Bipolar Footy Weekend: Saturday was as predicted, but SUNDAY?

Great game on Friday night, for once, as North Melbourne defeated Essendon 93-82 in an exciting game that flip-flopped several times. But Saturday...yawn...five games that all played to form, and the closest one was 43 points in the end:
- Adelaide over St. Kilda 119-73 (although the Saints started with a three-goal lead!)
- Hawthorn over Melbourne 155-50, and it wasn't that close.
- Sydney pulled away from Geelong 120-77 after a close first three quarters.
- GWS proved its credentials by annihilating poor Carlton 135-57, following their "famous victory" over the Hawks last week.
- And poor Gold Coast fielded whoever they could in a 135-43 rout by the West Coast Eagles that was well over 100 points shortly after three quarters, before they called off the slaughter.

So, expectations for Sunday were NOT high. And then...
- The Western Bulldogs (having fought to use Etihad Stadium this week, rather than give it up to a soccer tourney) fought back from 32-0 to tie the game at 88 with less than 4 minutes to go, only to see 7-0 Fremantle win by 13 (101-88) in the end. What a incredible game from both teams!
-As the legendary Rex Hunt (my favorite footy voice of all time!) broadcast his 2000th game of AFL/VFL footy (and the stories he can share!...), his ole team Richmond upset Collingwood 105-100 in a game that had 12 lead changes!
-And finally, amazingly rising from the dead, the Brisbane Lions pulled away from the much more talented Port Adelaide Power and won 102-65!

So, the ladder as it sits right now...
1. Fremantle. 7-0 and unbeaten - but happy to have been challenged this week! Still two games clear of all competition and rolling on all cylinders.

2-5. West Coast, Sydney, Adelaide and GWS, all 5-2. All four look like realistic finalists, although I'd take Freo over any of them at the MCG or anywhere else right now.

6-9. Hawthorn, Collingwood, Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne, all 4-3. No reason any of the four couldn't be finalists, but certainly not all nine teams will make finals. Oddly, the difference between 8th and 9th places right now - between Western and North - is exactly ONE point in the percentage: Western has exactly as many points scored as allowed (616/616, or 100.0%), while the Kangaroos have one less point than scored (656/657, or 99.9%).

10-13. Richmond, Essendon, Port Adelaide and Geelong, all at a desperate 3-4 and trying to stay close to finals contention. With fifteen games (2/3 of the season) still to go, there's still plenty of time to make the top eight - after all, Richmond made it from a 3-10 start last year - but the teams ahead of them are going to make it difficult!

14-16. St. Kilda, Melbourne, and Brisbane, all happy to be 2-5 because most folks have them pegged for the bottom of the ladder and maybe not having won any games by now!

17-18. Gold Coast and Carlton, 1-6, desperate for anything positive to happen this season. GC literally had too few players to practice last week, and Carlton "simply doesn't have the talent" to keep up with the rest of the league this year. Gold Coast in particular is a huge disappointment, having expected to make finals this year.

Re:West Virginia/Baylor last week...

In their game Saturday, where the Mountaineers upset the 6-0 Bears 41-27, West Virginia gained 456 yards, Baylor gained 318, and the referees "gained" 353 yards in penalties. That's ridiculous, even if every foul was legitimate. To quote Allen Christensen's tweet from the game (courtesy of Holly Anderson of Grantland), "Ref asked #WVU fans to stop throwing objects on the field. THE FANS ASKED THE REFS TO STOP THROWING ITEMS ON THE FIELD!" How cool is that? We have zero sympathy for Baylor's team, having used curious clock construction to pull off the comeback against TCU the previous week, but c'mon! 353 yards of penalties? No administrator would stand for his subordinate penalizing employees like that without dealing the issue other ways...why are officials any different?

Grantland's weekend-in-review articles for Week 7

Grantland often has some great summation articles from a weekend, a series, a sequence of games that provides with brief but colorful and insightful commentary a rundown of major themes and happenings. Here are two such articles from today's press, one for the professionals and one for the "amateurs"...

Week 7 college football wrap-up - Grantland

Week 7 pro football wrap-up - Grantland

We've narrowed the NFL tiers for Week 7 as well!

Putt'n these out a bit early this week, and we've reduced the size of each tiers from eight to about six, as with the collegians (although with 32 teams, we need a couple tiers w an extra team each). So, we've gone from quartiles to quintiles! 

Quintile A, unbelievably, has TWO teams from the supposed "worst division in football", the NFC East! The six best teams right now (we think!) are the Arizona Cardinals (5-1), the Dallas Cowboys (6-1), the Denver Broncos (4-1 at this moment), the up'n coming Green Bay Packers (relaxed at 5-2), the Indianapolis Colts (5-2), and the 5-1 Philadelphia Eagles.

