{"id":3667,"date":"2018-10-17T14:02:02","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T19:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gridironstuds.com\/blog\/?p=3667"},"modified":"2018-10-17T14:02:02","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T19:02:02","slug":"5-big-things-week-7-college-football-bitten-bulldog-wet-badger-and-west-coast-swing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/5-big-things-week-7-college-football-bitten-bulldog-wet-badger-and-west-coast-swing\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Big Things Week 7 College Football: Bitten Bulldog, Wet Badger and West Coast Swing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By: Chad Wilson – Editor – GridironStuds Blog<\/strong>
\nTwitter: @GridironStuds<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m going to make a brief run through the 5 Big Things This Week just to show you how fast we are moving through the season and also because I missed my Tuesday deadline. Now I’m running a hurry up offense in this column.\u00a0 Why not,\u00a0 no one else is huddling these days.\u00a0 The waters got muddy this week as top ranked teams had grease on their feet and slipped from their perches.\u00a0 Follow along as I talk about it in this week’s column.<\/p>\n

A Tiger Bitten Bulldog Always Bleeds<\/strong><\/p>\n

Don’t try to sit there and act like you’re weren’t surprised.\u00a0 You were probably at someone’s house or at a bar on Saturday watching this game and some dude who thinks he’s a football savant was telling you in the third quarter “I knew LSU was going to win.”\u00a0 I hope you threw some really ice cold beer in his face (imported of course).\u00a0 Though I picked Georgia to win this game,\u00a0 I did say they would not cover the spread and boy did they not.\u00a0 LSU came alive off of the Florida loss and took the Bulldogs’ dignity.\u00a0 As someone who gets caught up in the schematics,\u00a0 I must give a big thumbs up and a lot of credit for the LSU win to defensive coordinator Dave Aranda.\u00a0 His move to a three man front vs. Georgia was everything.\u00a0 All season long I have talked about how solid Georgia is up front.\u00a0 Aranda figured,\u00a0 why ram my head into a brick wall.\u00a0 Aranda rushed one less guy,\u00a0 dropped one extra in coverage to flood zones and make Jake Fromm do something he hasn’t had to do all year and that’s improvise.\u00a0 The clean looks down field were all gone for Fromm and he became as confused as a Bourbon street straggler at 2 AM of a Saturday morning.\u00a0 His inability to process the looks allowed the 3 man rush to eventually find him and take him down.\u00a0 From time to time,\u00a0 Aranda sent a fourth man from somewhere strange to speed up Fromm’s clock just in case Jake from State Farm thought he had insurance.\u00a0 He did not and it opened up opportunities for LSU’s offense to play their style of game.\u00a0 Perhaps a formula for beating Georgia has been released to the public.\u00a0 I hope Florida was taking notes.<\/p>\n

Wet Badgers Get A Washing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cue up the Denny Green video.\u00a0 They are who we thought they were but Michigan most definitely didn’t let them off the hook.\u00a0 Coming into their matchup up with the Wolverines,\u00a0 Wisconsin was already nursing a loss and some unspectacular performances against unranked football teams.\u00a0 One was left to wonder what they would look like against a ranked opponent on the road.\u00a0 Wonder no more.\u00a0 I have talked several times this season about Wisconsin’s inexperience on defense and how we will finally get to see golden boy Jim Leonard’s true coaching ability.\u00a0 As we should expect,\u00a0 it needs more experience.\u00a0 I won’t entirely judge Leonard off of this season just like it was unfair for many to judge him off of last year’s run with someone else’s players.\u00a0 I am concerned about the defections by several defensive players prior to the season and the confusion I see in the back seven each week.\u00a0 Perhaps they should have hung on to the departed and cast egos aside.\u00a0 Michigan took full advantage of the chaos, particularly in the 2nd half,\u00a0 as they racked up 25 points on the Badgers who could only counter with six of their own.\u00a0 A Wolverine team built to run,\u00a0 tallied up 320 through the air and ran away with the game in the third quarter.\u00a0 Wisconsin can bounce back this week against Illinois or fall deeper in the man hole.\u00a0 Illinois has been Jekyll and Hide this season.\u00a0 Depending on which team shows up for the Fighting Illini,\u00a0 the Badgers will either be on the road to recovery or headed off the beaten path.<\/p>\n

