When a guy who enters the game 10-25-3 against the spread in conference play over his career at a school, you really shouldn’t be surprised by poor decisionmaking.  But it was truly inexplicably stupid game management by Les Miles and LSU.  Just stunning.   Miles, with his head-scratching game management, has dodged a lot of raindrops over the years, but his longtime cavalier attitude to game strategy bit him deeply on Saturday.  Understandably, he’s taking a lot of heat in Baton Rouge. Ironically, he’s taking the most heat for a decision that was a pointspread cover, he now has 11 SEC covers in nearly five full seasons in the league.

Stanford’s winning streak came to an end at the hands of rival Cal, 34-28.  The Golden Bears outgained the Cardinal 484-345. Those of us who suffer from the corporate battle between DirectTV and Versus couldn’t watch what was one of the only attractive games of the weekend.  This weekend isn’t a whole lot better, with only game between Top 25 teams being the battle for Beehive State supremacy between Utah and BYU, which is attractive, but hardly worthy of top billing. 

Gambling is a terrible thing, according to the NCAA.  It becomes decidedly less terrible when a casino is ready to buy advertising, like the casino signage visible in the exciting Oregon/Arizona game.   I was pretty lucky with both Arizona +6 and Connecticut +6 to +6.5.  Though both underdogs played evenly, they each could have lost by 7 in overtime. UConn was fortunate to win at Notre Dame in double overtime, as Randy Edsall, a top-notch coach, exercised Miles-like clock management at the close of regulation, settling for a 47-yard field goal attempt, which narrowly missed, when he could have used his timeouts to get closer.     Perhaps the Husky mentor was spooked by the phantom “holding” calls that the officials were using to keep his club out of the end zone and feared more flags taking his club out of field goal range.

Those who have correctly determined all season that Iowa, though a solid, well-coached team, isn’t as good as their record, have had horrific luck fading the Hawkeyes.  For most bettors it was the same on Saturday.   Iowa gained only 171 yards in 60 snaps, less than 3 yards per play, yet covered for most in a 12-0 win.  Extraordinarily patient Minnesota bettors were rewarded, however, as the Gophers were available at +12 for the push in the half hour before game time, and a few Gopher bettors may have scrounged out a pointspread win in the 5 minutes or so before game time.  Minnesota outgained Iowa 201-161 and I hope you didn’t watch it.

9 days after waxing South Florida, looked as bad at Syracuse on Saturday.   Outmanned Syracuse, down 10 starters including best offensive player (by far) Mike Williams and best defensive player (by far) Art Jones, absolutely smashed the Scarlet Knights, outgaining RU 423-130 in the 31-13 Syracuse victory.  Just last week Rutgers drilled South Florida 31-0 on yardage of 354-159.  All of this happening within a 9 day span proves definitively that Syracuse is 49 points and 488 yards better than South Florida, who, ummmm, beat Syracuse 34-20 on October 3rd.

Actually, believe it or not, the above paragraph actually has a point to it.  Bowl season is coming, and when trying to assess the strengths and weaknesses of teams from different conferences it is very tempting to look at how teams did against common opponents, or how they did against fellow bowlers.  And there’s some value in the process of doing that.  But you really don’t want to put too much stock in that form of analysis.

If the number looks short for Arizona at Arizona State this weekend be aware that Arizona running back Nic Grigsby is out due to injury and the Wildcats are thin at that position if backup Kaola Antolin is also limited.  Two difficult losses in a row for Mike Stoops’ crew but they should be able to get up for their rival, shouldn’t they?   Arizona State lost only 23-13 at UCLA despite a 6-0 turnover disadvantage.  Other than the TO’s it was a pretty evenly played game.   UCLA takes on USC Saturday night at 7PM local, 10PM Eastern Time.  Shouldn’t there be a law that that rivalry is played only in the sunshine? 

Sad to see the stories of the flack that the Weis family takes at Notre Dame and the Hawkins family takes at Colorado.  I understand a lot of people attach a lot of their emotional happiness to the performance of their college football team but do the families really deserve to be roped in?

North Texas has outgained their last two opponents, Florida International (by 255) and Army (by 160), by a combined 415 yards, yet lost both games.  The Mean Green have now outgained 5 opponents in losses, sporting a (-15) 13 to 28 turnover deficit on the season.   The once mighty Georgia Bulldogs would dream of such turnover numbers.  They have turned the ball over 28 times yet only forced 8 turnovers themselves.  Amazingly, UGA has recovered exactly one opponent fumble this season.