All of this scoring can be fun, but after a while it’s just not as impressive when it seems like everyone is doing it. After West Virginia dismantled Clemson 70-33 last night, the whole bowl system looks even more ridiculous. Perhaps if these games meant something we’d see some more defense.

I think it’s a joke that Alabama gets a rematch with LSU in the National Championship game, but at least those teams know something about how to play defense.

An annual tradition in the south is the second-to-last week of the regular season, where many SEC teams get another filling of cupcakes. Why this happens, I’m not sure. But it does, and since the SEC conference slate is so challenging, nobody ever says anything about it.

The fact that the SEC teams usually romp their foes also helps in keeping any national attention off of them. Today, however, wasn’t the SEC’s finest day. Even though none of their teams were upset, none looked all that great against teams you normally only hear about in the first two weeks of September.

Florida defeated Furman 54-32, but needed a 17-0 fourth quarter to do so. Alabama and its vaunted defense gave up more points than it had all season (21) to Georgia Southern, and had a 24-14 halftime lead. Auburn clung to a 14-10 halftime lead against Samford before winning 35-16.

These results shouldn’t be considered high crimes, as every team should be afforded a bad day throughout the season as long as it can hold on and win. But one has to wonder what the national conversation would be if any of the other automatic qualifier conferences would have had a similar day. My guess is there would have been plenty of bashing.

It certainly would have hurt the case for any of those leagues to possibly have two teams in the national championship game. Not the SEC, however, which will come out of this completely unscathed.

And while we’re here, the idea of a rematch for the national title is absurd for several reasons. First off, Alabama’s loss to LSU will essentially mean nothing. The Crimson Tide can get to the title game despite not winning their division, having a loss at home, and possibly owning a single win against a ranked opponent (Arkansas) if Penn State can’t remain in the top 25.

Do I think Alabama and LSU are the country’s top two teams? Yes, actually, I do. But I — and a lot of others — thought Ohio State and Michigan were the top two teams in 2006, and that didn’t turn out so well. The point is, we’ll never know thanks to the absence of a playoff and weak schedules (outside of LSU) that don’t give us an idea how the conferences stack up against each other.

Watch Rueben run. That’s basically what the Auburn defense did best today, as Rueben Randle caught 5 passes for 106 yards and 2 touchdowns in top-ranked LSU’s 45-10 thrashing of Auburn. Randle caught a 46-yard touchdown pass from Jarrett Lee and a 42-yard scoring pass from Jordan Jefferson.

LSU has had mini-scandals all season with players getting suspended for games, but the Tigers keep brushing off these distractions. For this game against Auburn, LSU was without stud corner Tyrann Mathieu, leading rusher Spencer Ware and defensive back Tharold Simon. The defense didn’t miss a beat as they held Auburn to only ten points.

Now LSU gets a bye week next week and then they’ll face Alabama for one of the biggest games of the year on November 5th.

LSU may have come into tonight’s game with Oregon missing its starting quarterback and wide receiver because of suspensions, but that didn’t matter. The LSU defense and special teams were more than enough in LSU’s 40-27 win.

It’s a real nice victory for LSU and the SEC (again). It’s a tough loss for Oregon, which is about to get the Ohio State label draped on it when it comes to big games. The Ducks, as it turns out, aren’t that difficult to defend if you have some time to prepare for them.

In their last three big-time nonconference games — Ohio State, Auburn and LSU — the Ducks offense hasn’t been anywhere near the explosive unit that it is during the season. People that are smarter than I am on Twitter claim it’s because what Oregon does is actually pretty simple, and when you have the athletes to match up with it, all you have to do is play assignment football.

That being said, shutting down Oregon is quite an accomplishment, and LSU’s defense won’t face many offenses that are more explosive. They’ll face different and more balanced offenses (Darron Thomas is woefully inadequate in the passing game), but not many that can do what the Ducks can.

It plays in the SEC West, so LSU has a hell of a lot of work to do in order to play for the title this year, but this was a huge hurdle, especially considering the suspensions. It was an even bigger hurdle for the SEC, which may have just guaranteed itself a spot in the title game again.

There have been rumblings in Louisiana that Les Miles has worn out his welcome as coach at LSU. Some have written this off as ridiculous — “He won a national title in 2007!” — but Saturday night was a harsh reminder of why the LSU faithful have lost a lot of, um, faith, in Miles.

The Tigers survived Saturday night in a 30-24 win against half of North Carolina’s team. And it really wasn’t even the good half. Worse still is that LSU very nearly blew a 30-10 lead in the fourth quarter to do it.

Give a lot of credit to the North Carolina players who know the NCAA rules. They played with a lot of heart down the stretch and were two dropped passes and a probably-missed pass interference call away from winning a game nobody gave them a chance in.

But the story here is Miles and the Tigers nearly blowing the game. The Tigers failed to put the game away, and star defensive back Patrick Peterson’s postgame quote said a ton. When asked why he wasn’t on the field for a 97-yard touchdown pass that gave North Carolina life, Peterson responded, “I guess he thought we had a comfortable lead.”

