College football Week 2: Seafood linguini, campus corner & Big East problems
The second week of college football was better than the first. For me. I was at a real game. OU-Cincinnati lived up to its billing. The rest of the college football landscape was mediocre.
TEN BIG LOSERS FROM WEEK 210. Temple: One of college perennial big losers had a chance to beat a team of some stature, leading UConn 6-0 after three quarters. But UConn rallied to tie, then won 12-9 in overtime.
9. Washington State: Lose a conference home game 66-3, as WSU did to Cal, and there’s little reason for optimism in Paul Wulff’s first season as coach.
8. Army: A 28-10 home loss to New Hampshire, which followed a home loss to Temple. The Cadets could be looking at a winless season. No wonder Army wants no part of a home-and-home series with Oklahoma.
7. Ralph Fridgen: Remember when the Maryland coach was the toast of the ACC? He won 31 games his first three seasons. But after a 24-14 loss at Middle Tennessee, Maryland could be facing its second straight losing season.
6. Big East: The conference didn’t beat a Division I-A foe in Week 1. In Week 2, flagship team West Virginia got rolled by East Carolina and Cincinnati quarterback Dustin Grutza suffered a broken leg.
5. State of Colorado: Colorado State and Colorado both rallied to beat Division I-AA teams. CSU beat Sacramento State 23-20; CU beat Eastern Washington 31-24. Could be a long year in the Rockies.
4. Steve Spurrier: The South Carolina coach lost to Vanderbilt for the second straight year, and the Gamecocks might have to hustle to make a bowl. You wonder if Spurrier might get bored.
3. Pat White: The West Virginia quarterback’s Heisman Trophy hopes seem slight after a poor game against East Carolina — 97 yards rushing on 20 carries but just 72 yards on 11 of 18 passing.
2. Notre Dame-Michigan rivalry: The old powers play this week, and who could possibly care? Notre Dame squeaked by San Diego State, which is truly awful, and Michigan struggled to survive Miami-Ohio. The fight songs will be grand; the teams will not.
1. Tyrone Willingham: The Washington coach desperately needs victories; he’s 11-27 in his fourth year. With a chance to beat Brigham Young, UW missed overtime when a shaky excessive celebration penalty forced the Huskies to try a 35-yard extra point, which was blocked. BYU won 28-27.
THE PRIDE OF SEAFOOD LINGUINII didn’t make it to OU’s campus Friday night for dinner, but I got close. Benvenuti’s in downtown Norman. We had a charming dinner with a group of people that included retired Air Force Gen. Jerry Holmes and OU College of Engineering dean Tom Landers.
Landers is an interesting guy; a big military buff and especially taken with the airplane art of World War II. He knows all about the B-29 piloted by Waddy Young, the former OU all-American who was shot down and killed in 1945. Says there are all kinds of leadership clues in Young’s art; maybe some day I’ll write about that.
We also talked about engineering, and how Oklahoma and American high schools don’t produce enough students interested or qualified for U.S. engineering schools. Doesn’t this seem like a simple solution for economic development? Kindle interest in math and science among younger students, fifth through eighth grades, and eventually get them into engineering schools. Landers told me companies are recruiting OU engineering students earlier and earlier. They recruited on campus last week, even though students are nine months away from the work force.
Meanwhile, Gen. Holmes knows almost everyone in American politics. Bush, Colin Powell, John McCain. He told some great stories, but my favorite was about Joe Paterno.
Gen. Holmes once spoke at Penn State for a conference on ethics. Holmes spoke on ethics of war; Paterno spoke on ethics of sport.
The general said he asked Paterno what he would do under the following scenario. One of his players runs for the winning touchdown, but you saw him step out of bounds and the officials didn’t see it. What would you do?
Holmes said Paterno told him, “If I was coaching junior high or high school, I would tell the ref to bring the play back, because my job would be teaching and instilling character.”
