Digesting the Weekend

Top Teams Have Emerged
2 weeks ago Oklahoma and LSU showed us all that they are worthy of making it to the national title game with stifling victories over Miami (FL) and Virginia Tech. This week was the coming out parties for Florida and USC with two big time victories on national television against Tennessee and Nebraska. After a slow start, Florida's offense looked like a well oiled machine with Tebow leading the charge. After USC, LSU, Florida, and Oklahoma there is a significant gap between their level of play and the next best teams. West Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin, Penn State, and Cal all look very beatable. Louisville would have been in that pack, but they did lose this past weekend. As of now it looks like the game of the year will take place in Baton Rouge the first weekend of October when Florida comes to town. I'm not even giving Texas a chance in the red river shootout this season against Oklahoma.

Big Ten Posts an Embarrassing Weekend
The Big Ten would appear to be down this year. 3 teams suffered humiliating losses to lesser foes this weekend. Iowa lost to in state rival Iowa State on the road. Iowa State fell to Northern Iowa the weekend before. Minnesota was more or less blown out by Florida Atlantic. They went into halftime trailing 35 to 14 and was able to scrap to get the score back to a more respectable 42-39 loss. The biggest black eye occurred in Evanston when Duke snapped a 22 game losing streak to beat a promising Northwestern team. Northwestern has looked less than impressive against bad teams this season at home, including a dramatic come from behind victory the week before against Nevada. Wisconsin had a tight game throughout against Citadel, and was never able to really pull away at home. Couple all this with the two previous weeks worth of shame that occurred at Michigan, and this conference has become somewhat of a laughing stock amongst other conferences. That being said Michigan did redeem itself with a blowout of Notre Dame, Penn State continued their winning ways, Purdue continued to blow out the competition, and Ohio State won a big game on the road at Washington. This conference is wide open this season and could be taken by a good number of teams.

Other Tidbits

• A few new coaches had their first signature victory this past weekend with Troy Calhoun's Cadets of Air Force knocking off TCU, Gene Chizik's Iowa State team beating in state rival Iowa, and Nick Saban's Alabama squad hanging on to defeat defending SEC West champion Arkansas.
• Speaking of Nick Saban, Alabama is looking like a team who should definitely be playing on January 1st this season, and are becoming more and more of a lock to beat up on in state rival Auburn. If LSU and Florida weren't so strong, I would give them a good chance to compete for the SEC championship. Saban's impact is being felt early on in the season.
• Cincinnati has been abusing the competition this season after hiring Brian Kelly away from Central Michigan. They've outscored the competition 140-16 thus far this season. Look for their showdown against Rutgers to determine potentially the top team in the Big East.
• It's starting to get ugly down at Auburn. I'm starting to wonder whether Tubberville is on the hot seat. My guess is nothing will happen this season, but if it keeps up next year he'll be gone. One has to wonder if they can stop the bleeding this weekend when high scoring New Mexico State comes to town this weekend.
• Notre Dame is bad. Really bad. Nothing more needs to be said that hasn't been said about being dead last in just about every statistical offensive category. One excuse that has emerged has been the poor recruiting classes by Willingham during his final years. Believe me when I tell you they have a lot more talent than the majority of teams in college football and they are drastically under performing under Charlie Weis this year.
• Boston College has emerged as the class of the ACC. They're sound beating of Georgia Tech is further evidence that they are a force to be reckoned with and have not missed a beat with the departure of Tom O'Brien (who happens to be 1-2 thus far including a loss to BC).
• The most surprising score of the weekend was the 44-6 thrashing Utah put on UCLA. We'll have to see how UCLA responds after this loss, as they were projected by many to give USC a run for their money this season in the Pac 10.