Quintile B, which like the college version is filled with teams that could beat anyone anytime, contains the Baltimore Ravens (5-2), the Cincinnati Bengals (3-2-1), the Detroit Lions (5-2), the New England Patriots (5-2), the San Diego Chargers (5-2),  the San Francisco 49ers (4-2 at the moment), and the Seattle Seahawks (down to 3-3, unbelievably).

In the middle of the pack, Quintile C, sit the Buffalo Bills at 4-3, the Carolina Panthers at 3-3-1, the Chicago Bears (3-4), the Cleveland Browns (3-3), the Kansas City Chiefs (up to 3-3 after an upset of San Diego), and the 3-3 Miami Dolphins and Pittsburgh Steelers.

Quintile D has the 2-5 Atlanta Falcons, the Houston Texans (sitting at 3-3 and playing the Steelers tomorrow night), the Minnesota Vikings (2-5), the New Orleans Saints (2-4, meaning they've played four road games and two at home!), the New York Jersey Giants (3-4), and the St. Louis Rams, still just 2-4 after today's upset of the Super Bowl champs.

Finally, Quintile E holds the six bottom of the barrel teams, namely the Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Jersey Jets, the winless Oakland Raiders, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Titans, and the Washington whatevers... Just seven wins between the six teams listed...

Oh! THAT makes more sense!

Watching the Seattle Seahawks struggle against the St. Louis Rams, and heard a great explanation for the Percy Harvin giveaway trade this week: besides his normal obnoxiousness... Apparently last week, during their loss to the Vikings, there were plays designed specifically for Harvin (by my recollection, there were many of those), and Harvin simply refused to go into the game for them.

We'd call that insubordination, and completely understand getting that cancer out of the clubhouse.

The Tiers have NARROWED for Week 7!

As we reach the halfway point of the season, we're narrowing the tiers again, down to SIX teams per tier. Eventually we'll get down to four, and at season's end we'll submit our final ranking order, from 1-124...but it's premature and unnecessary to do so now.

Tier A hosts the top six school teams as of now: three undefeateds (Mississippi St, Ole Miss, Florida St*) and three teams whose one loss was narrow, on the road, and to a top tier team (Alabama, Notre Dame, TCU). Hard to deny them - almost hard to think there will be ANY unbeatens at season's end except for minor league champ Marshall.

Tier B contains six one-loss power teams, any of whom we could see beating even the Tier A teams on a given day: Auburn, Baylor, Georgia, Michigan St, Ohio St, and Oregon.

Tier C has Arizona, Duke, LSU, Nebraska, USC, and West Virginia. The Wildcats, Blue Devils, and Cornhuskers have one loss each; the others have last twice. But none of the nine losses were what you'd call embarrassing or 'inappropriate' - losing to good teams, no blowouts, and so forth. They'll hold their own against almost anyone, but we'd make them underdogs to the Tier A and B teams in a heartbeat.

When we get down to Tier D, some of these losses are a bit less excusable. These equate to rankings #19-24 in a conventional poll: Arizona St (5-1), East Carolina (5-1), Kansas St (5-1), Oklahoma (5-2), UCLA (5-2), and 5-1 Utah.

Tier E is essentially the equivalent of the fourth tier in last week's divisions, if comparisons are important to you: 5-2 Clemson, Colorado St (6-1), Kentucky (5-2), undefeated Marshall, Minnesota (6-1), and 5-2 Oklahoma St.

Tier F hosts six teams that (while not deserving grades of "F"!) have been disappointments at one level or another, more recently in particular: Georgia Tech (5-2, losers of their last two), Louisville (6-2), Maryland and Missouri (both 5-2), idle 4-2 Penn St, and free-falling Texas A&M, losers of three straight to three Tier A teams! What a killer schedule!

Now we've reached the levels of "receiving token votes" in the conventional polls, but these teams all have successes to boast of this year: Boise St, Miami-FL, Oregon St, Rutgers, Washington, and Wisconsin. All except the U have two losses; the Hurricanes have three. So, that's Tier G.

Tier H changed in drafts several times, but we've settled on Arkansas (4-3 in the toughest division in CFB history), Iowa (5-2), 4-3 Stanford and South Carolina and Utah St and Virginia.

The last level matching up with last week's divisions is Tier I, which features these competent teams: Air Force, Boston College, California, Northern Illinois, Pitt, Virginia Tech.

In the unofficial "tiery-eyed teams in waiting" green room are such teams as Bowling Green, fast-falling BYU, Florida, Houston, Northwestern, Tennessee, Texas, Cincinnati, Indiana, Memphis, North Carolina, North Carolina St, Temple, and Texas Tech.

*If the Tallahassee police and FSU compliance officers truly put justice ahead of football success, do you think the Seminoles would still be undefeated?

