1. Student-athletes can stand up for themselves. The players from Grambling State deserve a lot of credit for standing up and protesting against the school’s lack of maintenance of the athletic complex and department as a whole. The team decided not to travel to Jackson, Mississippi for their game against Jackson State and wrote a letter citing issues with having to pay for Gatorade out of their own pockets, having to deal with mold and mildew on their equipment and the shoddy maintenance of their own athletic complex. They also included who they thought should be the replacement coach since Doug Williams was fired. it should be interesting how the school and athletic department chooses to handle this going forward. Its a shame because Grambling State comes from a great football tradition.
2. The top ten is about to get shaken up. We knew that there would be some changes in the top top after the FSU-Clemson game but we didn’t expect what we saw Saturday. Ole Miss knocked off No. 6 LSU, Auburn shocked Johnny Football and No. 7 Texas A&M, UCF stunned No. 8 Teddy Bridgewater and Louisville and Stanford beat No. 9 UCLA.
3. This ain’t your daddy’s SEC. While Alabama remains the class of the SEC, other teams have stepped up to close the gap and make things interesting. Missouri is still undefeated and has knocked two ranked SEC opponents in the last two weeks, including Georgia. The Tennessee Volunteers made things difficult for South Carolina and Ole Miss has also made some waves in the conference. My gut tells me that the SEC will still have a representative in the BCS national title game but don’t count out some of these other upstarts.
4. What a day for Northern Illinois. If you had to guess which quarterback would have broken the record for rushing yards in a game by a qb, you probably would have been wrong. Jordan Lynch, who is always a threat to run, broke the record for rushing yards in a game by a quarterback with 316. The previous record holder was Stacy Robinson, who also played at Northern Illinois, who ran for 308 in 1990.
5. Miami vs FSU should be a classic. FSU is likely to jump into the No 3 spot after their dominant win over Clemson and Miami, who survived a tough game on the road against North Carolina, should jump into the No. 5 spot, setting up what should be a great matchup. Don’t be surprised if this is the first of two times they play this season because I fully expect both teams to be in the ACC Championship game.
1. On any given Saturday…apparently anyone can lose a game. In a week of shocking upsets, top 25 casualties included No. 12 Oklahoma losing to Texas, No. 7 Georgia losing to Missouri, No. 5 Stanford losing to Utah and No. 18 Michigan losing to Penn State in quadruple overtime. Expect a huge shakeup in the rankings and should set up a possible huge matchup between Miami and Florida State, who will both likely be in the top 10 together for the first time since 2005.
2. It wasn’t just upsets…some teams got some scares too. Johnny Football and the Texas A&M Aggies got past Ole Miss, Clemson survived against Boston College and Baylor took care of business against Kansas State.
3. Lame…I mean, Lane Kiffin admits mistakes. Former USC head coach Lane Kiffin admitted to ESPN’s Chris Fowler that he made some mistakes in his coaching career. There is your 2013 Understatement Of The Year.
4. Mack Brown might have saved himself from getting fired. And the best part of the whole thing might be Skip Bayless boldly predicting that his Oklahoma Sooners would win and hoped they didn’t cause the firing of Mack Brown. “Thanks to Mack, I no longer fear Texas” were his words on twitter. It was great to see Skip eat his words. Congrats to the Longhorns for keeping their season alive.
5. The Heisman race is heating up. Johnny Manziel has some competition in the Heisman voting this year with some other guys having stellar seasons like Oregon’s Marcus Mariota, FSU’s Jameis Winston and Ohio St’s Braxton Miller. Interestingly enough, there aren’t many candidates outside of the quarterback position. Georgia’s Todd Gurley has been injured and Alabama’s TJ Yeldon isn’t putting up the numbers that his predecessors (Mark Ingram and Eddie Lacy) had put up by this point in the season.
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