Sunday’s Seven: College Football Week 3

Seven things from the third Saturday of the college football season:

1. We’ll see if Iowa’s keel is even this week. After an emotional home triumph over Iowa State, the Hawkeyes go on the road for the first time. They still really don’t know who’s their quarterback. They play a Pittsburgh team with much to prove and two weeks to prepare for the Hawkeyes. Big game.

2. Arizona State did Iowa State no favors by losing at home to UNLV in overtime. Instead of rubbing out the Rebels, ASU gave UNLV a big lease on life. Now the Rebels come home to play Iowa State, and there may be some actual interest in the team in Las Vegas. Not a lot, but some.

3. Wisconsin earned some stripes by winning at Fresno State. Believe it or not, East Coast elitists, Fresno State is a really tough place to win. Good for the Badgers for trekking there for a real challenge, and good for the Badgers for leaving with a 13-10 victory.

4. Ohio State. Off you go. Try to settle for a Rose Bowl this year instead of stinking up the national-title game.

5. Michigan. No surprise that it lost at Notre Dame or is 1-2 or will go 6-6. Over the weekend, Coach Rich Rodriguez got the verbal commitment of another five-star guy, this one from New Jersey. Enjoy the Wolverines’ plight now, everyone. It won’t last forever.

6. Oklahoma and Missouri don’t play each other this year. Correction. They aren’t scheduled to play each other. But they’ll meet Dec. 6 in the Big 12 title game, both unbeaten. It will be the Game of the Year and then some.

7. USC looks fairly competent, wouldn’t you say?

5.

Sunday’s Seven: College Football Week in Review

1. The Big Ten went 11-0 Saturday. That’s perfection. It also isn’t all that impressive since 10 of those games were at home, and only two of them were from teams in BCS conferences. Those two were less-than-mighty Oregon State and Duke. But nobody lost.

2. Among the teams the Big Ten conquered were Florida International, Murray State, Northern Colorado and Eastern Illinois. Not a great showcase day for the Big Ten Network.

3.  Oklahoma is the best team in the country. Right now, anyway. The Sooners belted Cincinnati, 52-26, and Cincinnati is pretty good. OU had 592 yards. Who’s going to beat that team in the regular season?

4. The rankings, as always, are a joke. East Carolina is 14th in the AP poll, 20th in the coaches’ rankings.  In two weeks, the Pirates have beaten Virginia Tech and West Virginia. Name another team that has done more. I’m not saying they should be No. 1. But look at several of the teams ranked above ECU and who they’ve played. Virginia Tech and West Virginia, folks.

5. Juice Williams had one touchdown pass and two interceptions in Illinois’ 47-24 win over Eastern Illinois. Not too good, right? Well, Juice also rushed 16 times for 174 yards and two TDs. Very exciting player.

6. Notre Dame isn’t good. Again.

7. Did I say Oklahoma had the best team in the nation? I meant USC.

The Hlist: Week 1

OPENING KICKOFF

“They’re so athletic. It just wore on us. They didn’t play like Michigan. They played like LSU.” — Appalachian State Coach Jerry Moore after his team’s 41-13 loss at LSU. His Mountaineers won at Michigan last year.

FIRST DOWNS

1. Eye-Opening Opener: Illinois and Missouri join most of the rest of the bloodthirsty FBS cabal in plucking the FCS for some easy pickings this week with Eastern Illinois and Southeast Missouri State, respectively. But they sure started the season the right way.

Playing each other in St. Louis, the teams combined for 13 touchdowns. Mizzou won, 52-42, despite the brilliance of Illini sophomore QB Juice Williams, who threw five TD passes.

“I try not to look at the numbers, but I see the interceptions before I see the touchdowns,” Williams said. “I hope I have zero next week.”

In the fourth quarter, a member of ESPN’s broadcast team suggested Missouri might be Illinois’ best foe. Interesting,since the Illini play Ohio State in November.

“Missouri is a very good team,” Illinois Coach Ron Zook said. “It’s not a sin to lose to a team like that one.”

2. Covering the Spread: OK, Florida International didn’t fully succeed in covering Kansas’ spread offense. Passing 52 times, the Jayhawks rolled over FIU, 40-10.

Iowa won’t throw 52 times Saturday when it hosts the Golden Panthers, unless Kirk Ferentz’s body is taken over by Kansas Coach Mark Mangino. If you’ve seen Mangino’s girth, you know he’d make that trade in a heartbeat.

But FIU did cover the 36-point spread Nevada oddsmakers set for the game. Iowa was a 27-point pick over the Golden Panthers at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas as of Monday noon.

