Week 3: This Isn't Old Yet

Alright, I promise this week I'll get up at least one post that's not about football. Or if it is about football, it won't be rankings and game recaps. Promise. I'm working on a little research into whether or not teams run the score up in the game following an upset. A sort of "rage bonus," if you will. It's tedious, but all I think about is this time when one of my econometrics professors described the process of running a regression back in the day. As in before computers were powerful enough to do this. One regression - one fairly simple regression - would involve half the department working straight through the weekend (sometimes all night) and being subject to an amount of coffee statistically significantly greater than that which is considered "safe" by "normal" people.

Of course, nobody checked to see if that amount of coffee was actually statistically significant because they would've had to have run a regression, which would have taken all weekend.

SCIENCE!

Anyway. Let's take a look at how my picks faired for the week.

My pick: Iowa over Arizona
Actual: Arizona over Iowa, by a score of 34-27
In the week leading up to the game, Iowa fans were decrying their fall in the Coaches poll after a solid couple of weeks. Adam Rittenberg (the ESPN Big Ten blogger) had this to say on the subject: "Want national respect, Hawkeyes? Go to Arizona and get some."And in having lost, Iowa has proved to their fans exactly why Iowa is not yet considered a threat on the national level. Key word, though: "yet." They'll get there, I'm sure. It's just going to take a while.

My pick: Virginia Tech over Eastern Carolina
Actual: VT over ECU, by a score of 49-27
My heart nearly dropped when I checked in at halftime to see VT trailing by three. But once the VT defense found a way to get to ECU's quarterback, things started to fall in line. VT kept it on the ground and marched down the field for 28 points in the second half. It's got to be frustrating to be on an offense where it's all you can do to keep the ball for as long as possible so the defense doesn't have enough time to lay to waste the best laid plans of men.

My pick: Florida State over Brigham Young
Actual: Florida State over Brigham Young, by a score of 34-10
This was probably the only game that played out exactly how I thought it would. The FSU offense played as well as they ever have, but the difference between this week and last is that the defense actually showed up and stopped a powerful BYU running game in their tracks. They were held to just 76 yards - not even the full length of the field.

My pick: Tennessee upsets the hell out of Florida
Actual: FAIL, by a score of IT DOESN'T EVEN MATTER
Same story, different players. Florida has a terrible first half, Brantley fumbles once or twice, and I'm pretty sure they're actually going to bite it this time. Then things picked up in the second half and whatdyaknow, Florida wins. Fine. If that's how it's going to be all season, fine. They've got Alabama and LSU on deck, so we'll see how well that goes.

My pick: Michigan State over Notre Dame
Actual: Michigan State over Notre Dame, by a score of 34-31 in overtime
By far, the most exciting game I watched all weekend. My dad and I stayed up to watch the end (my mom was there too, but I'm not sure if she was actually watching the game or just awake because everyone else was). The whole game was back and forth - MSU scores, ND scores, MSU scores, ND scores. Then in overtime ND is forced to settle for a field goal, and MSU responds by faking a field goal for a touch down! Have I ever mentioned how much I love trick plays? This win made me happy.

So I went 3-2. Not bad considering only one of those games was supposed to be a gimme (VT v ECU), and it was still only the third week of the season.

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

Bama thru Boise    I saw no reason to change anything here. They all played very well against teams that were all expected to play very well against. This coming weekend, Boise and Alabama both play ranked opponents. So things could get shaken up, but will likely be cemented for a while thereafter.

Nebraska thru Oklahoma    This whole section is a fairly arbitrary rearrangement of the same teams, with the addition of Arkansas. To be perfectly honest, I would have been content not moving anyone from last week's top 10, but I wanted to get Arkansas in there, which meant some things had to get moved around.

Texas    After having nearly lost to Texas Tech, one AP voter still insists on giving them the #1 vote. I'd go through all the ballots to figure out who it is, but I'm too lazy for that. One thing I did check, though: it's not one of the guys who lives in Texas. So I'm pretty much out of ideas.

LSU   Why not? It's week three, after all.

Utah    OH HAI, UTES! I mean, they beat Pitt in their first week and have performed more consistently than a lot of other teams. So they get their due, I suppose. Again, still week three.

Wiscy thru Zona    Wisconsin and South Carolina get bumped up for the simple fact that Iowa had to go and I was left with a void that I felt uncomfortable filling with Zona. They played a great game for sure, but I think moreover than anything else I learned this week by just how much I had overestimated Iowa.

NOTABLY STILL NOT FEATURED    Michigan Denard Robinson escapes embarrassment at the hands of a second DI-AA team in as many seasons. The defense took the Redskins approach to making an otherwise decent game into a heart attack-inducing crisis: take an 18-point lead into the 4th quarter, and then screw it up. Almost identical to last week, Robinson took 17 of the team's 42 runs (last week: 18 and 41, respectively). Two more games, I say. If Denard Robinson wins two more games, he's in the top 15.

Oh, right, and Maryland failed to avoid failure, falling to West Virginia 31-17. But West Virginia is pretty good this year, and that was a game the Terps were never going to win anyway, so I feel bad posting a fail boat for that one. Just have to wait til next week...