to start doing that. That’s partly why you see so many high-ranking Big-12 teams today. It is the year of the QB in the Big-12 and I only want to mention one here. Colt McCoy at Texas has completed 80 passes out of 100 attempts. Ladies and gentlemen, that is what one might expect in the situation where there are no defenders on the field at all in a practice setting. McCoy has done this in actual games against defenders who have measurable metabolic rates. Wow!

The SHOEs:

Going to the bottom of the Division 1-A barrel, we find some name schools that are plummeting down toward consideration for the mythical SHOE (Steaming Heap Of Excrement) tournament at the end of the season. Washington State, Syracuse and Virginia are in free-fall. Do not be surprised to see at least one of them in the bracket of eight schools in the mythical SHOE tournament. Syracuse led Pitt after three quarters and then took gas; UVA lost to Duke 31-3; Washington State lost to Oregon 63-14.

The University of Central Florida is now on the radar despite their being conference champs last year. UTEP was on the radar as a SHOE team, but they just dismantled UCF last week by 45 points. UTEP can still be seen on radar - - but it is now on the over-the-horizon radar; UCF is coming into much better focus at the moment.

SMU lost to Tulane. Like UTEP, Tulane was on the radar as a SHOE team; like UTEP they now recede a bit into the distance while SMU is easily in sight.

Idaho lost to San Diego State. Like UTEP and Tulane, SDSU merited watching as a SHOE team but they beat Idaho 45-17 last week to push Idaho front and center for the tournament. By the way, that game looks closer than it was because Idaho scored 14 points in the meaningless 4th quarter of that game. Idaho has now lost to two potential SHOE teams (Utah State and SDSU) and they lost their opener 70-0. I think they are a “shoe-in” to be a SHOE team…

Florida International beat Toledo last week. FIU was – and remains – a SHOE team possibility. The 19-point loss by Toledo to one of the worst offenses in the nation and to a team that had lost 26 of its last 27 games puts Toledo in the spotlight here. The Rockets have a big win over Eastern Michigan this year and they lost by one point in double OT to a good Fresno State team. Those games may allow them to dodge the SHOE tournament, but losing to FIU should make them hide their faces in shame.

The usual suspects, North Texas, Army and UAB remain in consideration.

The Ponderosa Spread Games:

Last week the favorites covered in only 2 of 6 games with Ponderosa spreads.

That brings the season’s cumulative record to 21-13-1 for favorites covering.

Cal and Texas covered last week.

LSU, South Carolina, Texas A&M and USC did not cover. USC lost outright.

This week we have 8 Ponderosa Spread games. In four of the eight games, the favorite is on the road. I don’t recall a week where half the Ponderosa games had favorites on the road - - although I’m sure it has happened before:

La Tech at Boise State – 24.5 (56.5): Boise State can still crash the BCS party but cannot afford any losses along the way to teams without any “juice” such as La Tech.

BYU – 28.5 at Utah State (60): SHOE team alert. Utah State is a bad football team and BYU is a good one. BYU has two shutouts this year against better teams than Utah State so the oddsmakers must have BYU scoring somewhere in the 50 point range to make the total 60 points. If BYU puts 50 points up, I don’t see how Utah State can stay within 28 points of them. This should be a rout from the middle of the second quarter onward.

Florida – 25 at Arkansas (57): Texas dismantled Arkansas last week. Florida can’t afford another loss. This could be a statement game for the Gators telling the pollsters to keep an eye on them. On the other hand, the statement could be, “Welcome to the SEC, Bobby Petrino.” Neither statement bodes well for Arkansas.

Oklahoma – 27 at Baylor (62): The Baylor defense is not so good. The Oklahoma offense is very good. The problem with taking OU in this game is that they might be looking ahead to the Texas game. With Baylor at home, they might score 21 points so I think this game might go OVER.

W. Kentucky at Va Tech – 27.5 (42.5): Va Tech scored more than 30 points against Nebraska last week on the road; they might cover the total line all by themselves this weekend.

Nevada – 25 at Idaho (68): SHOE team alert. Idaho is a bad football team. Nevada is hardly “Top 10 material” so the drama in this game is whether or not Idaho can keep the score within three-and-a-half TDs at home against mediocrity. Oh, will the Idaho cheerleaders have their new uniforms yet? That’s another important question for this game. Because some fans thought the previous unis were “inappropriate for college football audiences” the school changed them to a more demure design.

San Diego State at TCU – 25 (48.5): SDSU beat Idaho last week. Now they go on the road to take on TCU who lost to Oklahoma last week. Idaho may be the worst team in the country; Oklahoma may be the best team in the country. SDSU on the road here looks severely overmatched. This might be the blowout of the week.

Texas A&M at Oklahoma State – 25 (63.5): It has been a while since Texas A&M has been a Ponderosa underdog. Last week they were a Ponderosa favorite and did not cover against a bad Army team at home. Now they are on the road. This too could be ugly.

Games of Interest:

Rice at Tulsa – 14 (no line): Sadly, this is not one of the national games this weekend; it would be fun to watch. Rice scored 77 points last week – albeit against North Texas – and has a really good offense. Their defense is not so good. Tulsa averages 601 yards of offense a game and just under 55 points per game. If they put up a line for the total score and it is below 80, take the OVER. If the total is 85, take the OVER. This game might go into the 90s.

Pitt at USF – 13.5 (48): Pitt trailed Syracuse after three quarters last week and Syracuse stinks. Yes, the Panthers came back to win the game but USF is significantly better than Syracuse. I think USF is the class of the Big East at the moment so I’d lean toward them in this game. But that line is awfully fat. Do not bet this game.

