Football Reflections

As I have mentioned before in previous articles, I decided for this season to deliberately focus my attention on college football's Pacific-Ten Conference. And I haven't been disappointed. So far, I have seen games involving half of its teams: Southern Cal, California, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington. There is one trend I am noticing for this season in the Pac-10: its teams seem to be taking turns knocking each other off. USC lost an big upset to Washington and California (which I had thought was good enough this year to go undefeated) was mauled by Oregon 45-3. After the USC loss to Washington, TV and radio analysts were bemoaning it as a big loss for the conference. But the Pac-10 has done well playing teams outside the conference. UCLA handled Tennessee and Kansas State, while Oregon defeated Utah, which heretofore had held the nation's longest winning streak. I'd like to see some of the other schools in the conference play, but that may be a problem due to my work schedule and is dependent on what is chosen to be shown on TV.

Much closer to home, the University of Florida Gators received a scare last Saturday when Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow suffered a head concussion during the third quarter of their game against Kentucky. Florida has a bye week coming, so this will give its sick and injured players some time to recuperate before playing undefeated LSU on the road two weeks from now. But a concussion is nothing to be taken lightly, and Florida has a very capable, talented backup quarterback anyway in John Brantley. I say give Tim some time to heal. Putting him back in too soon could be disastrous.

In professional football, the three Florida teams are having awful seasons. Miami and Tampa Bay are each 0-3 and Jacksonville is 1-2. I don't see any of them recovering enough to make the playoffs, but the Dolphins and Jaguars do show some promise and may put together decent regular season records by season's end. The ownership of Tampa Bay, however, ruined the team last year by firing its Super Bowl-winning coach John Gruden and revamping the team. The Buccaneers are much weaker this year, and although I had entertained higher hopes for them at the season's start, I don't see them finishing higher than dead last in their division.