2013 NCAAF Week 1

[Dolfan in NYC]

Hoo doggie!   We got college football back starting Thursday!   And as usual, we start out with massacre week.  Where your favorite football team plays the school you actually went to!

 

 

AP POLLZ~!

 

1 Alabama (58)

2 Ohio State (1)

3 Oregon 

4 Stanford

5 Georgia (1)

6 South Carolina 

7 Texas A&M

8 Clemson

9 Louisville

10 Florida

 

 

[jaedmc]

WKU vs. UK in Nashville. The Age of Bobby Petrino begins!

For like a year or two!

[EVA]

IIIIIIII'MMMMMMM SOOOOOOOO REEEAAAADDDYYYYY!!!!!!

My favorite time of year.

[Brian Fowler]

Where your favorite football team plays the school you actually went to!

 

 

 

Man, if that actually happened, I'd put 20 bucks down on Michigan scoring 100.

[Pete]

Bradley hasn't had a football team since 1970. 

[Josh Mann]

 

Where your favorite football team plays the school you actually went to!

 

 

 

Man, if that actually happened, I'd put 20 bucks down on Michigan scoring 100.

 

 

This no longer takes place for me. I wonder why...

[EVA]

It was a sad day for me when Alabama dropped the Southern Miss rivalry so they could schedule more games against UT-Chatanooga, Western Carolina, and Georgia State.

[Dolfan in NYC]

 

 

Where your favorite football team plays the school you actually went to!

 

 

 

Man, if that actually happened, I'd put 20 bucks down on Michigan scoring 100.

 

 

This no longer takes place for me. I wonder why...

 

Mr. Mann,  Biogenesis on Line 2

[Stevie Ray Von Erich]

Bradley hasn't had a football team since 1970. 

 

Were you on the speech team? I'm super-active in collegiate forensics and Bradley has a history of winning. A lot. 

 

It will be nice to watch Alabama beat VaTech, but I feel like VaTech and Clemson are always teams that are ranked and regarded highly but eventually disappoint. Being an Alabama alum makes football easy to watch. HOWEVER, I'm at Ohio University now and get to cheer on the Bobcats all season in sweet, sweet MACtion~! Hopefully Teddy Bridgewater doesn't make us look too bad in the season opener.

[Pete]

 

Bradley hasn't had a football team since 1970. 

 

Were you on the speech team? I'm super-active in collegiate forensics and Bradley has a history of winning. A lot.

 

Ha! I never did it (would've been impossible as I was a student manager for the basketball team) but my roommate was indeed on the forensics team.

 

(From 1980-2000, we won the American Forensics Association championship EVERY YEAR except 1994-1995.)

[tlk23]

We have a College Pick 'Em over at ESPN if you want to join.

http://games.espn.go.com/college-football-pickem/2013/en/group?groupID=7662

[Jerry Hattrick]

My Alum (Mt. Vernon Nazarene University) isn't even a Div III school (NAIA/NCCAA), so I don't know how that would work out for a Div I schedule. Besides, they don't have nor will ever have a football team. Our homecoming is during basketball season in November.

[JRGoldman]

Yeah, I don't know what would happen if The Ohio State University played Case Western Reserve University in football, but I'm pretty sure they would throw up a hundred. Also someone would probably die.

[Brian Fowler]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait....

 

You're not only a Cardinals fan, but also a Satan fan?  Why the fuck did I help you get approved to join the previous version of the board?

[Stevie Ray Von Erich]

Can Vandy beat Ole Miss? I'm way more interested in this game than I should be, but I love the storyline of Vandy's recent upsurge in quality versus Ole Miss's amazing freshman class.

[EVA]

I'm incredibly interested in that game. Both of those teams think they're on the verge of a breakout season and have a chance to play spoiler in their respective divisions. But one of them is going to find out real quick that they aren't who they think they are.

North Carolina/South Carolina on that same night looks intriguing, too. Obviously, you've got the best player in the game playing in the very first game of the year, which is neat, but I think there's some real upset potential there. SC has a tendency to start slow in openers. If Fedora has a solid gameplan to keep Clowney off balance, it could be interesting.

Auburn/Washington State could be the sleeper game of the weekend. The Pirate vs. The Gus Bus. A metric shitload of points will be scored in that one.