The “he” in that sentence is defensive backs coach Ron Cooper, but how does that decision not go through Miles? If it doesn’t, it should. The head coach doesn’t need to micro-manage his assistants, but he does need to make sure his best players are on the field while the game is still in any kind of doubt. Miles needs to at the very least contend for an SEC title this year, or it could be his last.

Now some other thoughts on the first Saturday of college football. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m assuming you’re excited today.

I know I am. As nice as Thursday was for college football lovers, there’s nothing quite like the first full Saturday of college football. I could barely sleep last night, as thoughts of TCU’s defense, Brian Kelly’s debut in South Bend and Erin Andrews — on the set of Gameday … pervs — danced through my head.

Before I get into the five things you should look out for today, a brief introduction: My name is Paul Costanzo and I’ll be guiding you through your college football Saturdays this season. I’m not a college football expert, by any means. I’m just a huge fan who happens to have a journalism degree. I’m also a good friend of Anthony’s, so if I suck at this, you can direct all your hate mail to him. You can read me daily in the Times Herald newspaper out of Port Huron, Mich.

But enough about me, let’s get to the games. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a quick and dirty look at how I see things playing out in the SEC this season:

#1 Alabama
Led by head coach Nick Saban and Heisman winner Mark Ingram, this is by far the best team in the country. While they don’t come weakness-free, the Tide have the best combination of talent and coaching in all of college football. They play in the nation’s toughest conference so there’s always a chance that they could lose a game during the season, but this is your clear national title favorite. Their defense might be even better than it was a year ago.

#2 Florida
The Gators lost Tim Tebow, Riley Cooper, Aaron Hernandez, Maurkice Pouncey, Carlos Dunlap, Jermaine Cunningham, Brandon Spikes, Ryan Stamper, Joe Haden and Major Wright from their squad last season. In one word: Ouch. Outside of running back Jeff Demps, they lost their top player at nearly every position, which would usually destroy a program’s chances of competing the next year. But this is Florida – they reload every year. This year’s crop of starters has seen time in either part-time action or spot starts over the last couple of years, so the Gators will compete. Are they a top 5 team? We’ll find out soon.

#3 Arkansas
All right, so I might be drinking too much of the Ryan Mallett Kool-Aid by ranking the Razorbacks ahead of Georgia and LSU. But even though Bobby Petrino is a turd, the man knows how to run an offense (a college football offense, that is) and Arkansas will be explosive on that side of the ball again this year. The question is whether or not their defense will step up so that this team can reach its full potential. As it stands now, it’s probably safe to say that Arkansas is going to have issues slowing teams down this year, but I just can’t stop starring at that offense. It’s like a tractor beam of hotness.

Read the rest of this entry »

LSU head coach Les Miles accepted blame for the Tigers’ collapse last Saturday against Ole Miss, although it appears that he isn’t accepting blame for everything.

From SI.com:

“As part of the process, I evaluate everything we do — players and coaches,” Miles continued. “I’m part of that process. I’m no different than anybody in this team room. I mismanaged the back end of the Ole Miss game.

“I’m responsible. I’m the head coach.”

The signal-caller on the sidelines (graduate assistant John Dunn) told Jefferson to spike the ball.

“To try to get the ball snapped with one second was certainly our greatest desire,” Miles said. “There was a possibility of Ole Miss having 12 men on defense. That came down from the press box.

Here’s the problem: Miles was the one that was signaling for Jefferson to spike the clock, as evidence by the video below.

Miles wants to take blame for what happened and he should, because that’s what head coaches do. But why did he not take blame for motioning to Jefferson to stop the clock? Jefferson says that the signal-caller told him to spike the ball and maybe he did, but Miles was clearly doing the motion too, yet he says he doesn’t know who told the quarterback to spike the clock.

At the end of the day, this will go down as just a massive screw up by all parties involved and LSU will just have to move on and get over it. It was just a bad ending in a bad loss, but I find it interesting that Miles won’t admit that he too was motioning for Jefferson to stop the clock. If he’s going to accept blame for the loss, he might as well go the whole nine yards and admit that he screwed up by listening to the press box and giving Jefferson the spike motion too.

Following LSU’s 25-23 loss to Ole Miss on Saturday in which Tigers quarterback Jordan Jefferson spiked the ball with :01 left remaining, Les Miles told the media that he didn’t know who instructed his signal caller to “clock” the ball.

Apparently Miles is either a liar or doesn’t have a real good memory, because it was him (thanks to SPORTSbyBROOKS.com for the video link):

This is damning evidence for Miles on several levels. Not only did he lie about what happened, but he also completely threw Jefferson under the bus by telling the media he didn’t know who told him to spike the ball.

Miles should have owned up to the mistake (maybe he thought there was more time on the clock when he was doing the gesture?) afterwards and took his medicine then. Now he’s going to feel the wrath of not only lying about the situation, but he also stands to lose some credibility with his players and the program.