Football season is upon us. I’m more excited by this season than I can remember feeling about football since I was a 16 year old Cowboys fan. I’m giddy about Miami’s prospects so I assume they’ll go out and lose to FAMU tomorrow night. Which would be, admittedly, pretty funny. Other things I’m hopeful about: Bernard Pierce becoming a household name. Navy continuing their domination of the Independents conference. Ricky Dobbs getting on some Heisman ballots. Houston attempting to one-up their own history and going balls-to-the-wall pass crazy trying to get Case Keenum up to 6,000yds passing on the year. Here’s my first attempt at weekly predictions. I don’t know how long I’ll keep up with my tabulations, I should do this shit in Excel if I’m really worrying about it. I’m not worrying about it. If you read this last year let me remind you of the rules; if you’ve never read it before let me fill you in: Research is against the rules. This all has to come off the top of the head. I like to throw out some ridiculous predictions. Navy always gets picked to win. Miami gets picked to win but I’ll let you know if I believe it or not. That’s the predictions. The highlighted team is the winner. Also notable is the fact that I will never remember FBS and FCS so I just use I-A and I-AA when it comes up.
The Heisman list will get whittled down and is based on my observations of actual games. My list is predicated on having seen at least one game from a player and is in no way representative of how I think the voting will go. Leave that shit to the HP. I love that site and wouldn’t try to duplicate what he does. I said in the last post that I’d have a Heisman list to go with predictions but that’s stupid. Just predictions for the first week. I’ll try to do this on Tuesday nights from now on. Let’s see if I can get more than 10 page views a week for this season. Onward and upward!
THURSDAY
Presbyterian at Wake Forest – best game of the year. Book it.
Southeast Missouri State at Ball State – also the best game of the year.
Rhode Island at Buffalo – No more Turner Gill in Buffalo. URI is not I-A as far as I know.
Hampton at Central Michigan – Another classic matchup. Thursday will be full of thrillers.
Murray State at Kent State – 10 students are killed on campus every week at Kent State. Tradition rules.
Marshall at No. 2 Ohio State – As much as I would love to pick Marshall that’s just ridiculous. That program fell off a cliff. I don’t think Terrelle Pryor will even be the best Heisman candidate on the Buckeyes, for what it’s worth.
Florida A&M at No. 13 Miami (FL) – I don’t know what to expect. Jacory won’t throw many passes. The RBs barely even have an established pecking order. The defense looks rugged but we’ll see. I want the Canes to come out and play disciplined for 4 quarters. If they don’t? Maybe they haven’t made any sort of leap forward. They should win this one by about 50. Randy Shannon has shown little to no propensity for running up the score thus far in his coaching career.
Towson at Indiana – Indiana’s biggest win of the year. Might be the only one.
Norfolk State at Rutgers
Minnesota at Middle Tennessee – Good win on the road for the Gophers. Best game of the year, also.
Southern Miss at South Carolina – One of the few games on this whole docket that I have trouble making up my mind about. South Carolina is the snooziest team to watch in the SEC. Southern Miss is randomly good every few years. What happens here? I’ll take a road team just to take a road team. Maybe Spurrier can retire after this game.
Florida Atlantic at UAB – Sure, why not? This game will have huge National Title implications
Northern Illinois at Iowa State – Best part about this one is that I really don’t have any knowledge of either program. NIU put out Michael Turner, right?
Southeastern Louisiana at Tulane – I give Tulane entirely too much credit on here, too, if you’re wondering.
No. 15 Pittsburgh at Utah – Is Utah good? I don’t remember. Strong candidate for upset of the week but I’m not going to blow my load on this one.
North Dakota at Idaho – I like the Vandals.
Eastern Washington at Nevada – This might be a conference game. This might be a joke that ESPN’s web programmers put on the schedule. Whatever it is, it’s a huge game.
No. 14 USC at Hawaii – There. That’s more like it.
FRIDAY
Villanova at Temple – Bernarrrrrrrdddddddddddddd!
Arizona at Toledo – I vaguely remember UA having a QB last year. I think he’s back.
SATURDAY
Miami (OH) at No. 4 Florida – Flori-duh. Great out of conference schedule they lined up this year. This is Urban Meyer’s big comeback game.
Youngstown State at No. 19 Penn State – Great game.
Samford at No. 20 Florida State – Florida State deserves to lose this game to Bobby Bowden’s alma mater.
Western Michigan at Michigan State
Eastern Illinois at No. 9 Iowa – Hmmm… Iowa does suck pretty bad, though.