West Coast Swing<\/strong><\/p>\n

What a fist fight we had out in Oregon.\u00a0 The Pac-12’s game of the week lived up to they hype like a MMA match as the Huskies and Ducks traded punches for extended minutes in Autzen Stadium.\u00a0 In the end,\u00a0 Oregon learned some lessons from this season’s earlier failure like I thought they would and closed out the overtime period with a win.\u00a0 It’s a shame that Oregon took that loss to Stanford earlier this year because a run of the table may be realistic.\u00a0 Or not.\u00a0 Part of the building process for Mario Cristobal in Eugene will be teaching his squad how to handle success.\u00a0 Last week’s emotional win is greeted with this week’s challenge on the road vs. a surprising Mike Leach led Washington St. team.\u00a0 The Huskies are a solid squad but as I stated in last week’s 3-for-3 predictions column<\/a>,\u00a0 too much praise was heaped on them because of Jake Browning.\u00a0 Frankly,\u00a0 Browning was pedestrian in this game as he’s been in all the big games this season.\u00a0 Two of those games resulted in losses (Auburn and Oregon).\u00a0 With Colorado next,\u00a0 the highly publicized Husky signal caller is going to have to put some or all of this team on his back and crank out a strong performance to beat the Buffs or people will be talking.<\/p>\n

Roller Coasters In South Beach<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nothing fits the saying “fluid situation” more than college football.\u00a0 Just over a week ago,\u00a0 Miami football and it’s fans were in the throws of elation because of the newly formed streak against arch rival Florida St.\u00a0 While a bit perturbed by the predicament they found themselves in, Miami fans were quite pleased with how Coach Mark Richt and young signal caller N’Kosi Perry stormed back to defeat the Seminoles.\u00a0 One week later,\u00a0 the fanbase wants Richt’s play calling card revoked and Perry to return to the cold seat on the bench.\u00a0 The Canes called on banished former starter Malik Rosier to come in and try to save the day but the lungs had take on too much water.\u00a0 I don’t know what Miami’s record is against Virginia over the years but it just seems that the Cavaliers have been the source of several disappointing losses in Hurricane history.\u00a0 Perhaps it’s memories of the final game in the Orange Bowl but once again,\u00a0 here is ugly Virginia being a pimple on the ass of progress for the program.\u00a0 The Cavaliers’ Mickey Mouse offense found enough cheese to circumvent the trap and run into their hole with the win.\u00a0 A similar performance next week on a Friday Night at Boston College and the city of Miami will burn.\u00a0 The Canes will call on Rosier to diffuse the situation and hold off the molotov cocktail fest brewing in the underbelly of paradise.\u00a0 That’s an extreme amount of pressure to ride around town with in your glove box.\u00a0 I hope Rosier has a concealed weapon’s permit.\u00a0 I will take umbrage with how the Canes were quickly ousted from the Top 25 by pollsters.\u00a0 Michigan St.’s resume includes a pair of losses to unranked opponents including one at home to Northwestern. Wisconsin lost at home to unranked BYU and was all types of non-competitive vs. Michigan.\u00a0 Even Penn State is allowed to hang out in the teens without a legitimate win to their name and a home loss to previously unranked Michigan St. on their docket. Both of Miami’s losses came away from home and one to the #5 ranked team in the country.\u00a0 You smelling fish here?<\/p>\n

