Week Tres

The word so far this year for the Big 12 is "inconsistency."  I understand it's early in the season and every team is trying to find their rhythm and what works well for them to produce.  Other than Nebraska, it's been a crap shoot on which team will show up no matter who they play.  Conference play has officially started but I don't think we'll have a decent idea of who's going to be a contender until mid October, which is the usually the norm.

Week 3 brought us some genius and spare football.  I'll just go ahead and start off with the spare.  Baylor confirmed that they are a one man team and don't have a whole lot else.  They might want to mix in 21 other players that can play if they ever want to be relevant in this league.  Albeit they got rocked by the 4th best team in the country in TCU, ole RG3 had nothing to offer to the Horn Frogs.  And after his post game comments, I am no longer a fan, as he quotes....."just embarrassing, I've never more embarrassed in my life. They don't have better guys than we do."  Wow Griffin, did you think you were playing 1-A powerhouse that is the Goldthwaite Eagles?  You might want to come down to reality buddy. The Aggies laid an egg Saturday and had to score 21 unanswered points in the 4th quarter to beat the football factory that is Florida International.  Not gonna work come September 30^th against OSU in their conference opener.  Missouri struggled with the Aztecs of San Diego State.  Maybe Marshall Faulk came out of retirement and had a few carries for his alma mater that kept the game close.


Now the genius.  The Longhorn's defense played as well as a defense can these days with all the spread and potent offenses.  I don't care who you are, you hold anybody to 144 yards of total offense and -14 yards rushing in their house, you're doing something right.  I like to think former Tech coach Mike Leach wouldn't have let it be this bad and the thing that scares me for Tech is that in Tuberville's last 3 years at Auburn, he averaged 24, 24 and 17 points per game, something Tech fans will not tolerate.  Oklahoma State is lighting up the scoreboard right now although I think Gilmer could muster at least 30 points against Tulsa’s ghost defense.  So far though, OSU has looked better than everybody thought, with QB Weeden playing well.  OU fans are probably freakin’ out about their 3 point victory over Air Force.  AFA is a very good, discipline football team and I’m sure their option based offense secretly made Barry Switzer’s pants go crazy just a little bit.  The Cornhuskers smashed the Huskies Saturday, 56-21.  They, by far, have the most complete team after 3 weeks using a headhunting defense to go along with a sick offense that runs the ball with ease.  The defense held Jake Locker to 4-20 passing but he baby arms the ball anyway so I was not impressed with him.  K-State beat the Clones in the other conference game 27-20.

That’s all I got for Week 3 kids.  Week 4 doesn’t look too great on paper but maybe we’ll get a few surprises.  Everybody plays out of conference and will be favored to win every game.

P.S.  The Gilmer Buckeyes finally won a game.

2 Weeks down

Well, so far we are 2 weeks into the Big XII college football season and in these two weeks, we have already had some surprises and excitement.  Although we still don't have a clear picture of is what to come in conference play, we do have an insight of maybe what to expect for this 2010 conference season.  Everybody seems to look good early in the season ya da ya da, but usually nobody is playing anybody with any substance.  Or are they??

Week 1 brought us the thrilling game of Kansas losing to FCS North Dakota State 6-3.  Not only did they lose, they couldn't even mix in a touchdown under new head coach Turner Gill (former Nebraska great).  Fourteen first downs against the Bison will not get you anywhere in the Big XII.  Texas had a bland game plan against Rice and OU struggled against the other Aggies of Utah State, winning 31-24.  Nebraska took care of business against Western Kentucky but that wasn't what to watch for.  Their redshirt freshman QB, Taylor Martinez is fun to watch.  He'll beat you with his legs just as much as with his arm.  He averaged 18.1 yards a carry in that game.  Although not much of a post game interview, he's fun to watch.  The rest of the teams took care of business with Kendall Hunter topping it off at 257 yards rushing.  Looks like the Tyler native is picking up where he left off before his injury.

Week 2 looked to be a little different than the previous one.  OU throttled ranked Florida State and Kansas rebounded with a 28-25 victory over Georgia Tech, also ranked.  Who by the way, my buddy Steve pointed out, I wouldn't want to meet GT's QB Nesbitt in a dark alley.  Colorado looked real neat giving up 52 points to Cal.  And only two other games caught my eye.  Nebraska didn't look like world beaters in their 38-17 win over Idaho, although Martinez once again showed out.  And Oklahoma State beat Troy 41-38 (I know Troy has athletes and beat OSU a few years ago).  Just didn't realize Washington State was that bad the previous week.

So Week 3 starts in a couple of days and should continue to give us a better idea of what to look for.  Tech hosts Texas Saturday night in the first marquee conference match-up.  Nebraska goes to Washington and TCU hosts Baylor.  TCU is 21.5 favorites but if Baylor can get some early points, they may have a chance.  This is a very interesting game to me.  The rest of the games I'm interested in: KSU/ISU, OSU/Tulsa (Go G.J.), and KU/Southern Mississippi.  The rest of the games are "yawn."

So enjoy Week 3 and I'll be back for more HSO's as the season unfolds.