College Football Week 4 Awards September 22, 2013

(Note:  All rankings are current AP [week 4] unless otherwise noted.)

COACHES
Wish I were him: David Shaw, Stanford

Glad I’m not him: Mark Dantonio, Michigan State

Lucky guy: Tim DeRuyter, Fresno State
Poor guy: Bronco Mendenhall, BYU

Desperately seeking a wake-up call: Brady Hoke, Michigan
Desperately seeking a P.R. man: Kyle Flood, Rutgers

Desperately seeking sunglasses and a fake beard: Dana Holgersen, West Virginia

Desperately seeking … anything:  P.J. Fleck, Western Michigan

TEAMS
Thought you’d kick butt, you did: No. 7 Louisville (defeated FIU 72-0)
Thought you’d kick butt, you didn’t: No. 11 Michigan (defeated UConn 24-21)
Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you did: Troy (lost to Mississippi State 62-7)

Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you didn’t:  Colorado State* (lost to No. 1 Alabama 31-6)

Thought you wouldn’t kick butt, you did:  Iowa (defeated Western Michigan 59-3)

Dang, they’re good: Stanford
Dang, they’re bad:  Western Michigan
Can’t Stand Prosperity:  Arkansas

Did the season start?  Michigan State
Can the season end?  Central Michigan
Can the season never end?  UCLA

GAMES
Play this again:  Fresno State 41, Boise State 40

Play this again, too:  Pittsburgh 58, Duke 55
Never play this again: No. 4 Ohio State 76, Florida A&M 0

What? Iowa 59, Western Michigan 3

Huh?  Fresno State 41, Boise State 40

Are you kidding me?  Texas 31, Kansas State 21
Oh – my – God:  Maryland 37, West Virginia 0

NEXT WEEK

(rankings are current AP (post-week 3, pre-week 4)
Ticket to die for:  No. 6 LSU @ No. 9 Georgia

Best non-Big Six vs. Big Six matchup: Northern Illinois @ Purdue

Best non-Big Six matchup: Navy @ Western Kentucky (honorable mention:  Akron @ Bowling Green)

Upset alert: No. 23 Wisconsin @ No. 4 Ohio State, or, No. 12 South Carolina @ Central Florida

Must win: No. 10 Texas A&M @ Arkansas

Offensive explosion: Arizona @ No. 16 Washington

Defensive struggle: MTSU @ BYU
Great game no one is talking about: Virginia Tech @ Georgia Tech (Thurs.)

Intriguing coaching matchup: Ken Niumatalolo of Navy vs. Bobby Petrino of Western Kentucky

Who’s bringing the body bags? South Florida @ No. 15 Miami

Why are they playing? South Alabama @ Tennessee

Plenty of good seats remaining: Kent State @ Western Michigan

They shoot horses, don’t they?  Troy @ Duke

Week 4 in Review:

*:  This was the “body bag” game that did not quite turn out to be one.  On paper, Colorado State was to be the lamb being led to the slaughter.  After all, the fortunes of the Rams have been nothing like the halcyon days under former head coach Sonny Lubick.  Moreover, in a week where every other game seemed to be a body bag game, this one should have been no different.  Consider an under-performing Mountain West Conference team journeying over a thousand miles from Fort Collins, Colo., to Tuscaloosa, Ala., only to go into one of the most hostile places in the land in which to play football, with none other than Nick Saban, arguably the best coach in the business, to be the pitiless executioner.

All things considered, the 31-6 loss could have been much worse.  The Rams actually did a good job of gaining yardage against the Crimson Tide.  The only problem was, the bulk of that yardage was between the 20 yard-lines.  Once Colorado State made it into the red zone, Alabama started to show more of its true defensive colors, as the score attests.  Still, head coach Jim McElwain – coincidentally, the former offensive coordinator at Alabama – came in with a sound game plan, and that was to keep his team’s offense on the field for as long as possible, and conversely, to keep Alabama’s offense off the field as long as possible.  They took plenty of risks – including lots of screen passes – in order to try to make that happen.  One thing that was particularly telling of some degree of success in the overall game plan, despite the loss, was that Saban kept his headset on and kept coaching his team literally as the final second of the fourth quarter ticked off the clock.  One normally does not see that sort of behavior from a coach – no matter how skilled they are in the business – during a so-called “body bag” game.

But this game aside, even some of the better matches on paper (say, Tennessee at Florida, or Michigan State at Notre Dame) turned out to be exercises in ineptitude on both sides of the ball. Even Purdue, who acquitted themselves well against Notre Dame last week, came out flat against Wisconsin this week.

Speaking of “body bag” games, though, this weekend was lousy with them.  Records have become so important in terms of one’s BCS standings, that teams have largely become risk-averse, and since most conferences do not mandate that at least nine conference games be scheduled (notwithstanding the Big XII and Pac-12), we the fans had to suffer through lots of garbage matchups (hello, Florida A&M @ Ohio State) this past week.  Next week will thankfully be different, though, as most teams have some sort of conference game, and even those that do not still [mostly] have some interesting opponent to play (e.g., Northern Illinois at Purdue, South Carolina at an up-and-coming UCF, Oklahoma at Notre Dame, and Navy at Western Kentucky).  The bottom line is, let us blot this past week out of our memories, and just look forward to that which is immediately ahead.