Rutgers and VT Now Holding Open Tryouts for Offense

[Eric]

Wow, that game was a hideous display of offense, moreso for Rutgers than Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech had plenty of trouble blocking, and people who thought Logan Thomas was going to leave after his junior year and be a potential first round pick this year were shown to be not only wrong, but the complete opposite of right (as they have been since October ). He still has another year of seasoning left and he does have all of those tools, but he regressed quite a bit and his passing skills need to improve big-time before he gets drafted.

Also, Rutgers. I don't know how you can field a division one team and win nine games without being able to master the forward pass. Rutgers offense hasn't been good all year long, but the fact that it was such a struggle to complete a pass was baffling. But, this was a team that scored 24 against Tulane and 26 against Howard, so....If Gary Nova is their starter next season, then something is wrong in Piscataway.

[Spence]

How bad is Texas Tech that Minnesota is giving them all they can handle.

[Spence]

And Texas Tech ties it up with 1:10 to go as we speak. I picked Texas Tech, but can't help rooting for the gophers. It will cost me 30 pts if they pull it off. Oh well, I figured Donovan would win anyway.

[Spence]

The INT should seal the deal. Minnesota showed some heart, but couldn't seal the deal in crunch time.

[donovan]

I am loving these bowl games.....going to tank it in the confidence poll...will live with that....but these upsets are not close...they are blowing them out...I am rooting, like Spence, teams that I did not pick to win. There is some really bad football going on...love it.

[Eric]

That was a great game. Texas Tech struggled to put away teams like Kansas, so they were a Jekyll and Hyde kind of team. I was kind of impressed with Minnesota in this one. I didn't know that they could run the ball that effectively. Minnesota was one of those teams I didn't pay attention to over the course of the year because they had no chance to beat some of the better teams on their slate. I forgot they beat Syracuse even

I was cheering for Minnesota as well. I had 33 on Tech, but if everybody else was going down big with me, I wouldn't mind an upset there. Fresno and WKU basically did me in with the confidence

[Spence]

It is some bad football, but also some good plays out of some bad football. It has been fun so far. I try not to look who I pick most games so I can root without guilt.

[Eric]

I usually cheer for whomever I pick, unless I really hate a certain team (see: Ohio State, Notre Dame, USC, or SEC in national title / non-conference games ). My picks on ESPN.com and elsewhere don't mean much in the grand scheme of things, especially since winning those contests is astronomically unlikely, but I get frustrated if I'm wrong. It's an ego thing

[Eric]

And I agree that bad football can be entertaining, to different extents. Arizona/Nevada was a bad game, but extremely entertaining. That is the type of game that they would have played during the regular season, so it's not like they can blame the layoff for looking kind of ugly. The Rutgers/VT game was entertaining in a weird way. In the same way an offensive shootout is exciting by waiting to see which offense will crack, this game was like waiting to see which QB would crack between Nova and Thomas. Nova was much worse than Thomas, and that's saying something.

Nova went to Don Bosco Prep, one of the best high school programs in the country, and he hasn't mastered QB footwork.

[Spence]

And you have to give credit to OU for beating the crud out of Louisiana Monroe. That was entertaining for me.

[Eric]

I like that the MAC showed up big for one of these games. Ohio really was the second best team behind Northern Illinois. They suffered a ton of injuries and their depth was hurting which cost them big during that slide they had. I think the weeks of practice and preparation got some of them healthy and got those reserves a lot of extra time.

Ohio is a candidate to go undefeated next season. They have a really tough game at Louisville (who returns an enormous portion of starters back and will be a very dangerous team), but other than that, they have to dodge some MAC foes and they're 13-0.

[Spence]

They had a better than most people thought first win and then finshed out big. Nice to see the boys from Athens get a big win.

[billybud]

I like watching games that have a little attitude mixed in...and the Minnesota/Texas Tech game had some attitude.......it was a fun watch.

VT-Rutgers,,,,,

....Logan Thomas looked baaaad. Rutgers offense looked baaaad (3 points by offense). This was a dull game even for those of us who like defense. I thought it was more a failure of offense than good defense.