.vresize.36.36.medium.0.png){kind=small}
.vresize.36.36.medium.0.png){kind=small}
It’s not often the Red River Shootout, one of the richest and most storied rivalry games in all of college football, takes a back seat on the first Saturday of October to another game. It’s never the case that it takes the trunk. But that will precisely be the case on Saturday, when Texas-Oklahoma — still very much a contest with BCS title implications — sits behind the game being played in Eugene and the SEC showdown taking place in Tuscaloosa.
It’s officially conference football time, and for all the summertime hype and preview-magazine polish those September out-of-conference games received, this is when the college football season really starts. Fresh off a weekend when the 10 Big Ten teams in action played eight MAC opponents and two schools from the FCS, 18 of the 19 Top 25 teams playing on Saturday will take on conference rivals. And though we’re still weeks away from the release of the first official BCS standings, the two Saturday night primetime affairs are likely the season’s very best two games thus far.
Everyone with even the slightest interest in college football likely circled Saturday’s Florida-Alabama game way back in the summer. Two to three games a year get the “Leave that Saturday night open” treatment. This is one of those games.
The two programs have accounted for the past two and three of the past four BCS championships and have given the country consecutive tremendously entertaining SEC title games. The Gators and Tide have also combined for a jaw-dropping 52 consecutive regular-season wins. Saturday’s SEC showdown in Tuscaloosa will mark the eighth time in conference history the two participants from the prior season’s SEC title bout squared off in the next season and the fifth time in a regular-season SEC game. The team that won the title game is 3-4 in the rematch.
Florida is coming off its best performance of the season, but Kentucky isn’t ’Bama. And playing in The Swamp under the lights — as the Gators did in Saturday night’s 48-14 win — is a bit different from a primetime affair in Tuscaloosa.
"I've not watched them on tape," Florida coach Urban Meyer said of Alabama following the win. "Our guys will practice really hard. There's one way to try to compete at a road stadium, and that's go as hard as you can on Tuesday and Wednesday. I think our guys will be anxious. You want to make sure you get healthy. That's going to be a real physical game up there."
With no Tim Tebow, no Maurkice Pouncey, no Aaron Hernandez and no Charlie Strong calling the shots on defense, the 2010 Gators haven’t been nearly as all-around dominant as the ’08 and ’09 outfits that were undefeated heading into their meetings with Alabama.
Then again, neither have the Crimson Tide. And yet, both teams have found ways to win and advance to the next Saturday thus far this season. The Tide looked dead in the water late in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s game with Arkansas, but made the most of their opponents’ late mistakes and used an always-reliable 1-2 rushing attack to ensure their flawless record remained intact. Neither Florida nor Alabama has been as aesthetically pleasing as say, Nevada or Oklahoma this season, but they’ve each relied on defense and offensive creativity to find ways to win when they’ve been tested.
This one has all the makings for an all-time classic, and yet it won’t be the only early season conference showdown with major BCS implications demanding your attention on Saturday night. You may need to go picture-in-picture or make the dreaded afternoon trip to the local Best Buy for a second living room TV for Saturday night.
The defense has been downright nasty. First-year defensive coordinator and longtime NFL coach Vic Fangio came to Palo Alto in the spring and immediately installed an aggressive 3-4 blitzing scheme. The results thus far? The Stanford D, which features basically the same players from a unit that finished last season ranked 110th in the nation in pass defense and 90th in overall defense, has now shut out UCLA at the Rose Bowl and done what three Big Ten opponents couldn’t do this season — held the Irish under 23 points.
But the Cardinal D hasn’t seen anything like the offense it will encounter on Saturday. Despite struggling at times in Saturday night’s 42-31 win over Arizona State, the Oregon offense still managed to compile 405 total yards and capitalize on seven Sun Devils turnovers. If anything, the “ugly” win was a good sign for the Ducks. They ran for “just” 145 yards — 200 below their average coming into the game — and instead relied on a career-high 260 passing yards from first-year starter Darron Thomas.
Though Harbaugh has already been receiving plenty of accolades for his work in Palo Alto this year, perhaps it’s Oregon coach Chip Kelly who deserves the national media’s praise. People already have forgotten, but a few months back, there was talk of Oregon’s football program in a state of disarray. Several pundits were ready to write off the 2010 season as a “transition” year in Eugene.
After an offseason when the team’s starting quarterback was dismissed for disciplinary reasons, the athletic director and former head coach quietly stepped down and accepted a job at ESPN and starting running back LaMichael James was accused of assaulting his ex-girlfriend, the second-year coach has somehow gotten his team to maintain focus on football, ignore any talk of the program’s “tarnished reputation” and, amazingly, get even better than it was last season.
Should we have expected anything less from Kelly, a guy who got a team to the Rose Bowl after an opening weekend loss that featured its best player sucker punching an opponent on national TV?
Saturday night will feature two primetime games with four legitimate BCS title contenders in action at the same time. And oh yeah, 3-1 Penn State travels to 3-1 Iowa with a conference title potentially lying in the balance, too. You might as well sneak the Red River Shootout on to your calendar — remember that little game? — as it still features two of the best teams in the nation, despite last Saturday’s rather lackluster results from Texas and Oklahoma suggesting otherwise. Undefeated Michigan State plays undefeated Wisconsin on Saturday, too.
All those dazzling September out-of-conference showdowns that we spent all summer hearing and reading about? Looking back, were any really worth all of the drooling and ogling?
UNC-LSU made for an entertaining finish, but neither team looks particularly BCS title-worthy a month into the season. Penn State-Alabama wasn’t quite the showdown we expected, Virginia Tech-Boise State featured only one true BCS contender and Miami-Ohio State didn’t live up to the expectations. Florida State-Oklahoma was over before the game even got started, and Oregon ended up beating Tennessee by 32 points.
Ho hum.
Saturday, on the other hand, has everything you could ever ask for in a college football slate. In-conference rivals going at it with national title implications on the line, primetime games that actually matter all over the tube and a crisp autumn wind in the air. The college football season really starts on Saturday.
Good thing you made certain to leave it open all those months ago.
