I was very surprised that Florida State kept its 28-27 loss to Miami as close as it did, and the most shocking thing about the game was FSU's ability to run on the front seven of the Hurricanes' defense.

Give kudos to the Seminoles' offensive line and running back Greg Jones. He moved past Miami's Willis McGahee on my Heisman list because of his courageous, 191-yard performance. The line was also fantastic, and this didn't happen at home, it happened at the Orange Bowl. The Miami front seven has to say "Whoa, what just happened to us? We were one of the strengths of this team and we got obliterated." There are some questions to be answered.

	Jason Geathers scored the game-winning TD after his team was outplayed for most of the day.

If someone had told 'Canes coach Larry Coker that Florida State quarterback Chris Rix would complete a grand total of eight passes in the game, he might have said they would win by 60 points because a one-dimensional Florida State team should do nothing to that defense.

FSU defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews had a phenomenal game plan, though. Teams cannot let Miami do two things well, so the Seminoles decided to stop the run and make Ken Dorsey beat them, which is a whole lot better than letting McGahee run wild and also having Ken Dorsey throw for a lot of yards.

Sure, Dorsey threw for 360 yards, but he completed less than half of his passes and threw two picks. With the problems FSU has had in the secondary and with the pass rush, Andrews could not have had a better game plan and the players could not have executed it any better.

But on the other side of the ball there has to be some concern. Anyone who knows college football will tell you Florida State should have gone for two after its last touchdown to increase the lead to 14. Miami would have then needed two touchdowns and two two-point conversions to win the game.

They would also tell you that a team should not run the ball with 21 seconds left and no timeouts just before setting up for the potential game-winning field goal. It just makes no sense.

Imagine if Miami had just let Greg Jones stay on his feet a little longer and the clock had run out. What would the fallout have been if FSU had not been able to get that kick off? The 'Noles did get it off, but under tough circumstances and amid the chaos and confusion a kicker does not need.

If I am coaching Florida State when Miami calls timeout in that situation, I say thank you very much and do one of two things: take a shot downfield and tell Rix to throw a pass where only our guy can catch it or throw the ball away if nothing is there, or I trot the kicker out under less duress, get everything situated and attempt the kick.

All that being said, Miami still deserved some credit at the end of the day. The Hurricanes were down big, Dorsey brought them back and they showed some poise. And Larry Coker again showed the ability to make all the right coaching moves in a big-game atmosphere. Miami escaped even though Florida State was a phenomenal team for 99 percent of the game.

Sooners lower the boom
I said before Oklahoma's 35-24 win over Texas that I thought OU would win because it would have more success running than UT.

You can talk all you want about Nate Hybl and Chris Simms (who were both pretty bad), but the bottom line is this game will never come down to the quarterbacks. It will come down to the offensive lines and I was surprised the Sooners had the huge success they did. Quentin Griffin is a good back and he goes off periodically with one of those 200-yard games, and this guy might be a Heisman candidate if he could string some of those games together.

On the other side of the ball it was defensive coordinator Mike Stoops and his unit shutting down Longhorns tailback Cedric Benson. The struggles Chris Simms had against the Sooners (12-for-26, 156 yards, 3 INT) had less to do with him than with the Oklahoma defense.

I agree that he had a bad game and locked on to his receivers too much, but that was because the running game was ineffective and the defense was outstanding. It could have been Drew Bledsoe back there, and with no rushing attack and a fierce pass rush coming he would have looked bad, too.

'Dawgs deserve some credit
Before the Georgia-Alabama game recently I said we would find out if the Bulldogs were the most overrated No. 6 team in history. They won that game and we found out they were not, and after the 18-13 win over Tennessee, Georgia looks like the best team in the SEC.

In a normal year UGA might not have a shot to win the league, but I'm not saying there should be an asterisk in the record book if they do win just because Steve Spurrier is gone and Tennessee is down. This team won at Alabama and it is time to start giving it some credit.

People will look at the offense and expect a prolific Mark Richt attack, but the Bulldogs are mirroring the success of teams like Notre Dame. They are playing good defense and getting some help on special teams in the return game, and very few teams in the country will match them in terms of skill players. People love to knock quarterback David Greene, but he keeps winning football games.

