College football Saturday: Georgia tops South Carolina, Michigan trumps Notre Dame and more

For those of us who get annoyed by the narrative that certain teams are clutch -- a truly ludicrous concept, considering the small sample sizes that characterize college football analysis -- and who are still put off by the term “Ohio State, 2002 National Champions,” there were three bete noire title contenders in 2012: Florida, Notre Dame, and Ohio State. How has each managed to continue being clutch in 2013?

In 2013, thanks to a Grenada/Panama opening schedule that pays homage to the major military conflicts of the Reagan and Bush I Administrations, the Buckeyes have not yet been tested. But Florida and Notre Dame both failed their first major tests of 2013 in a manner that showed that their successes in 2012 were not replicable in at least one important sense.

Exchange:

Angry beard selfie:

We’re not talking about which conference is the best. We’re talking about which conference had the best Saturday. Let’s go.

It probably says a lot about our expectations for a conference when I can rank it No. 2 with a straight face based mostly on the fact that nothing terrible happened. Miami posted the league’s second-biggest win of the season by beating Florida 14-9. The Hurricanes are the favorites to win the Coastal Division now and might finally deliver on the conference’s original plan to get them to the conference title game and play Florida State twice (or Clemson, of course).

ADL. Activities of daily living, also known as the set of skills people have to lose before they’re placed in assisted living facilities. These are simple things: bathing, dressing, feeding, and other things which you find easy and some older people do not. When you can’t do them anymore, that’s when it’s time to go to a home and spend your days eating soft foods and watching NCIS, our nation’s most popular television show. (Shh. Don’t tell anyone that episodic network television now makes its money solely off captive populations like prisoners and the elderly.)

Mack Brown fired Manny Diaz after two games, then cautiously coated the bottom of the tub in traction-friendly bath strips.

Jeff Nusser of CougCenter noted Mike Leach’s surprisingly conservative playcalling, especially on Washington State’s eventual game-winning drive:

Evan Budrovich at Conquest Chronicles noted the Trojans’ conservative attack as well, which pointed to a lack of faith in their offense.

After a tough loss against Clemson in their opening week contest, Georgia rebounded with a big victory over visiting South Carolina on Saturday, defeating the Gamecocks 41-30 in Athens.

DavetheDawg from DawgSports noted Georgia’s ability to game-plan around South Carolina defensive star Jadeveon Clowney:

The Michigan-Notre Dame rivalry is going away after next year. It’s probably not coming back for a long, long time. Say what you will about the two winningest programs in college football history, but their annual clash has never gone unnoticed, and it’s always had an outsized impact.

Could their thrilling 41-30 victory this year have a similar trampoline effect for the Wolverines? You bet.

Even with the big win, Juan Toribio of State of the U was worried about the Hurricanes’ offensive performance:

Florida’s defense played well, and their offense controlled the game, but it was the consistent turnovers in key situations that did the Gators in. Brandon Larrabee of Team Speed Kills said Florida beat themselves in the game.

Update: Texas has officially confirmed the news.

The University of Texas fired defensive coordinator Manny Diaz after the Longhorns’ historically bad performance against BYU, according to Orangebloods.com’s Chip Brown. Brown also reports Diaz will be replaced by Greg Robinson, the former Longhorns defensive coordinator brought on during the offseason as a personnel analyst.

That means Pachall will return, at the earliest, for TCU’s Nov. 9 conference game against Iowa State, and will miss contests against No. 14 Oklahoma and No. 12 Oklahoma State.

TCU’s offense should not suffer much -- Boykin has the advantage in completion percentage, yards, yards/attempt, touchdowns, interceptions and quarterback rating -- but the Horned Frogs will still anxiously await the return of their starter.

Dominated the bye week by margins unquantifiable. Spent the weekend on the couch guffawing openly at your team. They play an unheralded Texas A&M next week in a neglected conference game of little import or public notice.

59-10 over UVA, but it was closer than the scoreboard makes it look, because at one point in the game these teams were tied! (For exactly one minute and one second in the first quarter, the length of time it took the Ducks to score.)

The senior is one of the leaders of West Virginia’s defense, and started each of the past two years at WILL linebacker. In 2012, he was the fifth-leading tackler on the Mountaineers, recording 60 on the season.

• Georgia, Miami, Michigan surge in AP poll

After big wins over ranked opponents, Georgia and Michigan have moved up in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll. The losing schools in those games -- South Carolina and Notre Dame, respectively -- both slide down, as do Florida and Texas, who both lost to unranked opponents on the road. USC is out of the poll after a loss at home to Washington State, while Miami is in after their big win over Florida.

The full AP Top 25 for Week 3, with first-place votes in parentheses (also, the Coaches Poll, which will actually affect the BCS in a few weeks):

It was just a week ago that we said the early season Hot Seat Watch was merely an experiment, an exercise in prediction based on limited information. After all, UConn wasn’t going to fire Paul Pasqualoni after one loss, no matter how bad that loss was.

