You know the number of trees killed to feed the hype machine for two weeks preceding the Super Bowl? Localize it in the Deep South and you have what LSU-Alabama will be like.
Whether SEC commissioner Mike Slive interned under Pete Rozelle or not, the two top-ranked schools just happen to have byes this week before their showdown at Alabama on Nov. 5.
After No. 3-ranked Oklahoma flopped against Texas Tech and Hail Mary beat No. 4 Wisconsin, LSU-Alabama serves as de facto early national championship.
If Oklahoma isn’t out of the BCS Championship chase, it should be. Has anyone made that game after losing as a four-touchdown home favorite? The Sooners did to Texas Tech. And they did it with style, getting steamrolled for 572 yards and 17 plays of 10 yards or longer.
Ryan Broyles lost a third-quarter fumble, quarterback Landry Jones missed receivers all night and Michael Hunnicutt missed field goals of 39 and 28 yards. It added up to the end of a 39-game home winning streak and dropped coach Bob Stoops’ home mark to 75-3.
“Sometimes too much is said about it like it can’t happen,” Stoops told reporters afterward. “I told the players anyone we play the rest of the year will whip us if we don’t play better than we did today.”
Spartans listened.
Forget the buzzer-beating 44-yard Hail Mary pass that beat Wisconsin. A huge reason Michigan State won? A week after the Spartans’ William Gholston got suspended for punching Michigan’s Taylor Lewan, coach Mark Dantonio laid down the law.
“We talked about having the perfect storm,” Dantonio said afterward. “I said, ‘No penalties.’ It’s amazing. We had zero penalties (Saturday).”
This is a coach who has his players’ ears. That’s why they’ve won 17 of their last 20, are ranked ninth and are leading the Big Ten Legends Division.
Clay considered Colorado.
If you saw Michael Clay’s 32-yard interception return for a touchdown against Colorado on Saturday, you saw part of ex-coach Dan Hawkins’ failed recruiting efforts in California. Oregon’s Clay was the SuperPrep magazine’s No. 4 linebacker in the state out of San Jose’s Bellarmine Prep and visited Colorado his senior year in 2008.
Now he’s a junior starter.
“We wanted to get it over with really early, get after them, and I think we did that,” Clay told Oregon reporters after the 45-2 win.
Kelly blames players.
After Notre Dame’s 31-17 home loss to USC — after a bye — coach Brian Kelly didn’t just throw his players under the bus. He drove it right over them.
“I’m certainly not going to go back and second-guess the way I’ve prepared over 21 years in a bye week,” he told reporters. “Sometimes there’s some accountability from everybody, coaches and players alike. . . . They didn’t play as well as they needed to play.”
Said USC linebacker Chris Galippo to the Orange County Register: “They just quit. That’s what Notre Dame football is all about.”
Gill on hot seat.
Turner Gill’s program has become a disaster at Kansas. Two years after Mark Mangino left a program he earlier led to an Orange Bowl win, Gill is 5-14 and 1-11 in the Big 12. Kansas has lost its last five games by an average of 32 points and is dead last nationally in total defense (550.9 yards per game) and scoring defense (50.4).
No comment exemplifies the problem better than linebacker Steven Johnson’s, explaining how Kansas State’s Collin Klein hit a wide-open Tyler Lockett for 43 yards to the 9 for a field goal with 11 seconds left in the first half Saturday.
“It’s just us getting lazy,” Johnson said afterward, “something that has to stop.”
New KU athletic director Sheahon Zenger, who worked at K-State with Bill Snyder and at South Florida with Jim Leavitt, didn’t even bother with a vote of confidence.
“I don’t expect any player, coach, administrator, fan or alum to accept the performance on the field (Saturday) or in recent weeks,” he told The Kansas City Star after the game. “We will get this thing fixed.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299, jhenderson@ , johnhendersonDP
