Category: San Diego State

Irish Eyes

Pinch me. That’s how I felt last night as a madly switched between ABC & ESPN as Oregon and Baylor folded.

Going into this season I never thought Notre Dame had a shot at a national title. I didn’t even let myself think they had a realistic shot at a BCS game, though I knew if they got 8 or more wins they were a lock for one.

(more…)

Um, WOW. That about sums up my thoughts for week 10 of college football.

Let’s start off in two obvious places for me.

1. Notre Dame beat Pitt to go to 9-0. If you watched this game you know how ridiculous it was to get an Irish victory. It had all the ingredients of an upset loss. Red zone turnovers, penalties, and Coach Kelly playing Russian Roulette with his QBs. The defense looked mesmerized by Pitt all game– as if this weren’t the team they’d seen on film that lost to lowly Youngstown State to open the season. (As an Irish fan, I know that it’s the NBC factor. For most mediocre teams the Notre Dame game is their only shot at national TV. It’s their de facto bowl game and crappy teams tend to play better.) I thought the game was over when Golson threw a pick in the endzone with 3 minutes to go. But the defense got a stop and 2 plays later Golson somehow tied it up. How far can the Irish go? At this point if they win 1 out of 3 games they are going to a BCS game. Win 2 out of 3 and they go to a BCS game. But win all 3? Mark my words… an undefeated Notre Dame team will not be denied a spot in the National Championship game. They are just too powerful from a fan base perspective. An undefeated Notre Dame team could bump out undefeated Oregon or Alabama. Money talks and everyone in football is poor compared to Notre Dame.
2. San Diego State beat Boise State in Boise. For those outside of the West you need to know: No one beats Boise State in Boise. Going into the game they were 71-1 at home since 2001. Additionally, SDSU has not beaten a nationally ranked team on the road in the history of the program. (They were 0-31 in road games against ranked teams.) Quite literally, it was the biggest win in team history. Not only did it catapult them into a tie for the Mountain West lead, it also was huge from a recruiting perspective as they head into the Big East alongside Boise State. A lot of Boise State’s talent at the skills positions comes from Southern California, so showing those recruits we can go there and get a win means a ton. Credit for this victory goes to two departments. First, Rocky Long made some ballsy calls down the stretch to run out the clock, including going for it on 4th down with 2:03 to go. (Rocky’s go-for-it chart now has its own Twitter account.) Second, special teams won this game. We opened the game with a 102 yard kickoff return for a TD. And late in the game we blocked a punt to set up the victory.

Still kind of pinching myself about those two games. Wow. 

Notre Dame Opponents Making the Case for the Irish

ND’s schedule was a death sentence. No one… NO ONE predicted they’d be 9-0. But now that we are here we can thank our opponents for helping us with the BCS picture. (In basketball terms we’d call this the RPI) Navy has won 5 in a row. Michigan beat Minnesota in the first post-Robinson era game. Miami beat VaTech. Stanford is on a 3 game winning streak. And BYU went to Atlanta and kicked the crap out of Georgia Tech.

No Upsets in the Top 10

Boy, ESPN was sure hoping for a shake-up yesterday– right? They set it up all week for one of the undefeated teams to lose, but they didn’t. Alabama came back against LSU. Oregon went all video game on USC in the 4th quarter. Kansas State held on despite probably losing their QB. And Notre Dame stole victory from Pitt.

Even in the top 20 teams there wasn’t really a major upset. The day played out with only the SDSU/Boise State game surprising most people. Some ranked  teams lost to lower ranked or unranked conference opponents… but that’s gonna happen this time of year.

Who is For Real?

Is Louisville (10-0) for real? Um, no one seems to think so. I think they are destined for the Orange Bowl to play whichever team loses among the 4 undefeated who isn’t Oregon. All of whom will hammer the Cardinals. While undefeated, they haven’t played any team of significance, which is why no one is giving them love.

Is Rutgers for real? No.

Is the state of Texas for real? Meh. I’ve not been impressed with any of the Texas teams this year. I love that TCU beat West Virginia yesterday. But all the Texas teams just seem to be chewing up one another in 2012 and none of them is emerging. I’ve been impressed with A&M… but I have a feeling they’ll get thrashed by Alabama next weekend. I think that we’ve finally learned what happens when all Texas teams can recruit… they all kind of lose something. (TCU, Texas, A&M, Tech, Baylor are all meh in 2012.)

Is Florida State for real? Yes. No one wants to play them in a BCS bowl game. While their schedule has sucked they have thrashed some teams. If they can get by Florida, expect them to be in a top tier bowl.

Is the Big 10 really this bad? Yes. Other than ineligible Ohio State, none of the Big 10 teams are playing very well. It looks like Nebraska could make it to the Rose Bowl. (If Oregon gets the national championship game we could see a 1 loss Notre Dame vs. Nebraska… which would be a GREAT game.) Don’t forget that the Big 10 was horrible in non-conference games this year.

