OT: Game o' the Wk -- MINIMUM -- s'right here in your PAC 12 Wk 11

Owusu is def out as of today — which may affect the current 3.5 — but Ertz’s status remains unknown (and could also be signif).

U Dub @ No. 18 SC (-11 ½)

Under other circumstances (meaning bowl eligibility), this would be a trap game for the Rubbers, w/ OR coming next. But every game’s a bowl from here on for them, and Barkley doubtless wants to keep making his Heisman case as well. The Dub-fense was good vs. OR, but I say SC still covers here. Then they’ll prolly get whomped at Autzen, depending on how angry OR is.

SC 40-17. An encouragingly workmanlike job by the Rubbers, who have improved steadily over the season. It’ll be interesting to what the spread for SC @ OR next week is. I don’t think Barkley & Co. have a real chance at Autzen (any more than STA did last yr there), but they may make a good 1st half or 3 quarters of it.

Zona (-10 ½) @ Colo

Utterly meaningless games between big-losing teams can be agonizing to call, and here’s a good case in pt. CO is finally out of its 5-ranked-teams-in-a-row nightmare and playing at home, so they’re gonna be pumped. Sort of. Foles SHOULD go berserk against their matador DEF— but he shoulda last wk @ home too, and didn’t. Still, on quality athletes and injury-availability, take the Zorros to win/beat here. But not for big rubles, o’ course.

Colo 48-29. A mountain windstorm added some character to this one, an asset this Zona team really proved once and for all that it lacks. Congrats to the no-longer-entirely-hapless Flubbaloes for their first conf win.

OSU @ Cal (-9 ½)

With net rushing yds below 40 in the last 2 games and Mannion running for his life, da Beavs are threatening to chalk up their worst season since what, some time in the previous century. Meanwhile da Bearsss ran wild last wk (288!) and need this one big-time to bowlify—since they lose the last two pretty much automatically (@ STA and @ ASU). So here they win/beat, sez I.

Cal 23-6. Yup, Cal plays in Dec. thx to this effort, in which they went even berserker on the ground than last wk: 300 yds!! If they get somebody fairly crummy in a bowl, they might win. In the meantime, watch out Snodfart, whom they’ll hit on a Massive Down week…

UCLA @ Utah (-7)

Hard to believe UCLA will be embowled Nov. 19 when they beat CO, but they will. Back on earth, this wk a taking-off UT performs the same stunt with rather more confidence by beating them — and prolly by more than this 7 after everything worked so well at Zona. Both are strange teams, but UT covers here as the, um, normaler (and better-coached) one.

Utah 31-6. Yes, the UCLA we know ‘n’ love is back, mysteriously outgaining a one-dimensional Let’s Run John White UT team yet losing the game by 25. Hey Westwood, bus ticket time for you-know-who! No, seriously this time.

No. 6 Orygun @ No. 2/3 Snodfart (-3 ½)

Possibly a better Game o’ the Century here – but then, almost any good game would look better than last Sat.’s plodding FG festival. To cases: OR finally has the whole varsity back, while STA loses a key TE and their only deep threat — and they’re still a 3.5 fave? Somebody in Vegas has been into the Kool-Aid. Gotta take OR to beat, though I wouldn’t put it past Luck & Co., after that USC comeback, to pull out a last-min W @ home.

OR 53-30. Five turnovers, sure, but the real diff was as expected: mo better athletes at mo positions. STA would need to play a perfect game w/ what they have for a W here, and they were a long way from that. Hard to say how OR would do NOW vs. No. 1, but it’s hard to see them losing to anybody at this pt.: too many weapons.

ASU (-12) @ Wazoo

It’s still not clear how the Scum Devils managed to lose in the Rose Bowl last wk, but they did, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory three [3 ] times. They almost DESERVE to be visited by the Curse of the Pelouse for that—but Wazoo sucked so across-the-board bad @ Cal last wk that even witchcraft is unlikely to save them now (or Wulff, who’s 8-38 overall, 3-30 conf). So take the Debbils to beat here, salvaging some scraps of dignity.

Wazoo 37-27. Did I mention that the desert teams suck on the road? Well, they do. On the other hand, the bigger story here is: Wazoo starts a FR QB (why not?) named Halliday, and the kid goes nuts— big-time. It may be a career game 27-36/494 [!]/4 or the start of sth big, but whatever – some game! Win out and Wazoo bowlifies. Now THERE’S some insanity for ya…

Regional Pick o’ the Wick: TCU @ No. 5 Boise (-14 ½)

Compared to ’10 this is a "bust" yr for TCU after 2 L’s to pretty good teams. Be nice if the frickin’ Frogs made this contest close, as I can’t abide Boise, but I don’t think they will: this is the Blue Whiners last chance to show the BCS anything, the rest of the way out is by-the-numbers (Dago, WYO, N. Mex). So take Boise to beat here, sigh, as Moore does his gimme-the-Heisman routine again.

TCU 36-35. It’s rare, but sometimes you don’t too feel bad about losing a bet – and here’s a case in pt. Technically this L is Boise’s own fault, as they missed an easy enough FG as time expired (hello 2010). But TCU played a truly inspired game and def deserved the W. And thx to them we get some blessed relief from the incessant Boise WE DERSERVE MORE RECOGNITION foghorn.

So we’re .500 for Nov. Next wk: 5 W’s ATS— or die!

[sigh]
 
First, the Penn State scandal showed the country that the Benign Paternalism paradigm, in its most exemplary form — the Paterno Era at PSU — is inadequate as a management model for a major college f’ball program.
 
What makes this hard to take is that the PE @ PSU seemed to represent precisely the opposite: that you could run a successful major college program – one without the shameless hype, rampant commercialism and routine disregard for both academic standards and the future of the athletes themselves – under the working assumption that the decency and benevolence of a universally-acknowledged Good Man at the top of the pyramid would necessarily be spread downward and naturally come to include all and everything that made the program work. Alas…

And secondly, Oregon’s whomping on Stanford, for the 2nd time in two seasons, ended the illusion — a rather more ephemeral one, sure, but damn nice to contemplate while it lasted – that an elite academic institution could field a within-the-rules football program that was not only competitive with the borderline, outside-the-rules and what-there-are-rules? programs, but even make its way to the level of eliteness that corresponded with its academics: the national championship game. What an advertisement that would have made for Doing It Right.

If this had been fated to happen, it would’ve been this year, when a unique combination of individuals and circumstances was in effect: the maturation of the final Harbaugh-recruited classes, led by an extraordinarily gifted player at a key position (A. Luck); a schedule of progressive difficulty-gradation that was favorably up-tilted at its end for maximum poll impact; and the (prospective) co-operation of 3rd-party teams in clearing the field of all but one other logical contender for the BCS final.

It didn’t quite work out – and another such opportunity surely isn’t in the cards before the Big Asteroid hits. So while all college f’ball fans should be pleased that this extremely unlikely confluence of academic and athletic merit got as close to occurring as it did — hey, Stanford f’ball has been a Top 10 program for over a year now, which is not merely a remarkable success story, it is a stunning one — there is still no denying that competing in the NCAA’s Super Bowl would have said something tremendously Good, and for everybody, about the sport.

So yeah, a very tough week. One hopes college football can somehow find a way uphill from here.