Nothing in LSU's first six games suggests the Tigers have any hope of upsetting a top-three rival on the road. This was a team that struggled mightily against Washington in the opener and required a dramatic goal line stand to win at Mississippi State -- without defensive and special teams touchdowns that overcame the Tigers' offensive malaise in those games, there wasn't much to suggest they could win anywhere of any consequence. After coming back to beat Georgia in a game that featured zero touchdowns in the first three quarters, LSU returned home to narrowly avoid being shut out by Florida, 13-3, without coming close to the end zone. The offense still ranks dead last in the SEC in total yards per game.

For the optimists, though, there are the last two weeks, in which the LSU offense has found a little life off a post-Florida bye: The Tigers racked up 31 points against Auburn, their best output against the division's other Tigers since 2002, and hung 42 points on overmatched Tulane, their first game this year with 40 points or (not and) 400 total yards. Jordan Jefferson is emerging as one of the most efficient passers in the SEC, and his backup, true freshman Russell Sheppard, is coming on as a dangerous big-play threat as a runner, with long touchdowns runs in each of the last two games to complement the between-the-tackles thumping of regular tailback Charles Scott.

And by all appearances, this is the right time to catch Alabama. The Tide's surprisingly balanced offense through their 4-0 start in September has disappeared into a cloud of dust as they get deeper into the SEC slate, carried to a great extent by the Heisman-worthy legs of Mark Ingram but still held out of the end zone entirely by Tennessee and in three of four quarters by both Ole Miss and South Carolina. Quarterback Greg McElroy has looked increasingly like the "game manager" holding down 'Bama's rankings in the preseason, and the perfect season has looked increasingly vulnerable as the weeks go by.

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That's right, it's another Friday night WAC tilt we're foisting on you, because you know you should care. We care about Boise State at Louisiana Tech, anyway, and here's why (besides the fact that we're addicts):

Admit it: Ruston is growing on you. Both teams have already made a pair of Mid-week Madness appearances on national television this season -- the Broncos laid waste to Fresno State and survived a scare at Tulsa; the Bulldogs beat Hawaii and lost to Nevada, both in fairly convincing fashion. Tonight they meet in lovely Ruston, La., home of Louisiana Tech, Elephant 6 and very little else. Don't underestimate the somnambulant effects of the 1,948-mile trip from Boise, either.

Who will protect our precious BCS landscape? Their trajectories may be entirely divergent, but don't be fooled by Boise State's undefeated record and Louisiana Tech's three wins. A lot could change tonight. The Broncos have been difficult to peg despite their early season heroic versus Oregon -- there are a lot of convincing wins on their '09 record, but they do stumble every once in a while, as evidenced by that close call against the Golden Hurricane. You're not likely to catch them sleepwalking, however -- with that schedule, one slip is all it will take to cost them a BCS bid, and they have to know it. Their No. 7 spot in the BCS standings isn't going anywhere good without some showy victories (and some luck wouldn't hurt, either, but the victories come first).

Bulldogs make the best underdogs. The upset path will not be easy. Louisiana Tech's 16th-ranked turnover margin has been a program touchstone this year, but taking the ball away from the Broncos is even more difficult; they're fifth in turnover margin themselves. But there's a grand Bulldog tradition of giving better-equipped visitors headaches for four straight quarters: They beat Mississippi State in Ruston last year, and crushed Hawaii back in September, when the Warriors still had a quarterback for their prolific passing attack.

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At the beginning of November, three-quarters of the way into the season, our hard knowledge of Penn State as it heads into its season-making date with Ohio State Saturday amounts to the following set of observations against a very un-illuminating schedule:

• They can still play defense. The Lions lead the nation in scoring defense and rank in the top six in rushing, pass efficiency and total D, as well as sacks; they've given up a total of 26 points in the last four games, including a shutout against Minnesota. In PSU's only loss, the defense picked off Iowa's Ricky Stanzi twice and held the Hawkeye offense to 13 points, 10 of them coming on drives that began inside the Penn State 25 following turnovers in the fourth quarter.

• They prefer to spread the ball around. This is a pretty balanced offense -- 36 runs per game to 31 passes, and that includes plenty of garbage-time clock-killing -- and though tailback Evan Royster is carrying the bulk of the running game, four different receivers have hauled in at least 25 passes for 340-plus yards on the season. Derek Moye is the deep threat, but Chaz Powell, Graham Zug and Andrew Quarless (as well as Royster and Joe Suhey, who have 25 catches between them out of the backfield) have all been reliable targets.

• They're healthy. The defense has endured various injuries over the course of the season, notably to star linebackers Navorro Bowman and Sean Lee, but shouldn't be missing a single starter on either side of the ball Saturday.

For a top-15 team with serious BCS hopes and lingering (though very distant, thanks to unfriendly tiebreaker scenarios) designs on another Big Ten title, that's not very much, especially where the offense is concerned. That's what you get when your schedule to date includes one team that received votes in the latest polls, and you were held to 10 points by that team. As solid as the Lions have been offensively in every other game -- including their subsequent four Big Ten games, in which they're averaging 31 points on 453 yards -- their inability to score over the last three quarters against Iowa follows overhead like one of those tiny, personal storm clouds in the old Looney Tunes shorts as they come up against the only other defense on the schedule that measures up to the Hawkeyes'.