And on the flip side, the Bottom Eight becomes the Bottom Six (plus seven more)... The undisputed master of the B6 is the lone winless team left in the FBS, the coachless SMU Mustangs, joined by Georgia St, Idaho, Kent St, New Mexico St, and Troy. "Congratulations" to those clubs, some of whom were so far down that even a win didn't get them out of the basement!

Waiting for entrance to the exclusive club are Appalachian St, Ball St, Eastern Michigan, Miami-OH, North Texas, UConn and UMass. Actually, three of those just escaped the B8, so "waiting" is inappropriate...

Reviewing another FANTASTIC Saturday in college ball!

- Baylor finally got what was coming to 'em today, and West Virginia finally beat one of those Tier 1 teams it played so well! Justice both ways...

- If Bob Stoops doesn't have open campus tryouts for a new kicker next week, then the Oklahoma coach should have his head examined...

- There are some teams that may sneak up on us when the Final Four are revealed in seven weeks or so (we'll publish a pice on THAT later in the week), and Minnesota may be one of them! Like Auburn last year, the luck of the Jedi is with the, this year...

- Duke / Virginia was as advertised, the Devils winning a tight one with a 4Q TD, 20-13...

- The Bottom Eight was packed with reverse upsets across the board: UMass winning big for the second week in a row, Appalachian St destroying Troy 53-14, Kent St beating the US Military Academy 39-17, and Idaho wins its first game of the year, 29-17 over fellow B8'er New Mexico St...

- Would anyone spotting the Texas A&M Aggies, please report their disappearance to the NCAA...

- The Battle of the University of California was also tremendous, with plenty of lead changes and great plays in UCLA's 36-34 victory over California...

- Ohio St, LSU, Marshall, TCU, Michigan St, Ole Miss and Oregon all demonstrated that sometimes, games DO go as expected, and the top team DOES win fairly easily...

- ... And sometimes, SMU is just as bad as we think they are. Cincinnati defeated the hapless Mustangs 41-3, in Dallas yet.

- Poor Todd Gurley. Your backups are proving that it was more the Georgia offensive line's doing than yours...

- Seven TD passes for USC tonight...game winning FG for Colorado St over their main rivals from Utah St... What happened to Florida and Kentucky today? Did their 3OT game a month ago wear them out (eventually)?... As good as the North Carolina QB looked against the Irish last week, it shouldn't have been a surprise that they could rise up and take out Georgia Tech 48-43...

- Did you see Nebraska QB Tommy Armstrong leap the linebacker en route to an almost-TD against Northwestern? Alas, they planted his knee outside the end zone, and Abdullah had to run it in on the next play. the Huskers won 38-17...

- Unlike Georgia's Gurley, it's hard to be clearer as to how important Tayson Hill was to BYU than to watch how they've gone from a 4-0 threat for the title playoff to an 0-3 afterthought following his injury, losing again last night to Nevada-Reno 42-35...

- And last and certainly most, what an epic game between pretentious Notre Dame and criminal coddlers Florida St, won by the Seminoles 31-27 after a last minute score by the Irish was called back on an offensive pass interference call that...well, it took guts to make the call. 

Oh-for-three is a GREAT way to start Week Seven!

So, the Jets looked better than they've looked all season...so, Utah pulled out an overtime victory on the road after all...so Pitt isn't the pits after all.

We are reminded at this moment of our continued and resounding failure to project the near-future of football of two things:

1) That's what makes football so much fun! We simply never know from one week to the next what will happen, although it's so much fun to guess!

2) Gregg Easterbrook, the brilliant writer who pens TMQ: Tuesday Morning Quarterback for ESPN.com, always appends his disclaimer to his picks: "Remember, all predictions are guaranteed to be wrong, or your money back!"

If you continue to be foolhardy enough to rely on our preferences, we choose Fresno to lose to Boise tonight. Since we picked Fresno yesterday, ONE of our choices HAS to be right...doesn't it?

UPDATE: So of course Boise won Friday night, 37-27, making us 0-4 so far this week... Here's hoping we do better on Saturday!

Tonight's American Football menu for your dining pleasure...

"Appetizer, sir or madam? Would you care to try our ACC game? It's very good - Virginia Tech at Pitt. Or perhaps you would prefer something more...westerly? We also have this delightful Pac-12 matchup, with Utah visiting Oregon State if you'd like?

"My recommendation? M'sieur, I would not be so bold as to suggest what m'sieur prefers. But if it were my place to recommend, I would like the turkey and the beaver, myself (the Hokies and the Beavers) as they are under valued, in my humble opinion...

"Very good, sir or madam; very good. 

"Now, for your main course this evening? Our specialty is delightful - a steaming hot plate of Rex Ryan, boiling in New York Jets green sauce, heaped onto a delicious pile of New England Patriots, with a side of Belichick and Brady to agitate it, give it some spice! Yes? No?

