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 Friday, October 5, 2001
Expect the unexpected
By Terry Bowden
Special to ABC Sports Online
Bowden's Weekly Chat Show
This past weekend, over half of the teams in the Top 25 played each other. We had a chance to see good against good, favored against favored. Boy, did we make a few false assumptions. Some teams that were expected to have great defenses didn't. Some teams may not be as good as we thought. Others may be a whole lot better. For most, we just don't know.
If you think you know what you are talking about, you're wrong. This season has to be played out. Everything that you think is the way it is may not be.
Florida
Lined up against the No. 1 pass defense in the country and a Mississippi State team that gave the Gators their most humiliating loss last year when it rushed for 351 yards and won 47-35, what happens? Florida threw for 507 yards, held the Bulldogs to 44 rushing yards and made it a laugher, 52-0.
I'm not telling you how to think, but I don't know if Florida has had a more impressive win than that.
Oklahoma
|  | | K-State's Ell Roberson rushed for 3 TDs against OU on Saturday. |
I just got through saying on Friday that this was the best defense in the country. That no one plays that side of the ball better than the Sooners. That it starts from the top and goes through every assistant and pours out through the players on the field. Then we see them play Kansas State, a game that was sure to be a defensive struggle, only to see a final outcome of 38-37.
Were my eyes deceiving me or did Kansas State roll up 446 yards of total offense. This was by far the best game of the weekend and pitted the two highest ranked teams. But if Kansas State can score 37 against Oklahoma and if Oklahoma can score 38 against Kansas State, it doesn't give much credence to the statement that you win championships with defense.
UCLA
Here's a team that wasn't even ranked in the top 10 at the beginning of season, hasn't played defense in ages and wasn't one of the top 3 preseason favorites in the Pac-10. Today, the Bruins are 4-0 and just polished off an Oregon State team that has Ken Simonton and Jonathan Smith, who know quite a bit offense. 38-7 may look like a lopsided score, but I assure you it was a lot worse than that.
If Kansas State and Oklahoma fans are reading this, I think the saying is that you win championships with defense.
Georgia Tech
So many people in the preseason thought that this season was the year Georgia Tech --with so many talented players returning -- would upend Florida State and win the ACC. Sure enough, last week, Bobby Bowden's Seminoles took a direct hit by North Carolina and fell so far out of the top 10, you would have thought they would have had to have been scraped off the pavement. So what's the worst thing you can do if you are Georgia Tech and you are now locked in as the clear favorite to ride the ACC title into a BCS classic? That's right, go out and lose to Bobby's son, Tommy at Clemson seven days after his Yellow Jackets lost to Clemson.
So Georgia Tech now must sit with Florida State in the back of the room and give up their seats to Maryland and Virginia. For now, that is.
Washington
Washington is continuing with its reputation for being the Cardiac Dogs. The Huskies don't want to win a game if they can't win it in the fourth quarter. Their 31-28 win over California is their second fourth-quarter comeback victory of the year to go along with eight in 2000. It's good that they never give up and that they keep on fighting. And that they just find a way to win. But give me a break Rick, this is California. This was clearly the worst team in the Pac-10, a team that had given up 44, 44 and 51 points in its first three games. The Huskies may have moved up in the rankings, but if you ask me, they took a step backwards with this one
South Carolina
The Gamecocks had a hard time finding the end zone, but knew how to play defense. They played against an Alabama team that hadn't seen the goal line much itself. After victories over Georgia and Mississippi State on the road, you knew that this was a USC team that knew how to win a close game as long as Lou Holtz could convince them to make it a low-scoring one. Alabama, however, had a different plan and stuck 36 points on the board. I couldn't believe it. The bigger surprise is that South Carolina scored 37.
Dennis Franchione is a great rebuilder of football programs, but on Saturday, he lined up against a master.
Michigan
Michigan had a chance to be pretty good this year, but they were too young on offense to make a run for the conference title. The Wolverines lost their star quarterback, tailback, wide receiver and almost everyone on the offensive line. Although they played pretty good in their first three and lost to Washington, this young offense led by John Navarre keeps getting better and better.
The conference schedule began on Saturday and Michigan manhandled a solid Illinois team in the best display of dominance in the entire conference. So whether they are ready to be a national championship contender, I cannot say, but they are clearly the leading contender for the Big Ten crown.
Northwestern
|  | | David Wasielewski's 47-yard field goal as time expired gave Northwestern an unlikely win and a rare 3-0 start. |
Northwestern, on the other hand, was the preseason favorite to win the Big Ten championship. The Wildcats had everyone back on offense and a defense that had no direction to go but up. In one of the most exciting games of the day, the Wildcats gave us an emotion-packed inspired effort to beat Michigan State 27-26, in which there were three scores in the final 29 seconds.
I give Northwestern an A for drama, but this is a good, not great Michigan State team. And showed me nothing more but that Northwestern will be in a lot more Big Ten games that will go down to the wire.
What does all this tell you? It tells me that football is a game of inches, that games have to be played for 60 minutes and that on any given Saturday, anybody can beat anybody. It may not be a great time to be an expert analyst, but it's the greatest of times to be a football fan. If Saturday was an indication, we have a whale of a season still to be played.
Looking ahead …
I don't know about you, but I can't wait for Saturday's Red River Shootout in Dallas, Texas between the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns.
After the way Oklahoma's defense was manhandled by Kansas State, I would have to say the outcome of this game is an even bigger question mark. I saw more holes in OU's defense than I have seen in their previous 16 victories. If Kansas State had chosen not to blitz Nate Hybl so much and leave its secondary in tight man coverage, I am not sure the outcome would have been the same.
Texas, on the other hand, beat a Texas Tech team like the drum. An interesting note here is that Tech's coach, Mike Leach was the offensive coordinator who installed the passing game for Bob Stoops at Oklahoma. After a Longhorn victory of 42-7, you would have to think Mack Brown and his coaches have done a little work on the spread offense.
I am still not ready to pick a winner in this game, especially since you can't make a living voting against someone who has won 17 straight, but I am a little more uncertain about the outcome.
Terry Bowden was the head coach at Salem College, Samford University and Auburn University. He is ABC's college football studio analyst and contributes regularly for ABC Sports Online.
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 Nate Hybl hangs in the pocket and finds Antwone Savage for a 75-yard touchdown (Courtesy: ABC Sports).
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Antwone Savage scores on the 64-yard strike from Nate Hybl (Courtesy: ABC Sports).
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Ell Roberson connects with Ricky Lloyd for six, then executes the two-point conversion with time running down (Courtesy: ABC Sports).
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Woody Dantzler escapes the Tech pass rush and scrambles 38 yards for the touchdown (Courtesy: ABC Sports).
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Woody Dantzler takes the shotgun snap, then scores the game-winner on the keeper (Courtesy: ABC Sports).
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Northwestern sets up the game-winning field goal with a Hail Mary pass from Zak Kustok to Jon Schweighardt.
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Herb Haygood answers a Northwestern TD by returning the kickoff 84 yards with 18 seconds left in the game.
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Brian Poli-Dixon hauls in the 39-yard TD strike from Cory Paus.
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DeShaun Foster busts through four Beaver tacklers on the way to a 17-yard TD.
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BJ Askew rushes for a pair of Michigan touchdowns (Courtesy: ABC Sports).
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Michigan's Walter Cross finds Marquise Walker for the TD on the halfback pass (Courtesy: ABC Sports).
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Casey Claussen threads the needle to Kelley Washington, who goes 70 yards for the score.
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