teke184

The more I watch this, the more I believe that LSU got an upgrade by losing OC Jimbo Fisher to Florida State and bringing in OC Gary Crowton from Oregon to replace him.

Christ, is Florida State this bad or Clemson this good? Or both?

VT is high for three reasons that I can think of, none of which are particularly good. 1. They have a great defense. However, this is negated by a crappy offense. 2. They're getting sympathy votes due to the shooting tragedy 3. Their schedule is seen as soft outside of a trip to Baton Rouge. If they knock off LSU and then take care of business during the season and the ACC title game, they're going to be in the BCS Title Game. My thoughts on the VT-LSU game this week- LSU's defense and offense are both better than VT. VT's QB will make a lot of mistakes, though not as many as MS State's QB did this week, and LSU will capitalize. The big question mark will be special teams. I'm unsure how good VT is at it, but LSU has been notoriously streaky at it over the past few years. LSU's kickers tend to suck, blowing PATs on occasion and having trouble with FGs. LSU's given up a number of blocked punts since starting a weird punt formation after Miles took over two years ago. LSU, going back to the Saban days, has a habit of blocking kicks or making the kicker miss easy shots when they need it most. (This goes back to 2003 with Auburn and Ole Miss's All World kickers blowing a ton of FGs, the Oregon State kicker missing about the only 3 PATs of his career against them in 2004, blocking kicks against Arizona State to mount a late comeback in 2005, etc.) The big thing for me is the kick coverage, which has been abysmal at times. New OC Gary Crowton, formerly of Oregon, has been put over the special teams and the results against MSU appeared to be much better than I've seen in the past. Considering this is a home game for LSU, they have more talent than V-Tech, and they seemed to get rolling better in their warm-up game than V-Tech did, I'm predicting an LSU victory by about 7. The main way I can see V-Tech winning will be if their D or special teams get them into good field position for drives.

New Orleans @ Indianapolis (5.5) Atlanta @ Minnesota (3.5) Carolina @ St. Louis (0.5) (3.5) Denver @ Buffalo Kansas City @ Houston (2.5) Miami @ Washington (3.5) (6.5) New England @ N.Y. Jets (3.5) Philadelphia @ Green Bay (4.5) Pittsburgh @ Cleveland Tennessee @ Jacksonville (6.5) Chicago @ San Diego (6.5) Detroit @ Oakland (1.5) Tampa Bay @ Seattle (6.5) N.Y. Giants @ Dallas (5.5) Baltimore @ Cincinnati (3.5) Arizona @ San Francisco (3.5) Cincy will score 21 points

Arkansas isn't close, yet Michigan is and Auburn is at 25? Auburn's offense has questions and Michigan's head is up their ass, while Arkansas won somewhat comfortably, albeit against inferior competition to K-State and App State, respectively. (Troy is the best Sun Belt team, but that's like saying you've got better job security than Lloyd Carr right about now.)

There's a moratorium on teams moving from I-AA to I-A, AFAIK. Western Kentucky U, who got stomped by Florida today, is a provisional I-A member and is the last one for a while. (Florida A&M was trying to become one of the first Historically Black Colleges or Universities to move to the I-A level, but they got hit with a lot of NCAA sanctions for academic fraud, poor bookkeeping on their athletes' eligibility, etc. that scuttled that for the time being.) That being said, App State is good enough to be able to walk in and pull a Marshall, as Marshall rode Randy Moss, Chad Pennington, and other stars from their I-AA days into a I-A classification and several bowl wins, putting the team on the map. The standards for I-A teams is spelled out here: http://www.clt.astate.edu/marburger/new_ia_standards.htm While it may be outdated, the gist is 5 home games a year, an average home attendance of 15,000 per game, giving out a certain number of football scholarships per year, having scholarships for a certain number of sports, and either giving out 200 total scholarships to athletes OR spending at least 4 million on scholarships. App State's biggest problem in moving up would be to find a conference. The Sun Belt is an obvious choice because it has open slots and is in the same rough geographical area. However, it's the shittiest conference in DI-A and you only look as good as the people you're beating. Conference USA would be a better choice, but it has a full 12 teams right now. If a school like Tulane or Rice were to pull out, App State would be a natural fit because of their proximity to East Carolina and Marshall.

