Sic'em Bears!

By: Dave Roberson

There is not much change in this week’s BCS standings. The SWC still has three teams in the Top 10 and six in the Top 21. But in an important switch, TCU moved ahead of Boise State in the race of non-historic BCS championship teams. Should Oregon or Auburn slip up, TCU could move up from #3 into the coveted #2 slot.

The game of the week took place at DKR-Memorial Stadium in Austin. It only happens once or twice a generation, but the Baylor Bears defeated Texas. And it is even rarer that Texas loses 3 home games in a row. To make it even more impressive, Baylor actually came from behind. Congratulations Baylor fans, you escaped the casinos of Bossier City. You should feel very welcome in San Antonio. And if you have the audacity to keep winning, who knows where you might wind up spending the holidays. And how about those Texas Aggies? It took half a season to figure out they may need a change at QB, but bless their hearts, they figured it out anyway. The result, a 45 to 27 win against Texas Tech now has the Aggies one win from a bowl game. Can you imagine A&M and Texas at 5-6 going into to Thanksgiving night fighting for a trip to Shreveport? Wow, how far have the mighty fallen? The conference swept the rest of their games last week, mainly because Rice was off. So how about this, only Rice has a losing record? Texas Tech and Texas are at .500 and the other nine all have winning records. Name another conference that can say that. In the next week or two I will start looking at the bowls. We could have 8 or 9 teams going bowling this season. Once again, name another conference that can say that?

Unlike last week, Week 10 is back to a more exciting week. The conference games of the week are both north of the Red River with OU hosting A&M and Oklahoma St hosting Baylor. Conventional Wisdom has the home teams winning and I tend to agree. But watch out in Stillwater; Baylor is hot. A Baylor win would put them at 8 wins and into territory they have not been in decades. Other fun games to follow this weekend will be LSU hosting Alabama and Arkansas going to South Carolina. These are two very important games for upper echelon teams. You can watch both live, with LSU in the afternoon and Arkansas in the evening. I see these as toss ups, so stay away from the bookies on these two. Texas Tech catches Missouri on the South Plains. In the Leach days this would not be close, but I see Mizzou bouncing back from their Nebraska loss and taking down the Red Raiders. Three middling games that have bowl implications are 1) Texas at Kansas St , I’m going with K St, 2) UH hosting Central Fl, the Coogs should prevail, and 3) SMU beating UTEP in El Paso. As for Rice, well there are two games left that they have a chance in, but not this week at Tulsa.

And finally, I just picked up an article off of a blog. The Big East is considering offering football only membership to TCU and maybe UH. Why, because of Texas High School football and the large Dallas-FT Worth and Houston television markets? The Big East desperately needs a foot in the fertile football fields of Texas. There is not one Big East team in the Top 25 and it is basically because the lack of talent. The Big East is close to losing its automatic BCS bid. Keep an eye on this story; it would be a win for both schools and the Big East. Just another reason why we need to protect the home turf and why the SWC needs to become reality.

Have a great week!