All our top three managed to dispatch their opponents with varying degrees of drama. Colt and the Longhorns put a Texas-sized hurt on critical darling Mizzou; Alabama faced down in-conference rival Ole Miss despite some sloppy second half play. And PSU won, not that anyone cares.
The real news of the weekend is the reaction to the rankings, especially now that BCS is out and in play. Texas’ national credentials are worth questioning, given that the Big XII appears to have given up on the whole idea of defense (n.b. that they gave up 30+ in their win over Mizz). Frankly, despite the nostalgia factor, I hope UT hangs on so that, should Alabama win out, the big game is Tide vs. Longhorns instead of Tide vs. JoePa. Granted, I think we’d win either one…
Texas held the 4th best offense in the NCAA to 3 points in the first half. Mizzou having it’s FIRST three and out last week against OSU. Texas forced 3 three-and-outs, out of a possible 5 Mizzou possessions in the first half. We inserted our second and third string on defense by Q4. So they scored 27 points in the second half. I have not seen such a dominant performance since Vince Young and the Nat champs beat CU in the Big XII championship and hung 70 points on the buffs. Fact is, that Bama does not play teams with a potent offense and has scuttled through wins against two un-ranked teams in the past two weeks (not counting Bye). With Penn St. blowing out UofM and coming into a ranked game at the horseshoe, Bama will be jumped if they don’t start winning with some style points. I’ll put our defense against any team in the SEC because your offenses are weak with one exception, The Gator. If the SEC had more than one QB putting together Heisman quality games (tebow just started at that) I doubt SEC defenses would be doing much. One last statement on the Horns dominance last weekend. The line in Vegas went from 7 on last Tuesday to 5 on Friday. What has Bama showed this year that makes you think they could hang with the Texas offense much less our defense?