Lost in the Top 5

As we approach the best Saturday of the early college football season (with 7 matchups between top 25 teams), #5 West Virginia demolished Maryland and it's troubling. After three weeks, the Mountaineers have racked up three impressive wins against unimpressive opponents, and it doesn't get much better. As one sportscenter anchor pointed out, Steve Slaton ran into the leading in the rushing race in the 1st quarter ... it's Thursday, the first quarter of his game was one more quarter than almost everyone else has played in (although Slaton has received a lot of bench time in the previous blowouts). What is Rich Rodriguez doing scheduling Marshall, Eastern Washington, Maryland, East Carolina and Mississippi State as their 5 game non-conference schedule? He's depriving fans of seeing quality football matchups, apparently.

When you play in a conference that isn't all that strong (only two top 25 teams - WVU and Louisville (#12)), you have to do more. Schedule ACC ! and SEC schools, but hit the top tier, not MS State! Maryland is traditionally competitive and a rivalry game, so that's fine, but why schedule EWU and ECU? Why not Texas Tech, Oregon, Virginia Tech, or Florida? If your conference schedule includes Auburn, LSU, and Florida, then maybe you don't need to take on FSU and Oklahoma to bolster your strength of schedule. That isn't the case with West Virginia. Beating Louisville and a bunch of mediocre teams shouldn't get WVU into the NCAA title game, even if no other team goes undefeated. It would be enough to get them into an 8-team playoff, and will probably be enough to get them into the BCS title game unless two other major conference teams (or ND) go undefeated, but that shouldn't be the case.

The SEC features 5 teams that as good or better than Louisville: Auburn, LSU, Florida, Tennessee and Georgia. The ACC has Florida State, Miami, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Clemson and Georgia Tech. The Big 12 is! still fairly strong on top with Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas Tech and Texas A&M. The Pac-10 has USC at the top with Cal, Oregon, and Arizona State on the 2nd tier. The Big 10 (or 11) has Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa and Penn State.

Even if you argue that the Big East is close to the level of other major conferences, WVU still falls short. The SEC is probably the best conference in college football, so I'm going to give SEC schools a pass. Ohio State played Texas. Michigan, Penn State, USC and Georgia Tech all have Notre Dame on the schedule. Oklahoma plays Oregon, who also visited Fresno State. Florida State plays Florida. Miami plays Louisville. Nebraska visits USC. Texas Tech plays TCU. Cal visited Tennessee. The Mountaineers don't even come close to this list. Eastern Washington!

Steve Slaton is a quality back, but it looked like he was running against a HS JV girls basketball team! On one TD run by Slaton, #3 on Maryland backed away from Slaton as he got into the end zone rather than stick his nose ! in and knock him out of bounds. On a couple big runs, Slaton wasn't touched. The blocking was good, and Slaton is good, but not THAT good. The Maryland D was just awful and had no idea what hit them until the game was already out-of-hand, and maybe after that ... but I wasn't watching at that point. On WVU's last TD of the 1st half (their 5th), the return man fumbled the ball, picked it back up, then wasn't touched on his jaunt to the end zone. The return wasn't Reggie Bush-like with a number of defenders being juked out of their jocks. Rather, Darius Reynaud merely ran straightforward, made a little cut to go around a blocker, then headed back upfield. He wasn't touched. He didn't run through arm tackles or fake anyone out, he just ran from one end of the field to the other. Maybe they wanted to get a 100-yard dash time on him for future reference? Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for a bowl game to see what Rich Rodriguez can do against a high-quality defense .! .. maybe the whole college football system should be revisited.