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Week One

Most of this week’s games were mismatches of talent, but that didn’t stop a large portion of the major powers from struggling (or in one case falling flat on their faces). Penn State, Florida, Oklahoma, and West Virginia took care of business, but…

LSU 45, Mississippi State 0: The final score here is misleading. LSU scored 17 points off of four interceptions in the first half, the final touchdown coming as time expired. You’d expect more from a highly-touted SEC offense. Bulldog quarterback Michael Henig looked awful the entire night and literally threw away the hard work of his persistent defense. Mississippi State coach Sylvester Croom is still optimistic about his chances. Looking at his schedule, though, he would be lucky to win half of his games.

Virginia Tech 17, East Carolina 7: C’mon now. 17 points against a minor team from the Big East with a pirate as a mascot? 7 of which came from an interception-turned-touchdown? Pitiful. The Hokies travel to Baton Rouge next Saturday. I don’t think they’ll win.

Texas 21, Arkansas State 13: Two missed field goals, an interception in the end zone, and a penalty on a successful onside kick prevented Arkansas State from bringing down the Longhorns. Texas failed four straight attempts to score from the Indians’ three yard line. Their quarterback is still named Colt McCoy. He’s not VINCE YOUNG, but the name is still awesome.

Auburn 23, Kansas State 13: This was not the season opener I was expecting from my Tigers. Kansas State seemed to run the same short passing play once or twice every series, and Auburn did little to slow them down. The Wildcats even ran some double reverses for similar results. Auburn missed tackles all night, especially during kickoff coverage. To the credit of the defense, they did intercept Kansas State twice and forced one fumble for a touchdown. They missed two or three other interception opportunities, though.

These guys should never have had reason to celebrate.

Auburn’s offense had a disappointing showing as well. Brandon Cox looked a little better than last season. Despite an inexperienced line which gave him little time to settle down, Cox completed 17 of 30 passes for 229 yards. However, most of his completions were to receivers who were wide open and forced them to come back for the catch. It didn’t help that some of the passes which were on target were blatantly dropped (including one in the end zone).

Tuberville had better get to work before South Florida shows up next Saturday. This season could be a painful way to end my career in the student section of Jordan-Hare. At least the completely revamped kicking staff wasn’t a problem.

“Why are we so bad right now?” a distraught and incredulous Tuberville asks his team.

Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32: Ha ha ha…this is hilarious and unbelievable at the same time. No team from I-AA has beaten a ranked I-A oppenent since the divisions were created in 1978. In a poll on ESPN.com, 42% called this the greatest upset in college football history. I think I agree. It’s a shame this had to come at the beginning of the season, because everything else is going to pale in comparison.

28-14. Wolverine fans worldwide begin to fear.

I’ll spare you the recap. If you didn’t watch SportsCenter at all yesterday, this should get you up to speed. On a side note, some ASU students ripped a goal post out of their own stadium, which holds 85% less people than the Big House, and left it in the university chancellor’s driveway.


The action continues tomorrow as Florida State travels to Clemson (8 PM ET, ESPN). Saturday’s slate features some interesting interconference games, including:

West Virginia at Marshall (11:10 AM ET, ESPN),
Miami (FL) at Oklahoma (12 PM ET, ABC),
Nebraska at Wake Forest (12 PM ET, ESPN),
Oregon at Michigan (3:30 PM ET, ABC) (ha ha ha),
and Virginia Tech at LSU (9:15 PM ET, ESPN).

It looks like we’ll have to wait until week three for the major intraconference battles to begin. See you again next Sunday!

Also: I was wrong about Tennessee/California. Darn.

The Beginning of the Beginning

I almost broke down in tears today when I realized that USA Today’s sports section made no mention of college football. It has been way too long since Division I-A was in session. Thank the Lord that we are only a week away from the fourteen best weeks of the year. Not that the first weekend of the season is going to be anything spectacular. Thanks to the added twelfth game, most of the major powers scheduled automatic wins. So did the lesser powers. Out of sixty-eight games, twenty-three (one-third) of them involve AA opponents.

The TV schedule isn’t too appealing, either. I’d like to watch Tennessee/California, but I’ll be witnessing Auburn’s domination of former Big 12 powerhouse Kansas State. Anyway, here’s the lineup (all times Eastern):

Tulsa at Louisiana-Monroe (Thursday, 7, ESPN2)

LSU at Mississippi State (Thursday, 8, ESPN)

Washington at Syracuse (Friday, 8, ESPN)

East Carolina at Virginia Tech (Saturday, noon, ESPN)

UAB at Michigan State (Saturday, noon, ESPN)

Washington State at Wisconsin (Saturday, 3:30, ABC)

Nevada at Nebraska (Saturday, 3:30, ABC)

Wake Forest at Boston College (Saturday, 3:30, ABC)

Georgia Tech at Notre Dame (Saturday, 3:30, NBC)

Missouri at Illinois (Saturday, 3:30, ESPN2)

Oklahoma State at Georgia (Saturday, 6:45, ESPN2)

Kansas State at Auburn (Saturday, 7:45, ESPN)

Tennessee at California (Saturday, 8, ABC)

Texas Tech at Southern Methodist (Monday, 4, ESPN)

Florida State at Clemson (Monday, 8, ESPN)

The entire season is irrelevant, though. The established sports media already declared USC to be the undisputed national champion of 2007, and their word cannot be challenged. “If USC is as good as most believe, chasing down the Trojans could be too much to ask.” – The Associated Press ( http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=2980349 ). Nevermind that the Pac-10 is a joke conference (as Tennessee will hopefully prove next Saturday) with only one contender. Nevermind that preseason rankings are no guarantee of success.

