Wednesday, October 21, 2009

NCAA Football Week 8 (Sat., Oct. 24th) Predictions

Hurrah! No Tuesday games this week. And Orrin Hatch is wasting time and money on the BCS in the Senate. Could we end up with an actual national champion in college football in the next 5 years? Or will it be like the USFL vs. the NFL and Utah ends up with $3.76? I'm hemming closer to the latter.

Last week I was horrible at picking games. 33-20 for the week, dropping me to 109-50 for the year. That was my worst week, what gives? Ohio State fucked me again. I've been waiting for them to lose all year and they finally do it when I don't pick the upset. A high school coach is giving Tressel unsolicited advice, which is funny because it's on ESPN. Way to cover the big stories guys! Wisconsin is a worse team than Iowa but I still think Iowa sucks. Boise definitely deserves the BCS Championship gae if it comes down to those two. UCLA sucks! I should've been more of the decider on that one. Well, Berkeley still sucks, so I forgive myself for picking against them. Maryland v. UVa seemed like a toss-up but UVa ended up looking like the legitimately better team. Va. Tech v. Ga. Tech shocked me. It shouldn't have because the ACC makes no sense. I will be less than shocked if Miami shits the bed this week against Clemson. Todd Reesing announced his presence as a possibility for 6th team all-Big 12 after I hyped him a little last week. I won't be writing him up in the Heisman column tomorrow. Somehow I missed picking the Stanford v. Arizona game entirely. I would have probably picked Stanford, so it's just as well.

Onto the games! My rules willn't ever change. Purple wins and I'm not doing any research. Lines are for bettors and I don't want this to be considered an advice column.

WEDNESDAY
Tulsa at UTEP - I think this would be an upset but I keep forgetting if Tulsa is good or if it's Toledo that's good. In the way that they are not a horrible team, not in the way that they are contending for anything.

THURSDAY
Florida State at North Carolina - I'm rooting for the 'Noles and I can't expect them to lose every week. UNC is plummeting a little bit themselves, so this might be the best shot Bobby has to win a game in conference this year. Ouch.

FRIDAY
Rutgers at Army - Hmmm. I considered picking Army. That's not a great endorsement for the state of the program at Rutgers.

