Let’s just say that Purdue did not have a great start to their season. The Boilermakers opened 0-3, including a loss to Eastern Michigan. But lately they have turned things around in a big way, rolling off four straight wins, the last coming in impressive fashion over Ohio State. In front of a packed Ross-Ade Stadium (literally; stadium capacity is 57,236 and the official attendance was 60,716), the Boilermakers dominated throughout, pulling away at the end to win 49-20. Quarterback Jeff Blough threw for 378 yards and Rondale Moore had 248 all-purpose yards, including 170 receiving, and two touchdowns. Keep your eyes on Moore, a true freshman, in the years to come; he’s currently second in the nation in all-purpose yardage, at just a tick under 180 per game. Purdue is in a four-way logjam at the top of the Big Ten West with Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Iowa; that’s a pretty nice turnaround from a loss to Eastern Michigan!<\/p>\n
The annual Florida-Georgia game is a rivalry with bad blood. The former “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” has been played since…well, actually,\u00a0that’s up for debate. Georgia counts a game played in 1904 in their official statistics; Florida claims their first official football team was in 1906 and that the 1904 game doesn’t count (perhaps not surprisingly, it ended 52-0 Georgia). Since Georgia is the designated home team for this year’s matchup in Jacksonville, let’s count it for the sake of discussion, making the series record 51-43-2 and this the 97th meeting. The Bulldogs dominated the early part of the series (Florida didn’t register their fifth win until 1949), but the Gators have owned the series as of late, winning all but seven games since 1990. This year’s game is the first time both teams were ranked in the top ten coming into the game since 2008.<\/p>\n
We’ve reached that magical time of the year where football is on practically every day of the week! It’s true! This week, the Sun Belt becomes the “Fun Belt”: tonight, the annual “Battle for the Belt” between Troy and South Alabama is on. Then there are five games Thursday (including another really good Sun Belt game between Appalachian State and Georgia Southern), and another five on Friday.\u00a0 Next week, once the NFL has its days in the sun, we get sweet, sweet MACtion: two games on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, and two more on Thursday. It’s a little sad to see the practically empty stands in some of those games, but hey, who am I to complain about more games to watch?<\/p>\n
In small-school news, I’m not sure that I’ve ever written about an NAIA team before. But hey, it’s not often that the #1 and #3 teams play each other, no matter what the division, so let’s give it a go! The NAIA, for those who might be wondering, is short for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Its membership of about 250 schools is in a single division; from what I’ve read, the skill level is around the NCAA Division II level. This past weekend, #1 Morningside (Iowa) faced off against #3 Northwestern (Iowa) and came away with a 42-34 win. Morningside has been ranked in 145 consecutive NAIA football polls, the longest current streak in the NAIA. The Mustangs have never won a national championship (they made it to the championship game in 2012, but lost 30-27 in overtime); maybe this will be their year!<\/p>\n
Congratulations to WarTiger91<\/strong>, who wins week 8 with 127 points in a tie-breaker over JagRag<\/strong> and Paul Herron<\/strong>! Jeff4Bama<\/strong> had 126 points, and HostileNoles<\/strong> had 125.<\/p>\n Standings after eight weeks:<\/p>\n As I mentioned above, we have lots of weeknight games, and that extends to our picks. Two games are on Thursday, and one on Friday, so don’t miss out! The first game on the schedule this week is Baylor at West Virginia, Thursday, October 25 @ 7 PM ET<\/strong>, so make sure to get your picks in by then!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let’s just say that Purdue did not have a great start to their season. The Boilermakers opened 0-3, including a loss to Eastern Michigan. But lately they have turned things around in a big way, rolling off four straight wins, the last coming in impressive fashion over Ohio State. In front of a packed Ross-Ade […]<\/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-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","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=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n 1st<\/td>\n AllySun\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,507<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 2nd<\/td>\n Paul Herron\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,504<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n T-3rd<\/td>\n Crimson Gator\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,496<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n T-3rd<\/td>\n JagRag\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,496<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 5th<\/td>\n bamaken\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,487<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 6th<\/td>\n BEVO\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,486<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n T-7th<\/td>\n El Dude-arino\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,484<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n T-7th<\/td>\n Jeff4Bama\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,484<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 9th<\/td>\n Ragnor\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,474<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n 10th<\/td>\n Pachyderm\u00a0<\/strong><\/td>\n 1,472<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n