40 Acres Sports

Greg Davis, Gene Chizik, and Duana Akina break down the Tigers.

Texas’ early morning game today at Missouri is definitely important for the Longhorns and their season, but probably not a big game nationally. If we’re not looking ahead at next week’s game with OU, the Tigers are a team a national title contender should handle.

Only three games between ranked teams this week, #1 USC’s defense faces a tough test against #14 Arizona State, #5 Florida travels to #15 Alabama, and overrated #13 Notre Dame goes to #22 Purdue. #3 Virginia Tech will face a pretty good test when they take on rival West Virginia, who is unranked but always puts up a good fight against them at home. Should be a great day of college football. Here’s how we think today’s games are going to go down:

Related Links

• Last week’s picks

Our Thoughts

Brian – The USC guys have flipped for me this week, they both played well but bore me. I’m just not as enamored with Bush as everyone else is. He’s probably the nation’s most dangerous player but he just doesn’t put up the stats to back it up, 110 rushing yards per game just doesn’t do it for me. Laurence Maroney is banging on the door after his outstanding performance against Purdue. I wanted to put him in this week but couldn’t find anyone of the five that are on there that didn’t belong. Leak had an impressive game against Kentucky but will need to impress me this weekend against a tough Alabama team to hold him off. Bye weeks for Young and Jacobs, Young has a decent test coming up with Texas’ Big XII opener versus Missouri. Jacobs is pretty much done playing real teams this season, so he’ll be racking up the passing yards and TD’s the rest of the way.

Matt – So Vince Young has a bye week yet somehow ESPN jumps Reggie in front of him. Doesn’t make sense to me. After watching Maroney play this past weekend, I would have to say that I think he is the best running back in the nation. His size and physical style of running will make him a sure bet in the pros. He also proved that he can carry the load, tallying up a career high 46 carries. You haven’t seen him play you should.

Related Links

• Last week’s Heisman poll

Horns get no first place and 1 third place and a bunch of seconds.

*Note: The AP and USA Today polls were out before last night’s Tennessee – LSU game, so in order to keep things in line with them we voted as we would have before that game as well.

Our Thoughts

Brian – Virginia Tech looked very good against a Georgia Tech team that I think was overrated (I had them 3 spots lower than everyone last week) and whose QB wasn’t 100%. I was still impressed with their D and jumped them over Georgia. Texas Tech hasn’t played anyone but high school teams, but there they are in my top 10, I don’t know how that happened. I thought they’d be good preseason, and a lot of people I had ahead of them have lost. They could come into Austin in late October undefeated and in everyone’s top 10. Why is Penn State getting no love?

With the embarrasing showing from Lousiville and Michigan’s second loss, three teams from my preseason top 25 are gone completely. (OU sucks.) In protest of the Cardinals crappy play and worse conference, they won’t make another appearance in my poll until/if they win a bowl game.

Matt – Quite a few changes this week in my Top 25 poll. I put a lot more thought into my poll this week, and found out that I was tired of giving teams the benefit of the doubt and that I also wanted to give some new teams a chance to make their move on the poll. No one gets a free ride anymore, not even USC. Virginia Tech dominated the entire game while it took USC a half to get their stuff together, so I am moving Va Tech up a spot to #2. Michigan continued to disappoint, so I dropped them out. Purdue proved to me that they are over-rated, so I dropped them out.

Related Links

• Last week’s rankings
• Harris Interactive Poll (PDF, 27 KB)
• Master Coaches Survey

Notice the B.S. people are still spewing about Mack and the big one.

Notice that 0 – 4 Idaho received some votes and got 5 points. Nice job on the credibility.

11am kick-off. Ouch. The student section should be in by around 11:30am.

350 yards and four touchdowns in just 4 games as a freshman!

Texas is off this week but there’s still a few big games to watch this weekend. The one I’m most interested in seeing between #10 Tennessee at #3 LSU got pushed back to Monday because of Hurricane Rita, so today there’s #21 Iowa at #8 Ohio State and big matchup at home for #4 Virginia Tech hosting #15 Georgia Tech. #1 USC plays #24 ranked Oregon, but I really don’t think that one is going to end up being very close. Here’s how we think things shake out today and Monday:

Related Links

• Last week’s picks