SATURDAY
No. 12
Georgia Tech at Virginia - Wa-hoo-wa! It could happen, right?
Minnesota at No. 19 Ohio State - Minnesota has looked terrible to me so far this year. Worse than Ohio State.
South Florida at No. 20 Pittsburgh - USF needs to win this game or they will completely unravel again.
Connecticut at No. 23 West Virginia - Tough spot for UConn. If you were one of the kids on this team would you be able to concentrate on the game? I think I would have about 5 minutes of adrenaline and 175 minutes of malaise. It makes it really hard to give the Mountaineers the kind of "go fuck 'em up!" kind of praise I would normally give them for this game. Did the killer ever get arrested, btw? I read that the police were closing in but I don't trust police cops a lot of the time.
Indiana at Northwestern - Indiana is as OK as a Big Ten team gets.
Central Michigan at Bowling Green - I read some thing about the Cent. Mich. QB and remembered he had a lot of hype last year. Go Chippewas!
UAB at Marshall - Usually when I write a comment like, "Is UAB a D-IA school now?" it's intended as a joke. In this case I' serious, though. Is UAB in the BCS side of D-I now?
Illinois at Purdue - A word of caution to the Purdue players: It's OK to think you're a good team for beating Ohio State. It is not OK to act like you are excited to beat a Ron Zook team. Just walk very professionally off the field at the end of the game. If it's close at the end you should only feel justifiably relieved. Beating Illinois has no bearing on what you will do with the rest of this season.
Arkansas at Mississippi - Ole' Miss has not impressed me. Arkansas has impressed me in spite of my gritted teeth.
No. 15 Oklahoma State at Baylor
Iowa State at Nebraska
Colorado at Kansas State - Neither of these teams makes any sense from one week to the next. I should pick Colorado because they have that one freshman RB who's awesome. But they won last week and I don't trust them to win again. K-State won last week, too, but I've been to both Boulder, CO and Manhattan, KS before. If I were in Manhattan I wouldn't have any trouble focusing on football.
Northern Illinois at Miami (OH) - Who cares.
Ball State at Eastern Michigan - Nobody cares.
Maryland at Duke - I had already highlighted Duke before I remembered I'd rather get the game wrong than pick Duke.
Kent State at Ohio
Buffalo at Western Michigan
Louisiana Tech at Utah State
Tennessee at No. 2 Alabama - McElroy might suck pretty bad in this game. This is a good test for 'Bama. Tennessee isn't that bad. They have a decent game plan most weeks, but their talent level is lower than Alabama's. I keep waitig for Trent Richardson to bust out but it looks like Mark Ingram has got the bulk of the work to himself. I forgot to point this out earlier but it bears mention: Jonathon Crompton is horrible despite anything his father might tell you.
Louisville at No. 5 Cincinnati
Clemson at No. 10 Miami (FL) - Clemson has talent but they shouldn't have kept the interim guy from last year. He's a bad coach. Miami might have problems defending against Clemson. This could end up very high scoring and Miami might lose it a little bit here. This game worries me.
No. 11 Oregon at Washington
No. 13 Penn State at Michigan - Michigan is at home and Penn State is over-rated. I mean, think of it this way, they lost to a Big 10 school and they're still ranked? Definitely in line for a correction.
Oklahoma at No. 25 Kansas - Kansas has a better record. But Oklahoma is a better team. The Chester at QB for them is probably just as good as Bradford, anyway.
Boston College at Notre Dame - Theoretically I should have some sort of Catholic pride for both of these schools but, instead, I have a maniacal hatred of both. I have no real idea of who to pick in this game. It should be a high-scoring game that will hopefully end in some sort of disaster where neither team is ever awarded a victory again.
Akron at Syracuse - This feels really weird. I'm picking Syracuse? Well, Paulus, don't turn the ball over this week no matter how much the other team wants you to give them the ball.
UCF at Rice - Covering my eyes and picking a team...
Western Kentucky at Middle Tennessee State
Wake Forest at Navy - Go Middies!
North Texas at Troy
Air Force at No. 18 Utah - Final score prediction: Utah 0.5 - Air Force (-)1. Historical impact will be a black hole.
San Diego State at Colorado State - I always pick SDSU and I don't have a good reason. Marshall Faulk should come here to coach so that he can do for the football team what Tony Gwynn did for the baseball team.
Idaho at Nevada - Bandwagon +1
Washington State at California - Oi to the motherfuckin V-iz-ey. Even Tedford can't fuck this one up can he? Just give Best the ball and take your chances against 11-man fronts.
Florida Atlantic at Louisiana-Lafayette - Great game.
UCLA at No. 22 Arizona - Wildcats aren't that good, either.
No. 6 Iowa at Michigan State - Just you watch. I'll be right one of these weeks! I feel like I've got a lot of upsets on this list.
Vanderbilt at No. 24 South Carolina
Louisiana-Monroe at Kentucky
Florida International at Arkansas State
Tulane at Southern Miss
Texas A&M at Texas Tech - I hope this game is as bad as I'm expecting. I want TT to go for 100 the same week Crabtree debuts.
Temple at Toledo - Still can't remember which one is good. It wouldn't be much of an upset for a high school JV team to beat the Owls, so I'm OK with this pick no matter which "T" school has a decent football team.
No. 1 Florida at Mississippi State - Gators are trying to lose but I bet Miss State won't let them.
No. 8 TCU at No. 16 Brigham Young - Whoop-de-doo. One of these teams got steam-rolled by FSU. The other squeaked by Air Force. I hope neither of them is in a BCS bowl.
Auburn at No. 9 LSU - LSU is a stealth title contender in a year of not-great teams. Seems emblematic of the fact that LSU is not a great team.
Southern Methodist at No. 17 Houston - I think it was SMU that gave up 12 TDs to Klingler but I'll have to do some research to be sure. June Jones coat-game is ridic.
No. 3 Texas at Missouri - Wow, Texas. You suck, relatively speaking. Missiouri might not require the "relatively."
Oregon State at No. 7 USC
UNLV at New Mexico
Arizona State at Stanford - Owusu for Heisman!
Fresno State at New Mexico State - Ryan Mathews is starting to get some realistic Heisman pub and I wish him all the best in that. I like Noel Devine a little more because he seems a little faster and he's smaller, but Mathews has looked like a poor man's Barry Sanders every time I've watched him this year. Pat Forde's column yesterday featured some digression into how bad New Mexico and NM State have been this year. Hopefully that will translate into the 400-yd game Mathews apparently needs to get people to pay proper attention to how awesome he's been.
No. 4 Boise State at Hawaii - Come the goddam fuck on, Boise. I'm trying to believe you deserve a shot at the BCS title.

Tomorrow is Heisman Thursday here at the Comedy Corporation. Cheerio, chaps!