"Steveo's Salvos" - November, 2007 Edition

"Salvos" is presented as the editorial content of CollegeFootballFan.com focusing on current issues surrounding college football and news about some of the teams on the CFF schedule this year.  Originally from a newsletter, this web site, CollegeFootballFan.com, has evolved. 

We did it!!! - October 27, 2007.  CollegeFootballFan.com is #1!!!  Aside from any media types, no one can say that they've seen more College Bowl Subdivision teams than we have.  It's impossible.  There are 119 teams and now we've seen 'em all!  Great time with some big Nevada Wolfpack fans for the Grand Finale against Idaho in Reno.  Now we go on to more great football games this season and next!  Western Kentucky becomes #120 in 2009.  We hope to be at their opener, but a certain Guest Game Analyst (GGA) we've had with us over the years will probably start playing Freshman football in HS that season.  We'll have to work around that.

We can't wait...- for the game when some "smart" head coach calls a time-out as the opposing kicker launches one in the waning seconds of the game, and misses only to have the subsequent try go through for the game-winning kick!

How about a football challenge? - The ACC and Big Ten are matching up their basketball teams in the annual challenge between each team in their respective conference against one from the other.  Why can't the same be done in football on a particular weekend?  With all the one-sided, non-conference match-ups over the years, let's align one through twelve between the Big 12 and the ACC, or eleven games between the Big Ten and SEC. Think about it, the top three or four schools won't feel like they've beefed up their slate too much because their conference foes will be playing comparable competition as well.   But because everyone dilutes their schedule with three or four patsies to eventually get them six for the big bowl bucks, we're more apt to see a SEC-Sun Belt "Challenge" or a Big 10-Whack the MAC Attack!  Some people are going to make an excuse like we nee dthe extra home game to support our other sports!  What? Seven home game aren't enough already?  Something's got to be done to spice up some of the non-conference schedules in college football.

And this isn't going to help - More bowls?  Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese wants to schedule his teams in some more pertinent bowl games which can be understood, but instead of talks with existing bowls to match up games against SEC and Big 10 teams, he alluded to new bowls in St. Petersburg, FL and in the new football stadium being built in the Meadowlands (admitted long shot)! Hey Mike, who's left?  There's two possible 5-7 teams in Pitt and Louisville who can match up with other deserving teams like 5-7 Vanderbilt or 6-6 Northwestern, right?  He's got to be kidding!  He's correct in admitting that a few years ago when BC, Miami, and Virginia Tech left, the Big East lost a lot of negotiating clout.  However, now with a strong conference rep and some of the biggest television markets in the country, he may be able to steal away a couple of existing bowls from other conferences.  Besides having too many bowls to begin with where venues are having a tough enough time finding match-ups between 6-6 teams, how many SEC-Big Ten bowl games do we need? Let's get a few PAC-10 teams in this inter-conference mix, too!

Big Ten Blues - The Big Ten not only stunk up the place this year with some horrible losses to Appalachian State, Duke, Bowling Green, Western Michigan, and North Dakota State, but when is its administration going to wake up and extend the length of their schedule?  All Big Ten teams finished their twelfth games on November 17.  How much did we hear about the disadvantage of Ohio State last season because they hadn't played in 51 days compared to Florida who had a 35 day respite between games.  Maybe by extending the season by two weeks like just about every other conference, it could keep their players a little fresher.  The PAC 10 doesn't have a playoff game, but several of them play on Thanksgiving weekend and on the first Saturday of December.  The Big 10 only hurts itself even more by taking a longer break than others before they play in bowl games.  Maybe a few open dates during the season will not only give them some recovery time, maybe they can find some better teams to lose to out of the conference! Or, take a lesson from the PAC 10 and add another conference game to play nine league games.

