40 Acres Sports

He scares me a little (on & off the field), but I like having Mike Leach out there at Tech.

QB Xavier Lee was seriously looking at Texas before choosing Florida State.

The price went up $30 today and I imagine a win Saturday will send it up even higher.

You’d have known this at 2 a.m. this morning if you were a member of Orangebloods.

Our Thoughts

Brian – Texas cemented their spot at #1 this week when they walked over a very respectable Colorado team without their best running back. The Horns rolled to 5 touchdowns on their first 5 possessions, you can’t get any more perfect than that. Meanwhile, USC (and especially their defense) looked beatable in South Bend. It took a gutsy drive from Matt Leinart and some bonehead plays by Notre Dame in the last 2 minutes or else Texas would be everyone’s number one. The Trojans are good and probably deserve to be in Pasadena if they win out (they have a tough three game stretch to finish the season), but right now with the way the top teams are playing they’re just barely holding off Virginia Tech in my eyes.

Matt – Texas looked as dominant as ever, coasting through their victory against Colorado. But the big game of the weekend was, of course, USC at Notre Dame. I saw the game, but I am still pretty confused on everything that happened at the end of the game. Somehow I think Notre Dame got screwed by the Pac-10 refs. Figures. USC just buys everyone off.

I have decided to take my poll in a different route starting now. I am going to group the teams into their respective amount of losses, and then within that group I will rank who I think is better than the other. I know this can be a problem when dealing with smaller conferences, but to some respect, everyone should get a chance and the quality of programs in the smaller conferences has been getting better every year.

Related Links

• Last week’s rankings
• Harris Interactive Poll (PDF, 87 KB)
• Master Coaches Survey

The Longhorns became a consensus number one last week here at Bevo Sports (and Matt’s had them there since very early on), but now bandwagon is growing. The Master Coaches Survey, made up of sixteen former college football coaches like Hayden Fry and R.C. Slocum, has Texas number one overall this week. The Horns secured ten of the sixteen first place votes and passed reigning champs and last week’s number one team USC by five points.

Seems, like us, the coaches are unimpressed with the performance of the USC defense so far this season. As former University of Virginia coach George Welsh put it…

I’ve changed my mind about USC. I’m gonna vote for Texas this week because I think they have a better defense. In games like that, I don’t know if Southern Cal could score 35 points, which they might have to do.

Apparently the beatings the Horns gave Slocum’s Texas A&M Aggies and cost him his job didn’t get the message across, he still has the Trojans number one. Though I bet a lot of A&M fans are wishing he was still around now.

Gets AL honors for his work as A’s closer.

Vince and this team have come a long way since last year against Mizzou.

A must read.

The first Bowl Championship Series standings were released today and it was good news for the Texas Longhorns. We come out further behind #1 USC than I thought, but we have a pretty good hold onto the all important #2 slot.

Here are the rankings for the teams that have a legitimate shot of finishing the season in the top 2:

Before this weekend a lot of BCS experts were predicting Texas to debut at #3, but as you can see we’ve got a reasonably safe lead over #3 Virginia Tech and the rest of the pack. Virginia Tech is actually much closer to #4 Georgia than they are to being #2. I’m a little surprised to see how much more the computers like Georgia than Virginia Tech, and we better hope it stays that way. Switch Georgia and Virginia Tech’s computer rankings and the Hokies are right on our tails. It looks like Alabama is on the outside looking in as well, as they’re almost a full point behind the top 4. After Alabama you start seeing one loss teams and teams like Texas Tech and UCLA, who would need a miracle to make it to the Rose Bowl no matter how many games they win.

Texas’ chances of the Rose Bowl got a lot better on Saturday thanks to a number of factors:

1. Colorado 17, Texas 42. First of all, a blow out victory over a ranked conference opponent is always good. Texas went out and easily handled a very respectable Colorado team and Vince Young showed that the team can beat you in many different ways. There’s a ton of different factors that go in to the BCS rankings, but number one is winning games. With the number of undefeated teams this year, it doesn’t look like there will be a back door to the championship game this year.
2. USC looked beatable for the third straight week. Without a Trojans’ loss it’s not likely we’ll pass them in either of the human polls or in the BCS, but any Harris or USA Today voter that can be swayed is big. The more first place votes we get in those two polls the harder it’ll be for Virginia Tech or any of the other teams behind them to pass us. We picked up fewer first place votes this week than I thought we would, but if we can soundly beat a top ten Texas Tech this weekend we might see even more of those votes coming our way.
3. Ohio State came from behind to win. For much of the afternoon Saturday it looked like the Buckeyes would be dealt another loss from Michigan State and the Horns’ strength of schedule would take a hit because of it. Thanks in large part to a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown with seconds remaining in the first half, they pulled out the come from behind victory. Our computer rankings as well as national perceptions hinge a lot on the play of Ohio State so we need them to keep winning football games. If they can climb back into the top 10 in the polls it would definitely give us a boost.
4. Florida State gets upset by Virginia. Virginia Tech doesn’t play FSU in the regular season but there was a good chance they would play them in the ACC championship game. If the Seminoles had made it to that game undefeated, either one of those teams could have caused trouble for us. A solid win over a top 4, undefeated team in a conference championship setting could have given voters a reason to put either FSU or VT ahead of us on their ballots. Now, Longhorn fans can root for FSU to run the table and win the ACC, knocking off the Hokies in the process.

With the way things came down today it looks like we can control our own destiny. If the team continues to play the way they’ve been playing and just continues to win football games, they should be headed back to the Rose Bowl. The BCS is a strange and stupid system, but right now it appears to be on our side.

Related Links

• SI.com: No. 3 VT will need help in BCS race
• CFN: Initial BCS breakdown