NCAA Football Week 3 Preview

BC Tailgate is the official home on Blogcritics for college football news, rants, and riffs. Every conference is covered—we don't play favorites to the big boys.

ACC by Geeves
Big East by Dan McGowan
Big Ten by Geeves
Big XII by Ben Miraski
Conference USA by Matt Sussman
Independents by Benjamin Cossel
MAC by Zach Baker
Mountain West by Matt Sussman
Pac 10 by Steve
SEC by Josh Hathaway
Sun Belt by Jerkwheat
WAC by Matt Sussman

Well, it looks just as we feared. Virginia Tech isn't just getting over the emotional offseason, they're also not as good as we thought they were. LSU showed us that rather handily. Tech's offense has been meager at best. I'm starting elsewhere, though.

West Virginia decided to copy Penn State and other big name schools by having their very own "Color-Out"s at their home games. WVU has chosen the "Black-Out", urging their students to wear all black, even though it isn't a school color. Fortunately for the Mountaineers (unfortunately, in this case, for those beloved Turtles), their combination of an extremely potent spread offense (where a new tailback shows up every weekend) and a swarming defense were no match for Maryland in a 31-14 game Thursday night.

Virginia and North Carolina will go at it down in Chapel Hill as Butch Davis looks to build on the semi-success he has managed thus far, but there is a far bigger pony show a little further south.

Georgia Tech and Boston College play this week, in a game that could very well be an early preview of the ACC Championship game. With the holes that were shot clean through Virginia Tech and Miami last week, these two teams have now become the front-runners in the conference, though Boston College may soon drop off that list as well. They may be 2-0, but their defense has been hit hard, allowing 775 yards in their first two games - 717 of those through the air. This week they'll get a real test, as the Ramblin' Wreck will send out newly anointed Heisman hopeful Tashard Choice and his backup, Jonathan Dwyer, who have combined for 470 yards and eight touchdowns in the season's first two weeks.

Everybody else is, you guessed it, playing teams we could care less about, including Virginia Tech's opportunity to recharge against Ohio University. I'll let you know when Duke wins, trust me.

Winners: Virginia Tech, Virginia, Georgia Tech

--Geeves

No. 4 West Virginia did its job Thursday night, amassing 353 yards on the ground in a 31-14 blowout of ACC foe Maryland. Now its time for the rest of the Big East to keep pace.

Aside from Syracuse, who might have one of the five worst teams in America, the conference heads into week three unbeaten and has a good chance to remain that way considering Cincinnati and UConn play teams from the MAC and Rutgers hosts Norfolk State.

Pittsburgh finds itself in position to further the proof that the Big East isn’t just a three team league when it travels to East Lansing to play Michigan State. The Panthers will look to follow in the footsteps of the Bearcats and South Florida, who each defeated a BCS conference last week.

The Panthers have never beaten the Spartans in six previous meetings, including last year’s 38-23 whipping which saw the Big Ten school rush for 335 yards. If Pitt can contain the run, this game should be pretty close.

The only other game of note this week comes tomorrow night when No. 9 Louisville heads to Lexington to play Kentucky for the Governor’s Cup. You can expect to see a basketball-type score from this one, as both teams sport offenses ranked in the top ten nationally.

Article Author: Matthew T. Sussman

Sussman is the sports editor of BC Magazine. He also writes for Deadspin and Toledo Free Press. He and Tuffy can be heard hosting the Treehouse Fort, Sundays at 12 noon ET. Plus, he Twitters. Feed the feedback back to matt.sussman@blogcritics.org.

Visit Matthew T. Sussman's author page — Matthew T. Sussman's Blog