Maybe it's us - We reported last month that we almost attended the record-setting game on Oct 14 when Boise beat Nevada in four OTs on their Blue Turf, 69-67.  The teams tied the NCAA mark for most combined points in a game.  On October 10, we saw Navy beat Pitt, 48-45, but as the season goes on, we see a discernible difference between Navy's offensive skills and their defensive skills (see below).  Earlier, we saw Oklahoma State shoot it out with Texas Tech for a 49-45 victory in Stillwater.  But the real kicker came on the Friday waiting for a flight on to Reno for the Grand Finale while sitting in Salt Lake City airport .  Several Weber State players meandered by while on their way to the gate as we waited  for our fight.  Where were they going we wondered?  We pulled out a pre-season mag and checked -"Portland State."  We made note of it.  The reports came out Saturday night.  141 points not only beat the Championship Subdivision game scoring record of 125 points by Cal Northridge and Sacramento State, it beat the all-division record recently tied by Boise and Nevada.  Who you ask ?  Weber State Wildcats 73 - Portland State Vikings 68.  Another brief brush with college football history!  But wait a minute, there's more!  We mentioned just the possibility of seeing Richmond visit Delaware in a big CAA game, and what happened?  Richmond won, 62-56!  We're not Dead fans, but "What a long, strange trip the 2007 season's been!"

Coldest weekend of the year - Traditionally, it's this weekend when Army plays Navy!  We've been to enough of them to know.  That's one reason we're sitting this weekend out in front of the tube.  Other reasons - lots of great games are on, we want to see how the bowl picture shakes out, we were hoping this week's D-3 game would be in Allentown, PA and not Dover, DE, we're saving gas money for a potential Delaware at UMass game on December 8, some work needs to get done around the yard, Christmas decorations will go up, Army-Navy is on, and it's Saint Laurie's birthday.  If it's as cold as it typically is this weekend, not much will happen with the yard so maybe well straighten up the garage!

On the other hand - At Reno, we expected to see a big game from the nation's 11th leading rusher, Idaho's Deonte Jackson.  Averaging over 6 yards per carry, we expected to see him challenge the Wolfpack defense that allowed 69 points against Boise and 28 against winless Utah State the week before.  Not only did Jackson only run for 45 yards, he was constantly shifted in and out with SR RB Brian Flowers.  We're not sure if this was typical, but the strategy seemed to stop him from getting started.  We found that he's the cousin of St. Louis RB Steven Jackson who recommended him to the previous head coach at Idaho, who shall go nameless until the current trivia question gets answered.  In this game, he was completely shown up by the Pack's Luke Lippincott who garnered 119 yards on 27 carries.  With two games remaining, Lippincott is 21st in the nation with 1,194 yards for a 5.5 yard per carry average.  With one game left, Jackson has 1,100 yards for a 5.0 average, good for 27th in the nation.

And the ranked teams just keep dropping out - Only three teams we saw this season remain in the AP Top 25. Oklahoma who fell to another team we watched this year, Texas Tech, and stands at # 9, the same rank it holds in the BCS poll.  It's status will change next week after the outcome of the Big Twelve Championship against Missouri.  If they lose, we may see them again in the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day.  We hop that we get to see Kansas instead for several reasons.  Auburn (8-4) snuck back in at #23 after its Iron Bowl win over Alabama, tow notches ahead of 9-3 South Florida who defeated the Tigers  at Shug-Jordan.  The BCS makes more sense with USF at #21 and Auburn at #24.   Sportswriters have short memories.  We hope to see a couple of top-ranked teams when we go to the Cotton Bowl on New Year's Day including Kansas or possibly Oklahoma Big D against one of the top SEC teams.

Following the Leaders - We may not be seeing the best of teams this season, but we're certainly seeing our share of individual leaders.  Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford (179.43) and Tulsa QB Paul Smith (162.62) , whom we saw play against one another, are #1 and #3 respectively in QB ratings.  Mike Crabtree of Texas Tech and Jordy Nelson of Kansas State are #1 and #2 in receiving yards with 1,861 and 1,441.  Texas Tech QB Graham Harrell leads the nation in passing yards with 5,298.  Paul Smith is second with 3,886.  Crabtree is #4 in scoring with 126 points.  Ray Rice of Rutgers is the nation's third leading rusher with 1,612 yards.  Wake Forest DB Alphonso Smith may be tied for fourth with a plethora of defenders with 6 INTs, but he's the only one who has returned three for TDs.  In team stats, Oklahoma is #4 in scoring with 43.4 points,  Navy is by far tops in rushing yards averaging 357.4 while Texas Tech dominates in passing yards with 473.6 per game. (To be updated)

Good season, Cuz! - Cousin and OT Robert Keyes at The College of New Jersey (9-3, 6-1) and his team fell hard to #1 Mt. Union, 59-7, in the second round of the D-3 play-offs (see "Juggernaut" below).  Rob  garnered an individual honor last week as he was selected to the First-team All-NJAC offensive Line.  Congrats!!!  11-1 Muhlenberg, whom TCNJ lost to in their opener, 15-0, also fell 38-21 to #3 Wesley in their bracket this weekend.  The winner now hosts Mary Hardin-Baylor. 

