Ole Miss players sick with flu-like symptoms
OXFORD, Miss. (AP) -As many as 12 Mississippi players could miss practice because of flu-like symptoms.
Coach Houston Nutt said Monday that affected players are being tested for swine flu. Whatever strain it is, it's passing through the team quickly. Symptoms include vomiting and fever.
Nutt says several players were throwing up during Sunday's 45-14 win over Memphis. Safety Johnny Brown played through illness and took intravenous fluids at halftime but still led the team in tackles with 15.
Most troubling, perhaps, is that quarterback Jevan Snead's roommate, Clayton Moore, has taken sick, exposing the team's starter.
But the illnesses come at a good time. The No. 8 Rebels have the week off, then play Football Championship Subdivision opponent Southeastern Louisiana on Sept. 19.
NCAAFB Notes
By Bodog.com
Where did all the points go?
Some crazy stuff happened during Week 1 of the college football season. From a handicapping standpoint, the most intriguing was the under going 22-15-1 at the end of Sunday’s action. Even the one overtime game (Minnesota 23, Syracuse 20, with the Orange cashing in as 7-point home dogs) sailed below the posted total of 48.5. The under went 21-19-1 during Week 1 of the 2008 season and 27-19-1 in 2007, so it’s not unusual for offenses across the nation to get off to a rough start.
Nobody got off to a worse start than the Oklahoma Sooners. They lost Heisman Trophy-winning QB Sam Bradford for 2-4 weeks with a sprained right shoulder, and then the No. 3 Sooners lost 14-13 to the No. 20 Brigham Young Cougars. BYU was a 23-point underdog at the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Tex. This is exactly what football Cassandras were warning OU supporters about: The Sooners’ offensive line is not what it was last year, and Bradford didn’t even survive the first half of the first game. His back-up, redshirt freshman Landry Jones, couldn’t quite get the job done behind an O-line that committed nine penalties on the day.
Oklahoma’s Week 2 matchup is against the Idaho State Bengals of the Big Sky Conference – that’s an FCS team, so there won’t be any betting action for a game that otherwise would have been in our crosshairs. BYU, on the other hand, may still have some betting value left versus the Tulane Green Wave in Week 2 (Saturday, 3:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPN2). The Cougars held together quite nicely against OU on both sides of the ball, and QB Max Hall went 26-of-38 for 329 yards, a pair of touchdowns, and a pair of interceptions.
The Sooners were officially (and unofficially) the home team in front of a partisan crowd at Cowboys Stadium, making them one of the few home favorites to go bust in Week 1. Home faves were 21-9 SU (15-15 ATS), while home dogs were 1-7 SU and 3-5 ATS – the Bowling Green Falcons (+7) being the only straight-up winners in that group, downing the Troy Trojans 31-14 and easily slipping under the posted total of 55.5 points. Those low scores also made it more difficult than usual for the bigger-name programs to cover the spread in non-conference competition. Favorites of 20 points or more went 4-5 ATS; the No. 6 Ohio State Buckeyes (-22) barely beat the Navy Midshipmen 31-27, returning a 2-point conversion attempt to the Navy end zone to avoid overtime.
The biggest upset of the week happened off the board, but it was a whopper: The FCS William & Mary Tribe (Continental Athletic Association) beat the Virginia Cavaliers (ACC) 24-17, forcing seven turnovers in the process. That’s the first FCS victory over a BCS conference since 2007, when the Michigan Wolverines famously fell to Appalachian State and the Iowa State Cyclones lost to Northern Iowa. The Panthers (Missouri Valley) almost did it again this year, dropping a 17-16 decision to the No. 22 Iowa Hawkeyes.
Virginia has a very tough Week 2 matchup in Charlottesville against the No. 17 Texas Christian University Horned Frogs, who were idle in Week 1. We expected the Cavs to be mediocre at best this year, but there was enough preseason hype on the Hawkeyes program to put them in the AP rankings to start the year. Iowa’s Week 2 opponents are the aforementioned Cyclones in what should now be a very interesting tilt on ISU’s home soil, Jack Trice Stadium (Saturday, 12:05 p.m. ET). The home team has won each of the last five Cy-Hawk Trophies, with Iowa State cashing in every time. The Cyclones are 10-1 ATS in their last 11 meetings.
