So this was Revenge Week eh? You know, the week where Urban Meyer was supposed to pound Lane Kiffin, Pete Carroll was supposed to trash Steve Sarkisian, and Texas was supposed to show Texas Tech the pain of missing out on a national title shot last year. That was this week right?
Whoops.
Revenge Week (you have to love ESPN for those monikers right?) evidently didn't get the invitation to the party, and at the last second another guest arrived; Reveal Week. You see, the casual fan was stunned by this week's developments. USC losing to a Washington team that was 0-11 last year? BYU getting thrashed by a Florida State squad that looked horrible against a I-AA school last week (I will never use FC$ by the way)? Florida having a much tighter game than expected? All shockers. The truth though, is that all of these results merely revealed truths that were already evident to people willing to look at the play on the field this season rather than the names on the jerseys (I'm looking at you poll voters).
First off, USC is not an elite team; not even close. After watching the USC-OSU game last week I texted a friend of mine that is a huge OSU fan to let him know what I got out of watching the game; neither team has any business being in a BCS bowl. This year's incarnation of USC is not a good offensive team. Period. They lost two of their best WRs from last year (one to injury) along with a QB that was a top 10 draft pick, and replaced that trio with a true freshman at QB and two WRs that combined for six catches last year. Why exactly were they expected to be a great offensive team this year? Oh yeah, I forgot, this is USC, and they are always good. Silly me.
And lest I forget, Matt Barkley is the next Joe Montana. I mean, he played so great in that OSU game, and led them to victory on a last second drive!
Except...that never happened.
You see, a ruse was perpetrated on the American public last week. The sports media collectively took a dead cat and tried to sell us a mink coat. The ruse: Matt Barkley had a great game, showed great poise, and was the hero of the comeback drive against OSU. The reality: Barkley had a bad game, and Joe McKnight was the hero of the winning drive. Seriously, did anyone watch that game? Just as a refresher, here are Barkley's stats:
15-31, 195 yards, 0 TDs, 1 INT
Just look at those for a second, and I think you'll see what I see. Under 50% passing? Check. Under 200 yards? Check. Negative TD/INT ratio? Check. Color me confused, but I do not understand how this performance was being billed as a breakout performance for Barkley. The numbers don't lie; he played poorly. In the wake of USC's loss to Washington, almost every story on the game has noted that the 13 points and 110 passing yards are historic lows for the Trojans. Not a single story noted that those numbers were only slightly worse than last week's performance of 18 points and 195 passing yards. What that tells me (sorry Trojan fans) is that USC's passing offense is not going to get much better once Barkley returns. USC has five tough games left on their schedule (@Cal, @Notre Dame, Oregon State, @Oregon, UCLA), and it would be no surprise if they lost more than one of them.
Now that we have seen why USC losing should not have been totally unexpected, why exactly did Florida have so much trouble with Tennessee? Same song, second verse my friends. Just as voters seemed to ignore that USC lost Mark Sanchez and Patrick Turner and had little to replace them, they have also ignored the fact that Florida lost play-makers. In Percy Harvin and Louis Murphy, the Gators lost their top two receivers from a year ago, along with their top rusher not named Tebow. And the guy that was supposed to step in and be Percy Harvin 2.0, Andre Debose? Season ending surgery without playing a down. Still curious about why the Gators didn't throw 50 on the Vols? Short answer; they couldn't. This Gators team is all Tebow, all the time. Do you think SEC teams are really scared of Riley Cooper and David Nelson? Nah, me either.
While Florida should easily win the SEC East, they won't escape a schedule with LSU, Georgia, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Florida State without a loss, and I doubt they have the firepower to beat Alabama in an SEC title game match-up. This Florida team looks a lot more like the 9-4 team of two years ago than the 13-1 squad of last year. At some point the voters will recognize that fact.
What You Weren't Watching:
I must confess, I have a guilty pleasure when it comes to college football. I love watching the bottom of the Top 25 throughout the season. The overachievers. The underachievers. The comeback kids. Most years, teams 21-25 are exponentially more entertaining than teams 1-5. And this week featured one of my favorite types of games; a Top 25 play-in game. Didn't see it on the schedule? Oh, it was there. Auburn-West Virgina. Two BCS conference teams in similar states of transition that found themselves at 2-0, coming off disappointing seasons and featuring question marks at key positions. For WVU; can Jarrett Brown be the next Pat White? For Auburn; can Gus Malzahn work his wizardy as offensive coordinator on an offense that was putrid last year? The winner would find themselves at 3-0, and most likely comfortably nestled into the 24th or 25th spot in the polls, after Nebraska, Utah, Georgia Tech, and Oregon State lost earlier in the day. (Side-note: Why are people pretending Mizzou is a ranked team? They lost the two best players off a 10-4 team that lost to almost every good team they played, and have a three game stretch coming up of Nebraska-Oklahoma State-Texas. They are going 0-3 in those games, take it to the bank.)
Auburn prevailed in a shootout 41-30, a third straight impressive offensive performance for the Mighty Malzahns of Auburn Land. With a horrible Ball State team coming to town next week followed by a trip to offensively crippled Tennessee (do you think Jonathan Crompton is going to lead the Vols to 30-40 points in a single SEC game this season?), the Tigers are poised to be 5-0 heading into mid-October. Pretty good for a team that went 5-7 last year.
On the Field Heisman Rankings:
So what exactly do I mean by "on the field"? Simply put, these rankings don't factor in last year, two years ago, who you play for, or what people expected before the season. The obvious difference between these rankings and most out right now, is that you are going to see a distinct lack of Tebow and McCoy. Both QBs had their first marquee chances of the season this week, and both disappointed. Tebow had under 200 total yards against Tennessee with no passing TDs and an interception. McCoy only had 210 total yards while also posting a negative TD/INT ratio against Texas Tech. You won't see either of these guys in my rankings until they earn it on the field. Now, on to the rankings:
1. Jacory Harris, Miami (Fl.): This one is a no brainer. Two nationally televised games against ranked conference opponents. Two upset wins. Two 3 TD games by the precocious sophomore Harris. And guess what? Harris has his third straight chance this week, with another national TV shot against a ranked conference opponent in Virginia Tech.
2. Jahvid Best, Cal: In each of his first three games this year, Best has gone for 140+ yards from scrimmage and multiple TDs, highlighted by his scoring of all 5 TDs against Minnesota this weekend. Three straight big games, including two non-conference wins against BCS conference opponents, means Best is having the er...best start by any running back in the country.
3. Tony Pike, Cincy: While nobody has been watching, Pike has orchestrated two big road wins for the Bearcats, trashing Big East favorite Rutgers in Week 1 and topping a ranked Oregon State team this weekend, going for 330+ yards and 3 TDs in both contests. The only QB with a more impressive set of victories is Harris, and that is why he is #1.
4. Case Keenum, Houston: The rest of the Heisman conversation belongs to the stat kings, and Keenum has the advantage of being the only big number passer with a marquee victory this season, going for 366 yards and 4 total TDs in upsetting Oklahoma State last week.
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