Someone got a perfect week in the last year or two, but I can't remember who. Still, being the 2nd person to do it ever is still pretty damn impressive since I pulled the Wyoming game out of my ass.

As Peyton Manning proved against my HS in his senior season, knowing what the opposition will do doesn't mean there's a damn thing you can do to stop it. (We played about 8 guys in the defensive backfield and he STILL kept finding open guys.)

If Gawd Almighty Pete Carroll can't make his team play great to start out the year, I don't want to hear shit from the sports commentators about how LSU "only" beat MSU 45-0 because the QB they beat like a pinata coughed up 7 TOs. BTW, this isn't directed at King. This is a general rant about the post-game analysis of LSU-MSU on Thursday night where LSU was called "disappointing" as a #2 team.

If you watched that game, it wouldn't just be a Malibu-esque joke... GT's defense was beating the living shit out of the QB. My favorite play had to be near the end of the first half, where the DEs came at the QB and, while he tried to deal with those, the Safety did a delayed blitz and knocked him on his ass. The last time I saw a blitz that pretty, LSU was beating the crap out of Heisman winner Jason White in the 2003 title game. Let's not distort the facts here. LSU only won by a touchdown - it was a defensive clinic on both sides. Lavolais et all were smacking White around all night. I didn't say anything about how well the OU D was doing. Also, I was specifically referring to a delayed blitz late in the game where the Safety (LaRon Landry?) came straight through the line untouched and blindsided White.

With any luck, Green Bay will hire him in order to salvage their investment in Aaron Rogers.

More proof that the WWE is the canary in the mineshaft... The fucking *WWE* is suspending people publicly, for God's sake, so you have to know that the Feds have actionable info on all kinds of MLB, NFL, and NBA players off of that Internet pharmacy bust.

If you watched that game, it wouldn't just be a Malibu-esque joke... GT's defense was beating the living shit out of the QB. My favorite play had to be near the end of the first half, where the DEs came at the QB and, while he tried to deal with those, the Safety did a delayed blitz and knocked him on his ass. The last time I saw a blitz that pretty, LSU was beating the crap out of Heisman winner Jason White in the 2003 title game.

Question- Are ND's linemen on Bull-fighting scholarships? Because they spent most of the afternoon going "Ole!" while the QB got his ass handed to him.

12-0, looking for the big sweep if Cal and UTEP win.

Heisman front-runners now that Henne and Hart are done: 1. JD Booty, QB, USC 2. Colt Brennan, QB, Hawaii 3. Brian Brohm, QB, Louisville (despite the bush-league running up of the score against SEMO) 4. Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas 5. Steve Slayton, RB, West Virginia 6. Pat White, QB, West Virginia None of these are a real surprise, but it certainly does thin the herd early.

While you're not a lock, Mangina's team is up 21-0 near the half. That one will get uglier by the end, just like Fat Mark.

INT, BC. Game over.

The Wake-BC game is temporarily stopped while the medical team looks at the umpire, who got jacked by a Wake WR during a pass play. BC is up 38-28 with 40 seconds left.

If Ole Piss can hold out against Memphis, I win straight-up. w00t~! bitches. The way things are going, I may have a perfect set of picks today. My only dangerous one right now is BC over Wake. BC's up late in the 4th by a TD.

CBS Sportsline's Mike Freeman on the UM-AppState game-

"Golden Boy" Jimmy Clausen is warming up on the ND sideline. This could get interesting, given the quality, or lack thereof, on the ND O-Line. 33-3 G-Tech in the 4th with 8:52 left.

GT recovers a fumble after a sack on the ND QB. At this point, I need to find the WAV of "Necessary Roughness" where the backup QB is hiding behind the ref screaming "BLOW THE WHISTLE! BLOW THE WHISTLE!"

26-3 GT over ND in the 4th.

It's happened in the Women's Tournament, but not in the men's tourney. The Big Ten has come closest to it, though, with Purdue either winning by 1 or going to OT back when I was in HS (circa 1996).