Good Thoughts/Bad Thoughts from College Football Week 1
Posted by deaconcat08 on September 6, 2010
It’s time for the return of my weekly good thoughts/bad thoughts column. This column debuted last year and gained quite a following. The format of the entry is that after every Saturday of games I analyze six different college football news items. These six things are divided up into good thoughts and bad thoughts. Sometimes these “thoughts” represent my opinions about major news topics, while other times they are random observations I made throughout the weekend. Hope you enjoy.
Good Thoughts:
1. My preseason disappointment picks- It’s probably a little premature to evaluate the success of my preseason picks, but I appear to be pretty dead-on in regards to my # 1 disappointment pick of 2010. If you go this entry written on July 29th of this year: http://deaconcat08.sportsblognet.com/2010/07/29/brads-2010-disappointment-picks/, you will see that I picked Kansas to be the team who will disappoint the most this season. After the Jayhawks week 1 loss to North Dakota State, this pick definitely appears to be dead on. However, it still may not be as good as my # 1 disappointment team from 2008, which was Michigan. You will also see Southern Miss and Ole Miss on this year’s list, which are two teams who had equally horrific starts to their season. I’ve come to realize that I may not be able to tell you who is going to be a good each year, but I can certainly tell you who is going to be bad.
2. Big Boi’s Gameday picks- As you may know, each week the ESPN College Gameday crew lets a local celebrity (usually an alum of a participating school) join them on stage for their weekly selections. Typically, the celeb’s picks are pretty horrible, and when I saw Big Boi from Outkast come to the stage this Saturday in Atlanta, my expectations were quite low. Big Boi appeared to have no idea what he was talking about during the entire final segment, but when all was said and done, he put Kirk and Lee to shame by going 8 for 8 in predicting Saturday’s games. Corso finished with a respectable 7-1 mark, but the usually accurate Herbstreit had a dreadful 2-5 record this week. See full results here: http://espn.go.com/college-football/gameday.
3. East Carolina- They always say what goes around comes around and that certainly proved true for the East Carolina Pirates this weekend. After a shocking loss in last year’s Liberty Bowl to Arkansas where the Pirate kicker missed two potentially game-winning field goals, ECU was on the other end of an equally shocking result against Tulsa on Sunday when they successfully completed a Hail Mary TD pass with no time remaining. I didn’t expect much from ECU this season, but the Pirate offense looked great in their debut. However, Ruffin McNeil appears to have brought his patented phantom defense from Texas Tech with him to Greenville, as ECU gave up a whopping 49 points at home (including 20 in the 4th quarter).
Bad Thoughts:
1. My preseason surprise team of the year- The Washington Huskies gave a good effort in Provo, but unfortunately they came up just short to the Cougars. Because I picked Washington as my # 1 surprise team this year (http://deaconcat08.sportsblognet.com/2010/07/28/brads-2010-surprise-picks/), the Huskies’ persistent difficulty to win on the road is starting to concern me.
2. Boise Haters- The BCS elitists are at it again, but this time they are not waiting until October or November to begin their attacks. In fact, in an unprecedented move, they are criticizing Boise State before they have even played a game this year! Bill Hancock and his homies, such as Lee Corso and Gregg Doyle from CBS (http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/13887480/ok-boise-state-losing-to-virginia-tech-is-right-thing), are claiming that the Broncos are already not deserving to play for the championship just because they don’t play a “BCS quality” schedule. They keep saying that Boise only plays a 2 game schedule (Virginia Tech and Oregon State), and the rest of their opponents are creampuffs. After Fresno’s impressive win over Cincy last night, I think we all have to agree that now Boise at least has a 3 game schedule. And guess what, about half of the top 10 BCS powerhouses also play 3 game schedules. I mean who does Ohio State really play besides Miami, Wisconsin, and Iowa? In fact, OSU plays 8 true home games compared to Boise’s 6! I’m not guaranteeing that Boise beats VT, but either way, it’s ridiculous that the BCS elitists have gotten to the point where they are calling for the elimination of non-BCS teams before they even start their seasons. What if the 1984 San Francisco 49ers played in the WAC? Would they be automatically dismissed from playing for the national title? I assume that TCU is also eliminated from national title contention as well. A 9 point win over Pac-10 powerhouse Oregon State just wasn’t good enough I guess. Not when real national title contenders like Oklahoma are beating stellar opponents like Utah State by 7.
3. People cheering for Virginia Tech to beat Boise- See bad thought # 2. Do you all not have souls?