College football: 20 questions worth pondering

Remarkably, even though hurricane season is still not over, the college football season has reached the month of November. It is difficult to believe that it wasn’t that long ago that Matt Barkley was considered a lock for the Heisman Trophy and Florida State was a candidate to play in the national championship game.

Barkley wasn’t even the best quarterback named Matt on the field Saturday (Arizona’s Matt Scott was) as USC lost for a second time. Florida State will continue to crush mediocre ACC teams the way it crushed Duke on Saturday and it will mean nothing because the Seminoles couldn’t hold a 16-0 lead against a North Carolina State team that probably should have lost to Maryland a week ago.

Archive

• facebook
• RSS

Many questions have been answered during the season’s first nine weeks, but many remain. Here are 20 questions worth pondering based on what we have seen so far.

Question 1: Is Notre Dame, 8-0 after winning 30-13 at Oklahoma on Saturday night, for real?

Answer: Absolutely. This is a truly great defense and the offense does what it has to do to win. The Irish are almost certain to finish undefeated. They have three virtual walkover games against future ACC brethren Pittsburgh, Boston College and Wake Forest (no wonder they wanted to join the league) before finishing at USC, which has been exposed as a pretty team with little soul.

Question 2: Will Bob Stoops ever win another important game?

Answer: Does Texas count? The guy they used to call, “Big Game Bob” is now 17-14 the last eight years in games against ranked teams. He won a national championship when he was 40; at 52, his teams beat up on bad teams (like Texas this year) and disappear down the rabbit hole against good ones. The Sooners have gone from playing national title games to playing The Sun Bowl. Yikes.

Question 3: Is Randy Edsall doing a better job at Maryland this season than last season.

Answer: Yes. It would be impossible to be as bad as he was in 2011, and the presence of Stefon Diggs while playing a second-rate schedule would make anyone look like a reasonably good coach.

Question 4: Should anyone other than Kansas State quarterback Collin Klein and Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o be considered for the Heisman Trophy at this point?

Answer: No. They shouldn’t even invite a third player to New York.

Question 5: Did Oregon run up the score in a 70-14 rout of Colorado on Saturday?

Answer: No. Oregon ran down the score. It was 56-0 at halftime and the Ducks could have scored 100 against a truly god-awful team. They did everything but kneel down throughout the second half.

Question 6: Is it possible the season could end with four unbeaten teams?

Answer: What could be better than watching the BCS twits and apologists explain to the players from the two teams left out why a computer and a bunch of football fans (see the Harris poll) decided their undefeated season didn’t rate a shot to play for the title? Sadly, two of the four will probably go down: Oregon and Kansas State still have very tough schedules. Alabama and Notre Dame are more likely to win out. (Note to Louisville: Yes, we know you’re unbeaten but check your schedule).