A Cold Reception
It's a balmy 57 degrees as I type this post in my office on a Monday morning at the end of October. That's about 13.888 C for those of you outside of the US bubble. It was even cooler than that on Saturday morning when we went to watch our niece play at the "soccerween" tournament in the next town over. Even with sweatshirts, winter coats, and stocking caps on, it still did very little to hold out the cold.
I can only imagine how cold the players must have been out on the field in their Halloween costumes.
You can't see it in the photo above too well, but this was right before my niece kicked a penalty kick into the goal. They ended up with a 2-2 tie at the end of this game. She was telling us later that if they had a big enough point differential in the next two games they would win the whole tournament.
The second half of the first game she played goal and sadly, the two points that the other team played were during her tenure in that position. It turns out kids don't really enjoy playing goalie. In her words, she would rather be a striker, but since nobody wants to keep goal, she usually volunteers. Trust me, I get it. It can be quite boring, especially when it's mostly a one sided game.
I've seen kids basically laying down or sitting down playing in the dirt when they get thrown in the goal keep position. You definitely have to have the head and focus for it.
Speaking of having focus, my focus this weekend was a bit off when it comes to college football. Well, football in general. With the Lions on a bye week, I didn't really care too much about the NFL. Then we had the big Michigan vs. Michigan State rivalry game that should have been the highlight of my weekend.
Any other year...
The fact is, the Spartans just suck this year, so I wasn't really even looking forward to the game. I still watched most of it, but I can't say that I was really that into it. I may as well have been sitting on the ground playing in the dirt.
Virginia remains in a good position in the ACC with a 17 to 16 overtime win over North Carolina this past weekend. North Carolina just can't seem to catch a break this season. Even with their new Super Bowl winning coach...
Remember that South Florida/Memphis game I told you was going to be good? Turns out it was. Memphis beat South Florida in a quite exciting game 34 to 31. That knocked South Florida out of the top 25 and moved Memphis into the number 25 spot.
Indiana remains undefeated in the number 2 spot beating UCLA 56 to 6. It really should have been much more than that, but they kind of held back at the end. It actually makes me kind of mad that Michigan State lost to UCLA given the fact that they didn't allow Indiana to score nearly as many points on them.
Freaking Michigan State.
The number 19 Missouri vs. number 9 Vanderbilt game was close, but the Commodores came out on top 17 to 10.
It sort of looked like South Carolina was going to have the upset over number 4 Alabama this weekend, but the Crimson Tide was able to hold on and get the 29 to 22 win. Meanwhile, in the Big 10, Washington had a huge 42 to 25 win over Illinois knocking the Illini out of the top 25.
Number 10 BYU also remains undefeated taking down what used to be a top ranked Iowa State team 41 to 27. I bet there are a lot of folks in Utah who aren't too happy about that number 10 ranking when you consider they have zero losses on the season.
Number 13 Texas Tech blanked Oklahoma State 42 to 0 in what must have been a clinic game for them. Number 20 Texas had a big overtime win against Mississippi State 45 to 38, but their star quarter back Arch Manning as injured towards the end of the game, so we will see if he is able to play next game.
Number 3 Texas A&M had a huge 49 to 25 win over and LSU team that used to be in the top ten just two weeks ago.
As anticipated, number 21 Michigan beat Michigan State 31 to 20. I'm actually not too mad about it. It wasn't a blow out, so that is a good thing. They scored a few touchdowns, but ultimately, they fell short. This hasn't been a stellar year for MSU, and a win over Michigan would have been awesome, but 31 to 20 loss isn't horrible. We will see what happens with the Spartans head coach after this season.
Other than that, everything else went about the way you would expect with ranked teams dominating unranked teams.
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