This weekend is our first Double-Header Saturday of the 2015 season. And with the New York Mets headed into the National League Division Playoffs at 9:45 EST on Friday night for the first time since 2006, this could be a long, sleepless but exciting weekend for collegefootballfan.com. We will hang in for the late night game televised late from Las Angeles where knowing that we have plans to get going early to West Point on Saturday morning, our beloved Mets will probably play an extra inning game. We plan to get up early Saturday to beat a sell-out crowd to Michie Stadium for a 12 noon kick off. The Cadets (1-4) will be hosting Duke (4-1, 1-0). The Black Knights fell at Penn State last weekend, only 20-14. Their four losses have been by a total of 20 points. Junior LB and Captain Jeremy Timpf leads the Army defense. Duke enters this game with consecutive wins over Georgia Tech and Boston College at home after a 19-10 loss on the road to No. 23 Northwestern. The Blue Devils offense runs with QB Thomas Sirk who has thrown for 1,063 yards and six TDs while tied for the team lead in rushing with 272 yards and two TDs. Army, playing its 125th season of intercollegiate football will run its triple option averaging 287.8 yards per game. QB Ahmad Bradshaw leads the team in rushing with 341 yards. Last week, Senior QB AJ Schurr filled in for him at Penn State. We look for FB Matt Giachinta to be a key this week to make their running game more effective…
Hoping for clear skies this Saturday to get our college football DH off to a good start. Go Army!
After this game, we will head south to New Brunswick, NJ for the 8 pm night cap between No. 4 Michigan State (5-0, 1-0) and host Rutgers (2-2,0-1) who will have WR Leonte Caroo back in the lineup after being exonerated for assault charges against a woman who was a Scarlet Knight hostess who decided not to press charges. The Newark Star Ledger reports that the University has hired a law firm specializing in NCAA lawsuits to investigate the numerous charges and scandals in their football program. Head coach Kyle Flood will be absent once again in his third and final game of his suspension. Norries Wilson will again serve as HC. Under him, they ‘ve lost to Penn State and beaten Kansas. RU did not play last week. MSU comes off an unimpressive 24-21 win over Purdue which knocked them out as the No. 2 team in the nation. The Spartan defense has 18 sacks and forced 11 turnovers so far this season. Its D is led by New Jersey native and DE Shilique Calhoun who has 4.5 sacks. QB Connor Cook brings in 977 passing yards for 10 TDs and only one INT. His primary receiver is Aaron Burbridge who has 25 receptions and four for scores…Of historical notes: we saw Michigan State defeat Rutgers, 34-10, on September 29, 1990 at The Meadowlands. On September 12, 2009, we ran a bus trip to West Point where we watched Duke defeat Army on a rainy day, 35-19. On October 25, 1986, we attended the Rutgers-Army game at Giants Stadium that afternoon where the Scarlet Knights defeated the Black Knights, 35-7. From East Rutherford we headed to Flushing, Queens, NY where we attended the most memorable game in NY Mets history when we watched a ground ball go through first baseman Bill Buckner’s legs as the Mets defeated the Boston Red Sox in Game Six of the 1986 World Series. After the MSU-RU game this Saturday, we will probably catch the end of game two of the NLDS from LA on the radio and tv. We will have to recover from a second late night to write up two game reviews on Sunday, so they may be short! Of course on November 21, we will be back up at West Point to celebrate our 500th game where Knights of both colors will joust once again!…
MSU visits Rutgers Stadium Saturday night for an 8 pm kickoff.
We have seven of this week’s Top 25 on our current schedule this season: 1.) Ohio State, 4.) Michigan State, 12. ) Florida State, 15.) Notre Dame, 17. ) USC, 18.) Michigan, 24.) Toledo. In addition, two other FBS teams already seen are undefeated, Temple (4-0) and Navy (4-0). This week, Navy will play at Notre Dame. On October 31, we will see Temple host ND at The Linc. In addition to Temple and Navy, two other American Athletic teams remain undefeated, Memphis and Houston. One of the four AAC’s has to get a shot at climbing into the Top 25 if they can finish the season unscathed after winning their championship game on December 5. If they can, they will be challenging Toledo and No. 25 Boise State for that non-Power Five Conference spot among the 12 major bowl bids… Instead of showcasing QB Christian Hackenberg for the NFL, maybe HC James Franklin should start developing Penn State’s future by inserting Freshman Trace McSorley at QB. PSU die-hard John Massimilla reported that it was frustrating once again to see “Hack” play again last Saturday… Here’s our take on the way the pollsters think, regretfully. Michigan State defeated 1-4 Purdue, 24-21, and fell two spots from No. 2 to No. 4, and rightly so. Had an undefeated No. 2 Ole Miss beaten a 1-4 Vanderbilt last week (instead of suffering a 38-10 loss at Florida) by the same score, not only would Ole Miss remained at No. 2, but Vanderbilt probably would’ve cracked the Top 25!..On Oct. 17, we will see the C-USA match-up between Old Dominion (2-3, 0-1) and our team # 129 Charlotte (2-3, 0-1) in Norfolk. They will both go in with exact records after this weekend because neither plays this Saturday…
We return to Foreman Field on October 17 to see Old Dominion play for the second year in a row.
