Football Treats and Tricks on Halloween

Well, well, well...Halloween weekend presented some new "treats" for me to be excited about in my football world, as well as one "trick" that was unfortunately all to predictable.

Starting with the sweet stuff...unless you spent your Sunday sleeping off your Halloween party hang over, you no doubt heard that the Oregon Ducks took apart USC to the tune of 47-20 Saturday evening. This runs the UO record to 7-1 overall and 5-0 and solo first place in the Pac-10. They are also now #8 in the BSC rankings. For as well as they've played most of this season, this game is the first that has convinced me that the Ducks are legit Pac-1o title contenders and...who knows...even more. They didn't just beat USC, they destroyed them. Big games at Stanford and Arizona remain, along with home tilts against ASU and the hated OSU Beavers. So, nothing is settled yet. Part of me thinks all this is too good to be true. Surely the Ducks will stumble against a supposedly inferior team or a key player like QB Masoli will go down for the season with an injury. It can't be this good for real can it? We shall see.

Meanwhile, the Iowa Hawkeyes survived another poor performance and won a game they could have easily lost. Ultimately, they beat Indiana by a pretty decent margin, but that came late and only after the Iowa QB threw five - FIVE! - interceptions. I cannot ever remember a team doing that and winning. But...somehow, some way, the Hawkeyes are 9-0 overall now and 5-0 in the Big Ten. They are #4 in the BSC standings and have three games to play: home against Northwestern, at Ohio State and home vs. Minnesota.

The UW Huskies had a bye and did not play.

The Seahawks did have a game vs. Dallas, but they didn't play either and lost to the Cowboys in miserable fashion. The Seahawks are a pathetic team, and I predict a 4-12 season. I know it's hard to believe they can win one more game, but they do have to play St. Louis again. They'll probably get that done and that'll be that. 2010 anyone?

The other football: the Sounders hosted Houston in the first of a two game series in the MLS playoffs. The game was good, but ended in a 0-0 tie as Houston played slow down and keep away. This means it comes down to who wins the game Sunday. The winner moves on to the next round.