Sports Then and Now

In the era of the Bowl Championship Series, there have several occasions where an unranked team has pulled off an upset of a team that has been in the top-10 of the BCS standings or a serious contender to get the national championship game.

Such was the case on October 20, 2001 when an unranked Stanford Cardinal traveled to Eugene, Oregon and upset the heavily-favored Oregon Ducks.

Entering the 2001 season, expectations were high for Oregon as they were coming off a 10-win season and a Holiday Bowl win from the previous season and earned a top-ten ranking in both the AP and Coaches’ preseason polls.

The Ducks were led by head coach Mike Bellotti, who in his seventh season as the Oregon head coach and had complied a record of 49-22 in his first six seasons, and featured a Heisman Trophy candidate in quarterback Joey Harrington.

Oregon entered the game with Stanford having won their opening six games of the season and had moved up to #5 in both polls, still very much alive in the race for the national championship.

While Oregon had aspirations for a national championship, Stanford was just hoping to have a winning season and get to a bowl game.

Stanford head coach Tyrone Willingham was also in his seventh season as a head coach in the Pac-10 and while he had taken Stanford to the Rose Bowl in 1999, his time in Palo Alto had been average as his record during that span was 35-33-1, including a 5-6 season in 2000. Read the rest of this entry →

LSU topped Alabama in week 10, as No. 1 faced No. 2

Who knew such an exciting football game could be so boring? When Alabama hosted LSU last Saturday, not one touchdown was scored.  You call that a football game?

It was like watching soccer for the Big Zzzzzz…oops, dozed off again.  Just remembering how Zultan tried to stay awake until the last of five “field goals” spiraled through the uprights —whew, a real defensive struggle.

If only Alabama had won the coin toss—now that would have been exciting!

Still Zultan missed the final score and went down to defeat, along with many of you.  And now I hear pundits demanding to see the game again at the end of the season—as in Alabama vs. LSU, Part 2, the BCS Championship Game…

Pah-leeze!  Once is quite enough, thank you very much.

The big shocker of the day was one nobody saw coming—the Northwestern Wildcats defeating the Nebraska Cornhuskers in Lincoln. Who knew?  Certainly no one on this planet.

The only Big Red stampede came at the end of the game when Cornhusker fans stormed the exits. They were not humming “Whatever Bo-Pa Wants,” either as they fumed out with little puffs of smoke coming out of their ears.

When the dust settled over Lincoln Land, there were nine who guessed better than Zultan in week ten. Zultan posted an 8-2 record, missing on LSU and Northwestern. This week, however, looks like a supreme test despite the fact that Zultan has received his new crystal ball via the OverLook Brothers.

Click here to make your picks and see if this is finally the week you reign supreme over the the all-seeing seer by outguessing him on the selected games listed below.  Not much time is left in the regular 2011 season, so join in the fun today.  Zultan will feature you in his next column if you surpass him in picks.

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