Teams on our slate this season finished 15-9 last weekend. Only Rutgers did not play…If Philadelphia Eagle HC Chip Kelly keeps it up in the NFL, he will probably be one of the most sought after prospects for a college job next season at the level where his read-option offense works best as he’s proven at Oregon and New Hampshire… We’re surprised that some beleaguered program hasn’t called on Greg Schiano, formerly of Rutgers. It seems he could dig a downtrodden program up from the dregs, but just can’t get it to the top. RU may have given him too much time (5 years) before he started winning. Nobody else may want to wait that long…Talk about hot seats, Texas gave Charlie Strong a lot of money to turn the Long Horns into a stampede, but the 50-7 shellacking at the hands of TCU set him way back. He may not make it through year two of his contract. UT is one of the programs that can afford to pay him while he’s out of work… Mizzou dunked South Carolina last week while the rains flooded out the Gamecocks home back in Columbia, South Carolina. This Saturday’s game against LSU has been moved to Baton Rouge. Classes are cancelled at school, student’s cars are floating around in parking lots, railroad tracks are damaged, and water is not running on campus. Things are a mess down there. In their football program, too. I can’t see Spurrier talking about celebrating anything after this season like he said his team did after finishing 7-6 last year. I think the Old Ball Coach is finished as a HC…Big SEC East game this week when Mizzou (4-1) hosts No. 11 Florida (5-0)…
QB Maty Mauk (7) who started for Mizzou last year has been suspended from the team and replaced by Frosh QB Drew Lock. They play Florida this weekend in a battle for the lead in the SEC East.
Utah State replaced injured QB Chuckie Heeton last week with Kent Myer and he led the Aggies to a 33-18 win over Colorado State. Myer threw for 137 yards and a score and rushed for 191 yards and another TD. We will see USU in action against Air Force on November 14 in Colorado Springs…Among our FCS teams, Delaware upset William and Mary … The top Five FCS schools are Jacksonville State (probably because of the OT loss to Auburn), Coastal Carolina (5-0), North Dakota State, Illinois State, and James Madison. Teams of note we see play often among the Top 25 include surprising No. 13 Fordham (4-1), No. 14 Villanova (2-2) , No. 21 New Hampshire (3-2) , and No. 24 Harvard, projected to win the Ivy league again. Dartmouth, Princeton and Stony Brook all received votes…Bo Pellini’s Youngstown State Penguins (3-1) are at No. 9…Former ND State HC Craig Bohls of three national FCS championships is now 0-5 at Wyoming this season losing last week to Appalachian State, 31-13. That was not expected after a 4-8 start last season…Princeton defeated Columbia, 10-5, in an Ivy League game played last Friday night. That’s got to be Al Bagnoli, former Penn coach, starting to show signs of improvement for the Lions. Let’s keep an eye on him…Last week we decided to plan to go to see Franklin and Marshall play at Johns Hopkins as one of our options for a game on November 7. We were hoping for a clash between two undefeated D3 teams playing for their Centennial Conference championship. Well, JHU remained unbeaten beating up The Alma Mater, Juniata, but F&M fell to Dickinson, 13-7. We may still go. It could be our best option that weekend… Wisconsin – Whitewater is still No. 1 in D-3 with 21 votes at 4-0 followed by No. 2 Mount Union at 4-0, as usual. Linfield (Ore), Mary Hardin-Baylor (Texas) , and Wesley of Delaware round out the Top Five in D3. Johns Hopkins is ranked at No. 10, Rowan is at No. 14, and Cortland State (5-0) is 15th. Wesley, now of the NJAC , hosts conference foe Kean this weekend followed by undefeated Rowan on October 24. Kean and Rowan will both be significant underdogs in these games, but if strange things do happen, we could see the two of them play one another on November 7. Our former Little League baseball player Matt Hill is a junior offensive tackle at Kean University this season…
Penn State (4-1,1-0) hosts Indiana (4-1, 0-1) in its fifth straight home game in Happy Valley this Saturday. The kickoff is at noon.