College football season lacking suspense down the stretch

For suspense and surprises, you'd probably have been better off watching "The Amazing Race" than bearing witness to the 2009 college football season. Florida, Alabama and Texas, Nos. 1-2-3 in the BCS rankings this week, were top-five in the preseason polls.

But there's something of a tradition of chaos and upheaval on the final two weekends, a legacy that appears in doubt this year.

Remember last year? On this weekend, Texas beat Texas A&M by 40, but saw Oklahoma slip past the Longhorns in the BCS standings. That became a boiling controversy as a metric for the Big 12 tiebreaker to the league title game, where the Sooners solidified their slot in the BCS championship game by clocking Missouri.

Then there was 2007, maybe the mother of all weird windups. On this corresponding week, Louisiana State, Kansas and West Virginia sat 1-2-3 atop the BCS standings. Then LSU lost in triple overtime to Arkansas and fell all the way to No. 7, while Missouri beat Kansas and climbed to No. 1.

Came the last Saturday, and Missouri crashed in the Big 12 title game against Oklahoma, West Virginia got stunned by 29-point underdog Pitt, and somehow, LSU scrambled all the way back to No. 2, just enough for a berth in the BCS championship, where it swatted Ohio State.

Why the late craziness?

"When you're a team at the top all the way through," Texas coach Mack Brown said this week, "the kids can get physically tired, but also mentally tired.

"It's hard to be consistently good all year. If you're not careful, they take just a little bit of a lazy step and they get beat. Other teams have nothing to lose and their season is saved if they beat you."

But we're running out of potential minefields — unless Auburn (7-4), hosting Alabama (11-0) today, or Florida State (6-5), at 11-0 Florida on Saturday, can rattle the postseason matchups.

Seven seized

Not long ago, we offered up seven surprise teams of 2009. In the interests of equal time, these are the converse, also known as: Expectations can be a terrible burden.

1. Notre Dame (6-5): The Irish seemed to have the schedule to breeze to a BCS bowl. What they didn't have was a defense, now ranking 80th.

2. Oklahoma (6-5): Sam Bradford's shoulder injuries were a killer. Replacement Landry Jones has thrown 13 interceptions.

3. Michigan State (6-6): Collegefootballpoll.com, based on computer numbers, predicted a 12-0 season by MSU, which won nine games last year. It didn't figure on a defense that gave up 42, 35 and 42 to the Spartans' last three Big Ten opponents.

4. Georgia (6-5): Picked to finish second behind Florida in the SEC East, the Bulldogs have struggled on offense, with Matthew Stafford's replacement, Joe Cox, having thrown 14 interceptions. They've also recovered a single opponent fumble and rank 119th in turnover margin.

5. Kansas (5-6): The season has gone horribly south, with a six-game losing streak and the mess surrounding coach Mark Mangino. Before that, there was the dust-up pitting KU football and basketball players.

6. North Carolina State (4-7): The Wolfpack returned 2008 ACC freshman of the year Russell Wilson at quarterback. But the defense, ranked 100th, has been terrible. It's not good when you allow 49 points to Duke.

7. USC (7-3): Ranked fourth in preseason polls, which turned out to be too high, but coach Pete Carroll didn't tamp down expectations, either. Starting a freshman at quarterback, losing linebackers to the NFL and some key injuries were too much even for the Pac-10 colossus to overcome.

Packing heat

This might come as a surprise, but Boise State doesn't lead the WAC standings. That distinction belongs to Nevada (8-3, 7-0), which visits the Broncos tonight for the league title in a game worth watching.

Running the option-based "Pistol" offense — quarterback Colin Kaepernick lines up 3 yards behind center, a tailback a yard behind him — the Wolfpack has been unstoppable since an 0-3 start, piling up 413 points in an eight-game winning streak. That includes 132 points against probable bowl teams Fresno State and Idaho.

Boise State coach Chris Petersen calls Nevada "the hottest team in the country."

An Akey-break?

Idaho (7-4) finishes the regular season at home against Utah State (3-8), expecting to have quarterback Nate Enderle back from a shoulder problem.

Coach Robb Akey wasn't definitive when asked about his future this week, making a plea for the program to continue improvements, such as salary upgrades for assistants.

"I'm going to have a hard time keeping those guys around if they're the lowest-paid [assistants]," Akey said. "We need to step this up."

As for whether he sees himself staying, Akey said, "I think we've got it turned. I have not jumped around a lot; I've been able to climb up in the place I've been. To me, that's the best way to go about it. I would certainly think they'd like to make things better here and like to have you around here."

The end around

• UCLA's (6-5) road to a bowl would get a lot easier if it can beat USC on Saturday. Without it, the Bruins would appear to be standing in line behind some seven-win teams for at-large berths.

• Shouldn't there be some sort of college-football zoo reserved for people like (a) the guy who sucker-punched Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen at a South Bend bar last week, and (b) whoever heaved a bottle at Arizona that caused a concussion to an Oregon cheerleader?

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com