Top 25, Week Three

Nobody knows nothin’

So, this week as I glance at the Top 25 rankings for week three, I’m bothered by several things.

First, why has WVU won, handily, for the second straight week on the road, and dropped a spot for the second straight week?

Why, indeed? The voters are just plain fucking idiots.

Most of the time, I’m going to try to temper my contempt and loathing for “experts” and “coaches,” but not this week. This week, I’m going to “work blue,” and call them all fucking morons, because that’s what they’ve proven themselves to be.

Both the AP and USA Today polls are of a consensus mind about the top five:

1. Southern Cal
2. Louisiana State
3. Florida
4. Oklahoma
5. West Virginia

The AP is giving only USC and LSU number one votes, with one voter changed between this week and last, shifting his/her vote back to Southern Cal after the Trojans went to Lincoln and toyed with the Huskers.

The “Coaches” are slightly more unsure of who the best team is, splitting number one votes among the top four teams. The Gators garnered only one such vote, which is obviously one vote too many.

I suggest that while resituating one’s top five or ten or twenty-five is certainly an acceptable practice, I implore to know just what it is that WVU has shown to merit losing two spots in one poll and one spot in the other. Please. I beg to know.

Horse hockey

I’m sure most voters will submit the standard horseshit lines that idiots use to demerit the Mountaineers:

• Shaky defense.

• Bad opponents.

• Ummm… Pat White doesn’t throw enough.

• They don’t know the difference between West Virginia and western Virginia.

I answer those criticisms thusly:

• Yes, the defense has been shaky. But, they overpowered the Maryland offense after the first quarter. Sometimes, they overpowered them to an embarrassing degree. Maryland’s offense isn’t very good, sure. But, they were home, they have a good coach, and had a very supportive audience. And WVU’s defense bottled them up pretty well, upon opting to pressure the QB. This is a criticism of which I’m aware, and accepting of. But, does it matter? Aside from LSU, is anyone else’s defense not shaky?

• It’s true. The combined record of WVU’s three opponents to date is 2-7. Let’s glance at the top four combined opponent records, though, shall we?

Southern Cal’s opponents (2): 3-3

Louisiana State’s opponents (3): 4-5

Florida’s opponents (3): 4-5*

Oklahoma’s opponents (3): 2-6

I suppose we credit USC for traveling to Lincoln and handing the Huskers their first loss.

They are good. Very good. I don’t fully buy into JD Booty, yet, but whatever.

LSU has played one medium quality opponent (Virginia Tech), one mediocre to bad opponent (Mississippi State), and one atrocious one (Middle Tennessee State). They’re clearly a very good team, so, whatever.

Florida’s opponents earned an asterisk so that I remembered to make this point: Their opponent record should be 3-5. Western Kentucky dug really deep to find an opponent to ease the whipping they knew Florida would put on them. They beat West Virginia Tech 87-0. WVTech isn’t Div I-A. Or Div-I-AA. Or Division II. Or Div III. No, WV Tech isn’t even in the NCAA, in fact. They are an NAIA program. Give that Western Kentucky’s only other win is over a Div I-AA team, and well… maybe they shouldn’t count any of WKU’s record. Anyway, Florida hasn’t played a legit opponent yet, either, is my point. (Tennessee’s lone victory to this point came against Southern Miss.)

Oklahoma’s opponents have been North Texas (Sun Belt), Miami (ACC) and Utah State (Sun Belt). Tough opponents, to be sure.

Oh, and OU, Florida and LSU have yet to leave their home towns.

Of the top five teams, only USC and WVU have been on the road. And only WVU has been twice on the road.

It matters because it matters. If the Gators lose on the road to LSU, they’ll blame it on being on the road. But, come on. Maybe if they’d played anyone at all before that game, anywhere but in their own sandlot, well… they might have some sympathy. Not from me, but from somebody.

• Pat White was actually not very good against Maryland. He didn’t seem to read the defense very well, and made several bad choices on option plays, giving when he should have kept, throwing when he should have run, running when he should have given. Despite it all, I’ll take him over Booty every day but Sunday, over Flynn every day, over Bradford every day, and over Tebow every time he has seven days of preparation.