Is the MAC for real? Yes, but it won’t matter. A 1 loss Ohio/Kent State/Toledo/NIU team will still be in the Motor City Bowl because the MAC is a lower tier mid-major.

Adam’s BCS Bowl Projections

National Championship Game – Notre Dame vs. Oregon

Fiesta Bowl – Florida vs. Kansas State

Sugar Bowl – Alabama vs. Florida State

Orange Bowl – Louisville vs. Clemson

Rose Bowl – Nebraska vs. Georgia

Where do we begin? League play took hold this week and we’re starting to see the legitimacy of the contenders. Just like in basketball, the non-conference games can give false positives for teams because they’re playing in weird places, staying in weird hotels, and playing teams they don’t normally play. But when you head into conference play you are playing teams you know, schemes you’ve seen before, etc.

Lack of Defense

In watching parts of a number of games yesterday the thing that stuck out to me is that the offenses are way ahead of the defenses right now. Obviously, the West Virginia game was entertaining… but a horrible offensively played game. While fun to watch (kind of) none of these teams are serious contenders as they will all eventually play teams with defense. Geno Smith’s 25,000 yard, 119 TD game was cool. We’ll see just how good he is on the road against Texas in a few weeks. Right now, he’s got Heisman hopes and the stats to back it up. He might be this year’s RG3.

That trend continued all day as there were lots and lots of high scoring, highly entertaining football games. I think the thing that was so shocking wasn’t just the numbers… but how open some of these receivers were. I think there is such emphasis on stunts and blitzes defensively right now, because that might cause turnovers… that offensive coordinators are just out-scheming these defenses. Find the open man caused by the blitz, toss it for 6 points.

SDSU

There better be some panic on the Mesa today. Rocky Long, longtime labeled as defensive guru, saw his defense give up 655 yards last night, 484 last week, and 533 two weeks back. It’s like they aren’t even trying to stop the passing game. Big whoop, you stopped the run. The 3-3-5 depends on having a great inside linebacker which they don’t have. (Miles Burris graduated last year and is starting for the Oakland Raiders now) Time for Plan B defensively. So many times they gave up chunks of 25-30 yards to a completely unguarded receiver. That can’t happen.

Offensively, I love what I’m seeing from Adam Muema. That kid can play. And Ryan Katz (the QB) has moments when he’s great. But 5 turnovers last night ultimately put the defense in such a hole that they couldn’t possibly keep up. The first pick wasn’t Katz’s fault, but the other 2 totally were preventable.

Notre Dame

Nice to have a week off and move up in the rankings. Thank you Stanford. 

Let’s hope the only news items coming out of next week’s Miami game are…

• The uniforms.
• Record breaking sales of Catholic vs. Convict t-shirts.

Big 10

Michigan State losing to Ohio State was bad news for the Big 10 on a day full of bad news. I felt bad for ESPN yesterday. How did they get stuck with Iowa/Minnesota and Illinois/Penn State? Gosh, Illinois is bad.

Nebraska beating Wisconsin put Nebraska on the board and puts Wisconsin on the pathway to the 5th place bowl. No idea where that league is headed… it’s looking like Northwestern is still in the drivers seat.

Pac 12

Oregon State is legit. It’s really fun to watch them play… too bad the Pac 12 network makes it so that no one really gets to see them. Oregon is the real deal. The question won’t be if they are good enough to get into the title game, the question will be if their defense is legit enough to not get run over by Alabama in the title game.

Big 12 vs SEC Challenge

Have you seen the top 15 rankings? 9 of the 15 are from either the SEC or Big 12. Obviously, there will be winners and losers now that they have to play one another. But its pretty clear that those 2 conferences are this years “top tier” and the other AQ conferences + Notre Dame (minus the Big Easy aka Big East) are second tier.

Question?

Who’s “The best of the rest?” Who do you think has a shot at the title that I’m not giving love to?

This season is beginning to take shape. Some teams are exactly who you thought they were while other teams are emerging for breakout years. Here’s a quick rundown of what I saw and what I think headed into mid-season.

Notre Dame

For the second week, the SDSU home game start time prevented me from watching the game. But I followed along pretty closely nonetheless and watched highlights later. What is happening is Brian Kelly’s investment in the defense is starting to pay off in spades. As reported on ESPN, Denard Robinson now has the same Heisman hopes as his left tackle. The Michigan QB, who looked like Mike Vick against the Irish for the past 3 seasons, called his play “the worst game of my career.” There was a stretch in the second quarter where I’m sure Mitt Romney looked at the TV and thought, “Wow, they are having a horrible week, I feel so much better about myself.”

