Today, is my last post of the year. I originally started this one September 14th after the AP writers release this, their 4th college poll of the year. The University of Illinois was 3-0 and they got ranked 9th to show that, The University of Tennessee was 2-1 having just lost 44-41 to the University of Georgia in overtime so they were rewarded for their loss by staying put at 15th. This may seem unfair to some of the 17 other teams along with U of I ranked in the AP top 25 who started 3-0 especially the 8 3-0 teams ranked below TN all because the Volunteers played the Bulldogs close.
However one team dropped inexplicably in the rankings and they certainly had a bigger axe to grind than the 3-0 teams who felt slighted by TN. This team had started the year ranked 6th in the preseason poll . The next week they dropped from 6th to 9th. They had a bye week in week 2 so they were able to jump us from 9th to 8th but then the indignity of plummeting, freed falling, dropping from 9th to 24th.
This of course was South Bend Indiana's gift to Football itself, Notre Dame. What did Notre Dame do to deserve this national embarrassment? Failure to achieve any of the goals they set for themselves? No, I think that might just be too on the nose for the AP writers. Notre Dame had lost their first game and then after 2 weeks to think about it lost their 2nd game. Now, they only lost by a total of 4 points, so that was plenty of reason to place them above undefeated U.S.C. (who beat their 3 opponents by 115 points), and BYU (+93 point differential in their 2 games).
I mean that's crazy? How entitled can BYU get complaining thinking that their 2-0 start should be rewarded and place ahead of a team that could at that point in the season count all their victories with no hands.
I meant to get that out much sooner than today, but Notre Dame started winning and my original post got relegated to draft status. I always like to resurrect a post or two from draft status near the end of the year and I thought the title of this post, alone, merited an end of the year reprieve.
Yesterday Illinois and Tennessee met for the first time on the gridiron in the music city bowl here are the highlights.
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