Are You Ready for Some Football?

Ok, so I’m not exactly a Swami/Dali Lama/Elijah and I tanked pretty hard on some predictions (well, not so hard, I only went 2-1 this week), but there was plenty of good watching this weekend in the world of football. The NFL kicked off with some pretty fun match-ups and a slow week in the college game ended up with some interesting outcomes.

On the NFL front, pretty much everything went according to plan. The good teams won and the not-so-good teams lost (with the minor exception of the trash bath of Denver vs. Cincinnati). The best match-up of the week was the first, which I covered last week. Steelers/Titans were by far the most evenly matched teams. New Orleans/Lions, Seattle/St. Louis, and tonight’s New England/Buffalo are the most lop-sided matches of the week. All you fanatasy fans had better have started Drew Brees, throwing for 6 touchdowns and 358 yards, he had the biggest opening game in NFL history and tied a Saints' in game record. In the Patriots/Bills game tonight, expect T.O. to have a couple of catches tonight and not much else from the Bills. Tom Brady’s first regular season game back will have a few bumps, but for the most part will be overwhelming for the Bills’ underwhelming secondary. Other than the Kansas City Chief’s surprising decent offense, the 49ers upset over the NFC Champion Arizona Cardinals, and Indiana’s lack of scoring, the rest was pretty much a normal day at the office.

While anticipating the 2009 NFL season, the drama of college football was inciting a bang. The two big punches came from Ann Arbor and Stillwater, Oklahoma. The 18th ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish came into Michigan’s “Big House” in Ann Arbor thinking that this Wolverine squad was the same team that lost to Appalachian St. last year only to find a 2nd year coach starting to turn his program around. Several experts (including Lou Holtz and Beano Cook) thought Notre Dame was returning to their former glory just because they aren’t in the stink pot this year and predicted an undefeated, national championship season. Even though they don’t have any ranked team on their schedule besides USC, there’s no way this team will even make it to a BCS game now. We definitively learned that Notre Dame is not the national championship team so many would have loved to believe.

Stillwater, OK. 5th ranked Oklahoma State hosts heavy underdog Houston. The Houston Cougars got out early and it was just too much for the Cowboys to catch up to until they finally took the lead in the 3rd quarter. The fourth quarter became a quick shooting match until the Cougars pulled away in the last 7 minutes of the game. This game was as loud of a wake up call as you can get. Oklahoma State's defense needs some serious work. When it comes time to face Texas, Oklahoma, and even Mike Leach's newly renovated Texas Tech offense, they'll be in serious need to fix some holes. This loss is surely a devastating blow to the Cowboys, but it's also a major blow to the Big 12. With two top 5 losses in the first two weeks for the Big 12, it will take several weeks to bring back legitimacy to their strength of schedules.

As far as the USC/Ohio State game goes, I either drastically overrated USC’s offense, or gave no credit whatsoever to Ohio State’s defense. I haven’t decided yet which is which. Admittedly I put no weight on the power of the 12th man on the field for Ohio State: the crowd. With the Horseshoe filled to capacity at over 102,000, I greatly underrated their influence. USC’s top offensive line was completely neutralized, evening out the mighty Trojan running game. Whether USC’s front five just didn’t show up to play or Ohio State’s defensive line was really that good is difficult to say. One thing’s for sure though, USC did everything they wanted to do the last drive of the 1st half and the last drive of the 2nd half (thanks to Joe McKnight [left]). As far as Ohio State’s offense was concerned, their match up with USC’s spectacular defense was pretty close to what I expected. With the exception of a fluke safety, Ohio State only scores one more field goal than anticipated.

So we’re officially underway. NFL and NCAA are both in full swing and as the top teams try to keep their eyes on the prize, we all keep our eyes open for upsets. We’ve been blessed so far with 3 or 4 big ones in the first few weeks, but don’t get too excited. The best teams always rise to the top. Well… usually.