Weezie's Weekend Notes

* The Cincinnati game now becomes bigger than ever. If WVU were to lose to the Bearcats and finish in a three way tie with them and UConn, then Cincinnati would win the tiebreaker by being 2-0 against WVU and UConn.

* Has anyone seen Utah play this year. I watched a little of their game today against Wyoming and their offense is pretty unbelievable. In the first half they ran a reverse, a screen-and-lateral, a fumblerooskie, and maybe the prettiest fake punt I've seen. If Coach Rod has a version of their fake punt, he should definitely use it. They line up similar to how we do. They spread out and have 3 protectors in front of the punter. The punter receives the snap and the line heads down field as if to cover the punt and the three protectors pretend to block and once the pursuit near them, the punter lobs it over their heads to one of the protectors on a screen pass. When he caught the ball, the guys rushing the punter were behind him and everyone else was 25 yards down the field setting up to block for the return. I didn't watch the whole game, but I guess Utah kept pouring on the trickery in the second half, 'cause when I checked back, the announcers were reporting that the Wyoming head coach had flipped the bird to Utah's coach across the field.

* Wins by Mercer over USC and Gardner Webb over Kentucky in hoops this week are proving once again how useless the preseason polls are. If you compare the preseason poll in football to the current one, you will see that there are only 3 preseason top ten teams (LSU,Oklahoma,WVU) that are in the current top 10. And over 1/3 (9) of the teams in the preseason top 25 are no longer ranked. It hasn't been harmful this year due to the enormous number of upsets, but most years it makes it very difficult for an unheralded team at the beginning of the season to climb into the national championship picture and it still may very well cost Kansas a chance. I suggest that we don't conduct a blog poll next year until after the second full week of games.

* I hear all the speculation this evening that LSU and Oregon will be the new #1 and #2 teams in the country. This makes absolutely no sense. I don't have any problem with voters putting LSU or Oregon ahead of Kansas in general. However, the past few weeks, they have had Ohio State ahead of both those teams and Kansas' accomplishments have been every bit as impressive as the Buckeyes' prior to their loss. So how can a voter justify voting Ohio State #1 last week and not Kansas this week?

* The forced game Joe Manchin brought between Marshall and WVU is continuing to haunt us. Marshall has been pathetic all season and now that they finally decide to play well and win a game, it is over East Carolina. Though the win by Marshall over ECU doesn't seem to hurt WVU's schedule strength, we would have been much better off had ECU won. The Pirates would have clinched a spot in the Conference USA Championship which would look much better than Marshall managing it's measly 2nd win of the season. Now they must hope that UCF loses one of their last two against 1-9 SMU or 4-6 UTEP.

* Congratulations to Coach Weiss at Notre Dame. He has truly taken the program to a level that they have never seen and never could have imagined. It's only too bad that Army couldn't play them this year to complete the trifecta. Be sure to set your TIVO next Saturday at 2:30pm. NBC will be airing what could possibly be the saddest display of college football ever nationally televised that doesn't feature a service academy. (at least they are well coached). Two 1-9 teams will be battling fiercely as Duke travels to South Bend. I'm curious to see what the line is in that game.