Louisiana-Lafayette at No. 23 Georgia – Not an endorsement of Richt.
Illinois vs. Missouri* - Nobody wins. Especially Zook. But nobody wins.
South Carolina State at No. 16 Georgia Tech – Here’s the part where I start rushing through this shit.
Weber State at Boston College
Colorado vs. Colorado State*
Northwestern State at Air Force
No. 5 Texas vs. Rice* - Texas will score 85+ points.
New Mexico at No. 11 Oregon – Oregon learned their lesson last year when they opened with Boise. No more good teams the first week.
Coastal Carolina at No. 25 West Virginia – Noel Devine needs to go crazy on the yardage where he can.
Purdue at Notre Dame – I actually think Dayne Crist is a good player. He will get hurt in this game, though, because that’s what he does.
Kentucky at Louisville – Rivalry game!
Connecticut at Michigan – I highlighted Michigan by mistake. They have to earn a lot of trust before they start seeing regular highlights.
Jacksonville State at Mississippi – Hahahahaha to Ole Miss and Jeremiah Masoli. Even though I liked watching him play and understand that he’s been railroaded as many times as he’s fucked up.
North Texas at Clemson – Clemson sucks but North Texas is the worst.
UCLA at Kansas State – Big win for UCLA. They will never be ranked higher than they will be after this week.
UC Davis at California
Western Carolina at North Carolina State
Richmond at Virginia – Weird scheduling. UVA is coached by the guy that made Richmond a I-AA powerhouse. UVA hasn’t been good in a while and the ACC did butcher the early-going last year so this highlight isn’t very solid feeling.
Syracuse at Akron – Whatever.
South Dakota at UCF
Tennessee-Martin at Tennessee – Go Vols. Go. Fight. Bet UT wins this by their highest margin of the year. I’m giving ‘em 7.
Sacramento State at Stanford – I like Stanford even without Gerhart. There, I said it.
San Jose State at No. 1 Alabama – Pensacola is in the building, that’s all I got to say.
Utah State at No. 7 Oklahoma
Western Kentucky at No. 8 Nebraska
Tennessee Tech at No. 17 Arkansas
Arkansas State at No. 22 Auburn
Elon at Duke
Wofford at Ohio
Washington State at Oklahoma State – Nice little warm-up game for OK State.
Sam Houston State at Baylor
Stephen F. Austin at Texas A&M – A&M loves these games. They will try for 100.
Washington at Brigham Young – And there goes Jake Locker’s Heisman…
Memphis at Mississippi State – Nobody will ever know how this game ended. Or started. Or was in the middle.
Army at Eastern Michigan
North Dakota State at Kansas – Big game atmosphere for this one.
Bowling Green at Troy – I struggled with this but why bother?
Louisiana Tech vs. Grambling State* - See above.
Stony Brook at South Florida – USF in the new era. Hope they collapse.
Northwestern at Vanderbilt
No. 24 Oregon State vs. No. 6 TCU* - BS busters will suck balls this week. I’ve finally come to terms with this: Andy Dalton blows. Fuck TCU.
No. 21 LSU vs. No. 18 North Carolina* - UNC is a mess and I hope Butch Davis falls on his face. Of course, his record at Carolina is actually terrible so I’m pretty late to the party with that sentiment.
Nicholls State at San Diego State
Texas State at Houston – I don’t know what Texas Tech is going to be like from now on. I wish Leach was there and the final score could be 68-54 or some shit. For all I know, TxTech is even better now. I want Keenum to do well, though, so I’m picking Houston. Oh, wait. Texas State? That’s a school? Keenum should be just fine.
Southern Utah at Wyoming
Arkansas-Pine Bluff at UTEP
Portland State at Arizona State
Cincinnati at Fresno State - It's a new era in Cincinnati.
No. 12 Wisconsin at UNLV – John Clay is the most likely 2,000yd rusher in the country.
SUNDAY
Tulsa at East Carolina – I bet this game goes on as planned.
Southern Methodist at Texas Tech – So, I think these bases have been covered. Except to say that June Jones will extract his revenge. Does he have revenge to extract? I think he always does.
MONDAY
Navy vs. Maryland* - Go Middies!
No. 3 Boise State vs. No. 10 Virginia Tech* - I enjoy Boise State football. I really do. I kind of want them to win. I like the idea of them being a title contender. Here we finally are, though, so close to the season. It won’t happen. It just won’t. Virginia Tech will play angry and they won’t throw many passes. This doesn’t even have the feeling of a good game to me. I expect the Hokies to truck ‘em.
There you have it, see you next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment