9/15 College Football Picks

Let me start with the most important game for most of you.

Florida State over Wake Forest

This Demon Deacon team has been a pain in the neck to us Seminole fans. This team has really given us problems recently. Including their upset win last year, most of us want no part of Wake Forest. However, this year we should have too much talent for them to compete. I think their upset last year will have us focused as well. Jim Grobe does have great counters to our schemes though and as you know by now I have a tremendous for Jim Grobe. Today I think we win no problem, Jimbo has these boys focused.

Virginia Tech over Pittsburgh

Northern Illinois over Army

Miami over Bethune Cookman

 

Maryland over UCONN

Big game for Maryland with Randy Edsall facing off against his old school. Fresh off an upset win over Temple, the Terps should move to a surprising 3-0 record.

 

Auburn over LA Monroe

This game has a lot more attention after the latter team knocked off Arkansas last week. It seems unlikely that Monroe will knock off a second SEC team in a row and move Auburn to to 0-3 though.

 

Vandy over Presbyterian

Clemson over Furman

 

Alabama over Arkansas

Alabama will absolutely curbstomp Arkansas. I am calling for a huge margin of victory. We are talking 50 points maybe. Alabama is looking to make a statement and Arkansas is looking like a pile of garbage this year. John L.Smith was such a terrible coaching decision as I said on this blog at the time. That was the worst coaching hire made in an extremely long time and Arkansas will have a rough year because of it.

 

Georgia Tech over UVA

Georgia Tech has looked better this year from what I have seen. Love Mike London as a coach, but they looked pretty horrible last week.

 

Upset Special #1

Boston College over Northwestern

So not much of an upset, but Northwestern is 2-0 and coming off a huge win over Vandy. BC looks ready to go. They did lose to Miami though, so I am not super confident in this pick.

 

Louisville over UNC

Louisville looks tough. UNC doesn't. This one might not be close.

 

Penn State over Navy

Penn State looked good last week and Navy has not looked to great this year. Penn State gets their first win since 1998 in this one.

 

Upset Special #2

SMU over A&M

Coming off a hard fought loss to the Gators, SMU welcomes the Aggies. These guys want to prove they can play with the big boys and that they are back.

 

NC State over South Alabama

 

Tennessee over Florida

The Vols want to prove they are a threat again in the SEC East and this is a statement game for them.

Missouri over Arizona State

Arizona State is one of the few teams that I have not seen this season. I have seen Missouri and they looked good for most of the game against a great Georgia team. Think Missouri wins a close game today.

 

South Carolina over UAB

Miss State over Troy

Georgia over Florida Atlantic

LSU over Idaho

 

Texas over Ole Miss

The Longhorns look to prove they are legit and make a statement today against the SEC.

 

Bonus Pick: Upset Special #3

Notre Dame over Michigan State

The Fighting Irish against Sparty looks like a toss up game to me. This game definitely could go either way. It will be interesting to see how the Irish do as the competition heats up. This is the game of the day for me.

 

-Noland



Jim Grobe is a Class Act

As I was looking up scandals of football teams and found this and was reminded of this. It got me thinking of how prevalent academic cheating could be in college sports. There are some that think it happens everywhere. There are some athletes who you can't imagine have the ability to skate by. Some of us who hear an athlete on TV or are on campus with an athlete cannot believe that they pass their classes. Now, the athletes I do know take academics very seriously and work very hard. I do not want to take a shot at them and what they do, but many schools do seem to curb the rules for their athletes and usually it is football and men's basketball when that seems to happen. While I kept seeing these stories I feel bad for the athletes that do the right thing and for everybody who thinks everyone cheats. I was talking with someone about recruiting and he said everyone cheats a bit for recruits. My first thought was not Jim Grobe. And that should tell you all you need to know about Jim Grobe, but I won't stop there.

In one of the articles I found in yahoo, this is what it said.

"So much attention is being put on the quality of recruit a coach brings in, and not enough (if any) emphasis is put on the educational aspects. Heck, college football analysts often bring up character issues; why can't educational issues become more of a discussed topic?
Having spent time at both Ohio State and Wake Forest, I see a significant difference even in the athletes at the two universities I have attended. At Ohio State, you could have students leaving class in the middle of the lecture, or after a big test grade was received. It seemed that pretty much any student athlete could "slip" by and remain academically eligible.
At Wake Forest, I've seen athletes that all seem to take academics seriously. I'm not saying that all student athletes at Wake are committed at the same level, but it is important to the program. My point has nothing to do with the quality of normal student at each university; rather, it is to stress what I've seen as a student on each of these campuses."
Kobayashi, Forrest 2007

And there it is, Wake Forest is all class.

-Noland