But what’s the over/under for FIU total yards at Iowa? It mustered just 139 at Kansas.

“We’re getting better,” said FIU Coach Mario Cristóbal. Which is a relief, since the school has lost 24 of its last 25 games.

3. Wolves Are No Sheep: The Hlist vows to make no snide remarks about Iowa putting Arkansas State on its 2009 schedule. Ever.

The Maine Black Bears were teddy bears for the Hawkeyes, and Florida International appears little better. But the Red Wolves of Arkansas State play football. They topped Texas A&M, 18-14, before 78,691 horrified fans in College Station.

It was Arkansas State’s first win over a team from a BCS conference, and first in 16 tries against a Big 12 team.

“Just to be part of the new Red Wolves, and the way for us to start it off, at Texas A&M, oh my goodness,” said receiver Jahbari McLennan.

The Red Wolves were called the Indians until this year. Had they remained the Indians, Iowa couldn’t have played them under the UI’s policy.

4. Race for the Ages: Penn State’s 66-10 win over the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers put Nittany Lions Coach Joe Paterno in a tie with Florida State’s Bobby Bowden for the all-time lead in wins with 373.

“I haven’t even thought about it, and I’m not going to,” the 81-year-old Paterno said. “I can only say it so many times, it’s not a big deal to me.”

Coastal Carolina Coach David Bennett called Paterno and Bowden “American heroes.” Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times saw nothing heroic in Penn State playing an FCS team.

“Shame on you, Penn State, for even scheduling the Chanticleers,” Telander wrote. “JoePa, couldn’t you have just ordered a cherry for your flaming cake instead of a 66-10 forest fire, or has senility kicked in?”

FUMBLES

1. Bigger is Better: The bigger-school FBS teams crushed the not-as-big FCS teams last week. No shock there.

But that doesn’t make it right. There were 32 FBS-FCS “clashes,” and the FBS won all but one. Only eight of the games were settled by less than 24 points. That’s absurd.

Oklahoma beat Chattanooga, 57-2. It was 50-0 at halftime, then they had a 72-minute delay because of a thunderstorm. Which gave The Oklahoman’s Barry Tramel all the material he needed.

“After the most lopsided half of football in 30 years at Owen Field,” Tramel wrote, “and the second-most lopsided since anyone was paying attention, and the most embarrassing ballgame any of us hopefully will ever have to witness, God saw all that college football had made. And it was bad. It was very bad.”

2. Long Comes Up Short: The sole FBS team to fall to an FCS club was Chuck Long’s San Diego State, which fell to Cal Poly, 29-27.

“It’s time for Aztecs Nation to unite!” former SDSU star Marshall Faulk urged the crowd in a pregame announcement. He would have had few takers after the game.

Nick Canepa of the San Diego Union-Tribune isn’t smitten with Long’s program. After Saturday’s game, Canepa wrote “It should be better than this. At the very, very, very, very least, State should beat Cal Poly. And it didn’t. Again it didn’t.”

3. The Pitts: Pittsburgh closed last season with a stunning 13-9 upset win at rival West Virginia to ruin the Mountaineers’ chance of playing in the national-title game.

How not to build on that momentum: Lose 27-17 at home to Bowling Green.

Pitt slipped to 16-20 under Coach Dave Wannstedt, and 13-20 against FBS teams. Saturday was the ninth time the Panthers lost under Wannstedt when they were favorites. It’s a good thing Wannstedt got a contract extension through 2012 at the end of last season. A good thing for Wannstedt, anyhow.

Iowa is at Pitt on Sept. 20. Somehow, the Hawkeyes need to persuade Las Vegas to make them the underdogs.

4. Jumping to Wrong Conclusion: Duke officials were caught off-guard when two men parachuted into Wallace Wade Stadium and landed at the 35-yard line with a game ball an hour before the Blue Devils’ game against James Madison in Durham, N.C.

The skydivers were a bit surprised, too. Their jump site was meant to be eight miles away, at the McNeese State-North Carolina game in Chapel Hill.

The jumpers had decided to cancel the leap because of a severe weather front. But when the clouds eventually opened, the pilot thought they were over the correct stadium.

“In about five years, maybe this will be funny,” said UNC associate athletics director Rick Steinbacher after he apologized to Duke officials. “Right.”

FINAL GUN

“Rich Rodriguez’s spread offense is supposed to score all sorts of points, and after one game of the Rich Rod Regime, I must ask: for which team?” — Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press after the Wolverines fell to Utah, 25-23.

