Football on the Fringe

The MAC is speeding right along with their month of mid-week games, with 3 games in the last two nights that I haven’t gone over.  Today on the fringe, I’ll be cranking out our weekend previews, but for the four biggest games of the day, have a look at the Pub post, since I hit them  over there.

Read Post

The MAC has launched headlong into their weird November schedule, leaving no more than two games on any day from now to Thanksgiving.  While it makes weekly previews & wrapups short and easy, there will be weeknight game previews scattered about for a month.  It also means that the league standings are in near-constant flux.  But, for the moment, here’s where we’re at in the Mid-American:

Read Post

If you noticed the Sun Belt wrapup yesterday, essentially all their games played out as you would expect.  Well, the MWC wasn’t much different.  The big favorites won, and the home team won the only tossup game on the day.  Like some of the other conferences around the league, this week felt like a week off almost- just catching a breath before a fast & furious end to the season, starting next week in Fort Worth.

Read Post

I was going to switch back west to the MWC, but since C-USA action this weekend led to the end of Tommy West’s career at Memphis, we’ll skip there and hit TCU & Co tomorrow.

So yes, Memphis lost to Tennessee 56-28, after falling behind by 35 in the first half.  And if you add in WKU’s loss earlier this year, two of the three teams blown out the worst by UT have fired their coaches today (the other- Georgia.   Should Mark Richt be sweating?).  Elsewhere, Houston survived with an incredible finish against Tulsa, and two other games came right down to the wire.

Read Post

Word is out that Memphis and Western Kentucky have fired their coaches- will be monitoring for more in the next few weeks.

Memphis Fires Tommy West

Western Kentucky Fires David Elson

The Memphis firing is no surprise- West has saved his job with late-season rallies to get to bowl games several times already, but it wasn’t happening this year.  [...]

This was a remarkably predictable weekend in the Sun Belt- the leaders won, the lower ranked teams lost, and we simply took one more step toward the end of the season.  All eyes now turn to bowl-watching, specifically hunting for at-large spots since it looks like the Belt is going to have a few teams eligible.  It will be important for as many as possible to get to seven wins, since a 7-5 team has to get picked ahead of a 6-6 team (in at-large situations only). Read Post

This was a wild weekend in the college football world, and I’m looking forward to sorting through it to see where things stand in each league.  As for last nights game, Nevada obliterated San Jose State and is now bowl eligible, and like I said in my Pub column, when Nevada’s offense is clicking like it [...]

This is almost an off week for the MWC.  All the teams are playing, but we don’t have quite the monster matchups that we had a couple weeks ago and that we’re looking forward to in the last three weeks of the season.  This week is just ‘survive and advance’ for TCU and Utah, while the lesser conference teams are just shuffling toward the end of the year.

Read Post

Last night, Boise State took care of business and beat Louisiana Tech 45-35, in a game that was at times pretty close, and at other times led handily by the Br0ncos.  I suspect a ten point win won’t wow the pollsters, but may not do too much damage in the polls overall.  That being said, Boise [...]

The Sun Belt conference race has lost some of its luster in the last few weeks, but with a few of the big name conferences overrun by a wave of mediocrity, there may well be some bowl openings available to Sun Belt teams that get eligible, so there’s a lot left to play for.

Read Post