By CHRIS DUFRESNE
McClatchy-Tribune
It’s mid-September and people are taking more summer vacation. What is this, France?
UCLA players this week take a well-deserved break even though classes haven’t started yet, while USC’s bye week makes two straight if you count last week’s effort against Boston College.
Six of the 10 teams in the Big 12 Conference will be couch potatoes Saturday, and eight teams in The Associated Press top 25 have slipped “do not disturb” signs on their doorknobs.
This might be a good time for us to reflect on what we’ve learned so far:
Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston hasn’t learned a thing. He is what we thought he was: a bad guy, who happens to be a great quarterback, who can’t get to the NFL soon enough.
Winston swore at Atlantic Coast Conference media days in July he had “fixed everything” and better understood his role as a team leader.
Then, on Tuesday, he got up on a table in the student union and swore a vulgarity about women that was so profane it made truckers blush.
Winston was apparently repeating an Internet meme. It was so inappropriate Florida State suspended him for the first half of Saturday’s important home game against Clemson.
Which raised the question: What kind of vulgarity gets you suspended for a second half?
Don’t fret, Seminoles fans, your team won at Clemson last year, 51-14.
James “Actors Studio” Lipton could probably quarterback Florida State for a half.
It’s been clear to most people outside the Florida State bubble that Winston may not ever get it. His behavior has been overlooked, duh, because he is a supremely talented athlete.
Winston led Florida State to a 14-0 record and the national title last year. He won the Heisman Trophy in spite of a sexual assault allegation that dogged him to the eve of the ACC title game against Duke.
Winston was cleared two days before kickoff, after Florida’s state prosecutor concluded there was not enough evidence to press charges.
The circumstances of the case still stink worse than crab legs left in the Tallahassee sun.
Winston won the Heisman, in part, because voters couldn’t find any other viable candidates. The suspension is a positive only if it dooms Winston’s chances winning a second trophy.
“So I think we can stop pretending that Jameis Winston has any chance to win another Heisman,” tweeted Chris Huston, who runs the “Heisman Pundit” website.
The early season hasn’t settled much of anything.
Lack of sample data hasn’t stopped the voting coaches from hailing UCLA as a top-10 team after three wins the Bruins just as easily could have lost. Or, for some USC fans to dump on first-year coach Steve Sarkisian seven days after a signature win over Stanford: See, we told you it was a bad hire!
Pete Carroll might not have survived his first September had Twitter been invented in 2001. He lost USC’s second game, at home, to Kansas State, the first of four straight defeats en route to a season-ending Las Vegas Bowl loss to Utah that left the Trojans at 6-6.
But wait, Carroll took over a program in turmoil. Yeah, like Sarkisian inherited the 1972 Trojans?
Getting a grip on reality in today’s world is tough, especially when it’s almost never required.
For fun, let’s turn the clock back to last September. The top four teams in the AP poll in Week 4 were Alabama, Oregon, Clemson and Ohio State.
Alabama and Oregon did not end up winning their divisions of the Southeastern and Pac-12 conferences.
The team that won the SEC, Auburn, was not ranked. Nor was Michigan State, the Big Ten and Rose Bowl champion.
Auburn didn’t crack the AP poll until Week 8, at No. 24; and Michigan State didn’t stick its nose in until Week 10, at No. 24.
Clemson was No. 3 at this time last year because 2013 was supposed to be the Tigers’ year. It wasn’t. Ohio State was No. 4 at this time but thudded to a two-loss finish.
Florida State, the eventual national champion, was not in the preseason top 10.
It takes a lot to move the congregation — yours truly included — off its preconceived perch.
Three of the four schools in this week’s AP top four — Florida State, Oregon, Alabama, Oklahoma — are there based on projection. A top four based on performance should probably be Texas A&M, Oregon, Louisiana State and … Brigham Young?
Texas A&M dismantled South Carolina, the team picked to win the SEC East; Oregon scored a 19-point win over No. 7 Michigan State; and LSU had a rousing comeback win over Wisconsin. BYU eviscerated Texas in Austin, something UCLA could not come close to doing in Arlington.
Two early battles to keep monitoring:
Pac-12 vs. SEC: The two best leagues have further separated from the three other power conferences. Gee, if only the SEC and Pac-12 played each other. The Pac-12 owns the best win against a power five league, Oregon over Michigan State, but the SEC can boast Georgia over Clemson and LSU over Wisconsin.
Key out-of-conference measuring-stick games are Auburn at Kansas State on Thursday, and Utah at Michigan on Saturday.
Temple vs. Dome: BYU is trying to be like Notre Dame and go it alone as a football independent. It’s probably not going to work. Because it is not in a conference, BYU has no guaranteed access to a major bowl. The Cougars’ only hope is to go undefeated and hope they get picked in the top four by the selection committee. Good luck with that.
BYU is a more impressive 3-0 than Notre Dame but not getting nearly the same respect. It doesn’t seem likely BYU can piece together annual schedules worthy of title consideration. Notre Dame plays Stanford and USC every year and can always attract top national opponents — the Irish play Florida State this year. All Notre Dame has to do is win the games on its schedule to make the four-team playoff. It can even afford the right loss this year and get in.
If BYU goes undefeated this year and ends up in the Miami Beach Bowl, it should strongly consider a conference-protection plan.