• While I’m mostly sure that voters actually don’t know the difference between West Virginia and western Virginia, I’m hoping it has no effect on their vote, ’cause there isn’t anything that can be done about the failure of geography education. (For these people, that is.)

My Top Five

1. Southern Cal
2. Louisiana State
3. West Virginia
4. Florida
5. Oklahoma

Penn State, Boston College, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Oregon, Rutgers, and Texas are still alive. Of this group, though, only Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers and Oregon, as I see it, can make a run at the top five.

The Big East Takes Hits

Last week, only the Orange in Syracuse had losses that counted against the Big East. Unfortunately, Pitt and Louisville both went on the road and lost games.

The Cardinals will lose four games

The Cardinals have no defense at all. Letting a guy run completely free in the game’s waning seconds is absolutely ridiculous. Just ridiculous. I predict that going forward, they’ll lose to WVU, Rutgers, and South Florida. They could lose to Cincinnati, too, but it’s hard to see the Bearcats scoring enough to keep up. Not impossible, but difficult to see.

The AP College Football Voters are MORONS

I didn’t comment on this last week because I didn’t care enough, but this week, I care.

After Appalachian (that “a” after the “l” is pronounced as in ass, not as in ace) State shocked the world on opening Saturday, the AP saw fit to change its rules and allow voters to give votes to Division I-AA. Okay, that’s dumb. I see wanting to give Appalachian State its due that one week, but let’s not go overboard, shall we?

Oh, but we shall. Because the AP are mo-rons. Appalachian State continues to get Top 25 votes. Does anyone know what the ASU Mountaineers have done since shocking Michigan? They followed the Michigan game by beating up a Division II opponent. And they traveled out west and beat Northern Arizona (who isn’t bad, actually). But, did anyone who keeps voting for them even know that. Had they heard of Lenoir-Rhyne? Do they know anything of L-R? No, likely not.

But, they continue to vote for ASU based on the weight of a single fucking game. Ri-fucking-diculous. Show your respect one week, even give them a #1 ranking. And then stop. Because there’s a Division I-AA Top 25 poll that’s voted upon by people who actually follow that division.

Glances around the Mountain State

Soccer. Yes, soccer.

I know it goes unnoticed, but when I conceived of this project some 18 months ago, I swore to myself that I’d hit on all the goings-on in Mountaineer sports that I could find information about. And, the interwebs being all inter and webby, as long as you keep your eyes open, you can find info on almost anything.

Sometimes, that can be very awkward.

On to soccer.

First, since the Women’s World Cup in China began yesterday AM Eastern time, we’ll glance first at the women. Ranked 18th, the Lady ‘Eers (Is that Lady nickname still used in college athletics today? I confess, I don’t pay close attention to women’s sports.) beat the Lady Nittanies 1-0 Sunday afternoon. Penn State was 15th ranked at the time.

In an effort to be more confusing than football’s ranking situation, there are three ranking sources in college soccer. The Mountaineer-ettes are 14, 18 and 19, depending on which publication/association you’re abiding by. That’s an average of #17. Not too shabby.

The men’s soccer team isn’t yet ranked, but beat Duquesne Monday evening, 1-0, scoring the game winner late, according to the report you can catch here at msnsportsnet.com.

That’s probably enough college soccer for now.

UPDATE: The Men’s soccer team is ranked 13th.

Injuries

As I scrolled through the college football headlines on espn.com yesterday and this morning, I was struck by how many season-ending injuries folks were dealing with. Not quite as bad as the Scroll of the Dead that the NFL put out over the last 48 hours (apologies to Kevin Everett, who has apparently improved more than expected between Monday and Tuesday).

How is it that the Mountaineers have enjoyed unusually good health in the Coach Rod era, anyway? For that matter, I can’t recall the Mountaineers losing a player to injury that changed a season. Yes, last season saw Slaton’s running one-handed affect a game (his wrist problems versus Louisville was almost as responsible for that loss as the defense’s ineptitude), but in general, injuries haven’t claimed major stars in Morgantown.

Perhaps I’m cursing the crew by even typing this.

Maryland

While I’ll write a more thorough preview tomorrow, I was struck by the score of Maryland’s game Saturday over Florida International, team #118 of 120. I would have expected the T(w)erps to have blown out the Golden Panthers, but instead they eked out a 26-10 win.