Things stopped being experimental in Week 2. Things got real.

Michigan took a two-touchdown lead heading into the half after another Gardner-to-Gallon touchdown, and it was a lead they never relinquished. Not for a lack of trying, however, as up 34-20 in the fourth quarter, Gardner did this.

Notre Dame were not able to fully capitalize, scoring a field goal minutes after the touchdown to bring it within four, and a Gardner touchdown with just over four minutes to play sealed the deal for the Wolverines.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - It’s those seven turnovers. That’s why Bobby Petrino’s your man, Mr. or Mrs. athletic director looking for a new coach next year.

Damn right that’s the reason. Otherwise the disgraced-then-rebranded former Arkansas head coach would’ve very likely had his second SEC win in as many weeks as a Sun Belt coach. That’s why you hire Bobby Petrino, Mr. or Mrs. AQ program with an opening in the near future.

Just two weeks into the final BCS season, there are signs that the SEC’s seven-year reign might be coming to an end. To some, this proclamation seems a bit alarmist, but hey, if you’re the other conferences desperate to get a piece of the action, you’ll take any good news you can get.

For the second consecutive week, a top-ranked SEC team lost a high-profile game on the road against an ACC opponent. A week after Georgia was dropped by Clemson in Death Valley, Florida imploded at Sun Life Stadium against a Miami team that was just little bit less inept. Then, in the first big internecine battle within the SEC, Georgia handed South Carolina its first loss.

Michigan knocked off Notre Dame 41-30 on Saturday, and what song did the Wolverines’ PA play following their fight song? Well, the chicken dance song, of course.

Chickens have been a theme of the Michigan-Notre Dame series dating back to the summer. With Notre Dame becoming a partial member of the ACC, the Fighting Irish announced their series with the Wolverines would end following the 2014 season. Michigan head coach Brady Hoke said Notre Dame was “chickening out”, and thus a theme was born.

Washington State knocked off No. 25 USC 10-7 in what may have been the ugliest game of the young 2013 college football season.

Depending on how you look at it, the game was either a battle of really good defense or really, really bad offense. The two teams traded punts and turnovers for most of the game. WSU picked up the win, despite not scoring offensive points until late in the fourth quarter.

BYU made No. 15 Texas feel decidedly unwelcome in Provo, dispatching the visiting Longhorns 40-21 Saturday night. Texas led 14-10 early in the second quarter, but BYU scored 24 straight and held on for the big win.

The Cougars set multiple records in the game with an historic performance on the ground. BYU ran for 550 yards, the most all-time by a Cougars team and the most-ever given up by a Texas defense. The previous record for rushing yards by a BYU squad was 465, against Montana in 1958. The most rushing yards the Longhorns had given up in their history before Saturday was 452.

In a typically wild Michigan-Notre Dame affair, the Wolverines prevailed 41-30. Devin Gardner celebrated his status as the new No. 98—yes, a quarterback wearing No. 98, a Legends Number nod to former Michigan Heisman winner Tom Harmon—with 294 yards passing and 82 yards rushing and five total touchdowns.

This is, of course, the last time Michigan and Notre Dame are scheduled to face each other, and new games may not come for at least another decade or so. So it goes in a realignment-crazy college football world. It certainly didn’t help when Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly tried to minimize the importance of the game by calling it a “regional” rivalry in interviews. So when Michigan got the win, its Twitter account took the opportunity to rub it in:

Good news! Michigan-Notre Dame Saturday night set a record for attendance at Michigan Stadium, which in turn is a college football attendance record, and in turn, an American football record!

Our sincere condolences to the previous record-holders, who are now just in second place. Apologies to... (goes to google) (looks up attendance records) Michigan and Notre Dame from two years ago, with 114,804?

Fun fact: last week, Fresno State lined up offensive lineman as slot receivers. The Bulldogs are size-positive.

From Austin Wentworth’s Fresno State bio:

TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY YOU’RE UP BY TWO TOUCHDOWNS TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY IT’S ONLY TWO POINTS TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY YOU’RE AT HOME TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY THEY HAVEN’T STOPPED YOU ALL NIGHT TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETY TAKE THE SAFETYYYYYYYYYY

YOU DIDN’T TAKE THE SAFETY

The game as a whole was little more than a mess; neither offense moved the ball with much efficiency, and each team committed four turnovers on the day. West Virginia was particularly brutal on special teams, fumbling a punt return and extending an OU drive on a roughing the punter call. By comparison, Oklahoma’s late chip-shot field goal try that doinked off the upright seems downright tame.

Rankings Ramifications: Oklahoma’s No. 16 ranking will probably hold firm, as there’s not a whole lot of reason to bump up a ranked team that beat a weaker conference foe by only nine at home.