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Posted 11/12/2009 at 02:18 AM
On to a preview of two of Saturday’s best games on the college gridiron. I’ll look at Notre Dame-Pittsburgh and the absolutely huge game in the Mountain West between Utah and TCU.
Charlie Weis is back on the hot seat at Notre Dame, at least in the minds of the media and the fans. Is that a knee jerk reaction to the loss suffered last Saturday to Navy? I don’t think it is. The Fighting Irish were supposed to break through this year and at least get to a high level bowl game, if not one of the BCS extravaganzas. That’s not going to happen. Notre Dame is now 6-3, and four of those wins were narrow escapes, all in games where the Irish were favored. I’m pretty sure Weis needs to, at the very minimum, win two of his last three games to get to 8-4 and then finish things off with a bowl victory to keep his job. That won’t be easy, as Notre Dame has road games at Pittsburgh and Stanford sandwiched around a home game against a gritty Connecticut entry. In other words, Weis is in trouble. I don’t see how he can’t be at this point.
But if it sounds like I’m readying myself to fire against the Irish on Saturday, that’s not the case. First off, it’s not like they’re getting destroyed on a weekly basis. The three losses are by a combined 13 points. From a trend standpoint, simply taking the points in any Notre Dame game has produced eight straight winners. And while I’m sure Pittsburgh wants this win, the fact is they have two huge Big East tilts coming up with rival West Virginia and unbeaten Cincinnati. The fact is this game is actually kind of meaningless for the Panthers. If they win their last two conference games, they get a BCS bowl. What they do Saturday against Notre Dame won’t matter. By the way, the road team has won the last four Notre Dame-Pitt meetings. That really doesn’t mean anything, but I just thought I would mention it.
Okay, there’s the case for Notre Dame, and it’s actually a pretty good one. Here’s the problem. The Irish have had trouble all season up the gut on defense, and Pittsburgh has evolved into a true power offense. The Panthers have rushed for 905 yards in their last four outings, topping 200 yards in each game. So while the situation clearly favors taking the points with Notre Dame, the matchup points to Pittsburgh. Push comes to shove, I take the points with Notre Dame, but I think there are better opportunities elsewhere on this card.
Utah is having another terrific season. This an absolutely terrific program that’s been vastly underrated nationally for several years now. I think Kyle Whittingham is one of the best coaches in the country, and his teams simply don’t rattle in big games. But the Utes are going up against a monster this Saturday. TCU is playing great football, they have legit killer instinct, and this is the game they’ve been pointing to all season.
The Horned Frogs had a close call back in early October against Air Force. They were the dominant team throughout that game, but they were sloppy. The Frogs had a pair of red zone turnovers and allowed a late Air Force score off another mistake that let the Falcons hang in right until the final gun. Head coach Gary Patterson was unhappy with the sloppy performance and ever since, TCU has simply annihilated everything in sight. They’ve outscored their last four opponents 178-25. Granted, three of those games were against less than outstanding MWC competition. But that 38-7 shellacking of BYU in Provo was nothing short of sensational, and you have to be impressed by this team’s commitment to playing hard for 60 minutes every week regardless of the score or the opponent.
The oddsmakers did a good job assigning a number to this game. I was hoping to see TCU at about -14, and despite my very high opinion of Utah, I was well prepared to give the points. TCU is simply a superior team to the Utes, and this is their “mission” game. But the guys setting the lines decided to make things difficult, opening the game at -17?. Even that high impost hasn’t kept the bettors from firing on TCU with both fists, as the game is now up to 19?.
I don’t see this as a close game. But the fact that the number was so high to begin with, and has now risen even more, will ultimately cause me to keep this play small, if I get involved at all. The players are betting this one like it’s already been played, and I don’t like being on public sides, particularly in high visibility games. I’ll still lean TCU’s way, but the bottom line is that if you didn’t play the “good” number, you certainly should not play it now that it’s even more inflated.
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