NCAA Football, Week 5

Bad week for me last time. 5/10, making it 24/35 this season.

Lots of good games this week though.

Game of the Week: (6) Cal at (11) Oregon. Cal. Oh Oregon, you saucy mistress. You get your fans all worked up every year with great starts, only to crash and burn later on. Let the crashing and burning begin with this shootout. If you like offense, this one is not to be missed.

(2) West Virginia at (18) South Florida. WVU. The Bulls upset my beloved Eers in Morgantown last year - a game I unfortunately went to - so I doubt they will look past this one. This is one of the biggest games in the Big East this year considering the implosion at Louisville. Pat White is healthy and the WVU offense is even more potent; the stout USF defense will not be enough to stop them this time. Let's Go Mountaineers!

(1) USC at Washington. USC. My love affair with the Huskies is officially over. They have betrayed me two weeks in a row, so I'm officially dumping them until they prove me wrong.

Auburn at (4) Florida. Florida. Auburn is irrelevant this year; the best they can be is a spoiler. Gators win big.

Kansas State at (7) Texas. Texas. Tempted to pick the Cats with the upset again this year, considering Texas is anything but scary, but I'm going with the Horns in Austin.

Michigan State at (9) Wisconsin. Wisconsin. Michigan State could easily win this considering how uninspiring Wisconsin has been, but they did give up TWO touchdowns to the woeful Notre Dame offense, and for that I cannot forgive them.

(22) Alabama at Florida State. Bama. Both of these coaches badly need this win and it could be close, but FSU is just too bad on offense to win.

Louisville at NC State. Louisville. Dear Louisville, HOW IN THE HELL DO YOU LOSE TO SYRACUSE?!? AT HOME?!? This could very well be the only game the Orange win this entire season. You made the QB from the 117 rated offense in the country look like a Heismann contender. That's impressively bad. It's going to be a looong year in the offensively charged Big East. You defense looked like it was controlled by someone playing NCAA on Xbox who didn't know what the buttons did. This is not what Brohm had in mind when he came back to school. I'm going out on a limb here picking you over NC State, whose only win is against Wofford. Of course Wofford did beat Appalachian State...

Pittsburgh at Virginia. Virginia. The battle of the Big East-ACC also-rans. Both of these programs used to be respectable, but have been horrible lately. No idea who will win it. It's at UVA, so I'll give it to the Cavs.

Akron at UConn. UConn. Somehow UConn, having totally dominated Pitt, is quietly on the verge of 5-0. Meaning if they can beat Virginia, Syracuse or Louisville, they could be in a bowl game. I doubt they will beat anyone else in the Big East, but you never know.

Cincinnati at San Diego State. Cincinnati. On my Big East theme, Cincinnati is also 5-0 and RANKED, although they are much more respectable than UConn, having totally blow out Oregon State. The Big East has five undefeated teams and four ranked teams (out of eight) even AFTER the Louisville debacle.

Notre Dame at Purdue. Purdue. Fun Notre Dame stats of the week: Even after their first offense TD (let's not forget that they started that drive on the Michigan State 9) Notre Dame is still last in offense,averaging 137 yards per game. 118th in the nation is Florida International, averaging 199 yards. The other 117 teams are all well over 200 yards. How bad is the Irish attack? San Jose State has the nation's 113th-ranked attack, and it's cranking out twice as many yards as Notre Dame. As long as they still have their own BCS deal and TV contract, I will continue picking these games.

UCLA at Oregon State. Oregon State. So I had no idea what to do with this game, so for the first time ever, I checked the betting lines to see what Vegas was saying, and all the lines were either "n/a" or "+1/-1". Obviously no one else has any idea either, so in the battle of teams that beat USC last year, I'm just going to say Go Beavers!

Upset of the Week: (13) Clemson at Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech. Well after a nice start, GT seems destined for the Chan Gailey equilibrium. However, some of those 7 wins always seem to include big upsets over ranked teams. And Clemson is an Oregon-like team that starts strong only to flame out like a supernova. (This one has a caveat - I have heard a rumor that running back Tashard Choice might not play for GT in this game, and if that is the case, I'm picking Clemson.)

Upset of the Week II: (21) Penn State at Illinois. Illinois. I like the Illini in this one for several reasons. Penn State has virtually no offense. Their biggest win is over Notre Dame and they lost to Michigan, which I have still not forgiven. Illini thumped Syracuse at home, which is probably on par with beating ND, so I've giving this to Illinois.