Kentucky at Alabama – 17 (no line): This is one of the best games of the weekend matching two undefeated teams. In three of Kentucky’s four wins, their defense has allowed three points or less. Alabama showed that it is for real last week manhandling Georgia; might there be a small letdown this week? I doubt Kentucky can hold Alabama to three points but they might hold them to 20 points meaning all the Wildcats need to do to get a push is kick one field goal. I think they can do more than that so I’ll take Kentucky here with the points.

Memphis – 3.5 at UAB (57): SHOE team alert - - maybe two. Why is this game interesting? We know UAB is a SHOE team candidate and Memphis is only a field goal favorite here. Perhaps that line tells us we should be looking at Memphis as a SHOE team?

Oregon State at Utah – 12 (53): Will the real Oregon State team please stand up? I still think USC lost last week’s game to the same extent that Oregon State won it. That line looks pretty fat, doesn’t it?

Duke at Ga Tech – 14.5 (45.5): Duke is 3-1 and riding high in the ACC for now. It will come to an end this weekend against the Yellowjackets. But this is the biggest ACC game of the week - - and I know I never would have predicted that back in July.

Rutgers at West Virginia – 13.5 (45): The Mountaineers cannot afford another loss - - particularly one in conference. Rutgers only win of the year was over Morgan State. I wonder if Greg Schiano is having second thoughts about turning down offers at Michigan and Arkansas about now? I think Rutgers will lose big here and the Scarlet Knights will continue there regression to their former incarnation as the Scarlet Nightmares.

Penn State – 13 at Purdue (58): Notre Dame pushed Purdue’s defense around last week. Penn State can run the ball very well in addition to being able to pass. The part of the Penn State team that is not as good as the rest is their defensive secondary and Purdue can throw the ball. So I like this game OVER.

South Carolina at Ole Miss – 3 (43): Mississippi played a great game last week beating Florida. Have they turned the corner as a football program; are they about to re-emerge as a football powerhouse as they were in the 1960s? Or will they play down to their more normal form this week against a South Carolina defense that is better well than average. I like South Carolina with the points here.

Stanford at Notre Dame – 7.5 (49): I can’t take Notre Dame here because I really do not like that half-point hook on the full touchdown number. If I played this game I’d take it to go OVER. Neither defense scares me a bit and Stanford may just run the ball down Notre Dame’s throat for much of the day. Keep your money in your wallet.

Army at Tulane – 20 (41): SHOE team alert - - maybe two. If Tulane wins by 3 TDs here, I’ll take them off the SHOE tournament radar. Army would need an outright win just to come off the bulls-eye for that tournament.

Florida State at Miami – 3 (43.5): This used to be one of the top three games of the year in the whole country. Now it is not even the best ACC game of the weekend - - see Duke at Georgia Tech above. This rivalry has fallen into severe disrepair; the winner of this game will not vault into the top 10. The loser will sink further into the collective ennui of football fans across the nation.

Illinois at Michigan – 3 (52): I guess the oddmakers took the Michigan rally to win last weekend seriously and also took Illinois’ loss to Penn State seriously. Two weeks ago, I would have called Illinois as the favorite here by at least a field goal. Illinois will run the spread offense that Michigan is trying to incorporate so it will be interesting to see if the Michigan defense has learned to stop it by practicing against it. I don’t think so. I like Illinois here. I also see the game as a low scoring affair so I’d take this one UNDER.

SMU at UCF – 14 (56): SHOE team alert - - maybe two. UCF will need to beat definite SHOE candidate SMU by more than 2 TDs to begin to obliterate the rotting smell they acquired in losing to UTEP last week 58-13.

Auburn – 4 at Vandy (37): Auburn has an excellent defense. Auburn’s offense can’t score more than your typical eunuch. I would not be surprised to see this game wind up 12-10. I’d play it UNDER.

UConn at UNC – 6.5 (45.5): UNC is much improved this year and so is UConn. I like UNC at home here.

FIU – 7 at North Texas (57): SHOE team alert - - definitely two of them. FIU has won 2 of its last 27 games and it is a full TD favorite on the road. If you bet that game you are either a gambling addict or a dart thrower. Loser here will almost assuredly be in the SHOE tournament. The winner is not exonerated.

Washington at Arizona – 21.5 (59): Washington is winless and their starting QB is now out with an injury. And they go on the road this week. Nonetheless, with more than 3 TDs, I’d take the Huskies if you put a gun to my head and demanded a selection from me.

Oregon at USC – 16.5 (56): I have to assume that USC will play seriously this week. Even though Oregon is probably better than Oregon State, I think USC can win this game and cover here.

Ohio State – 2 at Wisconsin (44): A Wisconsin loss would eliminate them from any kind of important bowl game. Same goes for Ohio State. This is one of the best games of the weekend for just those reasons. Wisconsin is the kind of offense that Ohio State’s defense can - - and should - - hold in check. Wisconsin’s defense should be out to show that the collapse against Michigan was a singular event. I like the game UNDER.

N. Illinois at Tennessee – 16 (45): As I said above, there are some folks calling for Phil Fulmer’s head on a plate. If the Vols lose here, the cacophony will be heard in Antarctica. I think Tennessee will win, but just on a hunch I like N. Illinois with that helping of points.

Missouri – 10.5 at Nebraska (69): Nebraska had difficulty stopping the Va Tech offense last week leading me to think that Chase Daniel will run wild here. Mizzou wins and covers.

Washington State at UCLA – 17.5 (56): UCLA isn’t very good but this is “Get Well Week” in LA as a brutally bad Cougar team comes to town. Cal and Oregon went into the 60s against WSU; I surely don’t think UCLA can come close to that, but they should win here. I’m thinking this game goes OVER.

Good luck.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…