Tag: BCS

Rivals Rundown College Football Top 25 – Week 8

benchwarmer42Leave a comment

Wisconsin v Ohio StateAfter taking a week off and enjoying some music at Austin City Limits, we here at the Rundown have pieced ourselves back together and are ready to get back to some College Football!  The Top 6 teams have stayed almost untouched for the first six weeks of the season.  Now that both Alabama and Oregon have faced true tests in Texas A&M and Washington and passed, that leaves Louisville as the only untested top 6 team.  We will give Louisville some props for avoiding the trap game against Rutgers and while Rutgers is a good team, they are nowhere near A&M or Washington.  Other notes…  We are still of the opinion that LSU has the best shot of making it to a National Championship game other then Oregon or Alabama at this time, even though we have them ranked at 7.  With the showdown between Florida State and Clemson looming, the loser will fall somewhere between LSU and Miami, thus giving everyone a dilemma, does the winner deserve to be 1,2 or 3…  That is going to be a huge choice, I think at this time it depends on who the winner is and how they looked.  But, it will be tough!  It’s too bad Stanford choked on Utah,  it hurts the overall street cred of the Pac12 and Washington.  Until that we would say that the Winner of Stanford vs Oregon would peg their ticket if they were undefeated and so was Clemson or Florida State but now the Ducks are going to have to be really impressive, not to mention games left against Stanford and Oregon State. (Oregon State is a whole different blog).  Even as we sit back and look at our rankings, UCLA and Baylor might be the most underrated teams and we’re not sold on Texas Tech and Auburn but the deserve the rankings for now.  Ok, no more rambling, here is our most recent installment of the Rivals Rundown Top 25 Teams, Week 8 Edition!

1 Alabama Crimson Tide
2 Oregon Ducks
3 Clemson Tigers
4 Ohio State Buckeyes
5 Louisville Cardinals
6 Florida State Seminoles
7 LSU Tigers
8 Texas A&M Aggies
9 Baylor Bears
10 UCLA Bruins
11 Miami Hurricans
12 South Carolina Gamecocks
13 Stanford Cardinal
14 Missouri Tigers
15 Virginia Tech Hokies
16 Georgia Bulldogs
17 Washington Huskies
18 Fresno State Bulldogs
19 Texas Tech Red Raiders
20 Northern Ill Huskies
21 Michigan Wolverines
22 Nebraska Huskers
23 Michigan State Spartans
24 Auburn Tigers
25 Oklahoma Sooners

(Stats via Espn.com; Picture via sbnation.com)

Our Week 5 Top 25 Update!!!

benchwarmer42Leave a comment

NCAA Football: Arizona State at Stanford

Here is our Top 25 Ranking for Week 5 of the College Football Season.  Week four was a lackluster week of games in college football, which would leave one to believe we’d have little movement in our Top 25 Rankings… it’s kinda true.  So our top teams went unchanged but after watching some of the performances by our next 15 we had to do a little housecleaning to make sure that everyone is where they belong.  We saw Michigan continue to drop after what was a dominating performance against Notre Dame two weeks ago, while they have won both games since, neither wins have impressed us enough for them to maintain and if it wasn’t for the Notre Dame game, they would be with Maryland and Texas Tech as questionable unbeatens.  Speaking of Maryland, if you have followed our blog or rankings, you’ll know that we called this and that we have started the unofficial campaign for CJ Brown’s Heisman candidacy.  Other notables, was our Sun Devils getting thumped by what looked like an NFL team in Stanford.  The silver lining was that the Devils fought till the end and came within a 4th down of having a chance to pull within 11 points with 4 minutes still left.  Either way, they drop out of the top 25, again because of the performance.  A top 25 team should be competitive within the rankings, sans Alabama and Oregon (maybe Stanford, we’ll see).  Side note, keep you eye on UCF, the Knights might still be one of the better teams that no one is talking about.  Also Washington and Baylor could both be considered outside contenders in their respective conferences to win!  While we’re sharing random thoughts, how about Utah, they beat their instate Rivals Utah St and BYU to Own the State but a slip vs Oregon St who lost to Eastern Washington, keeps them off of the National Radar and ours.  We’ll Utah, let’s see what you can do against the Pac12 South!  Big game this week that we are personally stoked about and might get some play, Maryland and Florida State.  Check back this week as we will have our Rivals Rundown Rewind and games to look forward to this weekend.  Enjoy your NFL Sunday Funday!  Update: We missed Texas Tech as the 25th ranked team when we originally published, so we had a couple of moves made to 25-30 and out…