They were on the road, so that counts for something. Also, they had to have skipped game planning the game at FIU, instead focusing on the visiting Mountaineers during practice. That’s all that makes sense to me, because FIU is, well, a Division I-A team in name only. Sure, anything can happen, as Appalachian State proved on the season’s opening Saturday, but Appy State’s a good squad. FIU would lose ten games out of ten to Appy State.

So, I expect the T(w)erps will show up on Thursday night, but I truly doubt the Mountaineers will have any more trouble with them than they did with Marshall.

Administrivia

I’d promised a near-daily look at college athletes involved in police matters, but honestly, I’m overwhelmed. You’ve got computer thieves at WVU, batterers everywhere, murderers in New Hampshire, kids getting suspended for anything and everything. I will get to it. I promise.

‘Till then, I suck.

Mountaineers in the NFL

WVU grads (or, at least, former attendees) have gone on to the National Football League. I thought Mondays would be a good day to track them. And, when I’m feeling nostalgic, I’ll write about former Mountaineers who went on to have at least a year in the league.

Anthony Becht, TE Tampa Buccaneers

Becht’s career is just about over. He’s on the Tampa roster, but he had no stats in yesterday’s loss to Seattle. Things have been going downhill for him since Pennington’s chronic wrist problems began.

Marc Bulger, QB St. Louis Rams

Bulger was mildly miserable against the Carolina Panthers. His line was:

CMP	ATT	YDS	CMP%      LNG	TD	INT	RAT	        ATT	YDS	AVG   TD

22 42 167 52.4 18 1 0 70.2 3 18 6.0 0

While the Panthers do have a defense that could be decent, one would expect more from the QB of a supposedly high octane offense, even in week one. The Rams played poorly overall, but the QB has to perform, and Bulger’s numbers stand as evidence of either 1)He didn’t play well, or 2)His team stinks, or 3)Carolina’s better than I suspected, or even 4)Linehan’s offense ain’t so hot, after all.

Antwan Lake, DT New Orleans Saints

Antwan’s Saints got completely outclassed by the Indianapolis Colts on the league’s opening night. Lake offered two tackles as a sub in the Saints hopeless defense against the Colts, who looked incredibly strong overall.

Corey McIntyre, FB Atlanta Falcons

Since Corey had no stats against his name in the Falcons’ obliteration against the Vikings, I want to ask him one question: How’s my boy, Prince Killer? That pitbull is one good doggie.

Jerry Porter, WR Oakland Raiders

The second best former Mountaineer receiver to play in the league actually had two catches for the Raiders yesterday as the Raiders went down to the Lions. Two catches for twenty-six yards. It’s something, I guess.

Todd Sauerbrun, P Denver Broncos

Sauerbrun may be long in the tooth, but remains a really good punter, steroid issues aside. Todd had three punts yesterday, dropping one inside the twenty. Of course, one of those three punts went for six points for the Bills. Not that it’s all Todd’s fault, but…

Gary Stills, DE Baltimore Ravens

Stills had no numbers in tonight’s loss to the Bengals, though that doesn’t mean much. The Ravens playmakers are linebackers and safeties.

John Thornton, DT Cincinnati Bengals

Former teammate of Stills, big John Thornton had one tackle tonight in the Bengals’ victory.

All in all, a pretty crummy week for former Mountaineers, going 2-6.

Oh, and of course, this doesn’t include any former Mountaineers who might be suspended or otherwise detained by police.

West Virginia AT Marshall

I wanted to post some thoughts about this matchup prior to the game, but I failed to make time. So, some of this post will be a little irrelevant now.

Also, since I’m posting thoughts after the game, I’m going to take potshots, lots of them, at Pam Ward. What a friggin’ mess she continues to be, and on a consistent basis.

Marshall

I kind of regret that Marshall University ever became a Division I-A football program. They were absolutely dominant in Division I-AA during the early and mid-’90s. I actually started rooting for them fairly regularly. Indeed, the whole state started to pay attention, because with occasional bright spots (1992), the WVU program seemed to have plateaued. I enjoyed the Thundering Herd in their green and white dominating the scene in Div I-AA, because they had an interesting offense. And (I’m sheepishly admitting this–more on why some other time), I kind of enjoyed the playoff system that Div I-AA had.

