Sports Illustrated: Five Things We Learned This Weekend

Stewart Mandel

Here is the link.

 

1) That them boys out West can play some football. In terms of excitement level, quality of play and the high rankings of both participants, Saturday's Cal-Oregon game was easily the season's most compelling to date. Unfortunately, almost no one east of the Rockies saw it thanks to ABC's regional coverage that split five different games (the others: Clemson-Georgia Tech, Michigan State-Wisconsin, Kansas State-Texas and Maryland-Rutgers) during its 3:30 p.m. EST broadcast window. The lucky 20 percent of you who could see it were treated to a back-and-forth thriller in which the score was tied on five different occasions, the stars for both sides (Cal's Nate Longshore and DeSean Jackson, Oregon's Dennis Dixon and Jonathan Stewart) shined bright, both defenses made big plays and the final, 31-24 outcome was not decided until a reply confirmed that Ducks receiver Cameron Colvin had indeed fumbled a yard shy of the game-tying touchdown.

Both teams' impressive performances, coupled with so many bad losses by other top-10 teams this weekend, caused me to do something unprecedented in six years of ranking teams: I moved up both teams. Cal's jump from No. 7 to No. 3 was a no-brainer what with Nos. 3-6 (Oklahoma, Florida, West Virginia and Texas) all losing. Conventional logic would say the Ducks, whom I previously had 11th, should drop at least a couple spots for losing, which is exactly what the majority of my fellow voters did in dropping Oregon to 14th in the new AP poll Sunday. To each his own, but ask yourself this: If "No. 5" Wisconsin and "No. 14" Oregon played on a neutral field right now -- who would you take? How about the Ducks against No. 8 Kentucky?

The one concern with Oregon is whether the Ducks are about to go into one of their customary swoons -- they started 4-0 last year, too, before losing to Cal (albeit in a much more lopsided fashion), and wound up finishing 7-6. But it's hard to see a team with that kind of offensive balance (Dixon threw for 306 yards, Stewart ran for 120) and a defense that can stuff the run (Cal averaged just 3.5 yards per attempt) losing too many more games. And the scary part is -- they were only the second-best team on the field Saturday.