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The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
I’ve gone back and forth most of this season on how to cover Navy & Army. Since they don’t play in a conference, they don’t have quite as compelling a story to tell- 6 wins, they go to a bowl, that’s about it. So they won’t get a lot of discussion here, but the reality is that they’re just as stuck outside the BCS system as the rest of them are, so they’ll be discussed when there’s good reason to do so. As for Navy, they’re out to a very impressive start and appear comfortably headed towards a bowl berth. They lost to Ohio State by only 2 in the season opener and have picked up four wins since then.
- Wins: B. Despite the close loss to OSU, they’ve beaten the teams they should beat and lost to the teams they should have. Solid B. Read Post
The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
The Toledo Rockets have had an erratic, confusing start to their season. They started out by challenging Purdue before fading late, then stomping Colorado when that was all the rage. Then, for all the firepower they had shown in the first two weeks, they got shut out by Ohio State in week 3. Two mid-major wins later, they get surprised by Western Michigan, who had just lost 38-3 to Northern Illinois.
- Wins: C. After upsetting Colorado, I would have expected Toledo to be 4-2 at this point, and the loss to WMU could haunt them at the end of the season. Read Post
The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
Today’s theme has unintentionally turned out to be ‘Disappointing MAC Teams.’ The reality of the situation is that the MAC, with a few solid counter-examples, has had a pretty rough out of conference season, and more MAC teams have reached six games than the other conferences, so they make up a lot of this week’s posts. As for Buffalo, this season held a lot of hope- they won the MAC last year, their coach has garnered unprecedented national attention, and the school has left it’s laughingstock ways behind. Unfortunately, they’re sitting at 2-4 and 0-2 in the league after a 4 game losing skid made life difficult.
- Wins: D. The lone 1-A win was in the opening weekend at UTEP, which seemed to signal the start of something good. Instead, the Bulls dropped games to Pitt, UCF, Temple, and MAC powerhouse Central Michigan. All four of these teams might still be good, but that’s still not the start that UB fans had hoped for. Read Post
The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
I won’t lie, I did not see Idaho coming. I predicted the usual WAC season- Boise runs away with it, Fresno, Hawaii, and maybe Louisiana Tech fight for second and third. And while Idaho hasn’t played any of those four yet, their 5-1 start is impressive nonetheless. Idaho is now just one game short of bowl eligibility and picked up top 25 votes- the first time that’s ever happened in midseason.
- Wins: A. 5 wins, and a not-quite-blown-out loss to Washington is as good a start as Idaho has had in half of forever. They haven’t even won 5 games total since 2000. Several of the wins have been close, but at the end of the day, nobody puts the margin in the win column. Read Post
The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
Ok, I’ll try to be polite and concise. Miami is really, really bad. They lost their first two games by a combined 90-0, and in fact gave up 125 points before scoring their first. Things have been better since that start, but but not better enough to win a game.
- Wins: F. None, and never closer than 10. Read Post
The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
The Golden Flashes, despite their name, are one of the lowest profile teams in America this year. They haven’t had much success, but by winning two winnable games, they stay off the 0 and 1 win radar. They didn’t scare any of the BCS teams they played, so no attention on the worldwide leader. They’re sitting at 2-4, not a great start, but really only one point away from being as good as anyone would have expected.
- Wins: D. The schedule hasn’t been easy, but they haven’t faced any Top 25 teams either. They started the season with an 18-0 win over 1-AA Coastal Carolina, and they did beat 0-6 Miami by 10 points. They lost to Bowling Green this weekend on a last second touchdown after leading most of the game. Read Post
The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
The UTEP Miners might be the strangest team in my jurisdiction. They opened the season with a loss to Buffalo, who has since nose-dived (more later- they’re on the list for today too). They got run out of the building by Texas and Kansas. This past weekend, they lost to a pretty bad Memphis team. Yet somehow, in week 5, they ran roughshod over Houston, who was sitting in between wins over Texas Tech and later Mississippi State. Eleven days later and that game still baffles me. It remains to be seen whether that win alone is enough to get Mike Price off the hot seat.
- Wins: C-. Normally, I’m giving a 2-4 team a D rating, but that win over Houston is worth something. If you take Kansas and Texas out of the equation, they’re 2-2 against non-BCS teams, which isn’t the worst they could have done. Read Post
The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
For our 10th report card, we look just a couple hours up the road from the last one, to the Bowling Green Falcons. This works especially well since the two schools play each other this weekend. Unlike Ball State, and most of the MAC, Bowling Green kicked off the season with a pretty big non-conference win, beating defending Sun Belt champion Troy. The MAC was winless against the Belt last year, so this looked a lot like the start of something good for the Falcons. Unfortunately, they went from there into a 4 game losing skid against a set of pretty good teams- Missouri, Marshall, Boise State, and Ohio. Last week’s last minute win over Kent State may have put them back on the right track.
- Wins: D. The schedule hasn’t been easy, with 2 defending conference champs and the defending Big 12 North winner too, but 2 wins is still a disappointing start. Read Post
The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
Apparently the random number generator used to order these report cards has a sense of humor, because we turn from one of the elite teams in the non-BCS universe to 0-6 Ball State. While the Cardinals are not as bad as Rice, 0-6 is still 0-6. The worst part of it, is that this is the same Ball State that went 12-0 in the regular season last year, rose to #12 in the polls, but got surprised in the conference championship and went on to lose to Tulsa in the GMAC bowl.
- Wins: F. Their 60 point combined margin of defeat (four losses by 7 or less) may be the lowest of the 0-6 teams, but the fact of the matter is that Ball State has lost to good teams and lost to bad teams. Read Post
The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well. Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.
BYU has faced Oklahoma, Florida State, and four non-BCS teams…and none of it matters. Well, it does, but the second half of the season is going to be crucial for the Cougars. If they go 6-0, they may still have a shot at making a BCS game. The league title is still up for grabs as well. But this is about the first six games, not the last six.
- Wins: A-. The Oklahoma upset was amazing, but what on earth happened with that FSU game? The Seminoles have shown to have little to no defense, but something just went wrong that day. Beating MWC competition in Colorado State at UNLV is a good sign for the rest of the year, and an in-state win over Utah State is never a bad thing. Read Post
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