Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Your new top 25: Rocky Butt

After this weekend's annihilation at the hands of the Gators, the peasants are calling for Vols' coach Phillip Fulmer's head. A friend of mine predicts a 4-8 finish for UT this season. Of their games left, they will definitely lose to: Kentucky, South Carolina, and Alabama. If Arkansas learns to play a little defense, they'll beat them too. So there's 6 losses right there. They will, however, beat Vandy, Arkansas State, and Louisiana Lafayette, and they should beat Mississippi State. Georgia will be the swing game. While I maintain that 4-8 is pessimistic, 6-6 may be the ceiling.

Phillip Fulmer is actually very similar to Lloyd Carr. Both won national titles in the late 90's, and ever since they've seemed rather satisfied with themselves and have underachieved when you consider the top-caliber talent they consistently receive. Both are also stuck in outdated offensive mind-sets. In today's game, you have to be able to spread the field and use all of your players, and you also need speed. Carr and Fulmer either don't understand this or don't believe it.

Other various observations:

- USC is good and fast. I believe happy ninja was right, many people in the media somehow forgot this during their off week. Not that they had any trouble remembering this during the 2005 bowl season. But I digress... Just for the sake of not seeing any more supposedly "tough road tests" turn into one giant bendover by the other team, I'd like to see someone actually challenge these guys. Oregon? Cal?... Washington?

- Auburn's Tommy Tuberville is probably another one on the hot seat. There's a saying here in SEC country that every team gets a bye week and a Sly week. It's simply understood that you can't lose either of those weeks. Or at least, you really shouldn't, for your job security's sake, get croomed. Auburn already has 2 home losses and they haven't even played the tough parts of their schedule: Georgia is always a tough game. Florida will run roughshod on them. LSU might actually murder them. (All 3 of those are on the road, by the way) Alabama will end their 5-year losing streak to their rival this year. Again, 6-6 may be the best this team can hope for.

- Louisville has no defense to speak of. In fairness, Kentucky is somehow pretty good this year. Don't be surprised if (when) Cincinnati upsets the Cardinals on October 13th.

- I thought we had a good defense...


wk 3 (thru 9/16)





record
prev






1 USC
2-0
2
2 LSU
3-0
1
3 Florida
3-0
3
4 Oklahoma
3-0
4
5 W. Virginia
3-0
5
6 Texas
3-0
6
7 Rutgers
3-0
7
8 California
3-0
8
9 Ohio St
3-0
12
10 Wisconsin
3-0
10
11 Oregon
3-0
17
12 S. Carolina
3-0
16
13 Penn State
3-0
19
14 Kentucky
3-0
--
15 Louisville
2-1
13
16 Boston Coll.
3-0
--
17 Nebraska
2-1
9
18 Cincinnati
3-0
25
19 Alabama
3-0
--
20 Ga Tech
2-1
11
21 S. Florida
3-0
18
22 Va Tech
2-1
15
23 Clemson
3-0
--
24 Texas Tech
3-0
22
25 Hawaii
3-0
24






dropouts: ucla (14), tcu (20), arkansas (21), byu (23)

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