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I recounted Thursday the long chain of calls, apologies, complaints and threats that put the SEC in the position of potentially fining or suspending Florida coach Urban Meyer for criticizing conference officials, with one looming question: Did the conference really have the guts to drop the hammer on its most visible, most successful and highest-paid coach for a mild line in a press conference? Today, the SEC office answered authoritatively: Yes, yes it does.

Florida coach Urban Meyer was fined $30,000 by the Southeastern Conference for his public comments concerning officiating, Commissioner Mike Slive announced Friday.
[...]
"Coach Meyer has violated the Southeastern Conference Code of Ethics," Slive said. "SEC Bylaw 10.5.4 clearly states that the coaches, players and support personnel shall refrain from public criticism of officials. The league’s Athletics Directors and Presidents and Chancellors have made it clear that negative public comments on officiating are not acceptable."

Give the league this: It stepped up to enforce its stated policy, and brought enough heat to finally bring the escalating series of mini-scandals over the last month to an end. Meyer apologized for publicly suggesting officials failed to flag Georgia for an illegal hit on Tim Tebow last Saturday in the Gators' 41-17 win, and the SEC's other 11 coaches will think five or six times before calling out the refs with a microphone in their face again.

It's the "again" part, of course, that made the fine necessary, and the SEC's decision to repeatedly, publicly undermine its own officials opened the door to those circumstances.

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With upset bids from Oklahoma, Missouri and Oklahoma State emphatically quashed over the last three weeks and championship runs by fellow powerhouses like USC and Ohio State out of the question, all that's standing between Texas and the BCS title game in the Rose Bowl is holding court over its last five games. For the record, those games are against Central Florida, Baylor, Kansas, Texas A&M (combined record against teams from "Big Six" conferences: 5-12) and the annual patsy from the North Division in the Big 12 Championship, which hasn't come within two touchdowns of the South champ since 2003 and looks weaker than ever this year. The path to Pasadena is so clear, the hometown Austin American-Statesman is already offering advice for Longhorn fans more concerned with securing a seat than cursing their team with premature hubris:

"We've seen a jump in bookings to Los Angeles and Burbank after every Texas win," Southwest spokeswoman Ashley Rogers said. "The biggest was after the Oklahoma win."
[...]
Jon Berry, who works at Square 1 Bank downtown, already has his plane tickets to California and a welcome to stay with friends in Los Angeles.

Berry also has reserved the right to buy a game ticket at the $275 face value using the official Pasadena Tournament of Roses Web site. He paid $90 for that right, before the season began. As of Thursday, reservations to buy end zone seats were going for $520 and up.

The last sentence of the article -- "The Longhorns take on the University of Central Florida at 11 a.m. Saturday at Royal-Memorial Stadium" -- plays almost like a punch line in its irrelevance. Who are we kidding with this Central Florida/Baylor/Kansas charade? By any realistic standard, Texas is playing against itself from here on.

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Our weekly tailgating guide stays West this week, meandering down the coast to Berkeley for Cal's date with Oregon State.

The Lowdown.
Cal is a bit of a unique critter when it comes to tailgating, in that there's not a lot of traditional tailgating happening at all. The stadium is situated right in Berkeley; there are no massive parking lots and no fleets of RVs with grills on their trailer hitches streaming in on Thursday afternoons. If you're looking to make new friends, you'll find tailgaters in bars around town (none of which are remotely close to the stadium), frat houses and wherever someone can scare up a patch of green space. For a school whose geography makes standard mob revelry kind of impossible, though, they do know how to throw a party. I've been three times in the last three years and can remember very little from any of those trips, so they're doing something right.

If you're smart, you won't even get near campus with your car. We promise you don't have the booster cred to drive anywhere near the stadium, so be smart and take the BART train in or get your student buddies to pick you up and ferry you in to the action. Don't bother trying to find a street space in the residential areas, either; fines often double on football Saturdays. And please note: Wherever you land, you're going to be walking, a lot, and there are seemingly nothing but hills on this campus. Leave the stilettos in the closet. There are gameday trolleys around, but they're slow and crowded. Hoofing it is your best bet, and a fine way to work off the many delicious microbrews you'll be plied with.

Music follows you in some form everywhere you go in Berkeley. The Cal Band sings, plays, and dances its way across campus (stopping at one point to scream at a library for reasons that are unfathomable to visitors, but it's highly entertaining nonetheless). You'll also meet wandering bands of a capella singers serenading picnickers wherever the mood strikes them:

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• Black on the helmets, green on the minds. Joining Ohio State's throwback motif and possibly countless other Nike clients, Florida State will be unveiling a new uniform product for its Nov. 21 game against Maryland. The "Pro Combat" look -- designed neither for professionals nor combat -- will feature black helmets, intricately logo'd gloves, a four-way stretch twill that provides superior moisture wicking, strategically placed padding zones (i.e. thigh and hip pads), dual-density foam cells, high-tenacity yarn and, of course, that enduring symbol of the spirit of unconquered marketing, the Swoosh. Quarterback Christian Ponder seems to think they're schweet.

