Noisy Boise

Welcome back college football and aren't we all glad it's back! Boise State took care of business today against the 10-Th ranked Virginia Tech and validated their 3-Rd spot in the ranking to some extent. They looked good and dominated a legitimate, East-coast, ranked BCS team on the road. It was a neutral venue at Washington's FedEx field, but it was Hokie-town today all the way, given DC's proximity to Blacksburg. And of course, the media respects East coast teams more anyways. So Boise stands to gain a lot by beating the Hokies instead of some Pac-10 team. They busted out the special teams on Beamer ball himself and went up 17-0. But Va Tech crawled back into the game and Boise had to win it with a 2 minute drill at the end. Boise's remaining schedule is kinda soft with only a visit from Oregon State to the blue turn looking mildly challenging on their calendar. This means they may have a legitimate shot at the national championship game. It would be interesting to see what happens if they stay unbeaten. Boise did play the Fiesta bowl last year against the other highly ranked non-BCS team - TCU. Both teams are back this season ranked pretty high and TCU beat the 24-Th ranked Oregon state this weekend. Not happy as a Pac-10 honk, but it is what it is.

Speaking of Pac-10, ASU is ranked 9-Th out of 10 teams. What the hell is Dennis Erickson doing? They did beat Portland state in their season opener, but thats neither here nor there. USC won as well, but did not dominate. Oregon dominated New Mexico 72-0. It should have been brutal to be their mascot doing all those push-ups after every TD. I guess the message was "get buff or die trying". Pac-10 is viewed to be even weaker this year than usual and as if to prove that right, Washington State got crushed by Oklahoma State 65-17. Washington lost to BYU And UCLA lost to Kansas State to round off the weekend. And again, ASU is ranked 9-Th in this conference? Scary bad! The 2 top-25 upsets were Utah beating the 15-Th seeded Pittsburgh and 21-St seeded LSU beating North Carolina ranked 18. The second one was not a major upset, but it was one of the 3 big games this opening weekend and Les Miles comes through. Few high-profile teams involved in some big games in week 2 - Penn State @ Alabama, Miami @ Ohio State and Florida State @ Oklahoma. I would be pulling for the road teams in all those 3 games. Give me Joe-Pa over Nick Saban any day of the week. All in all, good start to the football season and it's only going to get better with the NFL kick-off on Thursday.

Speaking of the NFL, the Cardinals released Matt Leinart and he signed with the Texans today to backup Matt Schaub. Schaub is injury-prone though he is way better than Leinart. So we may even see Leinart play a little this year. As bad as Leinart has been, I still didn't want him to be released unceremoniously. Considering all the investment the Cards have put into him, they should have given him another shot. He was no comparison to Kurt Warner, but I don't think he deserves to be cut in favor of Derek Anderson - benched may be, but not cut. 14 TDs and 20 INTs doesn't make a great career yet, but the Cards should have given him another shot just because they don't have a great option ahead of him. Anderson is better, but only slightly and Leinart has slightly more upside. I think it was more a personal decision than a football decision. Matt coming out and complaining openly about the coaching decisions didn't help. The relationship was damaged and the Cards decided there was not enough talent there to put up with him anymore. TJ.Housh was the other big name who got cut and he got picked up by the Ravens. Baltimore now has a lot of big names on the flanks and lets see if it pans out. The Jets finally signed Darrelle Revis and it should be a good Monday night opener between the Ravens and the Jets. Let's see how Boldin does on the Revis Island.