NCAA Football 2013-2014 discussion

Tweet I just saw and enjoyed: "Huh...who knew that Oregon even had a field goal kicker. You learn something everyday."

Arizona up 14-3 over Oregon!

Ga. Southern is up 20-10 over the Gators, about to start the 4th quarter.

Maybe the Dawgs can hire Muschamp for their defensive staff next year.

Well Ga. Southern's kicker tried to give the game away, but the Gators lose!

Ducks still have a shot in the second half, but our defense can't stop teams running up the middle. Still plenty of time to make it a game in the second half but the first half was uncomfortably similar to the Stanford beating.

Why are both LSU and A&M wearing purple?

And, wow, two spectacular plays and runs by WRs. Nice TD A&M. Nice vision by Manziel to get em the ball.

firesloth wrote:

Why are both LSU and A&M wearing purple?

And, wow, two spectacular plays and runs by WRs. Nice TD A&M. Nice vision by Manziel to get em the ball.

Our unis are grey, but definitely do look purple on TV.

We are wearing new, flashy uniforms for this game. Like the black unis last year during MSU.

Well this game has been an abysmal mess.

MyBrainHz wrote:

Well this game has been an abysmal mess.

It's so bad. Day ruined. Night ruined. Barf.

So Kansas and ISU are playing on an ice rink tonight. Ugly looking game. ISU up 7-0 early.

Well the national tragedy that is Cal Football 2013 is finally over. This has been an historically bad season for Cal, and maybe for any FBS team. As usual Cal D gave up a number of records. Largest margin in Big Game History, most points allowed in Big Game History. Most poinst scored by stanfurd (42) in a half ever. Other Cal bloggers are sending in their stats:

2013, 11 WRs had 100 yard receiving games, and 7 RBs had 100 yard rush games against our D.

Cal has given up 30 points in 14 straight games (going back to last season), the worst such streak in major FBS conference EVER.

Cal has failed in all 3 facets of the game miserably, and while D has been consistently horrendous all season, Offense and special teams has regressed significantly as the season went on.

Now, all is not lost. Anybody who follows Cal knows that we've started 25 Fr or So during the year. While UCLA uses linebackers as running backs, we hardly have enough to field a defense due to injury. True Freshman Jared Goff broke the single season passing record for Cal before getting knocked out of the game.

We will seriously need to make some major changes in the coaching staff. Maybe Dykes is great or maybe he's the worst coach ever, but he at least deserves a chance to recruit his own guys and rework his staff.

On top of all that, with Oregon tanking in the desert, stanfurd is now going to play in the Pac-12 championship for a shot at the rose bowl, and that just makes me sad.

Guess I should feel a lot better about 10-1, but with so little hope for a BCS bowl it's pretty damn frustrating. Guess there's a whole bunch of teams out there that would love to be 10-1 right now, but it's the expectations being so high to start the year that made it somehow less than satisfying. And the way the 1 loss came, blowing a 21-point lead.

Still, good senior day win today. Really love this senior class that came in and took a chance with Charlie Strong and have rebuilt our program from the ashes left by he who shall not be named.

One final battle for the Keg of Nails with rival Cincinnati left to play in a couple Thurs nights from now.

Murray hurt his knee in the Dawg's rout of UK. Would guess his Georgia career is over, hopefully it doesn't effect his draft position. He did become the 1st SEC QB to pass for 3000 yards in 4 straight years.

Badferret wrote:

Murray hurt his knee in the Dawg's rout of UK. Would guess his Georgia career is over, hopefully it doesn't effect his draft position. He did become the 1st SEC QB to pass for 3000 yards in 4 straight years.

I hope he has a full recovery. Congrats to him for his consistent excellence.

Good luck to those of you going to bowls. I am signing off from the 2013 college football season. Cal opens @Northwestern next year in what will be a battle of 0-for-conference champions and as the offseason and what should be a horrible recruiting season picks up I'll be sure to post thoughts in the 2014 thread that I'm sure we'll open up soon.

See you in the hoops thread!

Oh Baylor. It was fun. Until you got dumptrucked.