And while Georgia is for real, Tennessee is not a very good team. Quarterback James Banks was not ready to play and I was a little unsure what the philosophy was with him and C.J. Leak rotating in and out of the game. That follows the season-long theme of the personality of this team is not really being understood.

It also goes to show how important depth is. Casey Clausen goes down and Leak has a tough day and all of a sudden you have a guy in there at QB who was playing wide receiver a few weeks ago. Tennessee could not run its whole offense, and sooner or later teams will be able to defend against an offense that spreads them out and runs quarterback draws all day.

Gators swamped again
The LSU defense proved in a 36-7 rout of Florida that it is pretty darn good. I said before the game that Florida would roll and the Tigers' defense was way overrated, but I was wrong and I have to give a nod to my colleague Mark May for saying LSU would win. I really thought Florida would bounce back in a big fashion and that quarterback Rex Grossman would have a good game, but I was wrong.

I do not think it is unfair to say that Florida is an average team at best and has shown signs of being below average. They are completely discombobulated on offense. On one of Grossman's interceptions he threw into an area that had three wide receivers within three yards of each other. Something is not right there. Last year one guy was flying up one side of the field, another across the middle and everyone was else spread out all over the field and hard to defend.

The offense and the line are not very good, and when you have a quarterback like Grossman who is competitive and wants to make plays, he ends up forcing things, causing turnovers and looking bad.

LSU is probably the team to beat in the SEC West, and Matt Mauck made plays at quarterback that were reminiscent of the way he stepped into the SEC championship game last year. And he did it in The Swamp, where you just don't walk in and win games. That is what was most shocking, that this happened in Gainesville. If Florida has lost that advantage things are not looking good.

Florida fans just have to understand that the team is going to have to fight through these growing pains. It will be interesting to see what happens with this team, if the staff can recruit the kind of players it needs to run a new systems and get back to where they used to be.

Irish and Falcons ready to get defensive
It is not a surprise anymore when Notre Dame wins a game like its 14-6 victory over Pittsburgh. The Irish continue to get turnovers and play good defense when it counts, and they do not turn the ball over themselves. It doesn't matter what the final stats say, I am a believer. I said earlier this year that Notre Dame would be undefeated going into the Florida State game and I still think that will happen.

But now the Irish run into an Air Force team that is just like them. The Falcons have the best defense in the Mountain West conference and it looked very good in limiting BYU to just nine points last week.

We know going into the game that Notre Dame is going to do nothing on offense, that is a given. Air Force will struggle on offense as well because the ND defense is pretty good, too. And I don't think either team will turn the ball over, so the final score might end up being something like 6-3. I will still pick Notre Dame to win, but that's the kind of game we are going to see.

Notre Dame has played within itself all year, waiting for teams to make mistakes that could be capitalized on, but Air Force is not going to make those kinds of mistakes. The Falcons have a great quarterback in Chance Harridge and that AFA defense also creates turnovers and will give the Irish a tough time. It should make for a great game pitting two teams with similar philosophies.

Giving the Blackshirts their due
All of us analysts are quick to jump on teams when things go wrong and we tend to let things slide when there is improvement. So it should be pointed out that Nebraska defensive coordinator Craig Bohl and the Blackshirt defense deserve a game ball for the handling of Missouri.

Quarterback Brad Smith was able to lead the Tigers' offense to just 196 total yards a week after making Oklahoma look bad and after the Cornhuskers struggled against Seneca Wallace earlier this year. This was without Chris Kelsay, their best defensive lineman, who was out with a pulled hamstring. They deserve some credit after we ripped the and we need to say "Good job."

It is disappointing, though, that Jammal Lord was ticketed for disturbing the peace after the game. I feel sorry for Frank Solich because he cannot catch a break. He finally wins a couple of games in a row and has some momentum building and then his quarterback gets in some trouble. Now what does he do?

I think the right thing to do is sit him for a week. I know Nebraska is going to Oklahoma State this week and there is always an upset lying in the weeds in Stillwater, but I think the right thing to do is to sit him down.

Trev Alberts is a college football analyst for ESPN. He contributes a weekly column to ESPN.com.