Having taken my lumps on Texas and Connecticut, and betting there's more to come, I'll gladly yield to the fans of those schools.
(Though having been in Dallas for the NCAA Tournament a year ago, there sure seemed to me to be a lot more interest in UT sports than other schools. Hopefully, I'll get there during football season some day.)
But I'm at least glad it stirred you all up. I feel like I'm only talking to tumbleweeds half the time.
Anyway, let's use my mea culpa as an excuse to look at today's headlines.
Speaking of big-time schools, Frank Fitzpatrick writes a truly outstanding story on the front page of today's Inquirer about the fundraising arms race in college sports.
Fitzpatrick has written about this stuff before and will surely do so again, and he really knows his stuff when it comes to this subject. So please read the story and feel free to comment on it here.
As for yesterday's games, pride of place has to go to -- believe it or not -- Temple. The Owls rallied from 17 points down in the fourth quarter to win at Akron, thanks to three fourth-quarter touchdown passes from Adam DiMichele. You Owls fans tell me whether that was more impressive than the fact that it's Temple's second win in a row.
Penn State was very impressive in its 38-7 win over Wisconsin, spurred on by a nice bit of motivation from JoePa. The win certainly moved the spotlight off the Austin Scott situation for a little while.
Rutgers also scored 38 points in beating Syracuse, with Ray Rice once again the center of attention. Before waxing nostalgic about winning a state high school championship at the Carrier Dome, Rice ran for 196 yards and three touchdowns.
Elsewhere in New York, Penn running back Joe Sandberg beat Rice's tally by a yard and a touchdown as Penn put up 59 points on Columbia.
(Fair warning, though: I have heard that the writer of that story isn't very good...)
In Massachusetts, Villanova took a very good UMass team to overtime, but the Minutemen were just too much after that.
And finally on the local scene, I would nominate Delaware's Omar Cuff as the best I-AA player in our region. I wanted to call him the best player in the region at any level, but if you include Penn State and Rutgers that isn't the case. It is if you only include Temple from I-A, though.
Cuff ran for 200 yards and three touchdowns and scored another from a screen pass yesterday. That's 24 of Delaware's 30-point total against Northeastern. Cuff's totals so far this season: 5.1 yards per carry, 20 touchdowns and an average of 123.3 rushing yards per game.
And one basketball story: Joe Juliano surveys St. Joe's at their first practice of the year.
After the jump, the national news.
At long last, we have genuine chaos in college football.
Pat Forde watched Kentucky topple LSU in triple-overtime, as college football's (relatively) meek continued "making life miserable for the mighty."
Ray Ratto watched Oregon State upend Cal, and says "there is no No. 1 team in the country - just a bunch of No. 11s exchanging turns."
Ivan Maisel watched Oklahoma not lose to Missouri, and is skeptical of Bob Stoops' "obligatory niceties" about the state of the Sooners.
Mike Jensen watched Penn Charter's Matt Ryan lead Boston College to a win at Notre Dame. The Eagles remain undefeated, even if "probably only devout Catholics and devotees of the point spread were watching NBC by the end."
(His words, not mine...)
Finally, Ken Gordon watched Ohio State beat Kent State, and writes that the Buckeyes "likely will be heading to New Orleans, site of the Bowl Championship Series title game, if they can win their remaining five games."
I happen to think that LSU, USC, Cal, Florida and Oklahoma are all better than Ohio State. I suspect I'm not alone in thinking that, and also thinking Ohio State does not merit being in a national title game at the moment.
I also think all this proves the need for a playoff yet again.
So I pass that question to you -- and not least to Penn State fans, whose team gets its shot at the Buckeyes in two weeks.
But having said all that, Doesn't it make too much sense that Ohio State would somehow come out on top of all this mess?
Comments (2)
The WAY Temple won on Saturday is FAR more impressive than just the fact that they've won two in a row (three of their last five, if you count UConn, and you should).
When you're building a team (and in the grand scheme, a PROGRAM), especially a young team, you need to LEARN TO WIN, and I they're starting to do that. This is the first comeback win by Temple in I don't know how many years. Wins like this give players confidence that even if they fall behind they can comeback. Not to mention how much better this team will be once this young team continues to improve and Al Golden continues to bring in great recruiting classes to North Broad Street.
From a building a program standpoint, FANS now have confidence that the team can come back, so one hopes that we'll see more people at the games, and less of them leaving at halftime. If there's one thing that Philadelphia can get behind, it's an underdog. I couldn't think of a better underdog story than Temple football.
Posted by Josh | October 14, 2007 12:52 PM
Posted on October 14, 2007 12:52
Gosh your and idiot... quit
Posted by Vic | October 15, 2007 7:35 AM
Posted on October 15, 2007 07:35