Is Navy still a branch of the Department of Defense? - At 7-4 and Poinsettia Bowl-bound, the Mids have still allowed their competition to score over 40 points 7 times. Their 35-24 win over Northern Illinois finally put their offensive scoring average above their defensive scoring average 40.1 to 39.5.  They finally played a "respectable" D holding Northern Illinois to only 24 .  Their average  on offense generated by an efficient triple-option offset their defensive inadequacies and put them into a record fifth straight bowl game for USNA. Their offense leads the nation in rushing by far with 357.4 yards per game. Only  3-8 Army stands between the Mids and a team with a winning record.  The Soothsayers predict 7-4 New Mexico or 8-3 Utah will meet the Mids in San Diego on December 20.  We don't think Army will stand in the Mids' way of attaining win #8 despite "throwing out the records", but hey, you never know. This we do know, however, Army's offense will statistically improve Navy's defensive stat for average points allowed per game!

Military history - Navy ended their 43-game losing streak to ND in 3 OTs, 46-44. We witnessed seven of those losses in person over the years.  The most memorable was the first in 1974 as a member of the frenzied Brigade as Navy had a 6-0 lead late in the third period .  The Irish won in the end, 14-6.  It's the game that Ara Parseghian decided that the pressure was too much.  Rudy Ruettiger was disappointed when Ara left without consulting him, but his story made for a great movie.   The Irish fell to the Air Force Academy this past weekend, 41-24. Reports indicate It was the first time since 1944 that the Irish lost to two service academies in one season, but in 1945, Army crushed the Irish 48-6, and Navy and ND played to a 6-6 tie.  The Irish finished 7-2-1.  Their other loss? The Great Lakes Navy Training School, 39-7.

West Point black nights - ...combined with cold, wet ones do not make Michie Stadium a great place to watch a game.  Whoever rated the West Point campus as one of the greatest college venues to watch a game never attended a contest on the banks of the Hudson on a weekday night.  We were tempted early on to buy Rutgers-Army tickets for this year's game where the 6-4 Scarlet Knights crushed the 3-7 Black, 41-6, but previous experiences there made us consider that TV was the better option to view the game, and we were right!  The West Point campus is difficult to get around.  Traffic from satellite parking lots to the game do not always run on time, so if you want to enjoy the experience at West Point, get there about 3 pm for the 8 pm start.  On a cold and rainy night, it becomes downright unbearable.  We've been drenched at day games against Tulane and TCU, and those were bad enough.  We attended the first night game ever at West Point on a cold night in 1999 when the Cadets defeated Louisville in 2 OTs. 59-52. The great game action made fans forget the inconveniences to get there before the game thinking that future night games would get better organized.  We went back last year for a Friday night game between Army and Air Force where the security people at the gate delayed us an extra twenty minutes to get into the stadium.  We sat as the game started having missed all the pre-game festivities, but the cold weather wasn't worth enduring as the Falcons flew off to a 42-0 lead by halftime.  We left early in the third to eat at a diner as USAFA won, 42-7. West Point isn't conducive to tailgating along the cold river at night.  In the warmth of our own home, we were simply able to turn the game off once the Scarlet Knights continued to humble the black ones no matter how the broadcasting team tried to maintain our interest.  West Point is in a beautiful setting.  The pre-game festivities are tops.  Unless you have reserved parking, you never know where you will park on campus. Walking uphill to Michie or even taking a bus does not guarantee you can get their on time for kickoff.  Cold, wet weather there is downright uncomfortable, and until Army can field a competitive football team, it's not as great an experience as it could be!  Army fell to  8-3 Tulsa, 49-39, at home last week before heading to Baltimore to play Navy on December 1.

Arizona State Watch - We predicted that ASU will play the spoiler roll with the upset of USC this year, but we were wrong as the roles were reversed.  The Sun Devils, now 9-2 and ranked #13 in the BCS,  fell to the Trojans  (9-2),44-24, on Thanksgiving night at home.  At least we didn't pick USC to win it all like everybody else did (we're looking even better having predicted WVU)! A revenge win over UCLA will probably put the Boys from Troy in the Rose Bowl.  Arizona State will get a good bowl bid.