Week Five: Two Weeks Remain

Black Saturday.

Need I say more?

If you were a ranked team this past weekend, you had a 1 in 4 shot of losing to a lower ranked or unranked opponent. It seems there is always an early season "Black Saturday" and this was it. There was Oregon State over #1 USC, Alabama over #3 Georgia, Mississippi over #4 Florida, Michigan over #9 Wisconsin, Navy over #16 Wake Forest, Maryland over #20 Clemson, and Houston over #23 East Carolina. That's a rough weekend for the ranked!

The rankings come out and lo and behold, we've got more SEC-love again. Alabama jumps to #2 in the AP poll with LSU #3?? What is it that the pigskin prognosticators love about the SEC?

Ahhhhh but look at the Big 12 - what must now be considered the strongest conference in the country. Let's see - #1 Oklahoma, #4 Missouri, #5 Texas, #7 Texas Tech, #16 Kansas, and #21 Oklahoma State. Six teams in the top 25 - hell, four teams in the Southern Division alone! 'Nuff said.

On the same note, let's look at what lies ahead in two weeks time. Yes, that special day that defines every college football season. Texas - OU ... October 11th. Dallas. The winner becomes the probable favorite to head to the Big 12 championship (assuming no strange act of nature, act of congress, etc). The loser - regardless of how many victories attained afterwards - will head to some lame bowl since both teams are in the South Divison. Even though the loser could end up 12-1, they will be out of luck because they will lose a tie with the South Division champion (again, the most likely scenario). This doesn't factor in those pesky Red Raiders, who could be in the best position to slip into the Big 12 championship from the South Division.

So the countdown to October 11 - and the destiny of the Big 12 South  for 2008 - begins ... but until then, there's a difficult road trip to mile high Colorado this Saturday, just to keep us out of wind and on our toes.