Digesting the Weekend

Louisville a Disappointment

Steve Kragthorpe's Louisville Cardinals squad has done nothing to earn their high preseason accolades this season. After almost getting knocked off by Middle Tennessee State, Louisville has lost in back to back weeks to Kentucky and bottom dwelling Syracuse. The defense is absolutely horrendous. They're giving up 32.5 points and 437 yards per game against weak competition. They now are surfacing as the 5th best team in the Big East behind Rutgers, West Virginia, South Florida, and Cincinnati who have all had more than impressive starts this season. Kragthorpe thus far has shown that he's no Bobby Petrino, but I didn't expect him to be this bad. I understand there's a transition period for every new coach, but it seems Kragthorpe's transition could be a few years before Louisville gets back into the groove. This will be the last year of Brian Brohm, and unfortunately he's already lost his chances at the Heisman trophy despite having the second most passing yards in the NCAA and tossing 15 touchdowns through 4 games.

Heisman Outlook

Besides Brohm it would seem there are a couple other players who are going to be leaving the Heisman race soon, despite their play. One would be Colt Brennan who failed to play last week and Hawaii has looked less than completely dominant. For him to receive a legitimate shot to win the Heisman he would have to eclipse last year's tremendous stats and have his team destroy the competition each week. The second player who may be seeing his chances slip away is Darren McFadden. He continues to put up great numbers, but Arkansas could easily see 5 or 6 losses this season after dropping two winnable games in back to back weeks. One player I'm not high on and really should not be mentioned in the Heisman chase is John David Booty. He's only averaging 213 yards per game and has a 9 TD to 2 INT ratio. His Heisman hype is simply just hype. If it were not for Carson Palmer and Matt Leinhart, Booty would not be in a Heisman conversation at this point in the season.
In my opinion the top 5 guys going thus far (in order)
1. Tim Tebow
2. Sam Bradford
3. Ray Rice
4. Steve Slaton
5. Dennis Dixon

Thoughts on the Mike Gundy Rant

The article that was written about Bobby Reid, the now backup quarterback for Oklahoma State, was pretty immature. It seems like something that should have been saved for the fan message boards and not mainstream media. It's one thing to knock the kid who's an amateur athlete and not getting paid is under performing, but it's completely another thing to bash the mentality of the player. She took a lot of words that he had used in the past, twisted them around, and used them against him when he was already benched. Her telling the story of his mom feeding him chicken is bush league. The part that made the situation embarrassing is not him in the parking lot with his mother, but the way the incident was portrayed to the general public by her. Would anybody have known of this incident unless she posted it in the paper.

She goes on to say Bobby Reid's essentially a coward and has no guts. She does all this at her computer in her office or cubicle and not on a football field with 70,000 rabid fans, not to mention 11 of the most physically imposing people you could imagine with the goal of hitting you so hard, that it will be your last snap of the game. Mike Gundy has all the right in the world to bash the columnist for embarrassing his quarterback the way she did. Who wouldn't want a coach to stand up for them the way Gundy did on Saturday?

Other Tidbits

• Texas A&M looked embarrassingly bad on Thursday. They have consistently dropped the ball under Franchione against decent out of conference competition over the last few years. I'm not going to read into Miami's success in this game too much, and I think they still have a lot to prove.
• Tulsa is going to score a lot of points this season under new OC Malzahn. For the most part they were able to move the ball against Oklahoma on Friday after putting up almost 400 yards of offense. Their shootout victory over BYU the week before further solidifies the reputation of this offense.
• What's going on in the ACC? Virginia is 3-0 in conference and Georgia Tech, Florida State, Maryland, and NC State are still looking for their first conference victory. Chan Gailey may never be able to pull GT out of the ranks of mediocrity.
• If there was any doubts rolling into last weekend, now they are confirmed.....the Big 10 is up for grabs. The top teams at this stage in the game appear to be Illinois, Michigan, Penn St., Purdue and Ohio State. Look for the showdown on October 6th in West Lafayette between Ohio St. and Purdue to hold great significance in determining the conference championship.
• Tim Tebow's Box line from Saturday: 261 yards passing with 2 TD's and 0 INT's and 166 yards rushing with 2 TD's. There were only 15 plays that did not involve Tebow running or passing.
• Nebraska is starting to look less and less like the dominate program they once were. A week after getting thrashed in Lincoln by USC, they barely hung on to beat Ball State at home. Bill Callahan is now on the hot seat.
• Trivia Question: Who's 3rd in the nation in scoring offense and 1st in scoring defense? LSU? No. USC? No. Try Kansas. Granted they haven't faced much competition, but they are blowing teams out on a consistent basis. They are a wild card to take the very down Big 12 North.