football!!

O what a weekend it's gonna be in the world of the gridiron, folks, and the surprises have started already: after losing to NC State the Florida State Seminoles will almost certainly start next week... get this... unranked. You don't hear that too often, eh?

On the home front, Notre Dame has what should (but probably won't) be a cakewalk against possibly the worst Stanford team I've seen in a long time (and that says a lot). How bad are they, you're wondering? Well, for starters, they're winless, as in 0-5 winless. And it gets worse: in 4 of those 5 games they lost by 26 or more, including a 48-10 trip south by Oregon that left vaguely Cardinal-colored splattermarks all over the field.

Well, now that they've been scraped off of UCLA's shoes (this time a 31-0 shutout), they're headed to South Bend for the rematch of a game that really should not have been close (but, of course, was) last season. Most of the players are the same, and most of them are still struggling. On the other hand, at least this time the Irish won't have a kicker with peyote in his gatorade. Hopefully.

Meanwhile, Tech takes on Mizzou, their first chance to upset a ranked team since they screwed the pooch against TCU 2 weeks ago. Color me interested but skeptical. And of course, the big game, the Red River Shootout, is this week as Colt McCoy, Texas Quarterback! (cue Dixieland on banjo) tries to lead the #7 'Horns to a second straight win over #14 Oklahoma (who I hear this year actually have other players besides Adrian Peterson!). This one could be close.

Among the rest, #2 USC takes on a potentially resurgent Washington team (SC will win, obviously, but it will be interesting to see if the Huskies really are on their way back up), and all Hell breaks loose in the SEC: #9 LSU vs. #5 Florida and #13 Tennessee vs. #10 Georgia. Wow.

Oh yeah, and #11 Oregon and #16 California, two of the most perpetually overrated teams in NCAA, face off, too. Yawn.