[Stevie Ray Von Erich]

I was thinking about that NC/SC game today and how it's going to be a Gamecock coming out party for the season, but I think you may be closer to right.

 

Also, I feel bad for Auburn's senior offensive players. This is the fourth offensive playbook they've had to learn: Gus w/Cam, Gus without Cam, the ill-fated move to Spread under Loeffier, and now Gus as HC. Don't get me wrong, I still hope Auburn is terrible for the next few centuries, but it's a lot to have to learn in one college career. All four systems were pretty different.

[EVA]

I'm actually kinda concerned about Alabama this year. On paper, this team has a lot more in common with the disappointing 2010 team than the 2012 team did when everybody was trying to make that comparison prior to last season.

The 2010 team had amazing talent at the skill positions (Julio, Ingram, Richardson) and a veteran QB (McElroy), but a lot of new faces on the offensive line, and that just killed them. Neither Ingram or Richardson came close to 1,000 yards, and while Julio was great when he could get the ball, McElroy got sacked, like, a hundred times.

Same deal this year: Amazing skill position talent (Yeldon, Cooper - and just insane amounts of talent behind them, maybe the deepest WR corps in the country), a veteran QB (McCarron)...and a bunch of new faces on the offensive line. And the guys being replaced on the OL (two 1st round picks and one of the most decorated linemen in history) were WAY better than the guys the 2010 team was replacing.

Likewise on defense, the 2010 team had amazing talent, but no leadership, and that's exactly what I've heard coming out of camp this year. Mosely is a great player and a lead-by-example type, but nobody seems willing to be the guy who rattles cages like Professional Crazy Person Rolondo McClain, or Hightower, or a couple of different guys last year.

Fortunately, the schedule is soft enough that they could probably win 10 games playing the 2nd team, but I don't feel like this team is the shoo-in for the title game that everyone thinks they are.

[muhammedboehm]

The first half LOL so we only win by 5?

[ChesterCopperpot]

Manziel has been suspended - for the first half of the game this weekend

 

 

 

Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel of No. 7 Texas A&M has been suspended for the first half of Saturday's season opener against the Rice Owls, a source told ESPN's Brett McMurphy on Wednesday afternoon.

[Randy]

Is this a joke?  Was he suspended by the NCAA or by Texas A&M?  If it's by the NCAA it's entirely way too light and if it's by Texas A&M then they are admitting that he did something wrong.

[ChesterCopperpot]

Is this a joke?  Was he suspended by the NCAA or by Texas A&M?  If it's by the NCAA it's entirely way too light and if it's by Texas A&M then they are admitting that he did something wrong.

 

From the ESPN report

 

An agreement has been reached between the NCAA and Texas A&M that a source told ESPN's McMurphy closes the book on Manziel's recent issues.

 

The NCAA has acknowledged Manziel did not receive money for signing autographs, the source said.

 

The NCAA had been investigating whether Manziel was paid for autographs, a potential violation of amateurism rules that could threaten his eligibility.

[Death From Above]

One half of one game?

 

That's some quality trolling. The number of fish you can catch with that net will be a sight to behold.

[Randy]

So if the NCAA acknowledges that he wasn't paid for autographs, then what is he being punished for?

[Tabe]

The NCAA has two different sets of rules when it comes to players making money off their names.  The first is that they can't be paid directly - like selling your autograph.  The second is that the player has to take steps to prevent other people making money off his name.  Examples of that would be letting the NCAA know if you see stuff on Ebay that shouldn't be or, in Manziel's case, not signing a huge pile of autographs for one person.  In that case, Manziel would be expected to know that the autographs would be sold and by not preventing it, Johnny broke the rules. 

 

What likely happened is this: the NCAA probably doesn't quite have enough proof that Johnny sold his autograph.  Manziel probably lied about it, denying he got paid at all and no paper trail for the NCAA to trap him.  So Johnny would admit signing the big pile of autographs, claiming he did it for free to help out a friend or something.  The NCAA would then bust him for the "failure to prevent" violation.  This way, they get to slap him a bit, even if it's a completely meaningless penalty, and they also get to avoid having to enforce a rule nobody thinks should exist.