Daily Blog - Sunday September 27th

WOW! There were a lot of unexpected results this past Saturday. I will delve deeply into them during the course of the week, especially in my Monday and Tuesday News & Notes. In the Monday News & Notes I will have gone through 31 games’ play-by-plays and the Tuesday News & Notes will involve the 30 games’ play-by-plays that I will go through on Monday for the Tuesday News & Notes addition. There are already a lot of great facts in there.

Amazingly this past weekend, four Top 10 teams lost which two more Top 5 teams going down. It seems like over the last three years parity has indeed caught up with college football. The flu bug has played a factor in some losses, like Ole Miss vs South Carolina and it will be very interesting to see if any team can go unbeaten once again this year.

A couple of this week’s most stunning events involved California and Oregon. I am not surprised that Oregon could pull an upset at home in Autzen Stadium the week before Cal plays USC. I probably would have given them a 2 out of 10 chance of doing that. What surprised me is the way they dominated the line of scrimmage vs Cal. I watched every play of Oregon’s first three games and there was nothing that would indicate they could do that. Miami’s Jacory Harris looked tremendous vs two top-notch defenses hitting 70% but bothered by the rain and a Virginia Tech defense, had a horrible game hitting just 9-25. Last weekend’s results bode well for Oklahoma and USC which lost their games early and could easily rebound and be playing for the National Title game.

This week on either Thursday or Friday, I will have my recap of the month of September, going over the schools that had the best performances in the month and the weakest for the month and many other September tidbits. I will also unleash, on Thursday or Friday my computer’s average rating poll. As you know, each week my computer analyzes a game based strictly on the opponent rating, their stats both in points scored and yards gained, offense and defense as well as location of the game and home field advantage. It indicates the best games of the week. Now with four games, I feel we have enough quality averages to have a legitimate poll released and I will have it up every Thursday or Friday. I might also expand some power ratings but I’m taking a peak at the poll right now and I think you will really enjoy it.

Now let’s look at this week’s Top 25 performances. The Ducks demolition of the #6 California Bears at home outgaining them by 317 yards was clearly the best performance of any team this week and they earned a 116.05 grade. Texas, while they were just playing UTEP, had a 586 yard edge in their 64-6 win. Florida beat a bowl team on the road with a 316 yard edge despite losing their QB in the 3Q. Virginia Tech, which was outgained by Alabama 498-155, had a 161 yard edge vs a Miami Fl team that had been among the most impressive in the country. Alabama’s defense held what looked to be an unstoppable Arkansas offense to just 254 yards and was the week’s #5 performance. Georgia Tech beat N Carolina worse than the final score outgaining them by 252 yards and remember UNC came in unbeaten. Ohio St got their second straight shutout and had a 148 yard edge on Illinois. Boise St’s road win over Bowling Green was impressive especially the week after Fresno St. NC State outgained an undefeated Pittsburgh by 230 yards at home and nearly made the Top 10 of this week’s performances. South Carolina’s upset of #5 Mississippi did earn them a Top 15 spot despite the fact they only outgained the Rebels by 37 yards. USF’s road win knocking off Florida St and outgaining them by 80 yards got them the #14 spot and moved them up greatly in the national voters’ eyes. TCU’s road win in Death Valley was impressive although my Monday blog will talk about a couple of key plays in that game. Kirk Ferentz continues to master Joe Paterno and that also was a Top 20 performance this week winning in Happy Valley despite being outgained by 9 yards. Mississippi St lost to LSU but it still earned them a spot as they outgained the Tigers by 111 yards. LSU continues to win games where they were outgained and remember, Mississippi St was stopped on 4th & goal by inches at the end of the game. Although I was personally disappointed by the effect that Georgia gave on Saturday, they took the nation’s #1 ranked offense and held them to 204 total yards outgaining the Sun Devils by 130 and surprisingly that earned them a Top 25 performance this week.

Another losing team made the Top 25 with Indiana outgaining Michigan by 94 yards in the Big House, actually earning a better performance than Michigan did for beating Indiana at home. That’s what I love about this ratings. Here are two more teams that lost that made the rankings. Fresno faced an outstanding Cincinnati team on the road and outgained them by 86 yards and watching the game, they really could easily have come away with the win. Trailing by 4 they had a turnover at the 5 yard line but you can read more about that in weekly News and Notes. That earned them my #23 performance of any team this week.

Once again, I’m pretty pumped about the release of the average ratings with now four weeks of action in. After last week Alabama was #1 in the country in my average ratings but a team edges them out this week and I’ll have them up for you either Thursday or Friday. Do check out my Monday News and Notes and Tuesday News and Notes. There is a lot of interesting things and when I go through the play-by-play, things that surprise me get into the News and Notes edition and a lot of things that you cannot see in a game from the final score, are reflected in the News and Notes each and every week.

It was a rough week for my magazine with team’s like Penn St and Cal going down and Oregon playing much better than expected but keep this in mind - when I watch ESPN each week, the one thing Lou Holtz says that I really respect is “It’s a different team every week”. We have really seen this and my September article which will talk about team performances will point out some amazing contrasts about team performances in the month of September.

Here are this week’s Top 25 performances.