 RIVALS RUNDOWN TOP 25 WEEK 5

Current Rank Previous Week Team
1 1 Alabama Crimson Tide, 3-0
2 2 Oregon Ducks, 3-0
3 3 Clemson Tigers 3-0
4 4 Ohio State Buckeyes 4-0
5 5 Louisville Cardinals 4-0
6 6 Florida State Seminoles 3-0
7 7 Oklahoma State Cowboys 3-0
8 8 LSU Tigers 4-0
9 9 Georgia Bulldogs 2-1
10 13 Texas A&M Aggies 3-1
11 11 Stanford Cardinal 3-0
12 15 Baylor Bears 3-0
13 13 UCLA Bruins 3-0
14 14 Miami Hurricanes 3-0
15 17 Oklahoma Sooners 3-0
16 16 Washington Huskies 3-0
17 21 Ole Miss Rebels 3-0
18 18 Fresno State Bulldogs 3-0
19 19 Florida Gators 2-1
20 20 South Carolina 2-1
21 25 Northwestern 4-0
22 24 Wisconsin Badgers 3-1
23 12 Michigan Wolverines 4-0
24 Unranked Notre Dame 3-1
25 30 Texas Tech Red Raiders 4-0
Next 5-
26 28 Boise State Broncos 2-2
27 Unranked UCF Knights 3-0
28 26 Michigan State Spartans 3-1
29 Unranked Maryland Terrapins 4-0
30 27 Nebraska Cornhuskers 3-1
Out-
23 Arizona State Sun Devils 2-1
29 Northern Ill Huskies 3-0

(stats via espn.com; photo sbnation.com)

Week 2 Rundown – Road Warriors

benchwarmer42Leave a comment

 

Week 2 Rundown – Road Warriors

That’s right after one of the most exciting opening weekends in the history of College Football we are stuck at a crossroads of mediocre and FCS games.  We know, we know, last week it was epic how many of these FCS teams came into BCS stadiums and caused chaos but for week two don’t count on too many FCS upsets.  So looking towards kick off tonight of week two here is some quick thoughts and games to watch:

 

MUST WATCH GAME:

Florida Gators at University of Miami Hurricanes
After taking a break, these two teams will match up in our favorite game of week two.  The current line is sitting at Florida -3 and we like the Gators to cover in this one.  We think that this is going to be a break out year for Miami but in a week two match-up we think the defense of Florida will be ready based upon what we saw last week against Toledo.  We will be cheering for Miami and the upset but think that Florida is better than we expected.  FLORIDA COVERS

MEASUREMENT GAMES:

Cincinnati Bearcats at Illinois Fighting Illini
We are extremely high on Cincinnati this year, in a preseason research all signs pointed to a big year, only one loss to Louisville.  If Louisville or Cincinnati has any hopes of crashing the BCS party they must win these games and in Cincinnati’s case they must win big.  That means going into Illinois and winning by more than two touchdowns.  We are taking the road favorite for this one, CINCINNATI COVERS

Bowling Green at Kent State
In week one, Bowling Green dominated a preseason favorite in Tulsa up and down the field.  In week one, Kent State beat Liberty by only one touchdown. So what does that mean for these two teams in week two? Nothing according to Vegas, Bowling Green is only a -6.5 against Kent State.  This game is going to measure how good Bowling Green is and give us some insight into what the Tulsa win meant.  Again, we are taking the road favorite, BOWLING GREEN COVERS

Texas at BYU
Sticking with the tread and not going into any more detail, we’re taking Texas to cover over BYU in Provo.  We believe this is Mack Brown’s comeback year and it really starts with this one.  Look for Texas to be ready.  TEXAS COVERS

COIN FLIP

This week we have two coin flip games, Notre Dame at Michigan and South Carolina at Georgia.  We are staying off both these games because our research and the first week match-ups didn’t tell us enough.  We do think that the Georgia-South Carolina game will be close and we like Georgia to come away with the win.  Now, we like Michigan against Notre Dame and this might get us in trouble but don’t be surprised if Michigan wins by more than two touchdowns.  Ok, so there you go, our week 2 Kick-Off Rundown.

And now for the Rundown…

benchwarmer42Leave a comment

Rundown of Day 1 College Football 2013

August 30th, 2013

The 2013 College Football season is in motion and we celebrated by having over 12 hours of fantastic football.  Incase you missed some of the action or highlights here are our favorite plays, moments or factoids from the Kick-Off of the 2013 Season!

Puke and Rally!

