Week 4 Recap and Week 5 Picks

I'm going to do this all in one post for your convenience. For your inconvenience, it's a very long one. Soooo yeah. Do that you will with that.


My pick: Virginia Tech over Boston College
Actual: Virginia Tech over Boston College, by a score of 19-0
Finally, like I hoped would happen, Virginia Tech puts on a solid performance all around and has a win to show for it. It’s about damn time.


My pick: Alabama over Arkansas
Actual: Alabama over Arkansas, by a score of 24-20.
This was a rough game for Alabama, and they needed a late rally to avoid an upset. Mark Ingram was the carrier on the last eight straight running plays. Even with that, Arkansas very well could have won were it not for two very, very costly interceptions in the fourth quarter. I said before the weekend that even if they won, their #1 spot was in jeopardy and, well, we’ll get to that.


My pick: Notre Dame overcomes Brian Kelly’s monkey’s paw curse to beat Stanford
Actual: Nope. Still cursed.


My pick: South Carolina over Auburn
Actual: Auburn over South Carolina by a score of 35-27.
It looked very much like I was going to be spot on with this one – Auburn screwed the pooch early in the game and was going down in flames. But quietly and subtly they made their comeback. Kudos to them for not giving up like they so often do.


My pick: Baylor doesn’t play quite as bad as Rice
Actual: Baylor played quite a bit better than Rice, winning 30-13.
What can I say here? I didn’t even watch the game. I just saw the score and said “Right, well, better luck next year, I guess.”


My pick: Boise State over Oregon State by a lot
Actual: Boise State of Oregon State by a good chunk, but not “a lot” by Boise State’s standards
Considering that BSU has averaged a 24-point advantage in their last 17 (straight) wins, I guess 37-24 seems a little tepid. Then again, their largest margin of victory against a ranked opponent in the last two seasons was just 8-points. So by that measure, this was practically spectacular. It’s a shame the rest of their schedule is so weak – their next real challenger won’t be until Nevada in late November. Nevada has just just cracked the top 25 and there’s no guarantee that they’ll even stay there, because, well, it’s Nevada.


So I'm 4-2 this week, 3-2 last week, making me 7-4 for the season so far. Meh. I think it's alright considering I really try to stick to games I think will be close.


You’ll notice the top 15 is not in a table format. There's a reason for that, but it's a long story so I'm not going to bother explaining it. It has a lot to do with the reason these are going up Saturday afternoon.


                                Last week
1) Ohio State           Alabama
2) Alabama              Ohio State
3) Boise                   Boise
4) Nebraska             TCU
5) TCU                    Nebraska
6) Oregon                Oregon
7) Florida                 Florida
8) LSU                    Arkansas
9) Utah                    Oklahoma
10) Auburn              Texas
11) Stanford             LSU
12) Arkansas            UTAH
13) Wisconsin          Wisconsin
14) Oklahoma          S Carolina
15) Arizona              Arizona


Ohio State and Alabama     This has nothing do with Ohio State’s 73-point offensive atomic bomb. Rather, it has more to do with Ohio State performing better and better. It took cojones to come out and play Miami in the second game of the season. AP puts Arkansas right above Miami, and Coaches have them separated by just one spot. Yet when Ohio State handily beats Miami and Alabama just barely scrapes by against Arkansas, Alabama doesn’t budge. It’s good to see that baseless hatred for Ohio State hasn’t gone out of fashion. But I will say this: in the next two weeks, Bama plays #7 Florida and #20 South Carolina, while Ohio State plays Illinois and Indiana. So it’s highly likely that things will switch back. So there.


Boise thru Oregon      I can’t put Boise over Ohio State or Alabama for obvious reasons. But I’m not even going to consider putting Nebraska over Boise until after they play Texas in two weeks. TCU is beginning their inevitable slide toward mediocrity that accompanies their mediocre scheduling. I am still not impressed by Oregon’s insistence on running up the score, plus I want to give them some room to move up if/when they beat Stanford next weekend.


Florida     I’m going to chock this one up to my rankings being based largely on how I believe teams will perform in the future. Ergo, Florida finally has the solid all-around game I knew they were capable of, and they don’t move.


LSU and Utah     Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas all had to get moved down, and there wasn’t really anybody who deserved to be above these teams, so they get a somewhat artificial 3-spot boost.


Auburn thru Arkansas     This is where things got tough. I put Auburn over Stanford because I think Auburns opponent – South Carolina – is better (or, failing that, marginally less cursed) than Stanford’s opponent – Notre Dame (THE TURKEY’S A LITTLE DRY!! OH, FOE, THE CURSED TEETH! WHAT DEMON FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL CREATED THEE?!)(<--continuation of last week’s Simpsons joke) concerning Arkansas, I am of the school of thought that when a team loses to a top-five team in a close game, you either you really can’t penalize them too much. It was a hell of a game that they fought to the bitter end and had it not been for those two unfortunate interceptions in the fourth quarter, things could have shaken out very differently. That having been said, they didn’t.


Wisconsin and Oklahoma     Wisconsin ran the score up in a way that very few Big Ten teams are capable of doing these days, positively toppling Austin Peay 70-3. Then again, as things would have it, Austin Peay is apparently not even a good team by DI-AA standards, much less Big Ten. So congrats on proving absolutely nothing and thus not moving an inch. Oklahoma I honestly don’t know what to do with, seeing as they just seem to play like crap against crappy teams but really well against really good teams. They’re going to bounce around until they do something A) impressive, or B) incredibly dumb.


NOTABLY STILL NOT FEATURED     Michigan did finally have that solid overall performance I was looking for. Interestingly enough, Denard Robinson was injured and it was Tate Forcier, widely regarded to be a lesser quarterback, who made it happen. Rumor has it that Robinson will be back this week. They’re approaching Top-20 territory, but I’d like to see one more solid game out of them before having any kind of faith in a team that has twice in a row started out well and crumbled later in the season.


NEWLY NOTABLY NOT FEATURED     Texas. What have I been saying about Texas the entire season? I’d put them around 10 and wait until they give me a reason to do otherwise. Well, I’d say losing to UCLA 34-12 is just such a reason. Down ya go.


Right. Now that that's out of the way, picks for Week 5.


Vanderbilt at Connecticut     Statistically, UConn is a better team, but their opponents have been pretty weak - they're getting a pretty big boost from a 62-3 blowout of Texas Southern. Vandy might be 1-2, but LSU and Ole Miss back to back does not a cakewalk make. I'm going with Vandy.


#21 Texas vs #8 Oklahoma     Oh, what to do, what to do. One team has been consistently scraping by, the other one was consistently scraping by until recently. I think I have to pick Oklahoma here, if only because Texas has too many fundamental problems that you just can't fix in a week. Plus, Oklahoma really does seem to their best work against their strongest opponents.


#9 Stanford at #4 Oregon     I'm going to give this to Oregon for one reason and one reason alone: Playing in that stadium is like playing inside a swarm of bees. Very angry bees. 


Notre Dame at Boston College     I'm going to give Notre Dame one more chance before I give up on them entirely. 


#22 Penn State at #17 Iowa     This ought to be a hell of a game no matter how you look at it. I'm going to go with Iowa, though. They've been playing better than Penn State this season and, I don't know, I just have this gut feeling... I don't have faith in Penn State this week.