Week Two - BORING!!!!!

This seriously could not be a crappier weekend of college football. Thank God Vanderbilt and South Carolina played an intriguing game on Thursday.


First of all, USC was bumped up to No. 1 in both polls, and the Trojans have a bye before the mega-showdown against Ohio State at the Coliseum next week, thus assuring them that they will be No. 1 in the country when that game takes place. No. 2 Georgia plays a good Central Michigan squad that features an exciting quarterback I'm really high on in Dan Lefevoure, but seriously, there's no way the Chippewas are going "Between the Hedges" and coming out of Athens with a win. Then you have the Buckeyes playing Ohio (I'll laugh the second all the Buckeye fans do the O-H-I-O chant this week), and the No. 3 team will be without Beanie Wells. I understand you want to have him ready for next week, but still, that leaves his status up for question until next Saturday when the Buckeyes head out to L.A.

While I think Cincinnati is a solid football team, there's NO WAY they're beating Oklahoma on the road. In fact, I'll argue right now that the Sooners will go undefeated and play in the national title game this year because when I look at their schedule, I can't name anyone beating them. As for the big Miami-Florida game (which is on ESPN because ABC has to show NASCAR on Saturday night for whatever reason), give me a break. We already established that the ACC is a joke, and anyone who thinks "The U" is going to shut down Tim Tebow on Saturday is out of their mind.

Then Gustav comes in, ravishes Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, which means that the LSU-Troy game originally set for Saturday has been pushed back to Nov. 15. Completely understandable reasons, but think about this for a second - as a result of this game being pushed to November, LSU now has FIVE STRAIGHT games on its schedule in Death Valley - Oct. 25 vs. Georgia, Nov. 1 vs. Tulane, Nov. 8 vs. Alabama (Oh, baby!), Nov. 15 vs. Troy, and Nov. 22 vs. Ole Miss. This could end up being pretty significant down the stretch, which is why I wanted to mention this now.

I give West Virginia credit for having the you-know-what to play AT East Carolina because in years past, the Pirates have given the Mountaineers some trouble, and East Carolina, should it pull this upset, could very well be on pace to run the table the rest of the way. This is really one of the few intriguing games this weekend.

Notre Dame starts its season against San Diego State. The Aztecs just lost to freaking Cal-Poly. NBC executives had to have wanted to throw up the second they noticed that, because if this was any other non-ranked team, no one would care at all about this contest.

Then look at the Big Ten for a minute - Illinois plays Eastern Illinois, Indiana plays Murray State, Iowa plays FIU, Michigan plays Miami (Ohio), Michigan State plays Eastern Michigan, Minnesota plays at Bowling Green, Northwestern plays at Duke, Ohio State plays Ohio, Penn State plays Oregon State, Purdue plays Northern Colorado, and Wisconsin plays Marshall. Other than Penn State vs. Oregon State (which lost some luster after the Beavers lost to Stanford last week), are any of these games really that intriguing? The Hawkeyes play a team that has lost 24 of its last 25 contests. The Boilermakers play a school that's only relevant because one of its punters stab the guy he was competing with. How lame is that? I'll give Minnesota and Northwestern some credit for going on the road, but keep in mind that Bowling Green beat Minnesota last year, and Northwestern lost to Duke a year ago. For the most part, we have some boring games.

Finally, I was looking at my TV guide on My Directv system to see what games I can watch when I return from Kinnick Stadium on Saturday. Among the options were Louisiana Tech at Kansas (I know La. Tech just beat Mississippi State, but seriously), Texas A&M at New Mexico, Texas at UTEP (which is a 9:15 p.m. kickoff for whatever reason), Buffalo at Pittsburgh, and the aformentioned Murray State at Indiana. I'll probably just watch the Hurricanes and Gators, but I just got a feeling has blowout written all over it.

If there's a silver lining, at least next week has some games worth talking about like Ohio State/USC, Wisconsin/Fresno State, Michigan/Notre Dame.

Hopefully we have some games as exciting as Vandy and South Carolina was last night, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

- Brendan Stiles