Wish me luck. I am going to be out of pocket this weekend: I'm going to the LSU-Auburn game with some friends. Fortunately I'm going to be in the part of the state that doesn't want to string me up, so I should be okay. I don't think it will disturb posting schedules too much but today and Monday might be a little light.

Obviously, there has not been a UFR as promised. I'm through most of the game and it will be up Monday/Tuesday next week.

Oh. My. God. I have veins in my head labeled "rupture in case of clock management malfeasance" that I have to get replaced on a weekly basis every fall, but holy God I have never seen anything quite as inept as "Coach Stew" screwing around with the clock last night.

So Colorado and West Virginia are tied 14-14 and West Virginia is putting together a potential gamewinning drive. They're on the 50 with 1:10 left and two timeouts. (4th Q PBP.)On first down they hit Devine for four yards and let the clock run. This would be fine if you could get to the line with a play ready to go; instead WVU burns 25-30 seconds screwing around. After getting stuffed for the fifth or sixth time on short yardage, they run the clock down to four seconds and try a Hail Mary. Erin Andrews then describes the scene on the sideline as "chaos… carnage… limbs everywhere, disorganization… blood".

1. How do you burn 30 seconds like that in your two-minute drill?
2. How do you not have the ability to pick up a QB sneak or even a short yardage play four or five times in a game?
3. How do you see yourself stuffed four or five times on runs up the gut on third and short and not, I dunno, try anything else?

And oh my god the sideline interviews. You just know, don't you? You, the college football viewer, have seen dozens and dozens of successful college football coaches and not one of them is like Bill Stewart in any way whatsoever.

Prediction: in two or three years there will be a post on this blog attempting to decide what was the most obviously terrible hire in college football history: Bobby Williams or Bill Stewart? (I guess you can throw Gerry Faust in there, too.)

Again with the high school football. Jeremy Gallon and Apopka take on Mississippi powerhouse South Panola tonight on ESPNU at 8. I don't get ESPNU and will probably be in Alabama by then, anyway, but if anyone's got it and can compile a set of Gallon clips that would be excellent.

Oh, snap. I guess you can do this when you're USC and you've just bombed Ohio State 35-3, but man these guys are carpet bombing the Buckeyes with incendiary quotes:

“Easy” was one word defensive end Kyle Moore used after missing practice two days last week with back spasms before having the game of his life (eight tackles, a fumble recovery, two tackles for loss for 19 yards, including a sack for 15).

“You can tell they don’t practice full speed,” Moore said of the massive Buckeyes who made it “easy” to fly past them.

“They were still getting into their (first blocking) move, and we’d already be into our second move (on defense) and past them,” Moore said.

Conference solidarity only applies when you're not trying to scratch out a Motor City Bowl bid, so: ha-ha.

Argh why would you call a backwards pass? The header to the left was a common complaint in the aftermath of the first disastrous fumble of many disastrous fumbles. This complaint is answered simply: no one called a backwards pass.

Rodriguez clarified that in the weekly Big Ten teleconference thingy:

We want to throw it in front of the receiver, and when you do that it's obviously a forward pass, not a lateral.

That's mostly on Threet then, not Minor.

Who's on what then? I'll have my piece on this in UFR, but Varsity Blue takes a look at the long Tate touchdown, concluding thusly:

The blame for this touchdown does not fall on Stevie Brown. Repeat: Stevie Brown is not culpable. He wasn't exactly stellar the rest of the day, but don't rag on the kid for this touchdown. Our good friend GSimmons (a high school DC who runs Shafer's 3-4 Okie package as his base defense and also knows much more about football than I ever will) lets us know that it appears Michigan is running a read-2 defense, which is a form of cover-2-like-substance. Morgan Trent sees Tate head inside, leading him to believe that Tate will not be a deep vertical threat. Because of this error in judgment, Trent does not cover a deep half, which allows Tate to get behind the defenders.

A commenter protests that gsimmons' meaning is not clear and the man himself descends to clarify:

I don't see Stevie Brown being responsible for a deep zone, if its man, he has back out of the backfield, if its three roll, he has flats, if its 2 read, he has underneath responsibility, one thing for sure, its not a deep quarter zone, you can tell by his alignment, and his eyes.

While I'm not going to dispute gsimmons' assertions about the coverages, I do think that there is a possibility Brown's alignment and eyes were screwed up because he was running the wrong coverage.