But what if it happened at Penn State? “Are you crazy,” Paterno said. “My job here is to win football games.”
At Benvenuti’s, I had the seafood linguini. It was excellent. Good restaurant. A little pricey, but a great place for a nice dinner or special occasion. It’s in the old Interurban building, which made me a little sad, because I love Interurban, and I’m glad to know they’re opening again in Norman, out on the interstate.
Across the street from Benvenuti’s is Coach’s, and in the middle of dinner Friday night, we saw out the window that a bunch of OU band members, in uniform, had assembled on the sidewalk across the street. Eventually, they went into Coach’s, and turns out they play in Coach’s every Friday night before home games.
Which reminded me of Aggieville on the Kansas State campus. Aggieville is a thriving area, sort of an expanded OU Campus Corner or OSU Strip. The Friday night before K-State home games, a Wildcat pep band strolls Aggieville and pops into every eatery for a fight song. A great tradition, which really adds to the spirit of the weekend.
Sounds like a great idea for OU and OSU. An OU pep band could hit the Hideaway, LaLuna, Louie’s, Othello’s. It would be great. Same in Stillwater, where an OSU pep band could go to Eskimo Joe’s, Hideaway, Qdoba.
REALITY RANKINGSIn a blog last week, I introduced you to a new concept in ranking college football teams. Teams judged not on what they might do or could do, but on what they have done. Novel, I know. Anyway, rank teams based on what they’ve done instead of some kind of mystical projections, and the rankings look much different. Here’s the top 15 for this week:
15. Arkansas State: Winning at Texas A&M won’t keep the Indians listed for long, but two weeks into the season, it’s enough.
14. Vanderbilt: Won at Miami-Ohio, which is a decent win, and beat South Carolina in Nashville.
13. Oklahoma State: Two wins, two semi-legit opponents (Washington State, Houston). In today’s college football, that’s better than most.
12. Wake Forest: Victories over Baylor and Ole Miss. Not exactly Texas and Alabama, but give the Demon Deacons credit for not yet having played an automatic win.
11. Kentucky: Dominant win at Louisville; too early to tell how UK or Louisville will turn out.
10. Fresno State: Victory at Rutgers has Bulldogs dreaming of the BCS.
9. Georgia Tech: Victory at Boston College stamps Yellowjackets as an ACC contender. For what that’s worth.
8. California: Golden Bears have two victories over BCS-league opponents, Michigan State and Washington State, though beating WSU 66-3 says more about the Cougars than the Bears.
7. Florida: Two home victories, which don’t count as much, but Hawaii was in the Sugar Bowl in January and Miami has pride, if not power.
6. UCLA: Home victory over Tennessee seemed more fluke than anything, but ours is not to question.
5. Utah: Win at Michigan’s Big House might not mean as much later in the year, but for now, it gives the Utes credibility.
4. Missouri: Romp of hapless Southeast Missouri State counts for squat, but neutral-field (St. Louis) victory over Illinois packs a punch.
3. Alabama: Routed Clemson on a neutral field in Atlanta, then beat Tulane.
2. Southern Cal: 52-7 slaughter at Virginia serves notice. The Trojans are a load.
1. East Carolina: The Pirates would be on this list even if it had gone just 1-1 in its first two games. But East Carolina beat Virginia Tech on a neutral field in Charlotte, then popped West Virginia. Of the five most impressive wins in college football this season, East Carolina has two of them.
STREET FESTIVALOU’s Campus Corner is hopping for several hours before kickoff. Part of the carnival is the media. On that one-block stretch of Asp alone, two radio stations were set up doing live broadcasts, KOCO-TV set up a stage for its pregame show and The Oklahoman set up a stage for its new live pregame show aired on newsok.com.
I parked near the train depot in downtown Norman and walked down to campus. I did a 30-minute segment with Eschbach and Traber on the Sports Animal, then went to prepare for our pregame show.
