Thursday night, I was flipping back and forth between UConn/Hofstra, South Carolina/NC State, Wake Forest/Baylor, and Oregon State/Stanford. Obviously, Wake was by far the most impressive of the teams in action. In regards to the Carolina game, it's hard to distinguish between good defense and bad offense, but that sure was painful to watch. As an aside, Buffalo and Temple will give Pitt and UConn respectively all they can handle this week.
Today I have been watching ECU/VT and Syracuse/Northwestern. ECU was good last year, but I wondered how they would replace Chris Johnson. VT was somewhat of a question mark in my blogpoll, but they've won consistently enough that I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. ECU won convincingly, and they will give West Virginia a game for sure next week.
Syracuse got off to a decent start in the first half. Their skill position guys did make a few plays, but the offensive line looked awful. NW wore them down in the second half, as Syracuse overall lacks team depth.
I don't have ESPN U, but the score from Pitt/Bowling Green is very troubling even if Pitt can come back. On one hand, that's one less team in our way in the Big East. However, the reputation of the Big East took a very big hit today, and it's disappointing that long-suffering Pitt fans may be in for another rough year. Looks like ESPN just switched to the Pitt game.
6:30 - Nothing's really caught my attention today. USC quickly pulled ahead of Virginia. Mostly, I've been watching Utah/Michigan. Oklahoma State looks impressive beating on Wazzu on MSG Plus. Because of Hurricane Gustav, the LSU game isn't on ESPN. It's replaced by Maryland/Delaware, and Jordan Steffy is again threatening to give away the game.
Alabama/Clemson and Missouri/Illinois are still on the plate for later. Oregon/Washington too, but sorry, East Coast Bias and all, I probably won't stay up to watch it. As far as the blogpoll goes, I'll probably drop VT and replace them with ECU, and maybe think about moving Utah up. There's not going to be a ton of movement based on this week.
9:20 - Alabama is looking impressive so far. How much of that is Alabama being improved, and how much of it is Clemson laying an egg as usual?