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Dateline Miami - So let me get this straight - if you attack players from an opposing team in a bench-clearing brawl this makes you qualified to develop a sportsmanship program? What next? Will we have child molesters giving out child ID kits at the mall? Dr. Kevorkian providing home heath care to the elderly? Mike Shula giving advice on how to score touchdowns? Don’t get me wrong. I can understand making these players provide some type of community service. But I think there’s been some credibility lost in the sportsmanship arena for the Miami football team. One more thing: Don’t read that article more than once. It might affect your judgement.

In other news, it seems that Tennessee pulled out all the stops in their victory over Alabama last weekend. Even the mascot got involved. Smokey was accused of biting and Alabama receiver prior to the game. It seems this isn’t the first incident. Wonder if we could get Miami on Tennessee’s schedule next year? THAT would make for some interesting ‘football’.

Charlie Weis is puzzled. His team dropped in the rankings after struggling to beat UCLA. Welcome to the world of every other college football coach Mr. Wies! Notre Dame is the only team I know that can almost lose to the 5th-ranked team in the Pac-10 and still wonder why they aren’t climbing in the rankings. Why don’t we just award Notre Dame the title in the pre-season and let all the other teams play for 2nd place, Charlie?

Building on my last entry, it was incredibly obvious on Saturday that college football players are 18-21 year old athletes. My new theory is this: The team with the highest average age will get my pick to win any given game.

Case in point? Auburn-Arkansas. Maturity level won the game for the Arkansas Razorbacks. Granted, the fact that Darrin McFadden could have run through some of those tackles pulling a rickshaw didnt hurt. However, Auburn is a more talented team than Arkansas (surely). The Hogs just never got down. The body language of the Tigers was very clear in this game. Here is how I read their body language through all 4 quarters.

1st quarter: Are they really trying to run the ball on us?
2nd quarter: These young upstarts are gonna be surprised when we come back in the second half.
3rd quarter: Why do they insist on running the ball through these gargantuan holes in our defense?
4th quarter: It’s our quarterback’s fault because he got sacked 5 or 6 times.

And according to my favorite Texas A&M site, sometimes a win is a loss. I have to agree. Take, for instance, Alabama’s win over Duke. Alabama, down 14-10 at halftime, came back to win. However, this win is a loss because at no point in the past, present, or future should any team in Division I-A college football ever have the following sentence typed about them: (Insert team name here) was down at halftime to the Duke Blue Devils.

Another point of interest. The defense for California has to be the fastest defense I have ever seen! Watching the Cal-Oregon game was like watching a track meet. I compare it to the Miami defense about 2-3 years ago, only much faster. The Cal defenders were flying around the ball, outrunning the recievers to the point of the catch, and basically making the Ducks look like they were playing with ankle weights. So, you might ask yourself, why haven’t I heard about this incredibly fast defense? Why aren’t they ranked top 1 or 2 in the country? I will tell you why. They concentrate on being so incredibly fast that they forget to tackle the ball carrier. At one point, two defenders were chasing the ball carrier, and much to everyone’s surprise, when they caught up to him, they ran past him. They were racing to the endzone taunting each other. One said to the other..”C’mon you slowpoke! You run like a girl! Yeah, you run like Marion Jones.” The other player promptly tried to tackle his teammate and they both fell to the ground laughing. I hate the Pac-10.

Last but not least, there were at least two great games in the SEC tonight. Georgia pretty much dominated the field in their 24-7 outing. They showed poise and great execution in every phase of the game. Then, there was the 44-9 shellacking that Tennessee served up. It was a well executed gameplan by the Vols. The 1 TD that they gave up was a kickoff return. Oh wait. That was the same game. Sorry.

This just in. According to this article on Yahoo Texas A&M is now known to the nation as the third-best team in Texas. Texas Tech, now the second best team in Texas, can also boast having the coach with the best quotes. “Sometimes a pirate can beat a soldier”, Mike Leach told reporters after the game. This leads me to believe we may have stumbled upon the first coaching blunder by both teams’ coaching staff, as the coaches apparantly do not know they are coaching 18-20 year old football players. With that being said, much scrutiny has been placed upon Texas A&M as of late, with emphasis upon the questionable coaching of Gary Darnell and Dennis Franchione.

Darnell hails from Western Michigan, where he led the Broncos to back to back MAC West division championships. Upon assuming the defensive coordinator position at A&M, Darnell became the proud parent of a defensive unit that finished, for all intents and purposes, dead last in Division I-A NCAA football. A defensively minded team that had finished in the top ten in at least one major defensive category for 28 years finished last in pass defense in 2005. Ironically, Darnell’s former team, the Broncos of Western Michigan, were next to last.

Texas A&M Dennis Franchione is on the hot seat more than ever. He’s fired one defensive coordinator and now it’s questionable whether the change to Darnell works for him. We shall see.