Fat Guy Touchdowns: Week Three College Football

This is going to be an interesting week to talk about for many reasons. Reason #1: Football season is now in full swing. Most teams have already played 1 or 2 conference games and if they have not they enter conference play this weekend. Reason #2: Conference expansion/realignment is also in full swing. It appears we are quickly headed toward 4 major 16 team conferences. The power players in this whole process are the SEC and Texas/OU because of the money. This whole process is being caused by money and greed. Reason #3: Last but not least the drama with the two major schools in the State of MS is at an all time high. I will get more into this later.

Put this date on your calendar…. November 5th. LSU plays at Alabama. This will probably be one of the best regular season college football games in a long time. The winner of this game probably wins the National Championship. It is unbelievable how good the defenses are for these two teams.

Southern Miss travels to Virginia this week for a game that will tell a lot about where their season will go. USM bounced back last week against an inferior opponent in Southeastern Louisiana. Prior to the season I had USM as a favorite going into this game against Virginia. Virginia has proved to be slightly better than I thought they would while USM has not lived up to my expectations through 3 weeks. Las Vegas has USM as a 3 point underdog in this game. Southern Miss needs to go up to Virginia, put all the pieces together, and take a win.

Not a good start to the season by both Ole Miss and MS State. I will first talk about the Rebels. The opening game loss to BYU is looking worse and worse the more games they play. BYU got dominated by Utah. I had some optimism for Ole Miss following that game, but I obviously over estimated BYU this season. Moving forward…A 30-7 loss against Vanderbilt is not acceptable. The bad part about it is that the game was worse for the Rebels than the score which was bad. The Houston Nutt quarterback carousel has once re-emerged. I have no idea what Nutt does to these quarterbacks, but he manages to completely destroy them mentally. Georgia comes into Oxford on Saturday as a 9.5 point favorite. This game features coaches on the two hottest seats in the SEC. A win could change everything for Ole Miss, but at this point I cannot see that happening. I hate to say it, but you heard it here first… Georgia in a blow out Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Lots of problems in Oxford from top to bottom… If Nutt does not figure out some way to rally the troops he may not make it through the season.

The start to the 2011 football season has not gone as anticipated for Dan Mullen and the Bulldogs. The first thing I am going to say is that I do believe MS State has a good football team, coaching staff, and administration. The talent in Starkville has been significantly upgraded the last couple of years. I do not doubt Dan Mullen as a coach because his tract record proves he is a winner. With all that being said, at some point Dan Mullen has got to put his money where his mouth is. If everything was not so bad in Oxford this year many more people would be talking about Dan Mullen's lack of production against top teams. Mullen is flying under the radar because of all the drama at Ole Miss. The good news for Dan Mullen going forward is that the schedule doesn't get harder. The bulldogs won't see a defense comparable to LSU until they meet up with Alabama. Just like with Houston Nutt, Dan Mullen needs to find a way to string together a few wins starting with a solid performance against La Tech this Saturday.

One other thing: I do not agree with the way the Forward Rebels movement is going about their business. The ad placed in the paper was a reaction based on feelings. When you are going to do something as significant as they did you need to step back for a few days and take the emotion out of it. If I wrote my blog the same day or the day after USM/Ole Miss/MS State played it would be much different than it is in the middle of the week because I would bring emotions into it. Sometimes you have to step back for a few days and calm down. After a few days you will probably realize you were the one that was out of line. All things considered, I am in no position to tell you whether the Ole Miss administration is doing a good job or not. One thing I do know is that Dan Jones did not call a single football play against Vanderbilt. Below is the ad if you have not seen it(click on picture to see it larger)or visit forwardrebels.com.