Week 1 College Football Recap

1. ACC. Best game without a doubt was Miami v. Florida State. Both quarterbacks had career nights and offense was a plenty as neither defense looked quite as "fast" as predicted. Miami's Jacory Harris had 386 passing yards, approximately double the yards he's had in any game to-date. And FSU's QB Christian Ponder looked nothing like he did in 2008, luckily. Although they lost the game, a bright spot for the Seminoles is true freshman Greg Reid who forced the pick-6 of Harris with less than 12 minutes remaining in the 4th quarter and in the final drive of the game gave Florida State field position in Miami territory with his kick return. Luckily an ACC win was guaranteed in this game because it was a rough start for the conference. In non-conference match-ups they went 4-6, including two losses to FCS schools thanks to Duke (v. Richmond) and Viginia (v. William and Mary). Btw, the fact that Duke was upset by Richmond shouldn't be that surprising considering they did the exact same thing to the Blue Devils in 2006. Something to keep an eye on for next week is Clemson's C.J. Spiller. The holder of 10 school records was injured on a punt return in the second quarter last week against Middle Tennessee State and didn't return. Spiller claims his foot/hamstring (conflicting reports) injury is "fine" and it better be as the Tigers play Georgia Tech next week and will need to put up some decent numbers on the ground to compete with a team that had 335 rushing yards last week (albeit against Jacksonville State, but still...)

2. The Big Ten. They escaped with some extremely close wins over formidable opponents such as Navy, Syracuse and Iowa State (obviously joking) and once again primed the media for discussions regarding how over-rated and slow they are. As I always do, I will reiterate how this first week generally means nothing as long as you win. The only team that shocked me was Illinois and how terrible they were again Missouri. The latter lost Chase Daniel and Jeremy Maclin and still put up 37 points against a team that finished in the top-20 in total defense last year. And speaking of 2008, in this contest last year, Illinois passed for 451 yards and 5 touchdowns and scored 52 points compared to 179 yards and zero touchdowns through the air and just 9 points this year. Perhaps injuries may have been a small excuse for the Illini though... Arrelious Benn and Jason Ford left early with ankle sprains while Daniel Dufrene sat out with...you can guess...an ankle injury. And at least for week 1, Shonn Greene's absense was noteable. As a team Iowa had a total of 87 yards rushing, while Greene had at least 100 yards on the ground in every single game in 2008. He was second in the nation only to UConn's Donald Brown and somehow I have both of them on my fantasy team this year (I'll explain later but having two rookies isn't exactly a good thing and that's not even the half of it).

3. The Pac-10. There was nothing to learn about this conference this week other than the fact that Oregon has some issues. We'll see how SC handles losing 11 players to the NFL Draft next week when they visit the Horseshoe. Cal's 52-13 win over Maryland was somewhat unexpected but I suppose the Terrapins couldn't handle losing 4 of their top 5 tacklers and having one of the most inexperienced O-lines in the nation. Cal went 9-4 in 2008 and one would expect them to improve upon that in 2009 given the talent returning, the emergence of Jahvid Best, hopefully not having to deal with the injury problems from last year and the fact that the dizzying alternation between Nate Longshore and Kevin Riley at quarterback is a moot concern. But even with a certain starter in Riley, given that Jeff Tedford seems to hit 9 or 10 wins only every other year, I wouldn't be surprised if this team somehow ends up stepping down a notch.

4. The Big 12. The offense we saw from Oklahoma this weekend had practically nothing in common with the record-setting one of 2008. With Jermaine Gresham out due to injury and Sam Bradford going down with a shoulder sprain, the only familiar faces out there were at tailback and left tackle. And having 9 guys back from a defense that ranked 99th last year against the pass didn't help, especially going against Max Hall.

5. The Big East. Let's go UC. I tried to pick Cincinnati against the spread in the pool I'm in but the guys running it forgot to tell me that the rules require me to pick a team playing on Saturday only. Bummer.

6. The SEC. I really look forward to watching Alabama this year...and can't wait to find out which regular season game Florida loses : )