So, the folks at ESPN made sure that we were all aware that the DVD of the film We Are Marshall was coming out soon. I liked that they played up the Marshall angle during the broadcast, but it got a little annoying. I haven’t seen the film, but I want to. I especially want to see the movie because growing up in Charleston/Beckley, WV, I didn’t hear about the Marshall tragedy of 1970 until I was living in Boston, sometime in the last ten years or so.

All I knew of Marshall prior to their dominance in the Div I-AA Southern Conference was that they stunk while I grew up. I have memories of hearing them called “The Blundering Herd” on both local sports television broadcasts and radio sports updates during one of those annoying “morning zoo crews” on V100. So, until they began winning, awful football was all I knew about Marshall. Well, that, and the school was in Huntington.

So, when I discovered this thing about the Marshall tragedy (I think the Oklahoma State basketball incident brought it to my attention for the first time), I felt horrible. I felt horrible at having grown up between fifty and ninety miles from the school and not knowing anything about the event. I felt horrible that sports folks saw fit, even twelve years later, to call the program blundering. Of course they were blundering! The entire program had been decimated! They had to start nearly from scratch.

Anyway, I hold it against… I’m not sure who, but I have some anger at my homeland and those that brought me up those 18 years of my life in WV not knowing about it. I think that’s thoughtless. I know why, to a degree, why I never knew about it, but, it seems wrong. Here we are today, bowing to Virginia Tech and their tragedy on a weekly basis, and no future Va Tech potential student will exist without knowing about their tragedy. Hell, the state will likely have some idiotic day of prayer or something. But, in WV, we mocked their muddled return to the game.

So, I’m a Marshall supporter, except for when they play one team: my Mountaineers.

Today’s Game

I missed the first five minutes of game time. I was surprised to turn on the game and find WVU up by only a field goal. As I watched, I was surprised to see the Mountaineers so easily kept under wraps.

My hat’s off to the Herd. They have a decent team there in Huntington. Maybe their best team in the post-Pruitt era. They can’t win the Conference USA (I’m pipping TCU, but don’t forget East Carolina), but they should be competitive.

I’m not sure why the offense didn’t run enough in the first half. Perhaps it was intended, to make the matchup worth something to someone. But, if the Mountaineers had played their normal brand of football during the first half, there’s no way that they would have been trailing by a touchdown at the half.

They seemed to want to throw, which is fine. I’m all for throwing, if you’re running the right pass plays. But, they weren’t. They were throwing short, against man defense. Against bump-and-run defense. Stupid. If someone is forcing you to throw by crowding the line, spread it out, sprint guys downfield and let White show off what he can do.

Maybe they don’t trust White to throw downfield. I don’t get it. I trust him implicitly. I fully believe he’s the second best quarterback ever to wear Blue and Old Gold. (Maybe third. I go back and forth on whether I like him better than Major Harris or not.)

I thought Marshall killed themselves, actually slit their own throats, by refusing to try for a TD at the end of the first half. Settle for the FG only after throwing into the end zone. They didn’t even try for the TD. Idiotic. I laughed at the coaching. Nothing more cowardly than kicking a field goal when you’re leading a heavy favorite late in the half. Plenty of time to try to take an eleven point lead. By only going up by seven, 13-6, by kicking a FG, without trying to take a 17-6 lead, the Marshall coach simply said to his team, “We’re gonna lose. We may as score the sure points and not start losing now.”

Why were they going to lose? Because WVU was going to change the way they were playing. Because you could see in Pat White’s face only modest frustration that things weren’t going their way. He didn’t panic at all. He was annoyed, but was never afraid of losing the game. Same for Coach Rodriguez. He was annoyed by the way things were going, but I don’t believe he ever suspected the second half would be more of the same.

ESPN

I have a request, oh Worldwide Leader of Sports. It’s a simple request. It’s this: Please, please, please FIRE PAM WARD. She’s an absolute frigging mess. She couldn’t keep Huntington and Morgantown straight. And she was doing a game in Huntington. She couldn’t identify players right the first time almost ever. She (and her boothmate) totally ignored the fact that the first Marshall TD came on an illegal play. (Morris was a full yard over the line of scrimmage when he threw the football. Line of scrimmage is the WVU38, his forward foot is on the WVU37 when he throws. He’s over the line. In fact, I saw no fewer than five obvious penalties committed by Marshall that went uncalled.)

