College football Week 4 wrap-up
Old Dominion shocker; Stanford comeback
A slate of college football games that appeared rather bland on paper turned out to be anything but as Week 4 unfolded. Some observations from Saturday: What the heck, Virginia Tech? You’d have to think really hard to come up with a result in recent memory as unexpected as Old Dominion 49, Virginia Tech 35. Sure, the game was in Norfolk, which raises the question why the Hokies scheduled a game there. And the
28-point line wasn’t the biggest upset we’ve ever seen. But all that aside, Old Dominion had been so bad it would have been hard to come up with any scenario for the Monarchs to win. They opened the season losing 52-10 to Liberty, lost
28-20 at home to Florida International and lost 28-25 to Charlotte. Though Tech was never as good as its No. 10 ranking, this is still a game you expect them to win 100 times out of 100. How Bud Foster’s defense gave up 632 yards to this team is hard to explain. But congratulations to coach Bobby Wilder, who has built the Old Dominion program literally from the ground up.
So what now, ACC? The Hokies’ loss certainly furthers the narrative that Clemson has a cakewalk to the Atlantic Coast Conference title and a College Football Playoff berth. A couple of years ago, it looked as if the ACC was getting closer to the Southeastern Conference. Now the gap seems pretty wide. How did Stanford do that? You might not see a wilder game this season than Stanford 38, Oregon 31. First, the game should never have gotten into overtime. When Justin Herbert scrambled for a first down with 2:17 left, Stanford had one timeout left. So even if you take a knee three times, the worst-case scenario is that you have to run out the clock by punting with a handful of seconds left. Instead, Oregon coach Mario Cristobal wanted the first down that would have negated such a scenario. He got burned when C.J. Verdell fumbled it back to Stanford with 51 seconds left. The Cardinal sent it to overtime with a field goal. As great a win as it was for Stanford, which trailed 24-7 (and nearly 31-7 until instant replay overturned a TD), it will be remembered more as a game Oregon gave away.
Texas is back-ish: We need to forgive the Longhorns for that odd and poorly played game against Maryland in the opener and recognize that they’ve im- proved greatly since. Beating TCU 31-16 is serious evidence of that improvement. The Longhorns now look as if they’ll factor in the Big 12 race. Ignoring Oklahoma’s issues … for now: The Sooners had no business going to overtime with Army, but the Knights are a funky team to play. It only takes a couple of long, clock-milking drives to totally change the complexion of the game and frustrate a team such as Oklahoma, which wants as many possessions and snaps as possible. Despite Army possessing the ball for nearly 45 minutes, Oklahoma got it done in OT, 28-21. Don’t read too much into this one. We have to back off Jim Harbaugh
for now: The pile-on after Week 1 was always ridiculous because as disappointing as it was for Michigan to lose at Notre Dame, it was just a seven-point, Week 1 road loss against another very good team. Since then, Michigan has outscored Western Michigan, SMU and Nebraska by a combined 150-33, which is exactly what the Wolverines should be doing against those kinds of teams. Notre Dame’s QB change paid off: Not everyone would change quarterbacks with a 3-0 team, but Brian Kelly obviously made the right call by benching Brandon Wimbush in favor of Ian Book. The decision to make a change was justified after watching how stagnant the Irish’s offense had been in their first three weeks. Book did everything he was asked to do, going 25 of 34 for
325 passing yards and 2 TDs in the 56
27 win over Wake Forest, and clearly gives Notre Dame its best chance of putting up points going forward.