This might be the best and worst moment of the year all wrapped into one.  Jordan Matthews, one of the premier receivers in all of college football and an All-SEC player made a catch coming over the middle late in the Vandy-Ole Miss game, in doing so he got absolutely crushed with a hit on his side by Ole Miss backer Cody Prewitt.  As Matthews tried to get to his feet he was visibly hurt and motioned to the sidelide to come out of the game.  With Vandy in hurry-up mode and not using a timeout, he was able to stand, get to the line of scrimmage for the next play.  After that play, it appeared he was going to make it to the sideline, stopped and went to one knee and that when the vomit came.  After Matthews was done losing his lunch, the training staff took him to the sidelines where he got some water, waited and on the next play, in classic college style Matthews puked ‘n rallied to make a huge catch on 4th and 18 and the game on the line.  Now, the problem we have, is with all of the concern about player safety at all levels of football, the Vandy staff shoul’ve never let Matthews return so quickly.  There is no way they could tell what condition the player was in.  They needed to let him stay on the sideline for a couple more minutes, while they professional assessed his situation but they didn’t and so we got one of the top plays of the season on day one.  Here is a link from SBNation showin the Rundown of this one!     http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2013/8/30/4674808/jordan-matthews-catch

 

Was that the Hoosiers or the Ducks?

In a game that only fans in Indiana watched or crazies like us watch, Indiana put an Oregon style offensive beat down to Indiana State with a final score of 73-35.  After the game, the Hoosier players were upset, why? Because Indiana was within 3 points of tying or beating the all-time record for points scored in school history of 76.  Now, normally we don’t agree with running the score up but when you are that close to a historical marker, kick the field goal, tie the record and give your boys something they will have for some years to come in the record book.  Now, Indiana is our pick for the surprise team in the country, picking them at 9 wins, now we know this was a gimmie game but the Indiana offense looked like an experienced one firing on all cylinders, now they just have to stay healthy.

 

USC Might be the Boys of Troy…

This one is hard for us to swallow, we picked USC to win the PAC 12 South division but if they can’t figure out how to run an offense they might be finishing behind ASU, UCLA, and Utah.  Before we get carried away reading too much into an opening day road game to Hawaii, let’s look at the positives.  USC’s defense will keep them in games, at the start of the game USC looked like a classic team that thought they were going to be able to show up and win the game, it took until almost halftime for them to figure out that they were going to have to take it and no one was giving them anything.  The side of the ball that changed the game was defense, they started to make plays on the ball getting 4 int. and holding the Hawaii QB to 16-41.  We liked USC because they have one of the easiest schedules in the PAC 12 but if they expect to compete we are guessing they are going to have to bring a lot more then what they had in Hawaii.

 

GAME OF THE NIGHT!!!

No it’s not Ole Miss-Vandy for all you East Coaster Bias out there, it was Fresno State-Rutgers without a shadow of a doubt.  If you missed that game because your mom wouldn’t let you stay up past your bedtime, we urge you, if you are a real college football fan, to find that game and watch it start to finish.  It had more lead changes than a NASCAR race and more scores than Robin Thicke.  It was from start to finish one of the best games and even had a classic OT finish of the away team going for the two-points to win!!!  Freakin Classic, a QB making his outside Heisman Campaign going 52-73 456 yards and 5 touchdowns, in Derek Carr and a Rutgers team saying we might have some holes but we can score too, Nova for Rutgers also threw for 5 TD’s.  This game should be on ESPN Classic sometime soon, look it up and enjoy.  We’re just thankful that Fresno made it out with the win, that game is going to do wonders for their confidence and we have them winning the Mountain West over Boise State… 

Rivals Rundown 2013 College Football Preseason Top 30 Teams

benchwarmer42Leave a comment

bcs-champion-odds-2014-1024x581

 

Welcome to our inaugural Rivals Rundown Preseason Top 30 Teams!!!  We are excited to present this the morning of the 2013 College Football Season.  We have published our Top 5 teams for all of the BCS Conferences and this is the culmination of all that research.  This is not our prediction of how the season will end, this is where we rank the teams as of today.  Throughout the season we will visit our Top 30 and adjust as we see fit.  Sometimes the whole thing might get flipped upside down but that’s College Football.  Here is our Rivals Rundown 2013 College Football Preseason Top 30!!!

1. Alabama Crimson Tide
2. Oregon Ducks
3. Ohio State Buckeyes
4. Georgia Bulldogs
5. Clemson Tigers
6. Louisville Cardinals
7. Texas Longhorns
8. Nebraska Cornhuskers
9. Florida State Seminoles
10. Oklahoma State Cowboys
11. South Carolina Gamecocks
12. LSU Tigers
13. USC Trojans
14. Stanford Cardinal
15. Florida Gators
16. Texas A&M Aggies
17. Oregon State Beavers
18. TCU Horned Frogs
19. Boise State Broncos
20. Oklahoma Sooners
21. Michigan Wolverines
22. Northwestern Wildcats
23. Arizona State Sun Devils
24. Fresno State Bulldogs
25. Notre Dame Fighting Irish
26. Baylor Bears
27. Washington Huskies
28. Northern Illinois Huskies
29 Miami Hurricanes
30. Ohio Bobcats