Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Things I think- College Football

I want to try to write a small notes column each week on college football or even the NFL if I have time.
That's my intent anyway and with baseball season being over, football is the most plausible weekly column to write, so even with Buckeye and Brown reviews to hammer out every week, I'm going to try to work on this project.

1) I'll wait until we complete a season before listening to the usual easy media narrative that one of the following schools is "Back"!
Michigan, Nebraska, Texas, Notre Dame, etc all have great traditions and it makes sense for the networks to hope that schools with large alumni bases and fans will watch their games more, but those schools are hyped overboard in August and September and usually disappoint.
I know Notre Dame made the playoff last season, but every "good" win the Irish had last season looked far worse in hindsight and I'll wait for consistency with them.
Looking forward to their game with Georgia in week three.

2) Which one of the "Back" teams might be really back?
I lean towards Texas with a solid head coach in Tom Herman, but injuries seem to have decimated the Horns early in the season and I'm not sure that Texas has the depth built up yet to handle those losses in Herman's third year.
The Longhorns home game against a top ten LSU team Saturday night will go a long way in seeing how good they might be.

3) Shocker of the week?
Georgia State's stunner of Tennessee that not only saw a Sun Belt team that finished 2-10 last season come from behind to drop the Volunteers, but they did so without a running back that reached 100 yards on the day and a passing game that didn't throw for 200!
Tennessee is a program that is trying to work itself back into where it once was and there will be growing pains, but a loss like this will give Jeremy Pruitt and Phil Fulmer a little less tolerance from a once rabid fan base.

4) Two more Rocky Top points- Tennessee wrote Georgia State a check for 950,000 dollars to come in and upset them.
Bet this series will not continue further!
Keep in mind that UT fired athletic director John Currie, who supposedly had Mike Leach on board after an admitted misreading of the fan base in almost hiring Greg Schiano before Leach to clear the warehouse for Jeremy Pruitt.
Let's not consider Pruitt a failure yet, but I have a feeling Mike Leach doesn't lose to Georgia State.

5) Give it up for the Mountain West conference, who defeated four Power Five schools with Boise State rallying past Florida State, Nevada shocking Purdue at the final gun, Wyoming upsetting Missouri, and Hawaii holding off Arizona's final charge at the one-yard line.
When you add Utah State losing to Wake Forest by three and Fresno State making USC sweat to the end of the game, this looks to be a very strong year for the Mountain West, who is always in battle with the American conference for the best league of the Group of Five.

6) The coach that I really like that I think is going to prove to be a great hire?
Scott Satterfield at Louisville.
I thought he did a great job at Appalachian State and considering that Louisville ran through Bobby Petrino twice, they needed an energetic and positive coach, I think they have that in Satterfield, who was impressive with Appalachian State in their transition to Division I.

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