Stoops: Oklahoma Was Better Opportunity Than Iowa

In three months, it will be 10 years since Hayden Fry retired as Iowa’s football coach. One myth will turn 10 years old at that time. That’s the one saying Bob Stoops’ first choice in late 1998 was to become Fry’s successor, not the head coach at Oklahoma.

OK, the Iowa-didn’t-make-it-happen part is true, at least according to Stoops.

“I’ve got to be honest,” Stoops told The Oklahoman newspaper of Oklahoma City, “I felt all along that business-wise, this was the best opportunity. And fortunately for me it’s worked out really well.”

Yes, a national-championship, 97 wins, and a team favored to win another Big 12 title this fall could make a coach feel secure in his decision. For a long time – at least until Kirk Ferentz started peeling off the first of three straight AP Top Ten finishes and two Big Ten co-championships, Iowa fans weren’t secure in Bob Bowlsby’s decision to hire Ferentz.

Many felt Bowlsby and his school bungled the interview process and let Stoops slip away to Norman. Some insist to this day that Bowlsby’s first choice was then-Northern Iowa Coach Terry Allen, but came to realize that would have gone over with a thud in Hawkdom.

Stoops does confirm that Iowa didn’t exactly come at him with single-minded determination. Bowlsby and Iowa’s search committee wanted to interview other people, including Ferentz. Oklahoma wanted to talk to just one person, the young hotshot defensive coordinator to Steve Spurrier at Florida.

But ultimately, Bowlsby’s slow-playing of the situation didn’t matter. Stoops said he interviewed at Iowa out of a courtesy to his alma mater. Now maybe he’s saying what he’s saying now because that is what will play best to his Oklahoma base. But it sounds totally plausible.

“Deep down, I truly felt as well that I had done the Iowa thing,” Stoops said. “I felt, though my wife’s from there, I had spent 10 years there. Sometimes, that’s enough. And I loved it. I loved the people.

“But it’s almost like you’re always that kid. It was just time for something different is what my feeling was. And you know what, my wife was supportive. She felt the same way. It’s time for something new.”

There’s no guarantee Stoops would have done any better than Ferentz over the last nine seasons. If he’d had a run similar to Ferentz’s from 2002 through 2004, he’d probably be gone now anywhere. For something new.

But this remains one of the great soap operas in Iowa football history. For more on what led Stoops to Oklahoma:

http://newsok.com/firing-to-hiring-9-days/article/3286061

http://newsok.com/stoops-philosophy-captivated-ous-joe-c./article/3286063

http://newsok.com/stoops-saw-ou-as-better-opportunity-than-iowa/article/3286065

The Nation’s Worst Squash: Oklahoma vs. ISU

According to fanblogs.com, the most one-sided rivalry in big-time college football involves Iowa State, and not for the better.

The piece suggests Oklahoma’s .919 winning percentage (67-5-2) against the Cyclones is the worst of the worst. It’s hard to argue with that.

The Sooners have won their last 20 games against ISU. But let’s not dwell on the negative, and instead recall the Cyclones’ last victory over OU.

Entering the fourth quarter in their 1990 clash in Norman, Okla., the Sooners held a 31-20 lead over Iowa State and had knocked the Cyclones’ top runner, Blaise Bryant, out of the game with injured ribs.

But behind quarterback Chris Pederson, Iowa State scored 13 fourth-quarter points to shock the Sooners, 33-31. Pederson scored the winning touchdown on a 1-yard sneak with 35 seconds left. He had a touchdown pass earlier, and rushed for 148 yards. Nice game.

That had been ISU’s first win in the series since 1961.

”’This is Oklahoma we’re talking about, where football was invented,” then-ISU Coach Jim Walden said. “I could die happy right now.”

Walden is still alive, though his 8-year era as the ISU football coach expired in 1994.

Oh, don’t get too many jollies from this, Iowa fans. Fanblogs.com says your team’s series with Michigan is the 14th-worst rivalry in the nation.

“Evidently in Iowa,” the piece goes, “they grow corn and bruises.”

Ouch. The Wolverines lead the Hawkeyes in their all-time series, 40-10-4. But Iowa did prevail against Michigan in 2002 and 2003.

Let’s close this on a high note for the state of Iowa: The Cyclones don’t play Oklahoma and the Hawkeyes don’t play Michigan this season. Although, if there was ever a time to catch the Wolverines, this season might be it since they have a new coach in Rich Rodriguez who is debuting a radically different offense than Michigan is used to running.

The link to the 15 worst rivalries among BCS conference teams:

http://www.fanblogs.com/ncaa/007635.php