Another week, and another BCS Top Ten team falling to an unranked opponent. Boise State, previously sitting at No. 5, lost a heart-breaker to Texas Christian in one of the games of the season. Disastrously for Boise State, still defintel;y amongst the best teams in the country - except, perhaps, their Special Teams unit - will not even have the consolation prize of winning their inaugural Mountain West Conference championship. With TCU's victory, they need only beat lowly UNLV and Colorado State to claim another MWC crown. Talk about a completed fall from grace for Boise, compounded by the likelihood that QB Kellen Moore, despite being the winningest quarterback in NCAA history, won't figure when the Heisman Trophy finalists are announced.
Oregon made big plays and made them early, and were surprisingly easy winners against Stanford. I personally was equal parts amazed and shocked by how easy the Ducks, playing in front of a raucous pro-Cardinal crowd at Stanford, dispatched the Cardinal. They showed up every single one of the weaknesses that pundits have said, week in and week out, might become Stanford's undoing. And they were. It's hard to see Andrew Luck winning the Heisman now.
Unlike Boise and Stanford, Oklahoma State had no problems this weekend, trouncing Texas Tech 66-6 in Lubbock, and making a bad season that much worse for the Red Raiders. How on earth that team ever managed to beat the Oklahoma Sooners in Norman is beyond me. Everything that the Red Raiders could've done wrong on Saturday afternoon, they did. Special teams, offense, defense. We saw a football team that imploded.
Saturday's USC vs. Oregon game looms as a big one after Oregon's successes against Stanford and after USC's defense, maligned all last year and for much of this year, completely shut down QB Keith Price and the Washington Huskies, scoring a dominating win inside the Coliseum, spearheaded by the continued emergence of RB Curtis McNeal. QB Matt Barkley barely had to lift a finger. In a way, it was revenge for USC's last-second loss to Washington last year in Seattle. This is a pretty good Trojan football team. I'm quietly confident they can mount at least some sort of challenge against the Ducks.
At the end of a tough week at Penn State, you get the feeling that, at least to a small extent, the healing has begun. To a man, the Nittany Lions players gave a valiant effort, nearly rallying from a 17 point deficit to record what would have been an incredible victory vs. Nebraska. Instead, the post-Joe Paterno era began with a loss, and it was incredibly strange not to see Joe Pa there stalking the sidelines. Honestly, I think it'll be strange for a while to come.
Oregon might be the best one-loss team in America. They put the cleaners through Stanford while Alabama had a so-so night in their 24-7 victory vs. Mississippi State. If things continue as they are - no given in a crazy season thus far - we may see a rematch of the season-opening game at Cowboys Stadium, the Ducks and the Bayou Bengals of LSU. Oregon's offense against LSU's defense would be another intriguing match-up. Traditionally, of course, spread offenses and option offenses are sniffed out and shut down by teams when they have 3-4 weeks to prepare. Look at what LSU did the first time around to the Ducks.
Does anyone wonder whether Oklahoma State's red-hot offense could have any success against the LSU defense? It's an intriguing question that might get answered in the BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans in January. I know how good the OSU offense is, but that LSU secondary is NFL-caliber and I can't help but think QB Brandon Weeden will have trouble making big plays with guys like Tyrann Mathieu lurking in the defensive backfield. I really hope we get to see what happens. LSU vs. Oklahoma State for all the marbles would be very interesting.
Kudos to Kansas State QB Colin Klein, who proved that he can throw the ball as well as he can run it. In a crazy 53-53 4-overtime game against the Aggies of Texas A&M, the K-State signal caller passed for a career best 281 yards (17-27, 1 TD and 1 INT) and ran for a further 103 yards and 5 TDs. K-State vs. Texas A&M was one of the games of the year.
With Boise State's loss, the way is open to a BCS bowl for the Houston Cougars, who blasted Tulane 73-17 on Thursday night. This team reminds me a lot of the 2007 Hawaii Warriors, who got a Sugar Bowl berth. The Cougars' star QB Case Keenum had a somewhat pedestrian night - by his lofty standards, anyway - going 22-29 for 325 yards and 3 TDs. Houston did their damage on the ground, rushing for 292 yards. Charles Sims had 207 of those on 10 carries, with 2 scores.
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