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Week 2 of the young NCAA football season concluded with 3 things clearly evident in my opinion: the University of Southern California, Louisiana State University, and Oklahoma University are clearly head and shoulders above everyone else in the college football world. By default, USC is still number one, but much is still desired to be seen from them after their bye week. This weekend’s much anticipated matchup against Nebraska will shed some more light on how much longer USC can hold off the rapidly rising LSU Tigers, fresh off of two dominating wins against Mississippi State and Virginia Tech, respectively. No other team so far in short a time has made more noise than the Tigers, playing tough D (allowing ONLY 7 total points so far), and putting up 40+ per game. OU on the other hand, endured a tough 2006 season that began with their starting QB being kicked off the team, peaking with the NCAA admitting the officials jobbed them out of a win at Oregon, and ultimately ending with being on the wrong end of a Statue of Liberty play against the smurf turf upstarts of Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl. More uncertainty surrounded the Sooners at the beginning of the season when their starting QB job was still up for grabs days before the first game. Behind redshirt freshmen Sam Bradford and their stout defense, the Sooners exceeded expectations by dismantling mid-major North Texas, and proceeded to blow out the Miami Hurricanes (a shell of their former selves) making a strong deserved case to be number 3 behind USC and LSU. Keep an eye on WR Malcolm Kelly, Bradford’s accuracy and continued growth will only pad the stats of possibly the best wide receiver in the country (well other than Crabtree of course, see below).

For the sake of sanity, we won’t even touch on the circus that is Notre Dame and Michigan. As for the rest of the top 25, only the defending champs, the Florida Gators, and the high octaned California Bears stand out in my mind as strong candidates to make strong pushes for a BCS bowl and/or even the National Championship game. The Texas Longhorns do not look as strong with noted concerns in the secondary, but the gritty win over TCU last weekend will go a long way towards building momentum and confidence for their annual Red River Rivalry vs. OU on October 6th. West Virginia’s cupcake schedule highlighted by their recent win 48-23 over the lowly Marshall Thundering Herd (a closer game than the score indicates as Marshall led for large chunks of the game) does not impress me enough to consider them BCS contenders even though they have a good chance to run the table. Same old story though, doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, the BCS is infamously controversial in placing undeserving teams on the big stage vs. snubbing out other unlucky schools. However controversy begets conversation, and thus is a perfect seed for overly opinionated football junkies to have something else to gripe about ;) Continuing along the lines of mediocrity, Louisville’s explosive offense has not missed a step with head coach Bobby Petrino’s departure to the NFL to coach the Atlanta Falcons. They have scored 73 and 58 respectively in their first two games, problem is their D gave up 42 against Middle Tennessee. Not a good formula for a potential contender when you are vastly unbalanced on both sides of the ball.

Nevertheless, if you don’t give a hoot about balanced football, strong defense, or even a solid running game, the Texas Tech Red Raiders are your best ticket for a high scoring game where there’s a better chance of seeing drunk TTU students removing steel benches from their OWN stadium than seeing a handoff to a RB. You could make a case for Hawaii having a more exciting offense, but:

1) Hawaii plays their home games at 11pm or 12am midnight on Saturdays, and that’s sadly become past my bedtime, so I don’t get to watch them as often.

2) Their schedule is easier than my last (err well you get idea).

3) (Speaking of easy) The Rainbow Warriors’ shamelessly whoring out QB Colt Brennan for the Heisman Trophy is mildly annoying if only for the fact that their D is atrocious and their level of competition allows Brennan to put up ridiculous numbers that are basely skewed.

4) While saying you got whaled on by a team called the “Rainbow Warriors” is plenty fun, that’s nothing compared to saying, “you’ve got crabs” after getting burned by the Red Raider’s newest wideout sensation, Michael Crabtree.

5) I am a homer and realize we are no different than Hawaii in our reliance on our passing game due to our mediocre D and lack of effort to have a running game. However we play in substantially tougher conference which (should) qualify our quality of play.

However I could imagine the Vegas lines for a potential Bowl game matchup between Hawaii and Texas Tech to have the totals around 120.5 or so.

I’d still take the over. :)