Tango and Cash<\/strong><\/p>\n

Saturday afternoon in Columbia, South Carolina,\u00a0 a pair of Nick Saban’s old assistants knuckled up for the fifth time as opposing head coaches.\u00a0 Jimbo Fisher and Will Muschamp were part of Saban’s all-star 2003 LSU staff that went on to win a national title.\u00a0 As head coaches at Florida State and Florida,\u00a0 Fisher and Muschamp dueled four times and Fisher got the better of it three times.\u00a0 Well make it four.\u00a0 Fisher has a better squad from a talent standpoint at A&M than Muschamp has in South Carolina.\u00a0 You can begin your debates about who’s fault that is.\u00a0 This was widely the situation when the two used to square off in the Sunshine State.\u00a0 Unfortunately for Coach Champ,\u00a0 there would be no 2012 style upset as Texas A&M dominated most of the contest and then held off the furious charge at the end from the Gamecocks.\u00a0 You can say what you want about Jimbo Fisher’s ability to run a program but you can’t question him as a play caller. Fisher can dial em up like a teenage daughter with unlimited cellphone minutes.\u00a0 Up 19-16 with 7:28 left in the 4th quarter,\u00a0 Fisher ran the 4 minute offense to perfection and essentially salted the game away.\u00a0 Texas A&M held the ball for almost five minutes and put the dagger in with a touchdown run to close the door on South Carolina’s bull run.\u00a0 It was vintage Jimbo and something I am sure Will Muschamp has seen enough of.<\/p>\n

Among Other Things…<\/strong><\/p>\n

I just can’t put my finger on it but I am not a buyer of the 2018 Texas Longhorns’ stock. A part of me thinks the win over Oklahoma has some flukish, outlier qualities to it.\u00a0 I know they were hung over from the Sooners win vs. Baylor but I just see them losing once maybe twice before all is said and done this regular season.\u00a0 Who’s coming with me?<\/p>\n

I see folks trying to rain on Central Florida’s parade.\u00a0 Hey,\u00a0 let them live their life.\u00a0 Deep down inside,\u00a0 they probably know they wouldn’t drink a cup of water in either division of the SEC, Big-10 or any other major conference.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 how often does a school go on a 19 game win streak?\u00a0 It may never happen again and in this day in age of likes, shares and retweets,\u00a0 I give way to their annoying nature and figure nothing they say can be more irritating than the 280 character onslaught seeping daily from an account named @RealDonaldTrump<\/p>\n

I am going to blame Auburn’s rocket dissent to can on the media.\u00a0 Why not? You guys boosted up this Auburn team to a pedestal they could not stand on.\u00a0 Now one slip has led to another and we have teams like Tennessee beating them in Auburn.\u00a0 What else can you chalk this up to other than expectations?\u00a0 I always say expectations are a mother and now we can expect the pitch forks and torches to come out for Malzahn.\u00a0 Film at 11.<\/p>\n

Florida continues to find ways to win and slide up the polls.\u00a0 This week they were forced to sober up after they entered the Vanderbilt game hung over from the LSU toga party.\u00a0 I guess the coffee was strong because not only did the Gators erase an 18 point deficit but we got a WWE Smackdown type showdown between head coach Dan Mullen and Vandy head coach Derek Mason in the “squared circle”.\u00a0 With a dialogue that would have made Samuel L. Jackson cover his ears,\u00a0 the match was lit and the Gators climbed out of the toilet to emerge Pine Sol clean.\u00a0 Any dips into the commode water in two weeks vs. angry UGA and these Gators will be taking a turd ride to hell.<\/p>\n

Search buyout clause on Twitter or Google and Bobby Petrino’s picture will wallpaper your screen.\u00a0 With his fourth straight loss and fourth by double digits this season,\u00a0 the Go Fund me party is getting started for Petrino’s exit from Red Bird City.\u00a0 I always preach patience with head coaches but no one in that town will listen after two weeks of getting outscored 104-51.\u00a0 A much needed bye week has arrived and if anyone in Louisville sees Petrino on the back of a motorcycle right now they won’t try to stop him.<\/p>\n

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