Suck on that, Jesus!
ETA: No, I’m not worried about lightning strik
A Perfect Day!
Thank you, Stanford. See you next week!
It’s GREAT to BEAT the Florida Gators!
It’s GREAT to BEAT the Florida Gators!
Go 'Noles! 
An insane game in Berkeley tonight. ASU jumped out to a 24-3 lead, as Cal looked completely discombobulated on offense, and (as usual) porous on defense. The Bears managed a TD, to go into halftime down 27-10.
In the 2nd half, Cal and ASU traded scores literally on every possession – except ASU kicked field goals, and Cal scored TDs…until ASU’s last possession, when they got a TD, and Cal went the length of the field to kick the game-winning FG as time expired.
Bears 48, ASU 46.
At least two, possibly as many as five, 5-7 teams will be going to a bowl this year.
I understand that in this day and age, bowls mainly exist in order to provide ESPN with programming, but still. . . This is getting ridiculous.
I don’t mind less than stellar teams getting bowl games. The players have had 5 long months of practice and games (risking injuries) and giving them a holiday vacation and some free SWAG is at least some compensation.
5-7 Nebraska has a couple nice wins at least.
So your view of bowl games is that they are a type of participation trophy?
Many of them, yes. It does tend to make the “consecutive bowl games” records somewhat meaningless though.
In coaching news:
- Va Tech hires Fuente from Memphis (reportedly).
- LSU doesn’t fire Les Miles after the media and fans collectively lose their shit. I suspect Jimbo telling them no had something to do with it as well.
- Georgia fires Richt after approximately 17 seasons of being on the “hot seat”. Who do they go for? I suspect Kirby Smart’s agents is fielding a few phone calls about now.
Anything I missed? It’s been a busy day and I’m a little hung over (in a good way).*
- Have I mentioned that FSU beat the Gators yesterday?
I think they should raise the bar for bowl games just a tad, to 7-5. Bowl participation should be for successful teams, and if you come out of a bowl with a 6-7 record that ain’t a success.
The big rivalry weekend was kind of a bust, dramatically. The only entertaining game to a neutral observer was Stanford-Notre Dame, which isn’t even a classic rivalry (and was on past the bedtime of many East Coast viewers.)
As a Pac-12 fan, I thought it was fan-fucking-tastic! 
Hard to beat the drama of a six-second left win for Stanford, and what was yours? Four seconds or something?
I watched some great games yesterday. The forth quarter in LA was wonderfully boring!
By the way, Corso’s record was for shit this season.
Here are the 5-7/5-6/4-7 teams in four-year APR order:
Nebraska, 985
Kansas State (5-6), 976
(tie) Missouri, 976
San Jose State, 975
(tie) Minnesota, 975
Illinois, 973
(tie) Rice, 973
Texas (4-7), 958
UTEP, 954
Louisiana-Lafayette (4-7), 953
Old Dominion, 951
East Carolina, 950
Buffalo, 948
Kentucky, 945
South Alabama (5-6), 943
Georgia State (5-6), 940
Florida International, 933
And here they are in one-year APR order:
Illinois, 1000*
Minnesota, 994*
Nebraska, 991
UTEP, 984
Kentucky, 980
Buffalo, 979
East Carolina, 977
Kansas State (5-6), 970
Texas (4-7), 967
San Jose State, 966
Missouri, 961
South Alabama (5-6), 960
Rice, 959
Louisiana-Lafayette (4-7), 954
Georgia State (5-6), 941
Florida International, 935
Old Dominion, 932
*If the NCAA’s “top 5 in the APR have to be chosen first” rule applies to the one-year APRs, Illinois has to be chosen, and I am guessing that being tied for fifth would be good enough for Minnesota to get in “automatically” as well. (If they go by the four-year APRs, none of the 5-7 teams are in the top five.)
Well, all that settling for field goals and turning it over in the red zone that have been a season long thorn in their side finally caught up to the Irish. Just march down the field and hit a brick wall at about the 10 yard line. Ah well, hoping for a matchup against Ohio State in a bowl game.
Not gonna happen. You can pretty much ink in Ohio State in the Rose Bowl to face the USC-Stanford winner. Unless crazy shit happens and Alabama and Clemson both lose their title games.
Yeah, the Rose Bowl will likely take OSU over whichever team loses the B1G championship. In that case, I hope ND gets the Florida/Bama loser. Just hoping they don’t get a weak matchup like Houston.
One nice win: Michigan State.
I felt we could’ve beaten #3 Iowa, but too many INTs and bad coaching decisions. Yeah yeah, I know that’s part of the game, but it’s still disappointing. At least I can tell my Iowa buddies that our worst team in decades lost to your best team ever by 8.
We’re 5-7 and looking at a bowl game, maybe. The honorable thing would be to refuse to go to some Toilet Bowl vs a MAC/Sun Belt team. But, in this day and age, 15 practices are just too valuable.
There are too many alumni scattered about to deny them a chance to see a game in person. The players may not care, nor most folks in Lincoln, but I bet there’s plenty of Husker alums in whatever state they wind up playing in that would be tickled to see them.
I consider Florida to be a weaker matchup than Houston, quite honestly.
The Thing Fish Ratings – Week 13, End Regular Season
LOTS of exciting games over the weekend have produced a new top dog.
- Oklahoma!
- Clemson
- Iowa
- Alabama
- Ohio State
- Michigan State
- Stanford
- North Carolina
- TCU
- Florida State
- Baylor
- Northwestern
- Oklahoma State
- USC
- Notre Dame
- Michigan
- Utah
- Oregon
- Ole Miss
- LSU
- Houston
- Florida
- Wisconsin
- UCLA
- Western Kentucky
Coming up: LSU, Western Kentucky, Houston
Going down: Mississippi State, Pitt, Wazoo
On the bubble: Pitt, Bowling Green, Miss St
Oklahoma’s title-clinching rout of OSU impressed the system so much that the Sooners have clinched my #1 spot going into the playoff, regardless of what happens in any of the conference title games. Iowa lost ground with their relatively unimpressive win, and also with Pitt’s departure from the rankings. It’s not a mistake that tOSU is back above Michigan State; their win over Michigan was big enough that the system sees them as too superior to MSU for the head-to-head factor to come into play (they also benefited from the upgrade of Northern Illinois). Stanford loses ground despite their win, relatively speaking, because Washington State dropped out – I now have them exactly where the AP does!
Here are the final strength of schedule adjustments, new ones in bold:
P5 teams counted as mid-majors: Georgia Tech, South Carolina, Auburn, The Oregon State Biebers, Colorado,** Rutgers, Purdue, Kansas, Boston College**
mid-majors counted as P5: Bowling Green, Air Force, San Diego State, Temple, Houston, Western Kentucky, Southern Miss, Northern Illinois, Arkansas State
mid-majors counted as FCS: Charlotte, E Michigan, Wyoming, Hawaii, Lousiana-Monroe, UCF,** Tulane, North Texas, UMass**
FCS counted as mid-major: Jacksonville St, Colgate, Dayton, McNeese State, Southern Utah, Charleston Southern, Richmond, NC A & T, North Dakota State, Duquesne, Chattanooga.
Considering that not all teams are not going to a bowl game, no I don’t think going to a bowl game is a participation trophy.