The Sports Truth

As The Pundit sat back today and ruminated (can one of The Pundit’s fan start a stat tracker for use of unnecessary and superfluous big words? Oops, there The Pundit goes again… can that same fan get a third person usage stat tracker? Thanks! Holla back!) on the first week of college football, he has to admit to being disappointed with a somewhat boring showing.

Pretty much all the teams that were supposed to win big did so in convincing fashion. There wasn’t much in the way of high drama or noteworthy upsets, unless you count Colorado being dumped unceremoniously by a I-AA team.

Due to this normalcy, The Pundit finds himself without any hot button column ideas but will proceed anyway. The Pundit would never want to deprive his hungry legions of followers of his most important ramblings.

THE PUNDIT’S POWER FIVE

1. Notre Dame. Okay, Charlie. Are you seriously trying to make The Pundit look like an a$$hole in the first week? You are being left with the top spot only because Georgia Tech is a known giant killer and your tailback is not a biyatch.
Next week’s opponent: #19 Penn State
Prediction: Penn State will be tough match, but their offense can’t go TD for TD with the Irish. It will be a good game but The Pundit takes the Irish by 14.

2. Ohio State. They jumped Northern Illinois and cruised to an easy victory, as they should have. Watch Garrett Wolfe in coming weeks if you were a Dave Meggett fan back in the day.
Next week’s opponent: #3 Texas
Prediction: This game made the Longhorns’ year last season and should be just as good this fall. I like the Buckeyes in OT, by a field goal, because Texas doesn’t have that magical playmaker named Vince Young anymore. Early candidate for game of the year.

3. LSU. The Tigers blasted the Ragin’ Cajuns from Lousiana-Lafayatte. A lot of other polls and “pundits” have Auburn in ranked ahead of LSU but The Pundit has no idea why. This team is legit.
Next week’s opponent: Arizona
Prediction: LSU should win by 3-4 touchdowns. People say Arizona is on its way back to the top, but they haven’t been good since Tedy Bruschi was a beer-drinking, sorority ho banging, pimp on campus.

4. Texas. North Texas? Need I say more? The new QB looked pretty good for the ‘Horns, but he is no Vince Young either. He is a system guy and that is what Texas needs right now.
Next week’s opponent: #1 Ohio State
Prediction: As much as the pundit enjoyed watching Texas last year, he is taking Ohio State in OT by three.

5. West Virginia. Marshall was the first victim of Rich Rodriguez and company. The only weakness with them is the weakness of the Big East.
Next week’s opponent: Eastern Washington
Prediction: This will be a shootout but WVU should prevail by 21.

Teams most likely to break into the Top Five after Ohio State and Texas finish whooping on each other are USC (dammit), Tennessee (Fulmer has finally found an offense), and the winner of the FSU-Miami showdown (a great ACC clash that will have national title implications).

SNEAKY TEAMS TO WATCH

Idaho. The Pundit realizes that the Vandals are not the next coming of Utah in the WAC, but with Dennis Erickson as coach enough NCAA rules will be broken to knock off some bigger school who falls asleep on them. Just ask Michigan State about this. Potential upset victim: Oregon State.

Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons have a ton of starters back on offense and defense. They were solid last year and will drop a big time ACC school at home this year. Potential upset victims: Virginia Tech, Clemson.

THE RISE OF DIVISION I-AA?

The Pundit is calling it now. You will see more I-AA teams knocking off I-A teams in years to come. Usually only one or two of these upsets happen in a season, but we have already seen one with Colorado getting dropped by Montana State. Maryland barely got past William & Mary and Northern Arizona gave Arizona State all it could handle.

The Pundit works at a I-AA school, and each year he sees more I-A castoffs making a difference at the I-AA level. Simply put, the level of play and coaching is getting better at the I-AA level. This means I-A schools need to be very careful in picking I-AA games in the future.

The Pundit predicts that at least one team will lose out on a more lucrative bowl contract in the coming years because they got dumped by a I-AA school unexpectedly early in the season.

MOST OVERRATED TEAM OF THE WEEK

Oklahoma. Someone really needs to explain to The Pundit how the AP poll has them ranked as the #10 team in the country. The Pundit understands that Adrian Peterson is a great back but he can also think of 10 teams that could beat Oklahoma right now including Nebraska who is ranked #20.

GAMES OF THE WEEK

FSU-Miami. This game should technically be in this week’s column. Why did they schedule this monster game on Monday night? Look for the winner of this game to possibly jump into the top five and the loser to struggle in their Saturday game.

Ohio State-Texas. One word to describe this game: HUGE!

Cue the electrifying, pulsating random drum roll (Get on the AV pyrotechnics ASAP, owner boys — The Pundit mocks your low-rent site!)…

AND THE WAHT THE F*#@?!?! AWARD GOES TO…

The “Friends of Coal” West Virginia-Marshall game! First off, this was not an epic football clash, or even a nationally prominent game as the sponsors would have had you believe. If you watched the game on TV you were probably asleep by halftime (as The Pundit was) because WVU was stomping some Marshall a$$.

One got the impression that the sponsors thought this game was of supreme importance to all the backwater mountain boys of West Virginia, as if West Virginian pride really exists. Realistically, these people probably have better debates over whether raccoon or squirrel tastes more like chicken and if they’d rather sleep with their sister over their mother on Sunday nights.

West Virginians: Please refer all complaints over The Pundit’s blatant and nefarious degradation of your questionable heritage to The Pundit personal complaint service, 1-800-Kiss-The-Pundit’s-Holier-Than-Thou-A$$.

Also, if you are a West Virginian and you don’t have indoor plumbing yet, don’t even talk to The Pundit until you get on that. You shouldn’t be wasting money on cable if you are still taking craps in an outhouse.

Posted in College Football