Another winning week!

Coach Talk:  Week #4

by Coach Jon Cacchione

    The contenders and pretenders began to separate themselves in college football in Week #3.  It is obvious to me that Big 10 teams Ohio State, Penn St., and Michigan St. are average football teams.  They may contend in their conference divisions due to the league being down as a whole, but they are not national contenders. I fully expect Michigan to lay claim to being a “pretender” as well in the next few weeks.  They are better, but not serious contender.  There are only two Big 10 teams that I think are worthy of mentioning when discussing national contenders.  They are Wisconsin and Nebraska.  By the way, there are no Big East teams worth mentioning.  In the ACC, Virginia Tech as usual must be mentioned, and the winner of Florida St. and Clemson this week will be on the radar.  The Seminoles were a serious contender until the home loss to Oklahoma.  The offense looked poor when QB E.J. Manuel went down.  He is questionable for this week’s huge game vs. Clemson.  I really cannot see any of these 3 ACC teams making it to New Orleans in January.  Oklahoma, Oklahoma St., and Texas A&M are currently in the national contender discussion.  You can eliminate the loser of this week’s big game between the Aggies and Cowboys.  The Sooners have a great shot at the title game.  The only PAC 12 team that I think deserves our attention right now is Stanford.  I love their style of play.  Oregon has a long way to go after their poor performance against LSU in week one on a neutral field.  Stanford is a long-shot to get to New Orleans, but it could happen.  From the BCS conferences, that leaves only the SEC.  I believe there are only two teams in the SEC that can win it all.  They are Alabama and LSU.  One of them gets to the title game, for sure.  Let me end by saying Boise St. has the first real shot at playing in a National Title game.  The Broncos will go undefeated, easily.  It is very, very possible for them to make it to the title game due to the few number of very good teams.  Here is my ranking of the favorites to get to the title game, #1-10:  

#1  Oklahoma  #2  Winner of SEC West  (LSU or Alabama) #3  Boise St.
#4  Wisconsin  #5  Stanford  #6  Oklahoma St.   #7  Texas A&M   #8  ACC Champ  
#9  Nebraska #10  Oregon

Some coaches who are getting hot pants, already: (Who will be first to get fired?)

1. Houston Nutt:  Mississippi  (23-18)  1-2 this year.
2. Rick Neuheisel:  UCLA  (16-24)  1-2 this year.  
3. Mark Richt:  Georgia  (97-36)  But 1-2 this year, and 6-7 last year.
4. Paul Wulff:  Washington St.  (7-33)  2-1 this year, but the loss is to San Diego St.
5. Frank Spaziani:  Boston College (16-14)  0-3 this year and lost to Duke.
6. Mike Locksley:  New Mexico  (2-25)  0-3 this year.