The Noles' makeover will come just one week after the Terps trot out their own special unis, a camouflage get-up by Under Armour to promote the Wounded Warrior Project for their game against Virginia Tech on Nov. 14. So much for the Great Recession, I guess.

• Cav crowds, it's time to Grow for Groh. It seems like Al Groh has been pulling himself out of the fire for years now at Virginia, and might have been on his way again after rebounding from another awful start with three straight wins over the first three weeks of October. Off two straight losses, though -- including the Cavs' second straight stumble against Duke -- athletic director Craig Littlepage was "cast[ing] an ominous cloud" Thursday in a conversation with the Associated Press, less about the Cavs' losing record than the fact so many fewer people have been on hand to see it:

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We learned a few weeks back that Texas Tech coach, pirate enthusiast, amateur rollerblader, love doctor and part-time meteorologist Mike Leach filmed a cameo for the cult hit "Friday Night Lights" while he was in Austin for the Red Raiders' date with Texas, and his official acting debut Wednesday night on DirecTV is certain to draw ... let's say, mixed reviews. If you're a Cap'n Leach fan -- a good bet, if you're reading this obsessively pro-Leach blog -- his unsolicited, lone-guru-at-the-pump advice to embattled Dillon East coach Eric Taylor falls perfectly in line with orthodox interpretations of the Tao of Leach:

If you're a bigger fan of fictional football than the real thing, of course, Leach probably seemed more like a random loon at the gas station whose sudden appearance and stammering delivery wouldn't even qualify as "awkward" by professional standards. And let's face it, as far as Coach Taylor and the internal world of the show is concerned, Leach's character could have very well been credited as "random loon at the gas station." As most people Leach encounters in his daily life seem to react to react to him the same way, though, it was probably a pretty realistic interpretation of his average pit stop -- I can see Leach at the end of the scene, asking the director, "So when do we start rolling?"

I would assume Taylor dispatched Leach's speech verbatim to Dillon quarterback Matt Saracen, who proceeded to throw for 450 yards and six touchdowns in a 59-24 playoff win, but the show's football scenes have never been very realistic.

- - -
Hat tip: Dave Matter.

East Carolina took a swig of the briny deep early on with back-to-back losses to West Virginia and North Carolina, but last season's giant (and Hokie) killers are on a roll since hitting Conference USA play -- ECU's taken four of its last five -- and ought to have a crew of their best mates out to make the Hokies kiss the gunner's daughter during the Pirates' only real national showcase of the season. Virginia Tech, meanwhile, is going the other way: ECU has no bearing on Tech's finish in the ACC, but after two straight, nationally televised losses to Georgia Tech and UNC, the Hokies are getting a little desperate to beat anyone. In Blacksburg, three losses in a row counts as a catastrophe.

What: Thursday night live blog, Virginia Tech at East Carolina. Landlubbers welcome.
When: Game kicks at 7:30 p.m. ET, give or take some pregame banter; blog kicks roughly simultaneously. And they repeat "It's Always Sunny ..." like three times throughout the night, you know, so there's no excuse for skipping out early.
Who: You and all your rowdy friends. Come loud, proud and bearing your most prized booty.
How: Hit "Watch Now," enter comments into the available box and do your part to accelerate the slow, agonizing death of conventional journalism.
Why: Because lobbing snarky barbs at earnest adolescents never gets old, especially when it's another school night with the ACC. And Conference USA! Football!

Barring an injury, this was always going to be Dez Bryant's last season at Oklahoma State -- All-American receivers who hang out with future Hall-of-Famers tend to have a rather low retention rate for their senior year -- and his suspension for lying to the NCAA last month about his relationship with Deion Sanders only made the leap that much more inevitable. With Bryant's final appeal officially denied today, his high school coach confirmed for the Oklahoman that Dez is officially done in Stillwater:

"He was here this weekend," Lufkin High coach John Outlaw said. "We talked for a long time. He's going to Tampa to get himself ready for the (NFL) combine."
[...]
Last week, Bryant was ruled ineligible until September 2010 and OSU appealed to the NCAA's Student-Athlete Reinstatement Committee. That appeal was denied on Thursday.

That decision, coupled with Bryant's likely departure to the NFL, represents the end to a superb collegiate career. He had 147 catches for 2,425 yards and 29 touchdowns during his Cowboys' career. He also added three touchdowns as a punt returner.

Bryant's numbers, spectacular as they are, don't quite do justice to his smooth acrobatics as the latest (and one of the greatest) in the long line of tall, high-flying receivers that emerged this decade along with increasingly sophisticated passing attacks. He led an all-star lineup of Big 12 receivers as a sophomore in yards and catches and in yards per catch among players with at least 30 receptions, and was well on his way again through the three games he played this year; on top of 29 touchdowns, he had 29 catches of at least 25 yards in less than two-and-a-half years. He certainly couldn't be covered man to man.

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