It's about time. After stumbling along for most of the season I finally had the week I was looking for. Last week I went 7-3 straight up but 7-3 ATS which, by any measure, is pretty strong. If you have made money betting against me (a sound strategy) you took it on the chin last week. This leaves me 77-32 straight-up this year and 52-55-1 against the spread. If I can finish the season with just a few solid weeks I'll be able to finish over .500 for the year.
Let's get to the takeaways:
1. - Alabama is still number one, but they're looking shakier. I qualify that with the huge caveat that 'Bama always looks sub-par coming out of the LSU game. It's become such an emotional high for them that it's bound to happen. And still, there's this: If Florida State and Alabama played this Saturday you'd have to give the Seminoles the edge. Give Saban a month and a half to prepare.....?
2. - Dear Tech fans.....Shhhhh. Somewhere in the 2nd half of Baylor's dismantling of the Tech defense I started hearing carping about the officials. Tech fan, that game could have been officiated by Tech alums and Baylor still would have rolled you by 20. Much the better team this year.
3. - OU's offense, who knew? I said in my picks and later on Twitter that I didn't think OU could SCORE 24 much less win by 24 1/2. Ooops. I think this has more to do with the poor quality of Iowa State than it does with OU's stout offense however.
4. - We can finally put the "Longhorns are back!" myth to bed. Anytime they play a good team, they get rolled. OSU is a good, but not great team. All this did was prove my suspicions right that Texas was the worst conference leading team in the Country.
5. - How do you not pull the interim tag off of Ed Orgeron? Conversely, hopefully AD's (and NFL GM's) everywhere understand just how bad of a coach Layne Kiffin really is.
6. - All hail Duke Football! The Dukies are 8-2, and hold the lead in the Coastal Division of the ACC. Cutcliffe for coach of the year.
7. - The Iron Bowl is now must watch TV.
8. - UCLA/USC just became must-watch TV.
9. - No ESPN, the B1G is NOT a FCS conference without Ohio State. It's an argument that's ridiculous on its face, but one that ESPN is making because they think it's "controversial". What it is stupid. Every conference has their bottom feeders, every one. If you don't get that then you're not paying attention.
And finally......
10. - Hail to the Victors! (barely) Give them this, Big Blue finally found a rush game. And although they still struggled against a not-very-good Northwestern team it showed improvement, something fans of Blue really needed to see.
Top 5 teams:
1. Alabama
2. Florida State
3. Ohio State
4. Baylor
5. Auburn
Clemson is on deck at six.
Conference Rankings:
1. SEC
2. Pac12
3. ACC
4. B1G
5. American
6. Big Twen
7. Sunbelt
8. MAC
9. C-USA
It's getting closer between the PAC12 and the SEC, but it's going to be hard for me to think differently until someone dethrones the champ. Call if SEC bias or whatever you want, but I believe 8 straight titles says something.
Interesting line of next week: Wisconsin(-15) at Minnesota. I like the Badgers here, but I don't like them at -15 on the road.
Also: How in the world is ASU getting 2 1/2 AT UCLA?
Until next week.