"Ah! Just like me! You'd prefer it with more Patriot and less Jet? Don't worry - that's what you'll get tonight: lots of New England with just a very tiny amount of NYJ,

"Magnificent! And for dessert? Can we bring you something on the blue? Perhaps some Fresno Bulldog? With a side of Boise State? No? Hold the Boise? Well, that would be a ten-yard penalty, but we expect much more Fresno than Bronco in this dish tomorrow night.

"Ah, very good, sir or madam. It is a pleasure to serve you!"

Highlights of the upcoming WEEK SEVEN!

There are some MASSIVE games in Week 7! We're in the middle of the college season, probably a third of the way through the NFL plate, and down to four weeks left in Canada before the Grey Cup playoffs begin, so there are a ton of important match-ups to look at:

CFL: The two games that should be close are on Saturday, when Montreal goes to Toronto for ownership of the East lead (depending on whether Hamilton holds serve Friday night when Ottawa comes to town), and the big game for second place in the West Sunday, when Edmonton visits Saskatchewan. The Eskimos are riding high and hold a one-game edge over the defending champs, but hosting the game should give the Rough-Riders an edge. Will it be enough to give them the win? They sure need it, because British Columbia is just a game behind them (and would be tied in the loss column with them if Edmonton wins Sunday)! 12-2 Calgary travels to 6-9 Winnipeg in the other game on Saturday. Predictions: Hamilton, Toronto, Calgary, and Edmonton. Especially Edmonton.

NCAA: The beginning of our Tuesday night schedule is tonight, with Louisiana-Lafayette going to Texas State. (When the Wednesday games start in a few weeks, you can feast on football seven days a week! Bliss!)  Thursday has VaTech at Pitt and Utah at Oregon State, two potentially close games, and Friday sees Fresno on the blue at Boise, and Temple travelling to Houston. No calls on any of those games - the lines are too accurate to pick against. But Boise just lost their best receiver...

On Saturday, a plethora of games to choose from! Highlights include several Tier 1 teams in action, including the nightcap with two top tier teams, Notre Dame at Florida State. We think 11 1/2 points is too big a spread - take the Irish. Other top tier teams in action include Baylor at Tier 4 West Virginia (8 1/2 points is too close - the Bears will want to make a statement), Alabama hosting Tier 3 Texas A&M, TCU hosting Tier 2 Oklahoma State, Ole Miss hosting Tier 7 Tennessee, and Oregon hosting Tier 5 Washington (we want to say that Chris Petersen will keep it closer than 21 points, but in reality, three TDs is probably about right). Other top games will include Tier 3 Kansas State at Tier 2 Oklahoma (take the Sooners and the 8 points); Tier 5 Virginia at Tier 3 Duke (the Blue Devils deserve more than 2 1/2 points - take them); Tier 2 UCLA at their UC brethren Cal-Berkeley; Tier 5 Rutgers at Tier 3 Ohio State; Tier 3 Clemson at Tier 6 Boston College; Tier 2 Georgia at Tier 6 Arkansas (we really want to give the Bulldogs the edge, but...no. No prediction.); Tier 6 Missouri at Tier 4 Florida (Missouri isn't as bad as they were last week, and Florida isn't as good. Take the Tigers and the 6 points.); Utah State at Colorado State, both Tier 6; Tier 3 Nebraska at Tier 7 Northwestern; and Tier 4 Kentucky going into Tier 2 LSU (and winning outright! Take the points!). The late games include Nevada upsetting Tier 6 BYU at home (write it down!), and Tier 4 schools Stanford at Arizona State (no prediction, but we struggle with why the Sun Devils are the underdogs...).

FCS: Games of interest to us...Northern Colorado (whom we just posted about today) goes to the red turf of Eastern Washington; Southern Utah goes to Pocatello to play ISU; Cal Poly visits Sacramento State in a potential shootout (CSU Sacramento's games tend to be 59-55 affairs!), and our personal favorites, the Savannah State Tigers, host Bethune-Cookman, who is a 214-point favorite. (No. Not really. Odds don't post for FCS games. But Savannah will find a way to lose this one big and probably embarassingly. That's why we love them.)

NFL: Ignoring the yawner Thursday night (Patriots by more than ten over the Jets), Sunday's line-up includes Atlanta at Baltimore, Seattle at St. Louis (they'll beat the Rams by MORE than the seven points listed), Cleveland at Jacksonville (take the Browns), New Orleans at Detroit (the Saints road woes are real - take the Lions), Kansas City at the Chargers (a classic case of people not realizing how good San Diego is this year, and that KC 2014 is NOT KC 2013), Arizona at Oakland (doesn't matter if Tiger Woods is there again, the Raiders lose by more than four), and the big game, San Francisco at Denver. It's tempting to pick Denver here, just as it is to pick Dallas over the Giants and the spread, but we'll be conservative.