If you don’t know this guy’s name, you must have never been to ESPN.com.

Well, I guess I have a few months to elaborate on my bitterness against Pete Carroll’s crew. I’ll be back next Thursday with my predictions through Sunday. Don’t lose heart; just one week left!

Baseball, baseball, baseball!

Los Bravos enter today tired with the Mets for first in the NL East. I’ll hit you with some notes:

  • So how about that Jeff Francoeur? If you know me, I’ve made no secret of the fact over the past two seasons I thought he was very overrated – most people got excited after his first month in the majors. Through his first 25 games, he had 8 HR, was batting .400 and had a 1174 OPS. In his remaining 45 games in 2005, though, he hit .246, had 6 HR, 731 OPS and struck out 41 times.
    2006 wasn’t very good for him, as this numbers continued on the same trend – 132 strikeouts, .260 average, 742 OPS. His home rate rate also dipped slightly – in 70 games in 2005 he hit 14, in 162 in 2006 he hit 29.
    2007 is a different story, though. Since he struck out 132 times and didn’t draw very many walks (23) and thus had an abysmal OBP in 2005 (.293). This year, in 30 games he’s drawn 11 walks, equaling the total he drew in 70 games his rookie year. He’s also hitting for a higher average (.299), both of which improve his OBP to a pretty good .362 (21st in the league). He’s got a 866 OPS, good 13th in the NL (one spot ahead of Andruw as a matter of fact, who I’ll get to in a minute). Not bad. Subjectively, it seems like he’s using the opposite field a lot more (as in, he’s actually hitting over there) and in 2-strike counters is swinging smarter, not harder (though he still takes more cuts than I’d like).
  • Kelly Johnson leads all MLB second basemen in on-base percentage, and is second in OPS (1021) only to B.J. Upton (1084). His .459 OBP also blows away anything Furcal managed to do (provided he keeps it up over the next 132 games, of course….).
  • Only one third baseman has managed to hit more HR (10) and have a higher OPS (1070) than Chipper Jones – Alex Rodriguez (14/1210).
    Something that mildly upset me a while ago was the question of whether Chipper is in the Hall of Fame. I’d say easily – until A-Rod retires, he’ll have been one of (if not the) best hitting third baseman of all time. If you look at the other 3B in the hall, this shouldn’t be a hard decision.
  • It’s been harped on enough, but the back end of the starting rotation has been really terrible. Davies pitched a pretty mediocre game yesterday. Redman suddenly decided to have an ingrown toenail fixed last week – though those pretty painful (I know the hard way), so I’m willing to cut him a tiny bit of slack.
  • Andruw Jones is not having the prototypical contract year so far. An 833 OPS is low for him, and while he’s probably never going to be a .300 hitter, his .229 average is low (usually hits in the .260’s). He’s also struck out 33 times in 30 games, which is alarming to say the least. Subjectively, he looks lost at the plate and needs to trim down his swing – he’s like the kid who tries to hit HRs all the time. (Like, say, Jeff Francoeur before this year.)
  • Based on that, I wonder if the Braves would be better served by hitting Andruw 5th and moving McCann up to 4th – certainly wouldn’t be the first time that Andruw has been moved down to regain his swing. (EDIT: Today’s AJC “Blog” wonders the same thing.)
  • Losing your closer to injury isn’t as big of a deal when your set-up men are essentially back-up closers.

That’s about it from me for now. Later.

(sigh)

Hey kids.

I’m getting back on my feet here in California. Meanwhile, back on the east coast things haven’t been going terribly peachy for the ole college team.

I was so depressed after our bowl loss I didn’t even post about how Tito, Ehren, and I did on the bowl predictions. I didn’t end terribly well, though. Checking the ESPN league for this site, and Ehren finished first with 349 points, then Tito with 339, and me bringing up DFL with 314 points. Going by straight up winners and losers, Tito and I tied by getting 11 of 32 wrong, while Ehren got 12 wrong. None of us picked Florida to win.

After that, Tech basketball started to look up. Despite losing their best offensive threat in Lewis Clinch, Tech beat Duke and FSU. Then they went on the road to Chapel Hill and things started to go terribly, terribly wrong. Tech seems lost on the court right now, especially our freshman point guard. At 2-6 in the ACC, this season is probably lost, and, well, if we can’t beat Wake Forest, who can we beat? Even if we get our collective shit together, I’d say best-case we finish 7-9 in the ACC.

Expect a Braves preview sometime later this month. Updates will probably be sparse until March, when my second favorite time of the year hits.