Jovenitti: 10 REALLY!?!’s for college football

One of my favorite recurring segments on Saturday Night Live is the “REALLY!?!” part of… One of my favorite recurring segments on Saturday Night Live is the “REALLY!?!” part of Weekend Update, during which the hosts of the  segment simply ask people in the news “REALLY!?!”

In doing so, they essentially poke fun and express their shock at people in the news for either being crazy, surprising or just plain stupid.

So this week, I give you the top 10 REALLY!?!’s from the college football world.

10. REALLY LSU!?! The Tigers want to be in the national-championship picture? Sure they beat Alabama, but no national championship team should ever have to rely on dumb luck to beat the worst team in its conference. (see: LSU losing to Tennessee, but then winning because Tennessee had 13 players on the field.)

9. REALLY Rich Rodriguez!?! Pitt fans adored Rich Rodriguez after he left West Virginia and took  the head-coaching job at Michigan. Mountaineer fans were hoping Rodriguez would fail in his new job, and due to the “rule of rivalries,” Pitt fans wanted the opposite. It really looked like this would be Rodriguez’s breakout year, after the Wolverines started the season 5-0. But then they promptly lost the next three games and fell off the map. And the NCAA has proved that Rodriguez committed significant training and practice violations at Michigan — putting the school’s football program on probation for the next three years.

8. REALLY Utah!?! The Utes defeated Pitt on opening night in overtime in a game in which both teams were pretty evenly matched. But after that first week, the two teams went in completely opposite directions. The Utes stormed their way to a No. 5 ranking, whereas the Panthers went on to 2-3 in nonconference play. But on Saturday against No. 3 TCU, when it came time for Utah to once again prove that it is worthy of a BCS bid or possibly even a national-championship berth, what did the Utes do? Why, they failed in every aspect of football, of course. The Horned Frogs completely owned Utah to the tune of 47-7. And Utah was lucky to get those seven points considering how poorly they played.

7. REALLY North Carolina!?! According to ESPN, the NCAA is investigating the Tar Heels football program for alleged recruiting violations involving player agents. Nothing has been decided yet, but if ESPN’s sources are reliable (and they usually are), then the evidence is pretty condemning. If the NCAA levies penalties like it did against USC and other schools that committed similar violations, then UNC will have to vacate all of its wins from the 2009 season. So that would mean that Pitt’s first bowl win in the Dave Wannstedt era will have come against an ineligible team.

6. REALLY SEC fans!?! SEC fans still don’t believe that a non-BCS conference school is deserving of a berth in the BCS National Championship Game. But TCU hasn’t lost a regular-season game since 2008 and Boise State hasn’t lost since 2007. Sure their strengths of schedule aren’t as difficult as an SEC team’s, and one undefeated season might be a fluke, but three undefeated seasons in a row is no rare feat, no matter the competition. Hopefully TCU will make the National Championship Game and win just to silence the SEC critics.

5. REALLY Northwestern!?! The Wildcats built up a 21-0 lead on Penn State Saturday, only to sit back and let the Nittany Lions score five unanswered touchdowns to give Joe Paterno his 400th victory. Kudos to Paterno for the impressive milestone, but REALLY Northwestern!?!

4. REALLY Big East!?! As if the conference wasn’t already the laughing stock of the college-football world, Big East teams posted a dismal 23-14 record in nonconference play. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, every single team besides Pitt has two losses in the conference. The conference is truly earning its nickname of the Big Least this year and is beginning to define mediocrity. Even if Pitt does win the Big East Championship, it will almost feel wrong winning such an awful league.

3. REALLY Pitt!?! Stop toying with fans’ emotions. First the Panthers start out 2-3, giving fans every reason to throw their hands up in the air and claim that all had been lost. Now, at 3-0 in conference play, Pitt has the Big East championship in its lap. This season has been such an emotional roller coaster that if the Panthers crash and blow the Big East like they did last season, I’m not sure the fans would recover. Luckily, though, the rest of the Big East is really trying to give Pitt the championship.

2. REALLY Brian Kelly!?! Notre Dame isn’t that bad of a football team, but first-year head coach (and former head coach of Cincinatti) Brian Kelly is making the team look pretty awful. The Fighting Irish started off the year with three losses to pretty good teams (Michigan, Michigan State and Stanford). They managed to beat Pitt and had hopes for a bowl game, but the Irish were embarrassed at Navy. Then, when all the Irish needed was a field goal to beat Tulsa, Kelly decided to have his freshman quarterback Tommy Rees, who was thrust into the game after starter Dayne Crist was injured, throw deep into the end zone. The pass was intercepted and Tulsa won. Yes, Tulsa beat Notre Dame. In South Bend.

1. REALLY teams-that-beat-Pitt!?! Thanks for making Pitt’s early losses look even worse. Utah got shelled at home against TCU, and it looked like the Utes simply didn’t know how to play football. Notre Dame was embarrassed by Navy (a team that lost to Duke) and Tulsa, and Miami got rocked by Florida State and then fell to last-place Virginia. Pitt keeps getting closer to the Top 25, but these teams keep hurting the Panthers’ strength-of-schedule every week.