Week Five Viewers Guide

Week five got off to a start already with the weeknight games. Didn’t have much to say about them since I thought they had outcomes that were relatively not in doubt, though West Virginia sure attempted to keep Colorado in the game.

All games Saturday

UCLA at Stanford (3:30pm, ABC) – Stanford has shown real progress over Jim Harbaugh’s tenure and UCLA has been able grind out their victories so far with mediocre offense. The Cardinal have the offensive stars in this game with RB Toby Gerhart and QB Andrew Luck and will have to be controlled for UCLA to have a chance.

Air Force at Navy (3:30pm, CBS College) – 1st matchup in the Commander-in-Chief series for 2009. Should be a quick game in the sense that neither team prefers to run the ball. On a per game basis, Air Force leads the nation and Navy is 6th.

William & Mary at Villanova (3:30pm, Versus) – An FCS matchup makes it here because it’s a CAA matchup between two top 5 teams. Both teams are fairly balanced run/pass on offense and both are among the CAA teams to notch wins over FBS competition (‘Nova over Temple, W&M over Virginia). The QBs are the key with ‘Nova’s Chris Whitney a dual threat with the arm and his legs where Tribe QB RJ Archer moves the ball down the field more methodically.

Both of the next two games would have been a lot more interesting a week ago

USC at California (8pm, ABC) – Jahvid Best had the Heisman roughly at the quarter pole of this season until he came up short, along with the rest of his teammates vs. Oregon. USC is ripe for the picking this season with the way Ohio St. played against them at the line of scrimmage and the lack of solid QB play. Don’t kid yourselves, the Trojans are really 1-1 because the Washington St. and San Jose St. games were essentially scrimmages.

Oklahoma at Miami (FL) (8pm, ABC) – Folks expect that the Sooners are OK because they won their last two games via shutout and put up at least 45 points in both games. But don’t kid yourself; those were against Idaho St. and Tulsa, competition that hasn’t been quite on the level as the Sooners. Miami (FL) has stepped up in class each week with three ACC opponents and all three ranked at the time of the game, no small feat. If you were the Hurricanes, would you be happy with 3-1 or 2-2, with one ACC loss, if your opponents to start the year were Florida St., Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and Oklahoma?