LaDainian Tomlinson’s single-game yardage record lasted 15 years. Melvin Gordon’s lasted a week. Seven days after Gordon rushed for 408 yards against Nebraska, Oklahoma freshman running back Samaje Perine gashed Kansas for 427 (and five touchdowns). On the bright side for Wisconsin’s Gordon, he hit the 2.000-yard mark on just 241 carries, fewer than it took Barry Sanders. He’s also starting to generate a bit of Heisman talk.
That was the big news yesterday. Here are my takeaways from the other games:
Things We Learned In College Week 13
-Iowa certainly looked better against Wisconsin than they did two weeks ago in that 51-14 blasting by Minnesota.
-Minnesota got back into the win column in a game in which seemingly half the players on the field were injured. Nebraska was hit harder by injuries than the Gophers were, with their starting center going on on the first play from scrimmage and their leading receiver two plays later. Minnesota did lose top running back David Cobb, but he’s already taken to Twitter to assure the Minnesota faithful that he’s fine and expects to play at Wisconsin next week.
-I was very disappointed to see Nebraska releasing balloons at the game. From an environmental standpoint, this is incredibly irresponsible. Balloons don’t biodegrade, meaning pieces of them are in the environment for ages, and animals who mistake pieces of latex for food often become ill and die from eating it. We’ve known this for at least 20 years.
-How can the same Virginia Tech that beat Ohio State also need overtime to get ANY points on the board against Wake Forest, and then lose the game? Football is weird sometimes.
-Florida State plays with fire week after week, and I don’t know how they’ve managed not to get burned. This week it took a late field goal to eke out a 20-17 win over 6-5 Boston College. This is most certainly not the 2013 Seminole squad.
-After losing at home to Maryland, Michigan now has to beat Ohio State next week just to get bowl eligible. (It’s not going to happen). The Wolverines improved by two wins per year under Rich Rodriguez; under Brady Hoke, they’ve gone from nine wins to eight wins to six wins to (presumably) five. So who coaches the Maize and Blue next?
-Apropos of nothing, I had a dream last week that Rich Rod took over coaching my hockey team.
-We learned something about Arizona State quarterback Taylor Kelly this week: he is incredibly tough, mentally and physically. How often do you see a quarterback get sacked five times in the first quarter, and win the game? Obviously, ASU has a lot of skill on both offense and defense, but I found that impressive.
-So Ole Miss lost to Arkansas 30-0. I’m guessing there are some purple- and gold-clad fans feeling a bit better today then they did a week ago.
-Overall, it was Scrimmage Week in the SEC; Missouri and Tennessee played the only other game that one might have expected to be competitive. The other opponents included Eastern Kentucky, Charlston Southern, Samford, and the like.
– For those talking about the weak Florida State schedule and the tough SEC West, it should be noted that FSU has more wins over top 25 opponents than either Alabama or Mississippi State. Maybe, just maybe, a nine game SEC schedule or some tougher out of conference opponents should be scheduled.
-Ok, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt was technically a conference game. Technically.
-My 91-year-old Irish fan grandfather had a pretty simplistic analysis of Notre Dame’s most recent loss: “They need to get a new kicker”. Well, yes, but they would have been well advised to keep Louisville from racking up over 400 yards of offense too.
-Arizona beat Utah soundly, but quarterback Anu Solomon was injured late. That will be something to keep an eye on, especially as they not only have a rivalry game with Arizona State coming up, but they play Friday rather than Saturday, giving Solomon one less day to recuperate.
-597 yards of offense for Oregon; Mariota 24 of 32 for 323 yards, three TDs, no turnovers. Just another week in Eugene.
-Baylor may have routed Oklahoma State, but something jumped out at me from the box score: 12 penalties for the Bears. Looking back at box scores from some of their earlier games, I found that to be something of a pattern- some weeks were worse than others, but there were several games where the Bears were penalized at least eight times. In the loss to West Virginia, they racked up 18. That’s something that could definitely come back to bite them in a playoff game.
Don’t forget to come back later and check out the LWOS Top 25! I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend- enjoy the turkey and the extra days of football!
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