TRS College Football Rankings after Week 7

WOW, what a weekend of football.

Every year has a weekend or two like this, where there cream rises...or injuries take their toll, as the case may be.

Let's take a quick look at what happened.

Missouri announced their intent to be a serious member of the SEC with a road win in Athens.  Say what you want about the injuries, Missouri didn't squeak that game out, they beat the Dawgs, limping as they were.  A good team should be a team on it's third-string running back by double digits.  Missouri was a good team, now we get to see how big a loss James Franklin is going to be.

As bad as Texas looked early in the season, their new found commitment to running downhill and an aggressive defense has them looking pretty good.  Don't get me wrong, they are not a top 10 team week to week, but they are more talented than nearly any other team in the country, and these schemes are letting them play rather thank think.  They will be in the top 20 by the end if they play like this, and they will deserve it.

We found out that as good as Arkansas played to stay close to the Aggies last week, they still have some work to do.

I think we got a realistic measure for how good the Baylor Bears really are.  When squared off against a well-coached defense that takes away those mistake plays that Baylor turns into 80 yard touchdowns, they are still good, but not great.  That said, 35 points on a Bill Snyder defense is a find showing, and they have the talent to beat you a couple times a game even when you are doing things the right way.

The PAC-12 is Oregon and everyone else at this point.  Stanford and UCLA both have a puncher's chance against them, but this race is theirs to lose.

TRS College Football Rankings after Week 6

We got a good slate of games this last week.  With the conference seasons really firing up, we starting to separate the wheat from the chafe. 

What did we learn?

Well, Maryland is not near a complete team.

Northwestern is a legitimate Big 10 contender, or were before they lost a tough one to the Buckeyes.

OU is a different team with Blake Bell at quarterback.

Georgia State's AD is a sadist who scheduled a vicious gauntlet for his young program.

These games did give us a bit of a shuffle in the rankings, so without further ado........

LSU professor created a program to help former NFL athletes.

According to an article written in a 2009 Sports Illustrated magazine, 78 percent of former NFL players had gone bankrupt or were under financial stress because of divorce or no job within two years of retirement. Even if this statistic is a bit inaccurate, we all know the history of athletes’ bad decision-making throughout their careers.

Thomas Karam, a marketing professor at Louisiana State University (LSU),  developed a program to help former NFL players transition into their post-NFL lives, hoping he can prevent many others from becoming statistics. Karam’s program is called “The Program on Personal Branding”. It is a three-day seminar in which former NFL players participate in workshops where they learn management skills, how to successfully build their brand and how to conduct a job interview.  

Instead of focusing on money management, the program is designed to teach these players how to fix their personal brand by analyzing their past decisions and what they could have done to better leverage their time in the NFL.

T.J. Yeldon keys Alabama’s 21-17 win over LSU

Alabama remained undefeated  after defeating LSU Saturday night. It was a close fought game in Death Valley but T.J. Yeldon took a swing pass from quarterback A.J. McCarron and went 28 yards for the go ahead touchdown with 51 seconds remaining. The 21-17 win over LSU will keep Alabama atop the college football polls.

The win moves Alabama to 9-0 (6-0 in Southeastern Conference) and dropped LSU to 7-2. (3-2 in SEC)