**NOTICE**

JIB Sports has posted two weekly columns during the first month  and change of the NFL and college football seasons. The first is a review of the NFL on Wednesdays and the second is a preview of college football on Fridays. Due to the mass amounts of college teams playing on Wednesdays and Thursdays we will be swapping the college football and NFL columns.

Are you ready for daily articles on the unfairness of the BCS and how there should be a playoff? With week 8 being the last week before the first BCS rankings are announced; ready or not, here they come! The highlight game of the week could be Missouri at Texas, which isn’t as exciting since Missouri lost last week, but will still be an excellent game. Here are a few headlines that will be topics of discussion throughout the weekend:

BYU Gets First “Quality” Win

BYU running back Harvery Unga will try to break through the Horned Frogs' stellar defense.

Let’s all agree that the polls are most ludicrous thing in sports. Reputation, and a school’s record the previous year play the biggest part in them (which is silly considering college rosters change every year based on graduating students so the team can be drastically different from year to year). Not only that, but teams jump up and equally fall based on the ranking they are given, regardless of whether the team upset was really that good. So here sits BYU in the top 10, largely because they are coming off of back to back 11-2 seasons and they currently own the longest winning streak in the nation of 16 games. Many people knock BYU because they have no “quality” wins on their schedule. While a valid argument, the Cougars can only play the teams on their schedule, they can’t control when teams like UCLA and Washington are having bad years. Putting all controversy aside, the Cougars will crash Fort Worth and put up big numbers against a stubborn TCU defense. TCU has lost one game all year, to Oklahoma. At the end of the year, their second loss won’t look so bad either, which will be to BYU this week. 

Arizona Nips the Golden Bears in the Desert

All year we’ve heard about how it’s “USC and the PAC-9,” but every time we turn around there’s another PAC-10 team in the top 25. At the beginning of the year it was Oregon, who then lost it’s top two quarterbacks and fell to Boise State. Then there was Arizona State who, has now dropped three straight games to UNLV, Georgia and USC. UCLA was even in the top 25 for a week after it’s dramatic opening season victory. Perhaps a little too much credit is given to the PAC-10 because it is the only BCS Conference in the west, although certainly not the best conference in the west. Just as a side note, how on earth is USC back in the top 5 after it lost to a non-ranked .500 team only two weeks ago? Don’t worry about it much, it will drive you to drink and if you already drink you won’t take notice to such intricate issues. Arizona has had a few setbacks this season against Stanford and New Mexico, which were both on the road, but they will be ready to trip up Cal in the desert. 

Mizzou Turns Mess Around

Missouri QB Chase Daniel is hoping to bounce back in a big away against Texas after last week's debacle.

With Texas taking down Oklahoma last week, Missouri had a golden opportunity in a nightcap game to move into the #1 spot with a win over Oklahoma State. Texas opened the front door for Missouri, but they didn’t slide the screen door open and Missouri ran right into it. Embarrassing, yes, can’t say that I haven’t ran through a creen door before, sometimes they are nearly invisible. Now Missouri is out of the top 10 facing #1 Texas. What is even more perplexing is how Oklahoma State bolstered up 8 spots in some polls after defeating the Tigers. If the Tigers were so good that the Cowboys jumped up so high, then obviously the Tigers shouldn’t have dropped so low. Looking at the Longhorns, all of the Tigers will have the dejected Prom Queen attitude of, “that should have been me!” Missouri still totes Heisman candidate quarterback Chase Daniel and a very talented offense that is going to have a shootout of their own this week. With a win over Texas they can sneak in the back door and be right back in the thick of things again. They just better hope their isn’t a screen door on the back door too. 

Vandy Going, Going, Gone! 

After Alabama beat down Georgia a couple weeks ago and jumped to #2 in the polls their coach Nick Saban had something interesting to say. Saban said something to the effect of the polls don’t matter this early in the season and asked if anyone could tell him who was #2 last year at this point in the season. The room went silent, somebody even let a few crickets in. When the season is all done with, people will not even see a blip of Vanderbilt on the top 25 radar. It’s a sad truth that it doesn’t matter how you start a season, but how you end it. Perfect example, March madness in college basketball. You would never know that an overachieving Vanderbilt squad was once at #13 in the nation only to lose consecutive games to Mississippi State and Georgia on their way out of the top 25. Every season needs a Cinderella, here’s to you Vandy! 

Oklahoma State snagged a top 10 spot away from Missouri last weekend.

JIB Picks

Week 7: 12-4 / Overall: 112-19

Week 8: #1 Texas – #12 Missouri / #2 Alabama - ‘Ole Miss / #3 Penn State - Michigan / #4 USC - Washington State / #5 Texas Tech – Texas A&M / #6 Oklahoma - #15 Kansas / #7 Florida (Bye) / #8 BYU - #24 TCU / #9 Georgia - #23 Vanderbilt / #10 Oklahoma State – Baylor / #11 Ohio State – #17 Michigan State / #13 Utah – Colorado State / #14 LSU – South Carolina / #16 Boise State - Hawaii / #18 Virginia Tech - Boston College / #19 Wake Forest - Maryland / #20 South Florida – Syracuse / #21 North Carolina – Virginia / #22 Cal - Arizona / #25 Ball State (Bye)

Tags: College Football

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under College Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.