My opinion that the top teams in the Big 12 might be a little bit better than the top clubs in the SEC but the SEC has more depth might be supported by this season’s pointspread results.  Take away pushes and SEC favorites are 8-16 to the number.  Big 12 favorites are 9-5.   Dogs are barking in the SEC and keeping the top teams in their sights, while the upper tier teams in the Big 12 are rolling over their lesser competition.

College teams can change from year to year, and sometimes we see pointspreads that seem out of whack, but the Tulsa/Central Florida game is particularly dramatic.  Last December Central Florida was favored by 7.5 over Tulsa in the CUSA Championship Game but just over half a season later, Tulsa is a 23.5 pick in the wagering markets in this Sunday evening affair.  Adjust 3 points for both games for home field advantage and that differential comes down from a raw number of 31 to 25, but 25 points is still a huge change in perception.  But it is more than just perception.  Central Florida’s lone win over a 1-A opponents was against SMU.  Interestingly, UCF beat SMU by 14 at home, while Tulsa only won by 6 in Dallas.  But the other common opponent, UTEP, tells a different tale.  Tulsa crushed UTEP at home 77-35, UCF got crushed in El Paso 58-13. Tulsa’s average result agaist 1-A opposition is a 55-26 win while UCF’s typical performance is a 18-32 loss.  Crunch the numbers, throw in “championship game revenge” and there’s your three-and-a-half TD favorite.

Even after rolling over Denver, the Patriots numbers are shaky.  A more accurate way to judge football teams than raw yardage numbers can be yards per play, and the Pats rank 25th in both offensive and defensive yards per play, gaining 5.1 yards per play while allowing 5.9.  Yet they’re outscoring their opponents 21.7 to 19.3.  Attribute that to good coaching and doing the little things well.

Remember in grade school when you had a blank map of the United States and had to fill in all the states?  That exercise wasn’t performed in Daphne, Alabama. West Virginia QB Pat White’s brother Coley is also a quarterback in the Mountaineer program.  According to Coley, when Pat was recruited by Rich Rodriguez “I didn’t even know that West Virginia was a state at the time.”

The Bengals are not only winless, they haven’t been within 39 total yards of an opponent.  They’ve scored 14 points or fewer in five of their seven games.  Marvin Lewis must have compromising photos of franchise owner Mike Brown.

The worst college football performance of the weekend was not Washington State’s 69-0 annihilation at the hands of USC.  At least the Cougars were disembowled by the mighty Trojans.  Nope, the worst result of the weekend was San Diego State’s 70-7 to a New Mexico team that entered the game with a 3-4 record.  It was 56-0 after UNM’s first drive of the second half.  All ten TD’s were scored by the Lobos offense (no special teams or defensive scores) and the Aztecs were outgained by 338 yards.  New Mexico entered the game having scored 24 points or less in five of their seven games.  Remember when Chuck Long was a big time coaching prospect?  Yikes.