With the top five teams in the BCS rankings are the only two powerful SEC teams and half of the Big 12 South, maybe it’s just a mediocre year in college football.  Is the power really that concentrated in those two conferences?  Apparently so. Consider that….

• 10 of the 12 ACC teams are still eligible to win the conference and every single team has between 2 and 4 conference losses.  Boston College, 2-3 in conference play, actually controls it’s own destiny.
• Everyone was terrified that Penn State would be the third straight overhyped Big Ten outfit to get crushed in the  BCS title game.  An Iowa team that has lost to Pitt, Northwestern, Michigan Stte, and Illinois eliminated that fear.
• The general consensus is that the Pac Ten is so weak that USC doesn’t have a quality win, including their September wipeout of Ohio State.
• The Big East is controlled by Cincinnati, who lost by 24 to UConn,  and Pitt, who has lost by double digits at home to Bowling Green and Rutgers.

And similar points can be made about the Big 12 North and every SEC club not named Florida or Alabama.  Take away those top five clubs, and it may simply be a year of parity, or a year of mediocrity.

Excepting when they play one another, the pointspread record of the top four teams in the Big 12 South, Texas Tech, Texas, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State, is a combined 23-4-1.   Not bad.  Not bad at all.

One team that was supposed to be a SEC powerhouse that is coming up short is the Georgia Bulldogs.  While UGA still only has a pair of losses, their defense is in steep decline.  In their first 7 games, the Bulldogs allowed 124 points, or 17.7 points per game.  In their last 3, they’ve permitted 125 points, or 41.6 points per game.  It is the first time that UGA has given up 38 points or more in three consecutive games since 1900, though at least they’ve won 2 of those 3.  Since wiping out Arizona State in what proved to be a phony win (the Sun Devils are terrible), UGA is 1-5 against the spread.

Although he could just teach his quarterback to recognize a Cover 2 scheme and instruct him to not throw deep into it,  Charlie Weis is heroically swooping in to save his offense by taking over the play calling duties.   Pretty good timing to do so.  Jimmy Clausen looked lost against BC’s impressive pass defense, which allows 5.8 yards per pass attempt (#15 out of 120 Division 1-A teams). Clausen is much more likely to show some competence against a Navy team that gives up 8.8 yards per pass attempt (#116), so it’s certainly a strategic time for Weis to pick up the call sheet and take credit for this week’s improvement in the passing game.  And though his offensive coordinator does have a personal commitment that will cause him to miss a practice day this week, Weis strongly hinted at this change immediately following the BC loss, before any such scheduling conflict was apparent.

It was easy to remember from Day One of the Big 12 who was in the North and who was in the South.  The Texas and Oklahoma teams are in the South.  Everyone else is in the North.  Same thing when the SEC expanded to include Arkansas and South Carolina and went to divisional play, everyone east and north of Alabama was in the East, the rest were in the South.

But several years into divisional play in the ACC, despite having looked at the standings dozens of times, I still have a hard time remembering who is in the Atlantic and who is in the Coastal.   The odd divisional arrangement in the ACC was highlighted when Duke and NC State, less than a half-hour drive from one another, played football for the first time since 2003 last Saturday.  In the interim, Duke had played Miami four times, and NC State had played Boston College four times.   But the neighbors had not played one another.

It’s just been a very weird year in college football, hasn’t it?