The Owls (1-8) get the top spot on the local football review this week as they finally broke their 14 game losing streak (the longest in major college football) in beating Tulane at Rice Stadium. The win was a relief for the Rice program, which could attract a “crowd” of less than 10,000 for homecoming on a mild Texas autumn afternoon. Rumors continue to swirl that this will be head coach Ken Hatfield’s last season, and — despite the problems that the program has endured over the past two seasons — he is going to be a tough act to replace. While Rice’s new affiliation with Conference USA renews its traditional rivalries with Houston, SMU, and Tulane, it’s reasonably clear that those rivalries will not be enough to revive the lagging Owl football program. The Owls have a tough game next Saturday at Central Florida before ending the season on the Saturday after Thanksgiving against Houston.
Let’s see now. Total yards: Colts 420; Texans 210. Score with 9.5 minutes to go in the 2nd quarter: Colts 21 Texans 0. But for a couple of muffed punts by the Colts, this one would have been even uglier, which is a daunting thought. Meanwhile, the Texans’ offensive line — already the worst in the NFL — has lost three regular players due to injury, which will probably prompt Coach Dom Capers to rearrange the deck chairs on this version of the Titanic once again (he has already done it a couple of times, described here and here). The Texans (1-8) — which increasingly resemble those perfectly awful early 1970’s Oilers teams — now have home games the next two Sundays against the Chiefs and the Rams, both of which are likely to lace the Texans’ porous defense in the same manner as the Colts did.
Key tip to Kansas head coach Mark Mangino — don’t declare in a post-game press conference that a close Texas victory over your team (last season’s, as a matter of fact) is the result of referees throwing the game so that the Longhorns will be eligible for a BCS bowl game. Vince Young might hear about it. After leading this one 28-0 after the first quarter and 52-0 at halftime, the Horns (10-0) now get to rest for their rivalry game with the Aggies in College Station the day after Thanksgiving and the Big 12 Championship game the following Saturday at Reliant Stadium against probably Colorado. If the Horns take care of business in those two games, the Rose Bowl matchup with Southern Cal shapes up to be the most important game for the Texas football program since the classic 1969 “Game of the Century” victory over Arkansas that prompted President Nixon to declare the Horns national champions.
The 5-5 Aggies are now falling back on moral victories, as they beat the spread for only the third time this season in this one, a sure sign of unfulfilled expectations. After getting blown out 28-7 in the first quarter of this game, the Aggies battled back and made a game of it, only to blow the opportunity to win the game by giving up a 3rd and long pass play with a little over two minutes to go after backing up the Sooners deep in their own part of the field. To make matters worse for the Aggies, QB Reggie McNeal endured what looked like a seriously sprained ankle, so he is questionable at best for the Texas game on the Friday after Thanksgiving. My sense is that the Aggies will get hammered by at least 30 by Texas, which will leave the Aggie faithful a long time before next season to grouse about Coach Fran and the $10 million buyout under his contract. Oh well, although not a national power anymore in football, the Ags are a winner in at least one fall sport.
Houston Cougars 27 Southern Miss 24
The 5-4 Coogs continue to irritate and amaze simultaneously. Although they dominated the line of scrimmage and the statistical battle, the Cougars fell behind 10-0 in this one before coming back to take 20-10 and 27-17 leads in the 4th quarter. Then, the always exciting hometown team coughed up two of their three fumbles — including a fumble and a flubbed onside kick in the final 2:40 of the game — to give Southern Miss an opportunity to pull the game out until the very end. Nevertheless, with wins in home games against SMU and Rice in their final two games, the Cougars will be 7-4 and a rather attractive team for a minor bowl game. You gotta love college football.
The Cowboys play the Eagles in the Monday Night game this week before playing Detroit the following Sunday and Denver on Thanksgiving Day. This is the key stretch of the season for the Pokes, who could take control of their division over the next 11 days.
Time to start making plans for the New Orleans Bowl … in Lafayette.
I hate to say it, but I think UH will lose one of the next two games. They shouldn’t, but I think they will. It would be just brutal if they lost to Rice.
Cowboys could really assert themselves with a win against Philly, esp with NYG and WSH losing, but I don’t know if this young Cowboys team is ready to go beat Philly at Philly, even with that team’s distractions and problems.
Hey, do not diss the Aggies soccer team by mentioning it in the same paragraph with the football team.
I haven’t visited it, but I saw several students wearing T-shirts that touted FireKenHatfield.com at the game. Given how utterly apathetic the students have been about the football team lately – and this goes back to at least 2001, when Rice went 8-4 – it was nice to see a few of them get passionate about something.
As I expected, the Coogs have now lost one of their last two games (against an inferior opponent, at home), now putting a bowl bid in serious jeopardy.
I hope Maggard got that Big 14 deal finalized before the Coogs’ latest debacle. 🙂