Denard Robinson hasn’t officially claimed Tim Tebow’s title as the most popular player in college football. But if he keeps up anything close to the first two games of his career as Michigan’s starting quarterback, his jersey is going to show up in a Gil Thorp cartoon.
Robinson has gone Pop Warner on two big-time opponents. In two weeks he has broken the Michigan single-game total offense record twice, running and passing for 383 yards in a 30-10 victory over Connecticut and thrashing that with 502 in a 28-24 win Saturday at Notre Dame.
Suddenly, this 6-foot, 193- pound sophomore from Deerfield Beach (Fla.) High School, only the 35th-ranked player out of Florida as a senior, has more records than Motown.
Included in Robinson’s big game Saturday:
• He set the Big Ten rushing record for quarterbacks with 258 yards against the Irish.
• His 87-yard TD run was the longest in the 81-year history of Notre Dame Stadium.
• It was the second-longest run in a Michigan road game and longest since Butch Woolfolk’s 89-yard gallop at Wisconsin in 1981.
• He became the ninth QB in college football history to pass for 200 yards and run for 200.
Yet Robinson’s biggest strength was his poise. With the ball at Michigan’s 28-yard line with 3:41 left, down 24-21, Robinson drove the Wolverines to Notre Dame’s 17. On third-and-5 with 51 seconds left, he hit Roy Roundtree for 15 yards to the 2. Robinson then scored the winning TD.
“When we watch the film,” Michigan coach Rich Rodri- guez said after the game, “I’ll bet you there’s probably at least 12 to 15 plays that Denard will say ‘I missed it,’ which is pretty exciting going for- ward for us.”
Bye-bye, Boise State.
Unless all university presidents suddenly gather — like, today — and organize an eight-team playoff for 2010, third-ranked Boise State has no shot at that dreamy national title.
Virginia Tech, one of only two plums on Boise State’s schedule, took care of that with its embarrassing pratfall against visiting James Madison. The Hokies were only the second ranked team to lose to an FCS (formerly Division I-AA) opponent.
The Broncos are also third in the coaches’ poll, one of three elements in the BCS formula. The cynical coaches, weighted heavily in the six major BCS conferences, won’t rank them any higher.
That will leave it up to the Harris poll and the computers. The computers are cold unforgivers, and Virginia Tech will drop off the face of college football. Boise State had better hope it beats 25th-ranked Oregon State and the Beavers go to the Rose Bowl.
An eight-team playoff may be more likely.
UCLA looks soft.
Anyone catch a familiar pattern at UCLA? The Bruins have gone soft under Rick Neuheisel. The coach who turned Washington into a finesse team has made the Bruins as resistant as Santa Monica sand.
Stanford, admittedly the most physical team in the Pac-10, rolled over the Bruins for 211 yards rushing in a 35-0 rout, including an 18-play drive that ate up 9:25. This came one week after Kansas State’s Daniel Thomas pounded UCLA for 234 yards.
Yet Neuheisel has made his living by manufacturing quarterbacks. He still hasn’t reached sophomore Kevin Prince, who engineered the Bruins’ first loss to Stanford at the Rose Bowl since 1996 and Stanford’s first shutout road win since the Cardinal beat Oregon 17-0 in 1974.
“Tonight was an offensive disaster,” Neuheisel said after the Bruins fell to 0-2. “There is no other way to say it.”
Tidal wave of talent.
Alabama’s stockpile of tailback talent is frightening. Coach Nick Saban loses Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram to a knee injury and replaces him with sophomore Trent Richardson, the No. 2 prep tailback in the nation two years ago at Escambia High in Pensacola, Fla., where he averaged 9.3 yards per carry his senior year.
Richardson had 102 yards — in the first half — against a Penn State team that hadn’t given up 100 yards to a running back in 17 games. This came a week after redshirt freshman Eddie Lacy had 111 yards coming off the Tide’s bench against San Jose State.
Oh, Ingram is expected back this week against Duke.
