Holy Freaking Crap!!! As a Michigan fan that first half yesterday against Western Michigan was the second best thing to happen to me in the last few years (And I only say second best because I’d get grief from my wife if I didn’t at least pretend my wedding mattered more). It has been a very rough year and a half since we beat Florida in the Capital One Bowl, so the 31-0 drubbing we laid on Western Michigan in the first half yesterday was tremendous relief. For the first time in too long there was something beautiful on witness when we played – competence. Our defense was smothering, our offense looked pretty good and true freshman Tate Forcier threw three touchdown passes and looked far beyond his age. Glory days. So much for all those reports of division in the locker room and incompetence by Rich Rodriguez. I hope I’m not the only one who took the over on Michigan’s season win total this year.
It didn’t help that Sam Bradford was hurt, of course, but I hope that that’s not the only story that comes out of that BYU win. The Cougars deserve more credit than that. They played absolutely stifling defense, they had game planned brilliantly, and they were completely and utterly ready for that game. Very impressive. Oklahoma should never, ever play a good non-BCS team again. Between Boise State and BYU they just don’t seem to be able to handle them.
I hate to admit it, but Notre Dame looked better than I expected – especially offensively. Jimmy Clausen had a good game. Very good.
Washington lost, but the Sarkisian era is already infinitely improved over the Willingham one. They will win more than once this year. Quite a bit more.
What in the world happened to Virginia Tech in the fourth quarter. They totally and utterly ran out of gas down the stretch and handed that game away. I hope for their sakes that that was just a blip and not a reflection of their physical readiness.
Ohio State will have to be much, much better next week than they were yesterday if they want to stand a chance against USC.
I was very impressed by Oklahoma State. They beat a Georgia team that was grossly overrated in my mind, but it was still a confident, impressive win against a good defense. It was especially impressive because they fell behind early on and didn’t let it faze them at all. This team will obviously climb the polls a bit already, and they are very legitimate from where I am sitting.