Week 2: Legitimate Wins and Illigitimate Losses.

First of all, I'm proud of myself because No Procrastination Wednesday is going pretty well. The only thing I haven't done is clean my desk. And that's probably just not going to happen today. But four out of five ain't bad. On to the important stuff.

Due to the Vampire Weekend concert Saturday, I once again didn't watch too many games. But this has got to be the most beautiful thing I saw in all of the replays.



That right there was 288 pounds of Ohio pride bowling down the field at speeds unlike those legs have ever seen. Honestly, that's about all you need to know about the Ohio State - Miami game. Jacory Harris threw four interceptions, which is an awful thing to have happen against any team, much less one that insists on mercilessly beating offenses for every little mistake. I don't remember the last time I saw a game where the Buckeyes defense didn't score.

Other games will be discussed after the rankings.

	week 2	ap	coaches	last week
1	bama	bama	bama	bama
2	ohio state	ohio state	ohio state	ohio state
3	tcu	boise	boise	boise
4	boise	tcu	texas	tcu
5	oregon	oregon	tcu	oregon
6	oklahoma	texas	oregon	nebraska
7	nebraska	oklahoma	florida	florida
8	florida	nebraska	nebraska	miami
9	texas	iowa	oklahoma	vt
10	iowa	florida	iowa	arkansas
11	arkansas	wiscy	wiscy	iowa*
12	wiscy	arkansas	lsu	texas*
13	miami	s carolina	arkansas	wiscy*
14	lsu	utah	utah	oklahoma*
15	s carolina	lsu	auburn	gt*
16		auburn	s carolina
17		miami	miami
18		usc	arizona
19		stanford	stanford
20		michigan	penn state
21		wvu	wvu
22		penn state	michigan
23		houston	houston
24		arizona	cal
25		oreg st	mizzou

Bama    OK, so they beat Penn State 24-3. But let's just be honest with ourselves, Penn State had a freshman quarterback, playing his first big game against the defending national champions on their home territory. Clearly, this was not going to go well. What upsets me is that if/when it comes down to Ohio State and Alabama for the National Championship, all the media's going to talk about is how bad Alabama beat Penn State. I'll be honest, I was tempted to put Ohio State over Alabama because I truly believe Ohio State has performed just as well against superior opponents, but decided to leave things the way they are for at least another week because I also truly believe that if Ohio State played Alabama this weekend, they'd lose.

TCU and Boise   Boise beats VT. Then James Madison University, beats VT. JMU has never beaten a top-25 team. This does not reflect well for Boise, who've been trying so damn hard to be a legitimate team. I'm sorry to knock them down, but what can I do? TCU is too damn good.

Oregon    Oregon has scored 120 points in 120 minutes. Wonderful. Moving along...

Oklahoma and Nebraska    Don't think of this as me having moved Nebraska down a peg, but rather the only way I could think of to make room for Oklahoma, simultaneously dealing with a notable lack of integers between 5 and 6. I was wary of the Sooners last week, but if they perform well against Air Force this weekend, they might get bumped up above Boise.

Tejas    All of the pollsters seem to be in love with the Longhorns. One of the AP voters actually put them in first place and I can't figure out for the love of God why. They haven't done anything. They've played pretty well against some teams that they expected to pretty well against. Things don't get tough for them until October and I have to say, they might have broken out of the four-way tie for 11th, but until I see them actually play a real game against a real opponent, they're not moving far from 10.

Miami    I don't like to knock a team too hard for losing a hard-fought game. Especially teams that I think still have a lot of potential and will come back. I'd like to say "look for them to move up in other polls and remain stationary in mine," but...

VT    *facepalm*

NOTABLY NOT FEATURED    Michigan has played surprisingly well for the last two weeks. I'm not ready to put them in the top 15, not even the top 25, really. While their new quarterback, Denard Robinson, does seem to have a knack for single-handedly dismantling very well-mantled defenses, the problem is just that: he is doing it all by himself; zero help from anyone else. Football is a team sport, he can't keep those kinds of shenanigans up forever. If he's still Atlas-ing it by week five, I'll put Denard - and only Denard - in the top 15. (Of course, there's two sides to every coin, and it could be that he's just a selfish ball-hog. But I can't blame him, evidenced on what happens when he actually does give up the ball. Which is absolutely nothing, at best.)

Now that we've got a couple games on the scoreboard, I feel comfortable making some picks for this weekend.

#9 Iowa at #24 Arizona    I'm going to go with Iowa here. They got knocked back in the Coaches poll this week, and they're pretty pissed off about this. Coach Kirk Ferentz doesn't like to run the score up because, like most of Big Ten coaches, he's got some pretty conservative views when it comes to sportsmanship. But look for him to keep the starters in much longer this week and try to make a statement.

ECU at Virginia Tech    After a rather embarrassing loss toe JMU last week, VT is looking for revenge. Look for them to go back to the old ground-and-pound running game to try and regain some semblance of respect.

Brigham Young at Florida State    This is a toughie, but I'm going to give it to Florida State at home. Their offense actually didn't do half bad against a normally very stingy Oklahoma defense (averaged 13 points allowed last season, including three goose eggs). If the defense had bothered to show up... who knows.

#10 Florida at Tennessee    I'm putting Florida on upset watch. Last week, they Tennessee played Oregon and handled the powerful and fast offense very well for the first half. Florida is not as powerful and not as fast, and they've had rocky first halves in both of their games. They got away with it against Mid-American and Big East schools, but the SEC is a different animal all together, and now that The Baby Rhino is gone, every one of them is chomping at the bit just to get a piece of them. These defenses are used to playing a quarterback who could stiff arm a linebacker into the stone age. Brantley, Tebow's successor, has -25 (negative twenty-five) yards rushing.

Notre Dame at Michigan State    Last week's loss to Michigan (or more accurately, their loss to Denard Robinson) tells me one thing: Notre Dame isn't that good. They had one guy to stop. It wasn't like he gave the ball to anyone else very often; Michigan made 81 plays, 41 of them were runs and Robinson took it 28 times of those 41. He had the ball for 18 of the 22 runs in the second half! I mean COME ON! Michigan State has two fully functioning running backs - exactly twice as many as Michigan - and receivers that are at least as good, so I'm picking them.