Speed Thrills

College Football:

It's now official: the game has changed. Today's game is pure speed and those without it are getting killed, which means the entire Big 10 plus Notre Dame are the prayer rugs of all college football. The Kings of Speed; CAL, Oklahoma, LSU, and Oregon (Oregon?), are the Big Dogs now. I will be astounded if USC, a slow slow slow by comparison team, beats both CAL and Oregon. Florida? They will be tested and may be as fast as last year, if so they will join the elite once again. Best teams? Unless CAL learns how to stop somebody they can't run people to death week after week so they ain't one of them, but the best are Oklahoma, LSU, Oregon (defense still suspect), and probably Florida. Which one? Florida or South Florida, the one that just beat Auburn? South Florida has speed to burn. Looks to me like the entire Big Ten has to rebuild. Watching the Penn State-Notre Dame horse and buggy show I was thinking that the entire game was a slo-mo replay of a game from the 1940s.

Sort of surprise, and I'd say a pleasant one, is Washington where the Notre Dame fired Willingham has built a very good team with one of the best quarterbacks around; still a year away because of the aforementioned lack of real overall speed, but they could upset either USC or CAL. Notre Dame "won" last year with Willingham's talent, not because of "genius" Fatso's great coaching. I continue to suspect that the Notre Dame alumni just didn't like some Black guy representing their Holy Name. Why else did they trash Willingham? No proof, but I have many Catholic friends who think that it was strictly a racial thing with many rich alums; if the Willingham coached Washington Huskies played the Weiss coached Notre Dame---The Fighting White Irish---they'd be favored by three touchdowns. BTW, the "pampered from birth" Notre Dame quarterback, Clauson, looked pretty good considering he has no such thing as an open receiver unless he's pitching to one of the refs. BTW #2, all of us worry that Clauson will have the same fate as the last "coached from birth" phenom, Todd Marinovich, who most feel ended up on drugs and in continual So-Cal rehab programs because of the pressure put upon him from Day One by his old man.