Is it just me, or has all of ABC's "best" Saturday night primetime games ended up being boring blowouts this year?

Good game, Jucofett. That was some strong medicine ISU forced down KU's throat tonight.

Really bizarre game, because for al ing while, despite being down 10-0, I felt like KU was outplaying ISU, overall. But for some unknown reason, Weis kept dialing up passes for Cozart, who had absolutely no touch on the ball. And Sims was running all over ISU, only to have drives stall out because they would go back to throwing deep passes.

But then the second half happened, and it was all she wrote.

Jayhawker wrote:

But for some unknown reason, Weis kept dialing up passes for Cozart, who had absolutely no touch on the ball. And Sims was running all over ISU, only to have drives stall out because they would go back to throwing deep passes.

That's his "decided schematic advantage" at work. While at ND, that "advantage" seemed to be simply calling long, high balls to 6'5" WRs who could jump.

An interesting occurrence: UNC football team scored only two fewer points than the basketball team.

And the basketball team scored 82.

P.S. Florida Fan shouldn't feel too bad. Georgia Southern is starting its transition to 1-A this year and isn't really a 1-AA school.

Enix wrote:

An interesting occurrence: UNC football team scored only two fewer points than the basketball team.

And the basketball team scored 82.

P.S. Florida Fan shouldn't feel too bad. Georgia Southern is starting its transition to 1-A this year and isn't really a 1-AA school.

But the Eagles were suffering a down year by their standards due in large part to injuries.

Things are bad in Gainsville and I would be surprised if coach Boom keeps his job.

warhawk - Collins is amazing, and from an opponent's perspective, scary as hell.

Carl I fell you pain bro. Arkansas is OFFICIALLY having the worst season in the history of the program. Most of the losing this season has been due to a talent disparity caused in part by Petrino's abysmal recruiting and general attrition. Miss. State was a winnable game. Some highly questionable coaching decisions cost us this game. Very disappointed in the coaching staff. And the losings not over yet. Next week LSU is going to take us to the woodshed, and if we hadn't already been there twice I might be more concerned. I'll actually be at work during the game (which sucks), so at least I can listen to the radio cast. That still won't end the losing streak. Next year we start the season at Auburn, a team that will likely be in the Top 5 and coming off a Sugar Bowl win. Cannot wait for that. Hopefully the coaches can go get some real talent to fill out the most glaring holes in the roster. A Top 25 recruiting finish is likely and a Top 15 possible with eight spots left. Only time will tell.

The one bright spot is Alex Collins is 33 (magic number) yards away from beating Darren McFadden's freshman rushing record. McFadden might just be the most gifted player to ever wear a Hog uniform and SHOULD HAVE won the Heisman in 2006. I'm very excited to see what future holds for Alex.

So the new AP is out, and Mizzou is now #5. Interestingly, Mizzou has not beaten a single other team in the Top 25. Their one loss came at home to #10 South Carolina. But Mizzou gets credit for beating Georgia and Florida, because, you know, SEC. So what happens next week. This is a good reason why even the four team playoff is going to be a f*cking joke.

Timing is everything. Mizzou got run up the rankings while beating the teams that everyone now knows were not actually good teams, due to injuries. If they beat them now, while not ranked, they probably would not even get votes.

In some ways ND has had a good year: they gave #11 Michigan State their only loss and crushed #13 ASU. They also beat a pretty feisty BYU team this weekend. The 23-13 score doesn't leap off the page, but the result was not in doubt after the first quarter. They lost handily to #20 Oklahoma.

If it were left at that, it'd be a quite good year. However, they also got run over by an awful Michigan team who just did everything right in a night game at the Big House. Then they pansied around until they lost to Pitt last week. Ugh. Their defense has been horribly inconsistent. It hasn't helped that their starting front 3 D-linemen have played a total of 23 snaps together due to injuries. 2/3 of them are out for the season.

I wasn't expecting much at all given the loss of many players at the beginning of the season that we expected to have (e.g., starting QB, starting OLB, etc.). All in all I expected them to go about 8-4, which is probably what we're looking at with the last game at #8 Stanford. I just thought they'd lose to better teams than that Michigan team and Pitt.

