(Written by kencraw)

More thoughts on our competition (that we didn’t play this week and beat to death… which reminds me of an old family joke, well humorous vignette anyway, to explain the way my family is, about Lord Crawford back in Scotland in the horse carriage when the driver comes back and says, “sir, the horse is dead.” sending Lord Crawford into a rage “I’LL SHOW YOU A DEAD HORSE” (whip!)) from around the Pac-10:

• WSU (6) @ USC (27): USC continues to look very vulnerable. If WSU’s offense wasn’t so incompetent, this would have actually been a semi-competitive game. Worse yet for USC fans, this was in the Coliseum, so no excuses about playing away from home. USC looks VERY vulnerable and I sure hope that us Cal fans bring the noise on Saturday because we can beat this team. As for WSU, at home they’ll prove to be an easy win in a month. No surprise there.
• ASU (17) @ Georgia (20): Boy, that was a tough loss for ASU. They really had a shot at the upset. It’s hard to tell what to make of this game because I’m pretty confident that Georgia is suspect. I will say this, the 17 that Georigia gave up is the smallest number that they have all season. So my gut feel is that the ASU offense isn’t all that potent. At the same time, it feels like their defense may be better than advertised.
• Arizona (37) @ Oregon State (32): Boy, Oregon State sure isn’t living up to their usual reputation. The offense is sputtering and the defense isn’t what it used to be. Never overlook the Beavers but I just get the feeling that this is a down team and the defenses that kept them in so many games for their opportunistic offense to capitalize on, isn’t there this season and it’s going to be a long season for the Beavers. As for Arizona, it looks like their young QB has potential and with their defense, they might just be this year’s Oregon State (meaning the defense gives the offense opportunistic chances).
• Washington (14) @ Stanford (34): I’ll call this one the enigma bowl because I don’t know what to make of either of these teams. Is USC just so remarkably horrible that we are over-appreciating Washington? It sure seems like it with the beat-down Stanford gave them. On the other hand, the were very competitive with LSU who looks to be on the rise, so I just don’t know what to think. As for Stanford… so who are they? Are they the team that let Wake Forrest push them around all 2nd half or are they the team that put the beat-down on USC-beating Washington? This may be a case of two teams who are good enough to be inspired at home but lack the fortitude to win on the road (I sure wish I could say I have no experience with that). That would explain a lot for both of these teams to date. The Tin Bowl in Palo Alto is becoming quite the home-field advantage despite only have 15K fans in the stands.

From now on I’ll use the end of this post to re-cap what’s going on in the Pick’Em League:

Tedfordium continues to be the class act of the group with his 84.4% winning percentage. Usually we have someone with a great winning percentage but who’s doing horribly in the MVD and TPD, but Tedfordium is pretty strong there too. Blogging co-host Jason Snell is back on his Mojo and is a solid 2nd place and CalBandGreat had a stellar week to get into 3rd place. I’m slowly creeping up the standings into 4th, but there’s a big group of us, all the way to the 9th spot who are very close. Tedfordium is leading the winning percentage category, so he should be better based on odds not spreads, Jason is leading in margin of victory, so he should be betting the spread and I’m leading the total points and should be betting on the over-under.