College football week 11 thread: Lion Eyes

I figure USC can make it interesting for a half...Caleb Williams pulls some big plays out of his ass to make it fun for a while, but Oregon only needs a couple of stops to extend a lead against that horrible Trojans defense.

Kentucky would have to play a near perfect game, but maybe they can catch Bama in a bit of a malaise with a noon start on the road...at worse I think the Wildcats can keep things fun for a half or three quarters.

 

Good for them. I mean who give a fuck if the Cure Bowl wants to let them in. Believe me if they can guarantee a large purchase of tickets a lot of bowls will join the appeal.

 

From what I remember, they always traveled well for the FCS playoffs, and that's not damning them with faint praise. They traveled VERY well.

 

There's a general distaste for Liberty, but the bowl that gets them is gonna make out as well.

That rule was meant to discourage teams from moving up, but that was before they raised the cost to do so. Used to be $5k, now it requires $5m. The days of moving to D1 casually are dead. What JMU has done is impressive as hell. Let those kids play, they flat earned it. In the days of teams and players that scoff at a given bowl, JMU will enjoy hell out of it, even if it is Shreveport or something.

 

JMU better be careful, or the NCAA will charge them the full $5 million transition fee retroactively, just out of spite.

 

Will Mike Bianchi proclaim them national champions?

 

Pair of pillow fights in FCS this week. 0-9 Western Illinois visits Terre dice to take on 0-9 Indiana State.
Also in a dog game, 0-9 Wofford visits 0-9 The Citadel.

 

Fixed.

 

Wow. It wasn't too long ago that Wofford was in the hunt for the SoCon title most years.

 

Games I like this week:
• Nebraska +2.5/ML vs. Maryland - Nebraska is no beast of a team, but Maryland has fallen off the face of the Earth ever since the second half of the Ohio State game. I misread this initial line as Nebraska -2 and loved it. I like it even more with Nebraska getting a couple of points.

• Fresno State -1 at San Jose State - San Jose State has played well the past few weeks while Fresno has kept winning close games, but this line should be a lot more than one point, right? Gimme Fresno all night long.

• Alabama -10.5 at Kentucky - Could be a trap game for Bama. As a Bama hater, I hope it is. But I think it's more likely one of those games that gets our hopes up and then Bama wins 38-10. The Tide is getting better as the season goes along, so take advantage of a slim line while you can.

• LSU O63.5 vs. Florida - LSU's shaky defense returned with a vengeance last week, after two decent outings. Tigers are 9-0 to the Over this season, including five in a row when it was 61+, so ride the trend until it breaks. The one caveat to that is if Jayden Daniels doesn't play, then it's probably a stay-away.

• Iowa State -6.5 at BYU - Another game between two mediocre teams, but one of them is trending way down. BYU has been outscored 72-13 in its last two games and hasn't reached 300 yards of offense in its last five. I've struggled to get a handle on BYU all year because they've run hot and cold, but I'm going to fade them here against a modest line.

• Arizona -10.5 at Colorado - As you can tell, I love this time of year because it's typically when the bad teams completely unravel and pack it in for the season, and the well-coached ones pull it together. Mix the two and you get match-ups like this, where an Arizona that's been solid all year (two of their three losses were on the road in overtime, and the other was to Washington) plays a Colorado team that is having every single one of its warts exposed. Would like this line a lot more if it were in single digits, but I'll still roll with it.

And some games I want to like, but just can't:
• USC +16.5 at Oregon - USC is clearly falling apart at the seams, but I'd like to believe they're still good enough to keep this within three scores. Then I look at Oregon, which is playing with a chip on its shoulder, and I'm not so sure. This seems like a gift to take USC and that many points but it just smells too fishy.

• Arizona State +17 at UCLA - I might end up betting this and USC in a small throwaway parlay and hoping for the best. I was higher than John Skipper on a cocaine bender on Arizona State until last week's debacle against Utah burned me. Hopefully that reset the lines on them a bit, since they'd dipped considerably after they almost beat Washington. Still, ASU's offensive line is beat up and their bubble might have burst.

 

Does anyone else think bowl eligibility and the touting of "we've been to a bowl almost every year" is one of the biggest fallacies in sports.

You have teams who talk about being bowl- eligible after they've won two games - only four more wins and we're bowl-eligible.

I know they have to fill 40 bowls but it gets ridiculous.

You'll have teams win a third of their conference games and still brag about going to a bowl. It's nonsense. Wake Forest is one team in this category almost every year.

For every team such as Arizona, which has really turned the program around, you have those who seem stuck in mediocrity yet act like they have accomplished something.


Of the big-time football programs to me Texas A&M is the most overrated along with UCLA. The Aggies haven't sniffed a conference title yet Jimbo Fisher remains employed and they draw 100,000-plus.