For whatever reason this struck me as an odd day, actually an odd few days going back to Thursday with Miami winning over Texas A&M. College football is a funny thing. We enter the season having endured the silly period in the media where analysis and predictions flow like honey. Preseason rankings and media polls create a framework on which we build a whole cache of preconceived notions on how each team will perform. Then as the weeks click by those notions are replaced with new notions which are then rendered inert by the next week of action. Here are some examples:
Week #1-3: Virginia has a weak offense and Al Groh is on the hot seat
Week #4: UVa might be the second best team in the Coastal Division and Al Groh is probably fine.
Week #1-2: Georgia Tech has one of the best defenses in the nation
Week #3-4: Not so much and UVa will be FedExing the hot seat to Atlanta on Monday.
Week #1-3: Miami is an ordinary team, the defense is nothing special and their offense stinks
Week #4: The defense can flat shut you down and Kyle Wright is now Gino Toretta
Week #3: Duke might be better than lazy analysis would have us believe
Week #4: The more things change, the more they stay the same
Week #1-2: Wake Forest was a complete fluke one season ago
Week #3-4: Wake Forest is the only team in North Carolina that can apparently win two straight games
Week #1-2 and Week #6-13 of 2006: NC State is bad at football
Week #4: NC State is really bad at football but according to the transitive property is better than Penn State because NCSU beat Wofford who beat App. State who beat Michigan who beat the Nittany Lions.
Week #1-3: T.J. Yates is the QB UNC fans have been waiting for all these years.
Week #4: Yates could still be all that but if rooms with Joe Dailey again I am personally flying to whatever city the team is in and pay for a new room myself.
Week #1-3: The ACC is a weak conference with the traditional powers faltering.
Week #4: The ACC is still pretty weak but the Miami win over Texas A&M is a bit of a relief.
Week #1-3: College football in North Carolina sucks.
Week #4: College football in North Carolina sucks.
The point is the media and internet has enough expert opinion to drive the average football fan crazy. The old adage about why we play the games is true. For as much as we think we know what we are talking about and that four weeks into the season we know what each team is about, a week like this proves that for the most part we don't know jack.
Miami 34 Texas A&M 17
South Florida 37 UNC 10
Clemson 42 NC State 20
Virginia 28 Georgia Tech 23
Boston College 37 Army 17
Navy 46 Duke 43
Virginia Tech 44 William and Mary 3
Wake Forest 31 Maryland 24 (OT)
Record This Week: 6-2
Record This Season: 30-8