Still, a win over Stanford...that'd cheer things up a bit!

firesloth wrote:

In some ways ND has had a good year: they gave #11 Michigan State their only loss and crushed #13 ASU. They also beat a pretty feisty BYU team this weekend. The 23-13 score doesn't leap off the page, but the result was not in doubt after the first quarter. They lost handily to #20 Oklahoma.

If it were left at that, it'd be a quite good year. However, they also got run over by an awful Michigan team who just did everything right in a night game at the Big House. Then they pansied around until they lost to Pitt last week. Ugh. Their defense has been horribly inconsistent. It hasn't helped that their starting front 3 D-linemen have played a total of 23 snaps together due to injuries. 2/3 of them are out for the season.

I wasn't expecting much at all given the loss of many players at the beginning of the season that we expected to have (e.g., starting QB, starting OLB, etc.). All in all I expected them to go about 8-4, which is probably what we're looking at with the last game at #8 Stanford. I just thought they'd lose to better teams than that Michigan team and Pitt.

Still, a win over Stanford...that'd cheer things up a bit!

That good enough for a automatic BCS berth still, right?

http://fansided.com/2013/11/24/flori...

If you are a Florida fan, just... ouch. It's bad and not getting better anytime soon.

And need I say anything about the beatdown my Tigers put on Johnny "ATM" Manziel??

i38warhawk wrote:

That good enough for a automatic BCS berth still, right? ;)

Huh?

I'm sure that's meant as snark, but I don't quite understand it.

For the record: there is no "automatic" path for ND and the BCS. They can be invited if they're in the top 14, but that's a money issue on the part of the bowls. And they won't be in the top 14, so it's moot.

While moonwalking Michael Jackson probably wins the band show of the year, this is pretty impressive: the ND band reenacts the "perfection" of the forward pass some 100 years ago by some guy named Rockne:

Jayhawker wrote:

Good game, Jucofett. That was some strong medicine ISU forced down KU's throat tonight.

Really bizarre game, because for al ing while, despite being down 10-0, I felt like KU was outplaying ISU, overall. But for some unknown reason, Weis kept dialing up passes for Cozart, who had absolutely no touch on the ball. And Sims was running all over ISU, only to have drives stall out because they would go back to throwing deep passes.

But then the second half happened, and it was all she wrote.

I wasn't expecting a shut out with the way ISU has been playing and watching how KU took it to West Virginia the week before. After the game I was shocked to see the yardage our QB put up. Up to this point I haven't been impressed with him and would rather Sam play hurt or not.
Playing in that game couldn't have been fun, 3 degrees is cold, cold, cold.

See you on the hardwood!

More Cal post-mortem coming in. Another fascinating number that's being bounced around is that with the wonderful BearRaid hurry up, record setting QB, offense, our offense scored exactly same amount of points we scored in last years 3-9 atrocity and it took us like 100 more plays to do so (BearRaid!). Tedford was (rightfully) panned for his unimaginitive and ultra conservative offense, but we had IMHO the worst QB in recent Cal history (i've been watching for 20 years now), and even though we had an NFL receiver (Keenan Allen) he was out the last few games and we could rarely get him the ball. So talk about Sound and Fury signifying nothing... there is the Bear Raid.

I will post something from Cal womens swimming that makes me feel good though:

The Bears concluded the meet with a sweep of the top three places in the 400 free relay. Alicia Grima, Piehl, Tran and Franklin finished a 1.5 seconds ahead of the field in 3:16.42. Li, Cheng, Farida Osman and Pelton were next in 3:17.92, while Kristen Vredeveld, Kaylin Bing, Rachel Bootsma and Acker took third in 3:18.82.

I have no idea how swim meets work, but I basically read this as our top 12 swimmers beat the first best swimmer for the next team. And, in case you are wondering the "Franklin" above, her first name is Missy. Ahh, feels good to dominate something.

Late to the party here, but it really sucks to see Aaron Murray go down in a meaningless game. Of all the Bulldogs, he certainly earned the right to finish his career on a positive note. Sorry to see him go down.