First off, I feel compelled to tell everyone (even myself)\u2026I tried to warn you about North Dakota State. The Bison did it yet again, beating #13 Iowa (and taking home half a million dollars from the Hawkeyes in the process), 23-21 on a last-second field goal.\u00a0 That makes it six in a row for the boys from Fargo over FBS competition, with over $2,000,000 in so-called \u201cpaycheck\u201d games from their vanquished foes.\u00a0 The next FBS opponent currently on the Bison\u2019s schedule is Oregon, in 2020, so fans of NDSU have four years to revel in this extremely impressive streak.<\/p>\n
Drop the ball<\/strong> (North American phrase of drop, informal)<\/em>: make a mistake; mishandle things. \u201cI really dropped the ball on this one.\u201d<\/p>\n What is it with players trying to look cool by dropping the football as close as they can to the front line of the end zone, only to mistime it and drop it at the 1 yard line? It\u2019s happened multiple times in recent memory, and twice more this past Saturday.\u00a0 Oklahoma\u2019s Joe Mixon returned an Ohio State kickoff 97 yards for a touchdown\u2026or rather, 96 yards before \u201cfumbling\u201d.\u00a0 The officials and review team didn\u2019t spot it, and Oklahoma kept the touchdown, although Ohio State ended up winning 45-24.\u00a0 Perhaps even more difficult to swallow was what happened in the California-Texas game.\u00a0 With 1:30 to go, and Cal hanging on to a seven point lead, running back Vic Enwere broke through Texas\u2019 defense for 53 yards and a score\u2026or rather, 52 yards and a fumble.\u00a0 This time, the reviewers noticed it, but claimed Texas didn\u2019t immediately recover, and so Cal kept the ball at the 1 yard line and was able to run out the clock and preserve the win. Coaches \u2013 tell your guys to hang on to the ball!\u00a0 Whatever style points they might hope to gain by doing this celebration aren\u2019t worth possibly losing the six actual points.<\/p>\n Another trend for this past week was teams running out to large leads, then losing them or hanging on for dear life.\u00a0 Michigan State enjoyed a 36-7 lead over Notre Dame at one point, then had to withstand a furious comeback by the Irish before prevailing 36-28.\u00a0 Alabama and Ole Miss swapped roles in the same game, with the Crimson Tide overcoming a 24-3 deficit to take a 48-30 lead with five minutes to go, then watching the Rebels score 13 points in eight seconds and being forced to grind out the clock to preserve a 48-43 win.\u00a0 LSU had a 23-6 lead over Mississippi State with four minutes to go in the game before the Bulldogs scored two quick touchdowns and forced a three-and-out, getting the ball back with one last chance to win or tie. LSU recovered a fumble and ran out the clock to survive, 23-20.<\/p>\n The two-point conversion has always been an interesting quirk when it comes to football.\u00a0 It usually only becomes a factor late in a game, in specific situations where the reward of an additional point outweighs the risk of not gaining the almost-automatic extra point kick.\u00a0 But Oregon didn\u2019t do things normally in Saturday\u2019s game against Nebraska.\u00a0 The Ducks scored five touchdowns \u2013 and went for two after each.\u00a0 However, they only converted one of the five. Nebraska\u2019s five touchdowns were each followed by a standard extra point, which proved to be the difference in the game, as the Cornhuskers won 35-32.<\/p>\n Quick notes: Western Michigan University, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, has had an excellent showing so far against teams from Illinois.\u00a0 After knocking off Northwestern 22-21 in week one, the Broncos went to Champaign and beat Illinois 34-10 this past week. If WMU can knock off Northern Illinois on October 8, they\u2019d have a good argument for being crowned champions of Illinois\u2026no one has beaten a service academy team yet \u2013 Army, Navy, and Air Force are a combined 8-0\u2026Donnel Pumphrey of San Diego State has 599 yards rushing after three games.\u00a0 That\u2019s more than 83 FBS teams\u2026Louisville, after three games, has 1,000 yards rushing (one of only 3 FBS teams) and 1,038 yards passing (one of only 13 FBS teams)\u2026Utah, whose punter won the Ray Guy award for best punter the last two years, then graduated, has a new punter, Mitch Wishnowsky. All he\u2019s doing is leading the nation in punting average, at 52.6 yards per punt\u2026eighty-one FBS teams average 389 yards or more per game. Florida\u2019s defense has given up 389 yards \u2013 total \u2013 in three games.<\/p>\n Congratulations to Tex Duck<\/strong>, who wins week three with 205 points!\u00a0 In Accord<\/strong> was second with 204, and Crimson Gator<\/strong> took third with 203.<\/p>\n Standings after three weeks:<\/p>\n We are finally in the thick of the conference season! Of the games involving ranked teams, only five are not conference games.\u00a0 That usually has the side effect of making the games trickier to pick, so be on your game!\u00a0 The first game this week is Clemson at Georgia Tech, Thursday, September 22 @ 7:30 ET<\/strong>, so make sure to get your picks in by then!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First off, I feel compelled to tell everyone (even myself)\u2026I tried to warn you about North Dakota State. The Bison did it yet again, beating #13 Iowa (and taking home half a million dollars from the Hawkeyes in the process), 23-21 on a last-second field goal.\u00a0 That makes it six in a row for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n 1st<\/sup><\/td>\n In Accord <\/strong><\/td>\n 702<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 2nd<\/sup><\/td>\n AllySun <\/strong><\/td>\n 685<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 3rd<\/sup><\/td>\n Crimson Gator <\/strong><\/td>\n 684<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 4th<\/sup><\/td>\n bamaken <\/strong><\/td>\n 681<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 5th<\/sup><\/td>\n maestro <\/strong><\/td>\n 679<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 6th<\/sup><\/td>\n Pachyderm <\/strong><\/td>\n 678<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 7th<\/sup><\/td>\n Jeff4Bama <\/strong><\/td>\n 677<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 8th<\/sup><\/td>\n Ralphie <\/strong><\/td>\n 675<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 9th<\/sup><\/td>\n TheColombian <\/strong><\/td>\n 673<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 10th<\/sup><\/td>\n Shame! Shame! <\/strong><\/td>\n 672<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n