\jeff{krimmel}

Thoughts on UCLA and Urban Meyer

Today was another important Saturday in the early college football season, as UCLA beat a reeling Oklahoma team and Urban Meyer got his first Southeastern Conference (SEC) victory as he led Florida past a good-looking Tennessee team.

The UCLA game was interesting for a few reasons. I described Oklahoma as reeling, but that is the case in record only. The Sooners are 1-2, but from what I have gathered, Oklahoma’s offense showed signs of life in today’s game that it had not shown in the two previous weeks. OU was done in by very sloppy exchanges between the center and quarterback and by a UCLA defense that could focus almost exclusively on stopping Oklahoma’s big running back, Adrian Peterson.

UCLA looked good in the win, much better than they have looked for most of the past couple of seasons. I don’t see a top ten finish in UCLA’s future, but I think they may be able to get through the season with three losses or so, which is an improvement over past years. The running game was sporadic, but that should probably be expected against a tough defense like Oklahoma’s.

The Florida-Tennessee game had fewer interesting plays than the UCLA-OU game, but the former definitely included the two best teams of this bunch. Urban Meyer came to Florida just this season, following surprisingly successful runs at Bowling Green and later at Utah. Many were curious how successful Coach Meyer would be playing against the bigger boys in the SEC, and for a week at least, he showed that he belongs.

Florida State finally put down a pesky bunch from Boston College, Miami squeaked out an overtime victory over Clemson, Texas Tech scored 80 points in a win over Sam Houston State, and my Texas Longhorns crushed the Rice Owls 51-10. Another Saturday is in the books.