College Football: Week 7

What an eventful day of college football. Week 7 saw Nos. 1, 5, 10, 12, 22, and 23 fall. The Wisky Badgers exposed THE Ohio State's weaknesses on defense as they jumped on the buckeyes 21-0, before adding to and holding on for a 31-18 win. Again, ESPN and many other media outlet's darling boy quarterback Terrelle Pryor struggle and Senator Tressel's team lay the usual, proverbial egg his team most always lays when his team is in the midst of a national title hunt.

Ohio State squandered away what I feel to be their LAST, BEST opportunity to make the national title game in the Big 10. Currently, with no conference championship game, all the buckeyes had to do was win out and they would have had a gift-wrapped invitation to the big dance by Thanksgiving. Now, OSU will have to not only navigate at divisional conference schedule, but also win a conference championship game to reach the title game. Now, oddly enough, perhaps the Big 10's most popular basketball school might have taken the steering wheel to the easy road for a title berth.

Don't believe me about the Spartans? Have a look at their schedule: at Northwestern and Iowa, at home for Minnesota and Purdue, then the finale at Penn State. All of those teams are struggling and the only real game left for Sparty is at Iowa. Navigate their way past the Hawkeyes and you could very well see Michigan State make a STRONG push for a national title game appearance. Weird, huh?

Nebraska, a word of advice for all: "...let it go..." For a slap year, Nebraska has stewed over the :01 controversy stemming from the Longhorn's win last year in the Big XII title game, a game that most likely was the straw that broke the Husker Nation and AD Tom Osbourne's back as the Huskers announced this summer that they would make a go of it in the Big 10. Bo Pelini should give Tom Osbourne a hug every day this year and thank him for the cupcake schedule that allowed his team to ride the hype-machine ESPN and Lee Corso put out there before the year started, picking Nebraska to win the Big XII and go on to the National Title Game.

Nebraska discovered Saturday what it meant to play a team with equal - maybe superior - talent to their own as "Freshman-Phenom" Taylor Martinez was outplayed by the anemic Garrett Gilbert who was literally lit up by Tony Jefferson and the Sooners two weeks ago in the Cotton Bowl. Perhaps all the build up and frustration kept the Huskers from playing to "potential" or perhaps Martinez came down with a little touch of the flu or perhaps Texas' offensive line came to a spiritual realization over the bye week and somehow finally decided they would finally block for the run.... OR, perhaps, and this is just my opinion, Nebraska...JUST ISN'T THAT GOOD! Simple, right?

Oh, and by the way Husker Nation, don't let the door hit you on the way out. While there may have been a plethora of OU fans quietly cheering for Nebraska in this game, as a guy that has grown up with the Big XII - yes, I do still remember the days of the Big 8 as well - I was all too happy to see Bo Pelini and his over-hyped, over-rated Huskers make the shameful walk into the locker rooms in front of their home fans. I have been dumbfounded from day one when Tom Osbourne announced that Nebraska would be leaving for the Big 10 (...really, Big 11). I believe that the Huskers will find it tough-going playing teams like Ohio State, Iowa, Penn State, Wisconsin, Michigan and Michigan State year after year. 

Apparently, there must have been a week-long party that the South Carolina Gamecocks attended all week long as the team that throttled EVERYONE'S number one team Alabama last week, lost to Kentucky...KENTUCKY?! In basketball, that's allowable. Heck, that's expected. But in football? Steve Spurrier desperately needs to get his Gamecock team back to the Carolina's and get his team ready to face the mighty Vanderbilt Commodores.

Arkansas' loss was more entertaining throughout as they slugged it out with top ten Auburn 63-45, a game in which the defensive coordinators should not receive their pay checks this week. Staying in the SEC, the mighty Gators of Florida and Urban Meyer were up-ended by their old offensive coordinator Dan Mullen led his fighting Bulldogs into "the swamp" and handed the Gators their second consecutive home loss. If I would have told you 7 weeks ago that Mississippi State would be 5-2 - with a razor thin loss to Auburn (...by 3) and a tough game against LSU (...27-9) - and Florida would be 4-3, staring at life outside of the top 25, what would you say? I know what I would say, and it can't be repeated here.

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Getting back to our home state schools for a moment, the 6th ranked Sooners hosted the Cyclones from Ames, IA and OU simply mopped the deck with Iowa State. 52-0 was our final score from Norman and Sooner fans were able to experience a very memorable game as running back and senior Demarco Murray tied, then passed 1969 Heisman winner Steve Owens for most touchdowns in a career with 58. Sooner wide receiver Ryan Broyles also set an OU record with 15 receptions in a single game. Broyles tallied 10 grabs after just the first quarter alone. He racked up 182 yards and caught one of Landry Jones' 3 touchdown passes.  With the initial BCS ranking coming out tomorrow, the Sooners should expect to be ranked somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4. I will go ahead and predict that the first rankings will go Boise State, Oregon, Oklahoma and TCU.

In Lubbock ,Tx, Mike Gundy's Oklahoma State Cowboys did something they hadn't done since 1944: win at Texas Tech. As I wrote earlier in the season about OSU, you can STILL count me as someone that is extremely skeptical of this Poke team. Their best win thus far has been the win they recorded Saturday afternoon in Lubbock, but, they beat a Tech team whose best win is against lowly and perennial doormat Baylor. If you are the type of person that likes to speculate about a team's worth when comparing other wins and losses to other teams on their own and other team's schedules, Tech was blasted by Iowa State 58-32 and was beaten by 10 at home against a 4-2, unranked Texas team. Iowa State was just blown out by Utah in week 6 and OU in week 7, and their only other 2 wins are against directional universities.

To me, that mean that Iowa State is not that good of a team and that Texas Tech and Baylor, along with Mike Sherman's Texas A & M Aggies, will battle it out for the right to be declared the last ever Big XII South Division Doormat. After watching Baylor travel to Colorado and come away with the win - because apparently Dan Hawkins does not understand that you can actually send out your field goal kicker to attempt PAT when you score touchdowns - I will hedge my bet that Texas A & M will have the luxury of being the laughing stock of the final, full-strength Big XII South Division, DESPITE having the preseason offensive and defensive POY's.

I'll update later should Oregon State and Nevada be knocked off later this evening, but as of 11:32 PM, Week 7 of CFB has been nothing short of entertaining, especially if you're an Oklahoman.