This week there is plenty to watch for among the non-AQ games. Houston’s Case Keenum and Boise State’s Kellen Moore are on the brink of breaking records. Upstarts such as Eastern Michigan and Western Kentucky try to entrench themselves in conferences title chases. Fresno State and Nevada meet for the final time as members of the Western Athletic Conference before becoming Mountain West members in 2012. The night game features possibly the game of the day with Conference USA powers Southern Mississippi and Southern Methodist meeting.
Tuesday night football (8 ET, ESPN2) on the ESPN family of networks kicks off with an important Sun Belt Conference matchup when Florida International (4-2, 1-1) travels to Arkansas State (4-2, 2-0). Both teams will be looking to keep pace with Louisiana-Lafayette, who is already 4-0 in conference play and has wins over preseason conference favorites, Florida International and Troy.
FIU started the season 3-0, however the Golden Panthers lost their next two games before snapping the skid with a 27-17 win at Akron in their last game (Oct. 8).
The Bob Toledo era ended today at Tulane with his resignation and the naming of co-offensive coordinator/offensive line coach Mark Hutson as interim coach.
Toledo replaced Chris Scelfo, who was let go after the 2006 season. Toledo was never able to get the program above four wins and finished with a 15-40 record in five seasons at the helm. The Green Wave are currently in the midst of a four-game losing streak where they are allowing an average of 43.50 points per game. Their two wins this season have come against a winless team (UAB) and a FCS program with one win (Southeastern Louisiana). In addition, they have had only one home game exceed 20,000 fans (Syracuse, 23,188) in the cavernous Superdome.
This week the power rankings remain fairly static as the top seven teams remain unchanged. Temple moves up from ninth to eighth while San Diego State (ninth) and Toledo (10th) move into the rankings.
Central Florida and Western Michigan drop out of the rankings.
This week’s rankings:
With the Big East reeling from the recent defections of Pittsburgh and Syracuse to the ACC and TCU for the Big 12, the conference’s remaining six members announced it will add six teams. Among the schools being mentioned as possible invitees are Air Force, Army, Boise State, Central Florida, East Carolina, Houston, Navy, SMU and Temple.
In the BCS era, only Utah, who joined the Pac-12 this year, and TCU, who will join the Big 12 next season, have been invited to join an automatic-qualifying (AQ) conference while a member of a non-AQ conference. Each school had played in two BCS bowls as non-AQ schools. So how do the schools being considered by the Big East stack up against Utah and TCU?
