First weekend thoughts...

After a weekend of college football, we already have some insights into the real and imaginary (this blog) college football bowl picture.

-Did the Big East leaders look at each other after TCU's loss to Baylor and say, "This is our football solution? We are making our basketball teams fly to Texas to play these guys, for this?!" TCU will be hard pressed to make the tourney this last season before being part of the Big East. They are not eliminated, but they have little room for error.

-The current longest string of appearances in my tournament is a whopping TWO, with Oregon, TCU, and Ohio State being the only schools in the playoffs the previous two seasons. And they went 1-2 in week 1.

-Will Oregon's two consecutive losses to Auburn and LSU (both in real life and my tourney), and topped by the fact that their high powered offense looked underwhelming against the size and speed of these SEC foes, take some wind from their sails? It seems like it would be hard to be enthusiastic to get back on their high powered steed knowing they still need to get over a big hurdle to be real title contenders.

-I am not so old school that I am not opposed to trash talking. After all, I grew up during the Muhammad Ali era. But trash talking over nothing plays and when your team is struggling seems out of place and annoying. For the first three quarters, Auburn was up chirping in the face of every Utah State player seemingly after every play. I kept wondering what they were saying, "We may stink now, but YOU'LL never get a championship ring!" or "Sure we may lose today,but you have to go back to Ogden!" Alas, Auburn prevailed, but Utah State won the class battle.

-Any tournament would love to have Notre Dame, but, like TCU, the Irish are on the precipice of tournament elimination already. And their first drive gave credence to their pre-season hype. One wonders if that first fumble had been ruled stopped due to forward progress, would the game have progressed in a completely different direction.

-If Texas and Oklahoma join a Pac-16, does New Mexico look at a map and say, "Hey, what's wrong with us!"

-Boise State, you guys are allowed to start trash talking now. What a cool program. And I read that a rule has been made so that the Broncos cannot wear blue uniforms on their blue field. But does that apply to teams with green uniforms on normally green-toned turf?

-My guess, Oregon and West Virginia will be out of my projections, and Virginia Tech and South Florida will jump in.