What I Learned, Week 3

A big shake up in the top 25 this week. We saw a couple of upsets, teams that proved they weren't deserving of the top 20, and teams that showed were underrated. What were some of the most important lessons of the week?

1. Gotta Admit, They're Consistent: For the third year in a row, USC opened the season overwhelming a non-BCS school and then beat up on a major BCS school. And, for the third year in a row, they celebrated by losing their Pac 10 opener to a team that they should have been able to completely overwhelm based on talent alone. While a lot of credit is due to Washington and coach Steve Sarkisian, we are also seeing a fundamental flaw in Pete Carroll's approach to college football. His is an expert motivator that gets incredible emotion out of his team. Unfortunately, when you are dealing with 18-21 year old kids, there will always be a let down at some point because they simply cannot contain that level of energy for three straight months. While Carroll is arguably the best big game coach in America because of how jacked up he gets his team, he may need to reconsider his approach to the regular season by keeping his team more even keel.

2. No BCS Outsiders at the Final Dance: It appeared as if the BCS was finally going to have someone crash the title game party. BYU was one of the most highly preseason ranked non-BCS school, then jumped into the top 10 sooner than any non-BCS school after their week one upset of Oklahoma in Dallas. You could almost feel the urine that was running down the collective legs of the media in glee now that they could finally show the BCS was flawed when an undefeated BYU missed the game. Granted, the would have have the chance to vote BYU into the final game, more or less giving them the final say and who does actually make it into the game, but that's another matter. Anyway, with BYU getting its hip broken by geriatric Bobby Bowden and Utah losing to Oregon despite Orrin Hatch's guarantee of holy retribution for 2008. Combined with Boise looking vulnerable on the road against Fresno State, it appears as if we will have another title game pitting two BCS schools.

3. Lane Kiffin Actually Does Have A Purpose: Is that purpose to win football games? No, certainly not. But his Volunteers went into The Swamp as 30 point underdogs, and kept it to a 10 point spread and even threatened to take the game down to the last possession in the 4th quarter. In doing so, he showed many vulnerabilities that most people did not realize the Gators have. Florida's run defense was supposedly unpenetrable, but Tennessee gashed them for 117 yards without resorting to any misdirections-- it was pure power by their O line and strong running backs. They also showed how you can slow down Florida's vaunted offense. Tim Tebow cannot throw deep against D-1A teams (sorry, Charleston Southern an Jesus), so by playing cover 1 you can bring up a safety to slow Florida's run game and shut down the underneath routes. I'm not sure if anyone in the SEC can beat Florida in the regular season, but the myth that Florida was unstoppable was seriously challenged by UT this weekend.