College Football Tailgate Thread
Last edited Sat Sep 21, 2013, 03:24 PM - Edit history (1)
Who are you watching/rooting for today? My team has big match-up on the road against Stanford.
So far in top 25 Ohio State & Louisville are smashing non-BCS Florida schools. However, Georgia is in a tight one against North Texas.
Also my other team--Colorado St has a huge road match-up against Alabama. I don't expect anything close to a win but the coach at CSU was an offensive coordinator under Saban.
Other big top 25 matchups are
Auburn vs 6 LSU
Tennessee vs 19 Florida
LA Monroe vs 20 Baylor
Michigan St vs 22 Notre Dame
23 Arizona State vs 5 Stanford
= new reply since forum marked as read
Hard to forget since I know of one other ASU fan that posts here besides you. 
What do you think of their chances at the Pac-12 South title?
I try to realize I'm a homer but believe they're the favorite. Kelly was one of the nation's leaders in YPA last year so he should be solid. They returned 14 starters but the receivers and line were hit hard. Still waiting for that attacking D to show up though.
The schedule works out somewhat favorably. Home games against USC, Washington, and Arizona. They have Utah, Washington St, and UCLA on the road. WSU looks very improved and they have a very noisy place, which combined with bad weather makes it an incredibly difficult place to play. UCLA has Stanford & Oregon on the schedule so that looks favorable in-case they have to absorb a loss at UCLA.
I'm also not overlooking Oregon State either, that loss to Eastern Washington wasn't a bad loss. EWU won a national championship in 2010 and was in the National Semifinals last season.
All that said, I'm prepared for last second losses, bonehead mistakes to cost us victories, and referee errors. The funny thing about that game against Wisconsin is that I'm not used to something like that happening to the opponent, it's usually the other way around for teams I root for.
I don't know about this team... They still look very much like the Sun Devils we have seen in the past three years (thankfully minus all the penalties of the Erickson teams). A team unable to pull away and truly put a game on ice against good opposition. What got me most about the Wisconsin game, was that, after we managed to pull ahead, on our last drive, instead of concentrating on running out the clock, we got plays ending up out of bounds and passing plays (my broadcast crapped out about then, so I'm going from what I read), which makes me question the play calling and Todd Graham's time management skills.
It all led to us giving the ball back to Wisconsin with enough time for them to move downfield, which brought back some terrible memories of Bruce Snyder's "prevent" defenses that lost us many a game. We ended up getting lucky with Winconsin trying to center the ball instead of just kicking the FG, and the refs screwing up badly. It was surprising to see something like that go our way for once, but of course, when we get lucky, the refs screw up so egregiously that we're gonna hear about it for a long time! After losing yesterday there were some Badger fans rubbing it in over on Sparky's Pigskin.
I'm not sure about winning the Pac-12 South; we'll know more after we play USC, and it will ultimately hinge on us beating UCLA. Kelly seems streaky, and inaccurate we throwing deep. He has thrown some odd passes, don't know what he was seeing there. Of course, so far only Strong seems to be a reliable WR, with WR #3 (Smith?) dropping a lot of passes. We've got good RBs, but no consistent running game, which makes me think the O-Line isn't up to the task (but then our O-Line quality has been lacking all the way back to the Koetter years). We're supposed to be fast, but I haven't seen all this speed yet. And Deantre Lewis and Chris Coyle, to me, are underused.
I think we lost a lot when Noel Mazzone was fired (and Brock Osweiler left with him). He seemed to have a solid offense figured out with quick, short, high percentage passes. Graham seems to have moved away from that kind of offense; we haven't been establishing the run and the passing game is all over the place.
All in all, I think we'll end up somewhere around 8-4 or 7-5, which means we're gonna need help to win the South. And the future seems unclear; SC is SC, they could be back on top anytime (probably after dumping Kiffin) and UCLA has a lot of buzz on their side, so a lot will depend on whether Graham can step up his recruiting to compete.
Whoa, got a little carried away with my armchair analysis...
