The first sign of trouble

I knew things were heading south about two minutes into the West Virginia/Oklahoma game last night. The announcers kept talking about how big the Oklahoma offensive line was - how they were all above 300 lbs. except one guy, and how they expected to manhandle the smaller WV line.

I immediately thought of my idea - if I were ever a college football coach - to stack the line with smaller, faster guys to facilitate the pass rush.

And that's exactly what WV did. They whooped some serious ass by just running around those huge slow guys.

I hope the trend towards the quicker spread offense results in slimmer, faster linemen. It's not healthy to be that big, and it's not exciting to watch what basically amounts to sumo wrestling at the line.

And with that, my perfect record for bowl game picks in the new year is ruined. That's what I get for not giving West Virginia enough credit. Congratulations to Bill Stewart for the win and permanent promotion to head coach.

Remaining games (my picks underlined):

Virginia Tech vs. Kansas
Rutgers vs. Ball State
Bowling Green vs. Tulsa (partly because of how they played against UCF, and partly because of the Rufus Wainwright song "Tulsa")
LSU vs. Ohio State (I'm calling it right now, Michigan took Florida and OSU can take LSU. At the very least, I don't think Jim Tressel will let himself be embarrassed again after what happened last year.)

Link