Collegefootballfan.com Preview – Week 11
This Collegefootballfan.com week 11 is our first left coast weekend since bowl week of 2010. My then 15-year old son Eric (now CPO 2/c, US Navy) and I flew to Arizona to attend the Holiday Bowl in San Diego and the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona. The games were disappointing. In a very uneventful Holiday Bowl, Washington defeated Nebraska, 19-7. My most vivid memory was how over-rated Husky QB Jake Locker was. In the Fiesta, a mediocre Big East Champ, Connecticut, followed us out much to our chagrin. The Oklahoma Sooners dominated them in a 48-20 ho-hum victory. Well, this time we’re in the San Francisco Bay area for “The Big Game” to add to our list of great rivalries attended, and as a last-minute bonus due to TV scheduling, we will attend a game at nearby San Jose State.
Stanford (7-3, 5-3) visits Cal (4-6,2-5) at California Memorial Stadium. We don’t expect this one to be dull. We look for a high-scoring battle led by Christian McCaffery of the Cardinal to pick up a lot of yards rushing, receiving, and returning. He sat out the earlier Cardinal 17-10 win against Notre Dame we attended sidelined by an injury. On the others side, we figure to see Cal QB Davis Webb continue to dominate the air waves. He’s thrown for 3,601 yards and 33 TDs this season.
To cap off Collegefootballfan.com Week 11 in San Jose, the Spartans (3-7,2-4) will host the Air Force Academy (7-3,3-3) in a Mountain West game. It will be the second time in two weeks that we will see the Falcons play a game on the road. We saw them defeat Army, 31-12, to win the 2016 Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy. QB Arion Worthman is 2-0 filling in for injured Nate Romine as the Falcons got by Colorado State last week, 49-46. The triple option should effectively confuse the Spartan defenders already giving up 36 points per game. This will be our second SJSU game. We saw them throttled by Fresno 45-7 in 2005. Not much has changed for the Spartans since though they has a few good seasons a few years back.
D3 playoffs start this week. Johns Hopkins got the No. 1 seed in the east. Wisconsin-Whitewater, Mary Hardin Baylor of Texas, and St. Thomas of Minnesota are the top seeds in the other regions. Perennial power Mt. Union was ranked No. 1 all season long until John Carroll knocked them off in the season finale last week, 31-28. The Purple Raiders will visit Hobart in upstate New York Saturday. If they win, they will most likely play at Johns Hopkins if the Blue Jays get by Randolph-Macon for an interesting second round match-up.
The Saturday of December 17 is open for us. We’ll be looking at opportunities to see James Madison possibly host a game that weekend. The D3 championship will be played in Salem, VA the night before, but we already have an obligation that night. S’am Houston State under former Delaware and Rowan HC K.C. Keeler is ranked No. 1 in the FCS. As usual, he’s relying on about a dozen FBS cast-offs on his roster.
With Houston’s devastating 36-10 win over Louisville last night, we better not see Houston ranked ahead of Navy! We saw the Mids run all over the Cougars which the Cardinals could not do with Lamar Jackson. Navy lost to rival Air Force and looked bad against USF in a 52-45 loss in Tampa. However, they beat Houston and the Cougars other loss is to SMU. Navy needs to beat ECU this weekend to clinch the AAC West and then plays at SMU. They win both then they should play Temple for the AAC championship. In the Armed Forces Services Bowl they will play a Big 12 team. We hope the Big 12 has the guts to send Oklahoma to play Navy in Fort Worth. If the Mids run the table, no excuse for them to be second fiddle to Houston in the poll. They beat he vaunted Cougars head-on this season.
Harvard, Princeton and Penn could wind up in a three-way tie for first place this weekend all with 6-1 records. No tie-breaker. Only in the Ivy League. We kind of like their uniqueness, but we wished they would go to the FCS playoffs. This logjam would probably require a couple of coin flips.
Our Bowl season has fallen into place nicely. We got our tickets ordered for the New Era Pinstripe and Chik-Fil-A Peach Bowl for the CFP. We’re figuring that Alabama will be “hosting” on New Year’s Eve, so we got out tix early. The Music City and Military will also be committed to soon. And somehow we’re going to find our way to Tampa on January 9.
Stay tuned! Man, this season goes too fast! Collegefootballfan.com Week 11 already.