College Football Week 9 Awards October 27, 2013

(Note:  All rankings are current AP [week 9] unless otherwise noted.)

COACHES
Wish I were him: Mark Helfrich, Oregon

Glad I’m not him: Butch Jones, Tennessee

Lucky guy: Steve Spurrier, South Carolina

Poor guy: Gary Pinkel, Missouri

Desperately seeking a clue: Bobby Petrino, Western Kentucky
Desperately seeking a P.R. man: David Cutcliffe, Duke

Desperately seeking sunglasses and a fake beard: Bo Pelini, Nebraska

Desperately seeking … anything:  Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern

TEAMS
Thought you’d kick butt, you did: Oklahoma State (defeated Iowa State 58-27)
Thought you’d kick butt, you didn’t: Miami (defeated Wake Forest 24-21)

Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you did: Kansas (lost to Baylor 59-14)

Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you didn’t:  Duke (defeated Virginia Tech 13-10)

Thought you wouldn’t kick butt, you did:  Michigan State (defeated Illinois 42-3)

Should have kicked even more butt than you did:  Auburn (defeated Florida Atlantic 45-10)

Dang, they’re good: Oregon

Dang, they’re bad:  Illinois
Can’t Stand Prosperity: Missouri

Did the season start?  Boise State
Can the season end?  Northwestern

Can the season never end?  Alabama

GAMES
Play this again:  No. 20 South Carolina 27, No. 5 Missouri 24

Play this again, too:  Middle Tennessee State 51, Marshall 49 (Thurs.)

Never play this again: No. 23 UCF 62, UConn 17

What? Iowa 17, Northwestern 10

Huh?  No. 20 South Carolina 27, No. 5 Missouri 24

Are you kidding me?  Duke 13, No. 14 Virginia Tech 10
Oh – my – God:  Minnesota 34, No. 25 Nebraska 23

NEXT WEEK

(rankings are current AP (post-week 9, pre-week 10)
Ticket to die for:  No. 7 Miami @ No. 3 Florida State

Best non-Big Six vs. Big Six matchup: (only two such match-ups, and they are both horrible)

Best non-Big Six matchup: Rice @ North Texas

Upset alert: Tennessee @ No. 10 Missouri

Must win: No. 12 Oklahoma State @ No. 15 Texas Tech

Offensive explosion: Arizona State @ Washington State

Defensive struggle: No. 24 Michigan @ Michigan State

Great game no one is talking about: West Virginia @ TCU, also Georgia vs. Florida in Jacksonville, Fla.

Intriguing coaching matchup: Pat Fitzgerald of Northwestern vs. Bo Pelini of Nebraska

Who’s bringing the body bags? No. 4 Ohio State @ Purdue

Why are they playing? Alabama State @ Kentucky

Plenty of good seats remaining: Kent State @ Akron

They shoot horses, don’t they?  Hawaii @ Utah State, or, UTEP @ No. 14 Texas A&M

Week 9 Random Thoughts:

At this rate, Purdue vs. Illinois is shaping into one heckuva Big Ten “Toilet Bowl” come Nov. 23.  For the entire season up to this point, the Boilermakers were the undisputed leaders of suck in the B1G.  Yet despite being shut out on the road to Michigan State last week, they acquitted themselves rather well in that they allowed the Spartans to score only 14 points.  Contrast that with Illinois’ performance against MSU this week, where the Illini only managed a “sad field goal” – at home, no less — against the Spartans’ D, and on the other side of the coin, Sparty scored seven TD’s.  Perhaps Purdue is not the gutter team of the conference after all.

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Give Missouri credit:  being undefeated in only their second season as a member of the SEC up through seven games is a decent feat.  Knocking off two traditional powers in two consecutive games is the feat worthy of a traditional power.  That being said, both Georgia and Florida were severely weakened, albeit in different ways, when playing the Tigers.  It was only a matter of time for the magic to run out.  That time manifested itself in a surprising way.

The normal rule of thumb is that when a non-traditional power (Mizzou, in this case) upsets a traditional one (Florida, in this case), the non-traditional power always comes out flat in the following game.  Yet they did not come out flat against South Carolina.  If anything, the Gamecocks tried to give away the game to the Tigers in the first half.  But they did not give the whole game away, for they won the second half, sent the game into overtime, then ended up winning unexpectedly when Mizzou botched a field goal attempt that would have otherwise sent things into triple-OT.  Even Steve Spurrier himself recognized how lucky his team was to sneak out of Columbia, Mo., with a win.

Mark May of ESPN hit the proverbial nail on the head when he pointed out that the Ol’ Ball Coach out-coached Gary Pinkel in the fourth quarter.

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As outrageous and “out-there” as Oregon’s uniforms sometimes look, they looked their best all season in their belated rout of formidable UCLA.  Part of the reason is that they actually wore a substantial amount of green for once.