Fourth and inches… (week of Sept. 22, 2007)

By T Erickson  |   Thursday, September 20, 2007  |  Comments( 1 )

College Football
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Early season surprises ... Does beating a winless Notre Dame team really mean anything to Lloyd Carr? You bet it does. And now he still has the Big Ten race for a chance at some redemption. Michigan's 1-2 record sure looks better than the big, fat 0-3 that Charlie Weis is staring at right now.

►Reality... Penn State could make the Wolverines' shot at redemption take a nose dive pretty quickly this weekend.

►Double dose of reality... Charlie Weis has been kicking some Irish tail around this week with a "back to basics" training camp mentality which included the unspeakable -- a full practice on Sunday. Guess who's coming to town this weekend? Yep, a Spartan squad that has a slight bit of payback on their minds for choking in the second half last year at East Lansing.

►Heisman hype won't help them now... Georgia Tech's Tashard Choice was stifled by ACC rival Boston College ... Nebraska's Marlon Lucky is out of the race for good this year with a dismal performance against USC. UCLA's Ben Olson, who had a sliver of a chance to begin the season, has totally been flushed with back-to-back embarrassments against BYU and Utah. Goodbye, gentlemen.

►More Heisman talk at the water cooler ... Rocketing to the top three is Kentucky's Andre Woodson after his gutsy performance against instate rival and former ninth-ranked Louisville and its own poster boy, Brian Brohm. Woodson tossed the winning TD pass with 28 seconds left in the game. His line was a modest 30 of 44 for 275 yards and four TDs. Arkansas' Darren McFadden ripped off 195 yards and two TDs on 33 carries against Alabama in a heartbreaking loss ... his SID has a pretty nifty Heisman campaign in full swing now with Web site, weekly press conferences, and DMAC swag. As long as No. 5 keeps producing on the gridiron like last week, he is going to be hard to beat this year.

►Are fake injuries a viable defensive strategy? ... Cougar fan boards have been lighting up with discussion about the inordinate number of injury timeouts taken by Tulsa in an effort to thwart BYU's no-huddle offense last Saturday night. If so, the strategy seems to have worked well for Todd Graham, as it flew under the radar of the officials calling the game and his Golden Hurricane eeked out the upset in a shootout, 55-47. According to one fan who recorded the game, Tulsa had nine injury timeouts for defensive players. I lost track after counting seven injury timeouts during the live telecast. A call to Tulsa's sports information office on Wednesday said the team does not release an injury list of its players to the media, but attributed the high number of injuries to "hard hitting by a very physical BYU team."

►Speaking of cheating... Georgia coach Mark Richt closed down practices for his Dawgs this week as they prepare for Nick Saban's Alabama team. Saban used to work for Bill Belichick. You get the picture.

►MWC fans still getting screwed by the CSTV deal... It was bad enough that only a few cattle grazing in the Wyoming pastures could see Mountain West Conference football games on the TV network known as "the mtn." last season. But, here we are heading into Week 4 of the second college football season on the mtn. and only incremental progress has been made to expand the network's footprint. Tens of thousands of fans in Washington, Oregon, California, Texas, Arizona, and all points east of the Rockies still can't get the network, and hence, they have no access to any football games shown on it.

MWC spokesman Javan Hedlund says that online pay-per-view offerings of this week's highly anticipated matchups featuring Air Force at BYU and resurgent Utah at UNLV are out of the question because it would damage ongoing negotiations with DISH and DirecTV.

Nobody's offering a timetable regarding when CSTV/Comcast might finally cut a deal with one or both of the satellite companies to carry the mtn. network, but the safe bet would be to assume "not this season."

So far, the big winner in this fiasco is Slingbox.

QUICK HITS

► Quack Quack... Duck thwacks Cougar and gets one-game suspension? Oh, you've gotta love college football. Yessirree, the Oregon mascot beat up the Houston Cougar mascot when the two teams squared off the week before last. The Duck managed to make it into the TV booth at Autzen Stadium during the Fresno State game last Saturday, much to the delight of O fans.

►Redux: Is the ACC the weakest BCS conference? ... Well, check out our new feature at the bottom of this week's "AP Top 25 weekly review." The ACC, Pac-10 and Big Ten are tied with three teams each in this week's AP poll. The SEC, Big 12 and the Big East all placed more teams in the Top 25. Of course, it's a weekly poll, so it's going to fluctuate with the outcomes every Saturday. Probably best to leave this question alone until the final polls come out in January.

►Potential BCS Busters ... Hawaii is the only one left, with the super longshot Tulsa, providing it can upset Oklahoma this Friday. Like I said, "super longshot." It remains to be seen how playing another D-IAA program will affect Hawaii's ranking. So far, it hasn't been too detrimental. What that means is that you just might see a lot more programs scheduling patsies in the future.

►Austin PD having a field day with Longhorn arrests ... Texas freshman running back James Henry became the sixth Longhorn arrested since June when he was charged this week with two felony counts of obstruction and tampering with evidence. Henry is accused of beating up one of the victims of a July home invasion that supposedly involved two other players, Andre Jones and Robert Joseph. Linebacker Sergio Kindle, defensive end Henry Melton, senior safety Tyrell Gatewood, and freshman defensive back Ben Wells have all been cuffed by the Austin PD in the past six months. "Twenty-three years as a head coach, and I've dealt with more in six months than I have in 23 years," Texas coach Mack Brown said.

►The hottest coach in college football right now? ... If you said former Central Michigan head honcho and current Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly, you'd be correct. Watch what he does with the Bearcats this year ... they're already 3-0 with a huge 34-3 win over Oregon State. Let's see what Kelly can do with a four game stretch coming up that has Cincy at Rutgers on Oct 6, Louisville at home on the Oct. 13, at Pitt on Oct/ 20, and at South Florida on Nov. 3.

►Quick Snap ... presented by the 83rd East-West Shrine Game, Jan. 19, 2008, in Houston, on ESPN:

What is the jersey number that has been worn most by Heisman Trophy winners?

Be quick and be correct. Send your answer to quicksnap@realfootball365.com. The first email received with the correct answer wins you a limited edition two-card set of 2007 Rose Bowl Game trading cards. The winner will be announced in next week's Fourth and inches...

Last week's winner, Randy Johnson, correctly answered that Michigan and Notre Dame had never met with winless records before, except the few times in history when they played each other in a season opener. Congratulations, Randy!

►Best Games of the Week ... Texas A&M Aggies at Miami Hurricanes ... Oklahoma Sooners at Tulsa Golden Hurricane ... Air Force Falcons at BYU Cougars ... Penn State Nittany Lions at Michigan Wolverines ... South Carolina Gamecocks at LSU Tigers ... Kentucky Wildcats at Arkansas Razorbacks ... Georgia Bulldogs at Alabama Crimson Tide ... Washington Huskies at UCLA Bruins ... Iowa Hawkeyes at Wisconsin Badgers ... Michigan State at Notre Dame (just to see if the streak stays alive) ...

►Upset Specials of the Week ... Last week (1-4, season 4-9) ... Toledo Rockets over Iowa State Cyclones ... Michigan Wolverines over Penn State Nittany Lions ... Miami Hurricanes over Texas A&M Aggies ...

Todd Erickson is a member of the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) and the author of Road to the Rose Bowl (Silverback, 2005) the definitive book on the last 50 years of matchups and tradition in the Rose Bowl Game.

Get more original college football insights at Realfootball365.com
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