We started the year looking at four strong contenders for the BCS championship, and we’ll wrap up this week’s column with the same four teams. The No. 3 Sooners we already know about; the No. 1 Florida Gators crushed the FCS Charleston Southern Buccaneers (Big South) 62-3, the No. 2 Texas Longhorns (-41.5) didn’t quite cover in a 59-20 romp over the UL-Monroe Warhawks, and the No. 4 USC Trojans (-35) had no problems overcoming the chalk in a 56-3 pasting of the San Jose State Spartans.
The Trojans will face Ohio State this week in Columbus (Saturday, 8:00 p.m. ET, ESPN) with live betting available right here at Bodog Sports. Watch for USC tailback Joe McKnight to do some major damage after Navy racked up 4.2 yards per carry against the Buckeyes. McKnight torched San Jose State for 145 yards on just 14 rushing attempts.
Sooners' Gresham to have arthroscopic knee surgery
NORMAN, Okla. (AP) -Oklahoma tight end Jermaine Gresham will have arthroscopic surgery to determine the extent of damage to his injured right knee.
Coach Bob Stoops said Tuesday that it's unknown whether Gresham will be able to return this season. Stoops says MRIs did not reveal the extent of the damage, and he could be sidelined anywhere from two weeks to a year.
The No. 13 Sooners are already reeling from the loss of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Sam Bradford, who sprained his shoulder in a 14-13 loss to BYU and will be out at least two weeks.
Gresham was a second-team All-America pick last season and had been considered a top NFL prospect before returning for his junior year.
Here’s to Week 2
By Richard Gardner
That first weekend of college football betting is in the books and let me ask you this, was that not crazy? The Miami-Florida State thriller on Labor Day night will surely go down as a classic. And don’t even get me started on Oregon and running back LeGarrette Blount’s big blunder last Thursday on the blue turf in Boise. (Did anybody else see those big puffs of smoke on the field? Those would be Oregon’s dreams of a BSC championship.)
Moving right along…
Over at Bodog Sportsbook we saw big action on LSU against Washington, but the Huskies looked like a new team under first-year coach Steve Sarkisian and they easily covered. It’ll be interesting to see if Udub can keep posting those big points.
USC certainly appeared in better early-season shape than their counterparts this week, Ohio State. QB Matt Barkley looked good for USC, while the Buckeyes were on the cusp of a possible upset to Navy despite having all summer to prepare for that option offense. Maybe OSU was looking ahead to this week’s big game with Southern Cal, one that could punt the loser right out of the national championship race.
We saw a lot of action on Illinois against Missouri, but not so much coming from the Illini as a team. QB Juice Williams looked completely unprepared in a 37-9 loss.
Illinois wasn’t the only Big Ten team that didn’t exactly shine this past weekend. Iowa was extremely fortunate to escape a loss to I-AA Northern Iowa. Minnesota, a bowl team last year, should have lost at Syracuse. Bettors were not convinced that former Duke basketball player Greg Paulus was going to make a smooth transition at QB for the Orange, but they covered. Paulus’ mistake in OT cost them a potential victory, however.
Meanwhile, we expect huge action this weekend on Michigan-Notre Dame. The Wolverines probably had the best showing of any Big Ten team, clobbering a good Western Michigan team. Rich Rodriguez turned West Virginia around in his second year there, and so far he appears to be turning this year’s bettors into believers.
Notre Dame’s 35-0 win over Nevada was indeed impressive, leaving little doubt that the spread was not going to be covered, let alone smothered. I expect Notre Dame-Michigan to perhaps even outdraw USC-Ohio State in total handle this weekend.
And then there’s Oklahoma. We saw plenty of action on BYU to cover the 22 points against OU, and that was assured when Sam Bradford went down with a shoulder injury that could keep him out for a month and keep the Sooners out of the chase for the national championship – if he’s out for an entire month. All of a sudden BYU has become the chic “outsider” team.