Also impressive was the noise factor at Notre Dame stadium. It was loud and buzzing and starting to act like a college stadium instead of a church. They retrained their ushers and did some PSAs…  you won’t hear “Down in front” or “Sit down” anymore.

With a bye week ahead and a gaudy 4-0 record, they’ll be in the top 10 this week. And since they don’t play they’ll have the chance to move up again before playing Miami on 10/6. I expect them to be #9 today and #7 by 10/6. Trust me, NBC wan’t ND vs. Stanford to be as high a ranking as possible on 10/13. 

All of a sudden Notre Dame looks like they could got 10-2 or 9-3. Either of those is good enough for a BCS bowl bid.

San Diego State

Offensively, we did pretty good in scoring 34 points. Unfortunately, the defense continues to suck. So while we enjoyed going to the game and it was entertaining… we won’t win many games giving up so many points.

Worse than the defense is the special teams play. Just kick the ball out of bounds and give it to them at the 40. Or go for an onside kick. Special teams play lost this game for the Aztecs and exhibited the lack of depth for the team.

The really bad news is that San Diego fans won’t come watch a .500 team. If it weren’t for the 10/6 Sky Show I’d expect 15,000 fans for the Hawaii game. If we lost a couple more we’ll be in the 10,000 range again very soon. And that’s unfortunate.

The Big 10 Isn’t

Central Michigan beat Iowa? Wisconsin struggled with UTEP. Ohio State and Penn State‘s games don’t count. Michigan literally handed– make that tossed — the game to Notre Dame. And only Michigan State and Northwestern handled their business. Those two teams are in the drivers seat. Which will be in the Rose Bowl and will anyone care?

The Pac 12

I thought Arizona would play Oregon tough… but I think they are the only team who can give Alabama a run for their money. (Only if its outside of the south, though.) The only team that is impressing me in the Pac 12 (besides Oregon) is Oregon State. Again, with Oregon headed for the national championship game will anyone really care to watch a Northwestern vs. Oregon State Rose Bowl? At least they will have a cool parade.

Other conferences

The Big East is a turd this year. The MAC looks like the best mid-major. The Mountain West is somewhere between awful and terrible. And the Big 12 should get an award for not playing a decent non-conference game among all member teams. Seriously, what’s that about?

A big, fun day in college football yesterday. With a week or so left in non-conference play the match-ups are getting better. And Saturday saw a big round of upsets… something which always adds some fun and makes the college game unique.

The Aztecs

With temps well over 100 the past few days fans stayed home for this game. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen so few people at the start of the game. Then it just turned out that there were a ton of people hanging out in the hallways waiting for the sun to go down! The McLane family was on the home, shady side, but the heat really wore us down and we left after the third quarter. Week 2 of “everyone goes to the game” wasn’t quite as fun as week 1.

To me, the first two plays of the game dictated what was going to happen. On the first play our d-line pushed the North Dakota o-line back into the QB and running back. In the second play, our DB jumped a route and ran for an easy pick 6. North Dakota moved the ball… combined the game ended with just over 1000 yards of total offense. It was a classic track meet. The final score was too close for comfort but the Aztecs were never really in doubt about the outcome.

Notre Dame

Because the kickoff was the same as the Aztecs game I only caught the last few minutes of the game on TV. But, in watching highlights and reading all of the articles it seemed like a breakthrough game for Brian Kelly. I watched an hour long press conference on National Signing Day in 2010 which talked about all the defensive talent they had brought in. That press conference was on display yesterday in East Lansing. I’ve visited a bunch of college campuses on game day and a night game at Michigan State is one of the more hostile places around. To go in there and basically shut Michigan State down is very impressive. There’s a lot of talk today about Notre Dame being good enough for a BCS game this year… it’s too early to know that, but this was a major step in the right direction.

Upset City

This week in the sports media we’ll start hearing about parody. Outside of Alabama and LSU no one is overly dominant so anyone can win week to week. Case in point, UL Monroe took Auburn to overtime the week after beating Arkansas, Stanford reminded Matt Barkely that he’s no Andrew Luck, Utah handed their rival a reminder, BYwho? On and on it went. This will be a year when anyone can win on any given week… and that’s a lot of fun.

Conference Picks

Three weeks in it feels like I can gauge where some teams are. Here are my picks for conference champions of all the major leagues. I’ll even put the #2 team in parenthesis)

ACC – Florida State (Va Tech)

Big 12 – Oklahoma (Texas)

Big East – Cincinnati (South Florida)

Big 10 – Wisconsin (Michigan State)

Conference USA – Tulsa (Central Florida)

MAC – Ohio (Toledo)

Mountain West – Boise State (SDSU)

Pac 12 – Oregon (USC)

SEC – LSU (Alabama)

Upstarts of the Year

These are teams that are on the upwards track. They might not with their conference in 2012 but are headed the right direction.

