• 4th & 1: Bye week bonus

      4th and 1

      This week: BYE

      We’re going to change it up a bit this week, since OU had the weekend off. Rather than going through four plays and a report card, we’re going to offer four observations from the week and a prediction for the big game in South Bend.

      1. Snoozer scheduling
      We can only hope the four team playoff brings an end to the kind of game slate we saw this past weekend. Among teams that littered the schedule, the following teams might want to consider giving their defense the week off, then quit. Florida A&M, ULM, Savannah State and Florida International gave up a combined 295 points, and scored a combined 14. No matter how you look at it, that’s pathetic. Whether you want to blame the big schools for scheduling these kinds of games, or the small schools for grabbing a pay check, it’s not good for college football or it’s fans. Let’s hope the pressure is increased to schedule tougher out of conference opponents when the playoff rolls around.

      2. Pellini versus the NU faithful.
      When the Huskers took the field Saturday against South Dakota State, Bo Pellini was met with a mixture of cheers and boos. Not hard to believe given his recent comments about the fans. When SDSU took a three point lead into the second quarter, it looked as though Pellini would be lucky to finish the season. Fortunately for Bo, the Huskers picked it up and went on to win 54-20, but the rumble about Pellini’s future isn't going away. We think it’s pretty bad that Bo had such harsh words for the Husker fans, but think it’s even worse that some reporter sat on that audio for two years before going public. It’s not going to get any easier for Bo, but a weak Big Ten should help quiet the storm, for a while anyway.

      3. Alternate Universe
      Last year, all we heard about was the porous Big XII defenses and the high octane offenses. The Big XII was perceived to be the “no defense” conference, and prognosticators would have you believe every game was a 71-70 affair, and some were. Now, fast forward to week 4 of the current season. It’s early in the conference schedule, but through three games, the final scores have been: 16-6, 20-10 and 31-21. Either the departure of most of last year’s starting quarterback’s has had a major impact, or Big XII defensive coordinators worked overtime in the off-season. We think it’s a little of both.

      4. Texas Football
      No, this isn't a commentary of the state of the Longhorn program. This is a literal observation on college football in the state of Texas. After spending most of the day watching over-matched teams play schedule filler to bigger names, we couldn't help but notice how many Texas programs there were on TV yesterday. We were able to watch Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, North Texas, Baylor, Rice, Houston, SMU, UTSA, UTEP and Texas State play. By our count, only TCU got the day off. If you are a football fan of Texas college football, yesterday was glorious. For the rest of us, it was kinda brutal.

      And 1

      Oklahoma has rivals. Texas will always top that list, but there are the others that line up hoping to be viewed as a rival. However, there is one team that isn't really interested in being a rival, but they enjoy the same reaction and respect from Sooner fans: Notre Dame. Call it luck, call it talent, call it misfortune, but whatever you call it, OU is 1-9 against the Domers.

      Coming off of their national title game embarrassment, Notre Dame doesn't appear to be quite as polished this year. They’re not particularly dangerous on offense (71st in total offense), and they don’t put the fear of God into opposing teams on defense (41st in total defense). What they have done, and done well the past year and a half, is win. Notre Dame is 16-2 since the start of the 2012 season.

      If Stoops is to get the golden monkey off of his back, the offense will have to do better than the 15 total rushing yards they managed last year. In addition, this year’s Sooner defense will have to stiffen up and allow less than the 215 rushing yards they gave up in the same game. We think the Sooners will do both. We expect to see much more production out of the running back by committee, and expect the revamped defense to limit Notre Dame’s ground game while making Irish QB Tommy Rees uncomfortable. It’s going to be a tough game, in a tough environment, but we see Oklahoma winning this one:

      Oklahoma 28
      Notre Dame 24
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