She’s an abysmal mess. Easily the worst play-by-play voice around. I’ve ignored her for a long time, but now, it’s just time. Her performance is so bad, she must be repurposed. Absolutely must be. I don’t care what she does. Just take her out of the broadcast booth. She’s making a living on not having a penis in a penis-dominated job. I didn’t object to her at first. But, she only continues to regress from an only mildly tolerable start. She’s an embarrassment, and must be removed from covering games that will be aired on ESPN or ESPN2. Seriously.

Later on, I’ll post my thoughts on the three days of college football and update some problems in this post.

Until then, I suck.

An introduction, an explanation, a road for the season ahead

Too much time and too many bits are wasted on explaining why a new blog on some topic on which there is already time and bits wasted seems like an idiotic start to this new writing venture of mine.

Suffice to say this: I have opinions. Strong ones. Right ones, and wrong ones. I also have changing opinions. And, most importantly, I sometimes need to reveal these opinions, let them be available for the masses, so that they may tear them apart, so that they may absorb them.

I think a great deal about the state of college athletics in the United States. And at no time do I consider its state more than during college football season. There is so much wrong with my all-time, anytime, everytime favorite sport. There remains much about it which is right, but so much that is not.

And so it is without further ado or delay that I unveil MountaineerDave: On College Athletics.

First, some notes:

Who am I?

I grew up in West Virginia rooting for the only team around, the Mountaineers. Coach Don Nehlen was getting started in Morgantown when I first started following the game. I remember my grandfather’s excitement over a game we heard bits of on the radio. When I think of it, there wasn’t a time during that era of his life that recall him being more excited than when we were working on building a house and West Virginia did the unthinkable by marching into a Norman, Oklahoma and whipped the Sooners. True, in retrospect, it wasn’t the best team that the University of Oklahoma ever put on the field, but it raised eyebrows everywhere, and put a couple names on the tongues of everyone who pays attention to college football: Jeff Hostetler, Don Nehlen. Things were never the same for WVU (except perhaps at the end of Coach Nehlen’s career). But, the Mountaineers could no longer be considered some nothing team from the Southern Conference (a I-AA division). They were there nationally, now.

And they had beaten the Sooners, who my grandfather knew best as having been the best team of the 1950s and 1960s. West Virginia was suddenly somebody.

I loved that a football team could make somebody who wasn’t happy with his situation in life feel better about everything, if for only a short time.

Better than that, the entire state felt it. Something was afoot.

And I was growing up there. So, there couldn’t possibly be another rooting interest in my mind.

Where am I?

I moved to Pittsburgh to attend college (but not at hated Pitt!), and have since moved to the greater Boston area. Interesting thing about living in towns with professional sports: college athletics take on a much reduced import than what I grew up experiencing. Where WVU had lifted the spirits of nearly every citizen of the state (even my grandmother, whose primary concerns were her family, her friends and her bible, in that order came to know what WVU was doing from her chair in front of the televisions), the fates of the University of Pittsburgh and Boston College are completely inconsequential to the citizenry of their respective cities.

Ultimately, I think there’s something healthy about that. But, damn, does it make for talking my favorite sport difficult.

What am I doing?

I am filling my college football hunger, rooting for my childhood team from afar, and on the cheap. No ESPN GamePlan subscribers here, thanks.

No, I’ll be filing my opinionated reports based on what I can glean from the nine thousand video-hosting websites, blogs, news reports, etc. My focus will be on my favorite team, but I intend to move forward with a wider eye. Hey, I love my Mountaineers, but not everyone who cares about college athletics is interested in WVU, and I’m going for more than a simple niche readership.

That said, I plan to follow something approximating the schedule below:

• Daily comments on whatever, and I mean whatever, is floating around the wires and webs on my favorite team.

• Weekly picks to go along with a topic of the week.

• Something that will be a feature whenever it comes up, which is too often (and was a favorite section of our weekly college newspaper, about three hundred years ago): the police blotters. I’ll be looking for reports of malfeasance every day, but how often I need to comment on it, well, we’ll just see.

Other stuff is likely to come along, but this is where we’ll start.

I should have posted this a week, or two weeks ago.

Alas, I suck.