Week Four College Football Roundup: Who’s No. 1?

Oklahoma and LSU both won on Saturday night, Oklahoma is 3-0, LSU is 4-0 and now both can say they’ve been No. 1 in the polls this season. As a reward for beating three ranked teams in four games, the Tigers get to be No. 1 in the AP’s poll this week.

Controversy! Shenanigans! Or whatever. I wish I cared.

This is the part where the “it gets people talking about college football” argument for poll rankings falls flat. These polls are totally meaningless. The first BCS poll doesn’t come out for a couple more weeks, and while that poll relies on these polls heavily, it has become fairly clear that these polls are an awful metric for how good a team is. There are also some people out there (OK, maybe just me) who wonder if the networks are just helping out the BCS by programming only teams they know will draw ratings for the BCS bowls.

It’s somewhat trite to immediately resort to cynicism when one realizes something other than fairness is running a beloved institution (see: America, United States of). I realize that. I do what I can to campaign against the BCS and the river of money that rules college football in general, I guess, but that cynicism is always there. Guess we’d still be in Vietnam if our generation was growing up in the 60′s instead of our parents, right?

But no one in college football is going to listen until people start talking with their feet and their wallets. Because those college presidents who created the BCS and the networks who only show approved, BCS-conference teams are right. There are certain teams and conferences that are much better for business. Until people stop participating in the system, there’s really no reason to tear it apart.

As for the golden horse shoe up Les Miles’ ass, I mean…no matter how many endgame scenarios he blows, how much grass he eats, assistant coaches get very sick, or how many unwarranted assaults his starting quarterback commits, the Tigers keep winning. It’s amazing and proof that no matter what kind of coach one is, if that guy is one of the top three recruiters in the entire country, everything will be fine.

Miles is also smart enough to know being ranked first after week four is essentially meaningless. There is an entire conference schedule left to play in the SEC. Plus he’s got to be concerned about quarterback Jarrett Lee’s rebirth as Craig Krenzel. The guy was an interception machine who suddenly seems to get it after four games. Feels like there’s a size 12 hanging over the quarterback position at LSU.

Maybe this scenario with OU and LSU is a harbinger of some real BCS chaos, which is pretty much all fans can hope for if they want that junta to disappear. The best-case scenario is if there are either four or five undefeated teams at season’s end or if everyone in the top five has one or two losses, preferably to other top five teams. Only things like that can free us from the BCS, so LSU, OU and Boise State and a bunch of other teams should all stay undefeated as far as I’m concerned.

The triple option rides again!

I wouldn’t say Georgia Tech rolled in their 35-28 victory over North Carolina, but they looked damn good for quite a bit of the game. Paul Johnson will always find one or two guys who can thrive in his offense, but the key for the Yellow Jackets is a tough defense. They can’t win shootouts every week, and the inability to get stops absolutely killed them during their disastrous 2010 campaign.

Where have I heard this before?

Ohio State gives up on its slow, white quarterback for a raw freshman who can’t necessarily throw well but can run like the wind? Never heard of that before. Can’t imagine where Luke Fickell got that idea. Nope. Can’t imagine.

Freshman Braxton Miller wasn’t great, but he threw two touchdowns and ran for 83 yards with no turnovers. Can’t ask for much more than that from a freshman who spent the first three weeks watching and only playing in very special packages.

Make no mistake, Ohio State will get destroyed when they try this against anyone good. Miller is an even worse passer than Terrelle Pryor was as a freshman starter. There’s also less talent on the Ohio State offense than there was back in 2007 or whenever the hell that was Jim Tressel tried Pryor out against USC. A glimpse of the future is nice, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were an Ohio State fan.

Indiana can’t even suck with style

There are no guarantees with Indiana’s 2011 team. They’re so bad, especially on defense, that they’ll probably even fail to set records for futility along the way. Saturday’s 24-21 loss at North Texas was like a band covering the DiNardo years perfectly. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Kevin Wilson got fed up and took a high-paid coordinator’s job after the season.

Griffin 4 Heisman

Tearing up Rice doesn’t count towards anyone’s Heisman campaign. But Robert Griffin is f-ing awesome so far. Baylor will probably get blown out a time or two what with all the ranked teams on their schedule. But Baylor’s games with Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, and Missouri will have at least one of the most entertaining games of the year.

Tajh Boyd does it all day Saturday

Clemson’s second straight win over a ranked team aside, Tajh Boyd’s fantastic performance against a Florida State defense that’s much better than Auburn’s is enough to make the debate over which quarterback you would take to run your team into a five-way race: Boyd, Robert Griffin III, Denard Robinson, Landry Jones, and Matt Barkley.

For me, Barkley is out because of yet another shaky performance on the road at Arizona State. I like Jones, but it’s not like he’s the only guy to thrive in that system (it made Josh Heupel into a Heisman contender, after all). Boyd, Griffin, and Robinson are all pretty close and have similar weapons, but I would probably still take Griffin at this point. He’s equally athletic as the other guys and he’s one of the most efficient passers in the nation this year. I have no idea if that keeps up, but Griffin and Boyd are distancing themselves from the rest week by week.

Clemson’s third straight ranked opponent is Virginia Tech next Saturday. Let’s see if Boyd handles yet another step up in opposing defenses as well as he handled Florida State.

Week three record: 10-4 W/L, 5-10-1 AS (yikes)

2011 season record: 38-13 W/L, 26-23-3 AS