The Cocks vs. UCF. This game started in Spurrier like fashion, but sputtered out rather quickly. It would be difficult to say that USC looked good, but Stevie boy definitely still knows how to coach quarterbacks. New starter Blake Mitchell (soph.) completed 78% of his passes for 332 yards and 3 TD’s. However, USC averaged a dismal 1.1 yds/car versus a team that didn’t post a win last year.
I still don’t buy into journeyman defensive coordinator John Thompson. His hokey (no offense VPI) defenses just don’t do it for me. If he tries that square-dancing defensive line non-sense against Tennessee or Georgia, they’ll run all over him. Thompson built his reputation in C-USA and may have been effective there, but don’t expect big things at USC. Late in the game, Spurrier, who never gets involved with defense, was livid with the prevent line-up Thompson called.
The most impressive thing from this game may be that O’Leary looks like he could make UCF competitive in C-USA this year. Don’t get me wrong, the Cocks aren’t good enough to warrant calling a 24 – 15 loss a moral victory, but UCF played fairly well, and C-USA isn’t what it used to be and that wasn’t ever much anyway.
According to the media, Oregon is the 2nd or 3rd best team in the Pac 10, which begs the question, why don’t we go ahead and give USC their Rose Bowl bid now and let them forego their season? Oregon in the end did win the game 38 – 24, but Houston scored 21 point on the Ducks in the first quarter. Let’s stop calling the Ducks a roadblock on USC’s schedule.
I can’t imagine that anyone actually watched this game, but Vanderbilt beat Wake Forest 24 – 20. The only significance to this game is that while everyone acknowledges that Vanderbilt is really really bad, some people contend that Wake is a good team and point to the Demon Deacons as evidence of the depth and strength of the ACC. The ACC has a multitude of things to brag about, but Wake football is not one of them.
