UPS and DOWNS for the Second Week of September, 2015!

DOWNS - your blogger, who's been a day off all week...not because of Labor Day per se, but because he was waiting for the results of the Ohio St/VaTech game Monday night before moving on into the next week...only to then be a day behind! I'll try to make it up by getting our Prophecies column out later today!

DOWNS - the Texas Longhorn football team, who in its last three games has looked nothing like the Burnt Orange Machine of old. The loss Saturday night was almost as devastating as the humiliation to Arkansas in its bowl game last winter, where the Longhorns had one TD drive of 43 yards (two good plays), and a game-total of 25 net yards - meaning that excluding one drive towards the end of the first half, Texas had negative 18 yards of offense for the game. In fact, over the last three games, the Texas offense has been outscored by the opponents' defenses 21-20!

UPS - Temple, who beat Penn St 27-10; Northwestern, who beat Stanford 16-6, and Illinois, who overcame its coaching mess to beat Kent St 52-3. All three have far brighter prospects today than they did a week ago!

UPS - the Canadian rivalries between Calgary/Edmonton, Saskatchewan/Winnipeg, and Toronto/Hamilton. CFL scheduling is a hoot! All three pairs of rivals play home-and-home series over last weekend and this one, building a chance for animosity, bragging rights, fights, and twice as many reasons as usual to hate the other team! Going into this second weekend, let's see if Edmonton, Winnipeg, or Toronto can manage to even the scales at home!

UPS AND DOWNS - it's too early for any adjustments in our Top Eights or Bottom Fives, but here's a sneak peek at the college teams we pushed towards the "first among equals" status on one end, and the "isn't there a tier lower than this?" on the other...
POWER FIVE CONFERENCES: Alabama, Ohio State, Texas A&M, and Notre Dame all looked remarkable this weekend! Meanwhile, Washington St and Colorado lost to middling-to-poor lower level teams (Portland St and Hawai'i, respectively) and don't appear to have improved as much as we'd hoped...i.e., at all.
GROUP OF FIVE CONFERENCES: While Boise St would probably still be sitting atop this group for now, their second half was not impressive, even given the Pac-12 opponent. More impressive were the wins by Western Kentucky (against a vastly improved Vanderbilt), Appalachian St, Temple and Houston of the AAC, and we'll count BYU in this group for now on the strength of its Hail Mary victory at Nebraska. (Speaking of which, don't skip the last UP today!) Downs to the usual candidates: Idaho, Georgia St (lost to newbie Charlotte 23-20), Kent St and Tulane.
FCS CHAMPIONSHIP CONFERENCES: Southern Utah absolutely should have a win over Utah St under its belt today - they dominated the Aggies on defense (13 USU punts!) and were it not for USU's special teams (a blocked XP converted on the other end, and a 4th quarter punt return), Southern wins easily. Credit to the Missouri Valley Conference and Big Sky schools, of course, winning in FBS stadia - South Dakota St, Portland St, and North Dakota. Jacksonville's victory over Chattanooga spoke highly of the OVC. On the down side, the Colonial Athletic Association went 2-9, and it would've been ten losses had Stony Brook's game with Toledo not been cancelled before halftime with Toledo already up 16-7.
HBC CONFERENCES: Alas, off to a bad start at 6-17 across the board, and the six wins included four against lower division opponents and two against each other (Prairie View def Texas Southern; Ark-Pine Bluff lost to South Carolina State).

And finally, UPS to the Mangum family of Eagle, Idaho, who were in Pocatello watching one son make the catch of the day (according to ESPN, who made it Top Ten Play #2) for Idaho State, and were alerted that their other son was in at QB for BYU after the starter was injured, and saw him throw a Hail Mary to the end zone which gave the Cougars the 33-28 win in Nebraska - and was ESPN's Top Ten Play #1 for the day! "What are the odds?" said Dad, "We're just going to enjoy it for now!" This weekend, one parent's headed back to Pocatello and the other to Provo, so they can watch both sons play!

Early Game Update!

From the first set of games on this Week 12 Saturday...

- Big Ten games: except for the Gopher - Husker tussle (which ended in a Minnesota 28-24 win), it was mostly routs - Michigan St over Rutgers, 45-3; Northwestern beat Purdue 38-14, and Ohio St survived Indiana 42-27 (although the Hoosiers led 21-20 in the third). Illinois did put some fun into the afternoon, though, kicking a field goal late to win 16-14 against Penn St.

- Semi bye week in the south started with Florida over Eastern Kentucky 52-3, Georgia handled Charleston Southern 55-9, South Carolina took down South Alabama of the Sun Belt, 37-12, and Army upset FCS Fordham (in our opinion!) 42-31.

- And in other interesting games in the Bowl division, Western Kentucky took down UT-San Antonio 45-7; SMU lost their tenth of the year, 53-7, to UCF; Marshall survived UAB 23-18, thanks to a punt downed at the 1 followed by a fumble recovery in the end zone; Houston 38, Tulsa 28; and the defensive struggle that went into overtime scoreless, eventually ending in a hockey shootout - kinda, sorta. Anyway, Wake Forest's kicker made both of his attempts, and Virginia Tech's went 1-2; therefore, Demon Deacons 6, Hokies 3, in the battle of cool mascots in Winston-Salem, NC!

- The Game ended with an 80-yard drive that gave the Crimson of Harvard their 18th Ivy League title and a 31–24 comeback win over arch-nemesis Yale...Rhode Island won their first game in over a year, overcoming Towson 13-7!...And Coastal Carolina LOST their first of the year, falling to Liberty 15-14 on a late field goal to drop to 11-1.