We’re in the infancy of this webcasting by newspapers. Sort of feeling our way along. It was a wreck before the Chattanooga game, but the Cincinnati pregame went smoothly. Dave Morris of newsok.com, myself and Jake Trotter did the show, and we had a couple of guests, former Sooner John Tatum and author Jeff Snook, who has written a new OU book, Then Bud Said to Barry, Who Told Bob. We still don’t have any idea what we’re doing on camera, but the resulting videos seem to be popular. And besides, you can’t keep a face like mine off video.
The best thing about such days is the interaction with the crowd. I get to meet new people and see old friends. Come into contact with 20,000 people, and you’re bound to know some of them.
On the walk from Campus Corner to the stadium, I encountered two familiar faces.
Calvin Jones is an OU fan I met on a flight from same game, don’t remember which. But he’s a loyal Sooner. Lives in Valentine, Neb., which is hard by the South Dakota border in northern Nebraska, and works on an Indian reservation in South Dakota. Yet Calvin makes it to most OU games.
And E.C. Wegener of Minco is a guy I met several years ago at the Fairfield Inn in Las Colinas, during an OU-Texas weekend. I saw him year after year at the Fairfield and learned he was part of the OU chain crew on the sidelines.
In February 2005, Wegener was in an horrific truck-train crash. His face was mangled and his body was crushed. But after 52 days in the hospital, Wegener walked out of the hospital, and that September he was on the sidelines for the OU-TCU game.
I walked with Wegener to the stadium and all the way to the entrance. It was good to see him. I don’t stay at the Fairfield anymore; we’ve moved over to the Courtyard for OU-Texas. But Campus Corner brought us together again.
TEN BIG WINNERS FROM WEEK 210. U.S. Marines: 32-year-old ex-Marine Brandon Crawford, Ball State’s captain and defensive end, had four tackles in a 35-23 victory over, yes, Navy.
9. Rice: The Owls won at Memphis 42-35 and are 2-0 in Conference USA. Rice could up playing some big games for the first time in what must be 50 years.
8. Wake Forest: Sam Swank’s 41-yard field goal with two seconds left beat Ole Miss 30-28 and guaranteed the Demon Deacons will be unbeaten when they go to Florida State on Sept. 20.
7. Tim Tebow: The Florida quarterback is the chic pick to not repeat as the Heisman winner. But he threw for 256 yards and ran for a game-high 55 against Miami’s stout defense. Don’t discount Tebow from finishing out his bookends.
6. Oklahoma stats: The nation’s leading passer for the week was Tulsa’s David Johnson, with 418 yards against North Texas. OU’s Sam Bradford was third, with 395 passing yards against Cincinnati. The leading receiver in the nation was OSU’s Dez Bryant, with 236 yards on nine catches. The No. 2 rusher was OSU’s Kendall Hunter, with 210 yards on 22 carries.
5. Colt McCoy: Quarterbacking on the road can be rough, just ask Bradford. But McCoy was very good for Texas at UTEP, throwing for four touchdowns and 292 yards.
4. Mid-American Conference: Rarely does a league make a statement in defeat, but that’s exactly what happened in dueling ESPN games. Michigan edged Miami-Ohio 16-6 while Ohio State barely survived Ohio U. 26-14. The MAC didn’t get its big upset, but it earned even more respect in Big Ten territory.
3. Big 12: OK, so the competition wasn’t great. But still, the Big 12 went 12-0 Saturday. Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Texas won road games against mid-majors hungry to make a name for itself, and OU beat Cincinnati in one of the day’s marquee games.
2. Paul Johnson: Some wonder if Johnson’s option attack, which worked at Navy, can work at the big-time level. But Georgia Tech beat Boston College 19-16 to give Johnson a victory in his ACC debut..
1. Skip Holtz: The East Carolina coach pulled off his second straight big upset, this one 24-7 over West Virginia. Keep this up, and Holtz might soon take over his dad’s old job, coach at Notre Dame.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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