Radical Georgia Moderate

Gambling on college football, even when only pride is at stake, is a fool’s errand.

Maybe I’ve just drank away one too many brain cells, but I don’t ever remember there being so many upsets of highly-ranked teams in a single week. And Kentucky and South Florida are in the top 10. Huh?

Posted without commentary…

It’s amazing what knowing the betting rules will do for one’s score. I’m not out of this thing yet anyway.

Hurrah, I am getting my ass kicked in my own contest. The only players with scores lower than mine are those who never submitted their picks or those who missed a week. I made the bonehead play of picking UGA over South Carolina, which I feared I’d regret.

Yahoo’s interface kind of sucks, and I’ll probably pick a different site next year, but at least it gives us scores nice and quickly. Here are the week 1 NCAA picks results:

And about that Cal-Tennessee game? I’m disappointed, but if you’d told me Erik Ainge was going to throw for 277 yards and that UT would run for over 100, I’d have figured the Vols had pulled that one out.

People are complaining about no big plays in the run game, but when the quarterback throws 40 times because a fumble and special teams mistake has you down 14, you don’t get to run the ball all that much. The UT O-line looked like it had the better of the Cal D-line most of the night (except in the red zone). Ainge barely got touched, having all the time in the world to pick receivers. Of course, when your freshman receivers can’t get open downfield, you have to settle for four-yard underneath passes. Hmm…

Kick coverage did look truly atrocious, which has become a UT trademark the past few years.

I’m withholding judgment on the defense, however, until a couple of more games have been played. Cal isn’t the best team to break in three new starters in the secondary. Their lack of experience showed.

I’m not as worried as I was earlier about UT blowing games they should win easily. I am worried, however, that if a team is able to burn the UT secondary early for big scores, that UT won’t be able to throw it downfield to catch up quickly. They’re good enough to beat Florida and Georgia based on what I saw from those two teams last night, but as you know, that doesn’t mean they will. I didn’t get to see SC, Kentucky or Vandy play, but they all easily handled inferior opponents.

Things could be worse. At least UT didn’t lose to a “playoff division” team (sorry Ben).