• Northwestern
• South Carolina
• Notre Dame
• Arizona
• UL Monroe (Is anyone going to schedule them next year?)

It’s week one of the NFL season. As a college fan, the only thing I like about the NFL is seeing where my favorite college players have ended up. It’s exciting to see that Miles Burris will be starting for the Oakland Raiders today as a rookie.

Here’s what I saw in week two of the college football season.

Powder Puff City

There weren’t a lot of great match-ups going into this week. It was tough flipping for the at-home viewer yesterday… lots of very boring games. The top 5 didn’t really play anyone. LSU & Alabama continue to show us why they should be in the AFC East. Seriously, the SEC is in a league all their own right now. I watched parts of a few games and the teams, the crowds, the level of play… it far surpasses the other leagues right now. It’s really not even close.

Perhaps Arkansas will get kicked out of the SEC for what they did yesterday. UL Monroe beat an SEC team? I didn’t even know UL Monroe existed.

Up and down the schedule there weren’t many top teams playing interesting match-ups. I’m looking forward to next weekend when we have a few more top 25 match-ups.

Pac-12 B Crazy

USC struggled with Syracuse? In football? Yeah, that was weird. And the Oregon game… OK, so most of the 25 points game during garbage time. But you’d think Oregon’s 3rd string could hold Fresno State. Also in the league you had Washington getting blown out by LSU, Oregon State beating up Wisconsin, and then Colorado and Utah losing to community colleges.

I’m not sure what to think of the Pac-12. They are better than last year, but more schizophrenic than ever.

Penn State

Each week I find myself cheering for a new, more random team. This week it was for Virginia, who are going to win 4-5 games this year in a weak ACC. While PSU didn’t fold like they did in week one they continue on the downward spiral national television is there to capture. One of my twitter friends described watching Penn State like its a rerun of a train wreck. You know what’s coming but wow… you have to keep watching. 

I expect for them to get a win against Navy next week before getting beat up badly in the Big 10.

The Rest of the Big 10

So, when your conference favorite gets beat by a lower tier Pac 12 team… where does that leave you? Michigan State is in the drivers seat now. Ohio State is looking a little better. Michigan is going to be helter skelter depending on Robinson. The irony is that Wisconsin is still the favorite, right? But based on their non-conference games it’s really hard to know who is who, yet.

Notre Dame

I only saw bits of the game so I don’t know a lot. Any time we beat Purdue, I’m happy. But needing to go to last year’s hapless starter in order to get a 2-minute offense going isn’t a great sign of things to come. Each time I see them I can see that Brian Kelly has them on the right track. The key is if the fans are willing to wait out an actual rebuilding process which might take 5-6 years or if they are going to continue to fire perfectly good people. The team noticeably tackles better, has more depth, and more talent than during the Weis years.

I think we’ll get pounded by Sparty next week. We always get beat there. 

One thing I noticed yesterday, and I think its new, is that they were piping in music like a regular stadium between plays and at time outs. The house that Rockne built was bumping like it was built by Jay-Z yesterday…. I love it! (It’s part of the AD’s new “Take a StaND” initiative.) The atmosphere at Notre Dame stadium is, by default, way too formal. I liked hearing the music as it definitely brought the fans (and students) into the game a bit more. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told to sit down and be quiet in that stadium. It’s really no fun going to a game there… I hope its changing.

If you’ve never been to Notre Dame stadium, it is worth going. Just know that they have cranky church ushers in yellow jackets. Literally, if you stand up and cheer too loud you can be kicked out. Seriously. 

San Diego State

Um, wow. I didn’t see us rolling over Army. Player for player we were faster than the Black Knights… it felt like we were playing at normal speed and they were playing with heavy shoes. We were 6 point underdogs and the entire 4th quarter was garbage time for the back-ups to get reps. A very impressive showing on both sides of the ball. My favorite play was Colin Lochhart’s 96 yard kickoff return for a touchdown. My second favorite play was when Ezell Ruffin stiff-armed an Army defender in the open field and scampered 57 yards down field.

Week two of Rockyball was non-existent. I don’t think they went for it on 4th down, ever. And they kicked field goals and extra points where you’d expect them to. I don’t know if he just threw that hot mess out the window or if it just wasn’t needed this week.

This was our first game where all 5 McLane’s reported to section 36. We even tailgated for the first time, which went flawlessly. And while its definitely fun to barbecue before the game and soak in some of that atmosphere I’m not sure tailgating is in our future. In truth, its just so much easier to take the trolley than it is to drive. Plus, the parking lot was like a tarmac yesterday so we all got overheated.

All-in-all, we’re pumped about home games next week versus North Dakota State and the week after against San Jose State.

Question: Will LSU or Alabama lose in 2012?