Business Just Picked Up: Week Three College Football Recap

Now we've got ourselves a football season! Week three finally gave us a good number of match ups that actually told us something about this young season. Alabama and Texas A&M lived up to the hype, and the Pac-12 and Big Ten met in a series of games that separated some potential contenders from definite pretenders. We're only a few weeks away from conference schedules kicking the season into high gear, but this week gave us enough to talk about to make it finally start feeling like fall.

Johnny F'n Football

• Alabama won the game, but ALL HAIL JOHNNY F'n FOOTBALL!!!! College football's game of the year lived up to the hype, and saw Johnny Manziel have the type of gritty losing effort that will make America love him again. The Tide won the game, but they didn't stop Johnny Football. It leaves us to wonder if Johnny Manziel can be stopped. To hell with Teddy Bridgewater, Johnny Football is the new Heisman favorite. Also, is there a person on this planet that wouldn't want to see a Bama/A&M rematch in the final BCS title game? Could you complain too much if one-loss Texas A&M leaped over an undefeated Louisville team to play for the national title?

• I owe AJ McCarron an apology.  I've always given Alabama quarterbacks a hard time, especially AJ McCarron. I always give him his credit as a game manager and a smart player, but I have always contended that he was relatively talentless in the terms of being able to make plays that win games. On Saturday, McCarron out dueled the best gunslinger in the nation, and did so while maintaining his mistake free reputation. AJ McCarron is a really good quarterback. There, I said it. 

• Texas Tech can beat anyone in the Big 12 with Kliff Kingsbury at the helm. The Red Raiders didn't score a million points against TCU but they scored enough to win, and played solid defense against a team that was supposed to contend for the Big 12 title.

•  What the hell happened to Michigan? After two very impressive wins to begin the season, the Wolverines laid an egg at home against a bad Akron team in a game that they should have lost. After two weeks I was certain that we would be seeing Michigan vs Ohio State back to back to finish the regular season, but if Michigan plays like this at any point during the Big Ten schedule, they can't be considered the favorite in their division. 

•  UCLA, not Stanford, may be Oregon's stiffest competition in the Pac-12. The Bruins throttled Nebraska, while Stanford struggled to put away Army. To beat Oregon, it's clear that you're going to have to score at least 30 points [I originally typed 40]. It seems that the only team in the conference that can do that is UCLA. Stanford doesn't seem to have the explosiveness to be able to keep up. 

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  The Belldozer

  Oklahoma found it's quarterback, and now they are a legitimate contender. Even some of the game's best coaches make mistakes sometimes. Clearly Bob Stoops did a bit of over thinking when he questioned whether or not Blake Bell was his QB of the future in Norman. Stoops saw the offense sputter behind freshman Trevor Knight, but with Knight on the shelf, Stoops got a chance to see his second choice prove to be the obvious choice after throwing for 400+ yards and four touchdowns. After being used as a specific package QB for the past two years, Bell finally got a chance to go the full 60 minutes. His success at the position means that OU can make a run at going unbeaten in a weak Big 12 until they meet with Oklahoma State for what could be an epic Bedlam Game. 

• Ole Miss is in the Top 25 to stay.  The Rebs announced their arrival to college football relevance by thrashing Texas in a game where they were flat out the better team. It was by no means an upset. Ole Miss is recruiting at an elite level, and their talent is starting to develop nicely. This team could possibly settle in very nicely behind Alabama, LSU, Georgia, Texas A&M, and South Carolina in the SEC. 

• The Pac -12 is loaded -- ask the Big Ten. One of the more interesting subplots of the weekend was the miniseries of games that took place between the Pac-12 and Big Ten. Three games between evenly matched teams from the two conferences yielded three victories for the Pac-12. Washington exposed Illinois, UCLA handled Nebraska easily, and even Arizona State managed to weasel out a win against a favored Wisconsin team [Cal did lose to Ohio State, but would you trust the Buckeyes to take out Oregon or Stanford on a neutral field?] The Pac-12 should give us entertaining football all year as it looks to be a year where everybody can beat anybody...well, except Oregon. No one in that conference can beat Oregon.