College Football Etc.

Well, it has been over a month since my first entry and this thing didn't quite work out like I had hoped. I wanted to get a few friends involved, get some dialog going, etc...but that didn't end up happening. Instead, I'm fairly certain nobody even read the last entry, and if they did, didn't care enough to comment. Anyways, if only for my own pleasure, I'm going to revisit a few of my "opening thoughts" and bring up a few other things that I've enjoyed seeing in the first few weeks of action.

First off, Maroney's status as a Heisman frontrunner actually appears strong thus far. ESPN's "experts" have him ranked a strong fourth between Leinart, Bush, and Young. Of course, they have Wisconsin RB Brian Calhoun ranked fifth based off of gaudy numbers he put up against Bowling Green. So that's not saying much, but it's nice to see that he's in the national eye of sorts. Since I'm talking about Minnesota already, I might as well give my impression of the team thus far. In a nutshell, the defense has pleasantly surprised me, Cupito has unpleasantly surprised me. For a while last year, I thought he just needed some more experience to evolve into a big-time QB. Now, I'm pretty certain that no amount of experience will make him anything more than a barely sufficient Division 1 quarterback. I can understand why QB's don't want to come to Minnesota, but if the Gophers had even an above-average QB they'd be a top-15 team. The recievers are big, strong, and physical, the offensive line is more or less insane, and the ground attack borders on unstoppable. If you caught the Colorado State game, Minnesota looked pretty impotent early because of the way the Rams were stacking the line. But the Big Ten team wore down the Mountain West team and eventually asserted their dominance. Against a Big Ten team, though...things won't work out the same way. There will be no wearing down, and I look forward to Maroney's Heisman hopes being dashed because Cupito simply can't pass on a consistent basis.