The Chaos Index, Week Four: Dang, Texas – Everything (Including Meltdowns) Really Is Bigger There!

This week, the fickle flipped finger of fate made sure that everything – including bizarre meltdowns – really is bigger in Texas. Say hello to our chaotic little friends.

1. Texas – Admit it: you thought it couldn’t get any worse than losing a game on a missed extra point. Fun game for the next six days: try to guess how much worse it could get. Sometimes, it’s just not your year.
2. TCU – Football can be a very cruel game. What’s happened to the Frogs defense isn’t at all fair, and you’ve got to admire the fact they’re playing through it. Anyway, Texas is going to explode at some point, and next Saturday in Dallas might just be that point. Also, if they gave up 52 to a good, but hardly great, Texas Tech offense, what might Baylor and Oklahoma do to them?
3. Tennessee – Do you, to paraphrase Guns ‘N Roses, have an appetite for self-destruction? Then find a way to pit Texas and Tennessee against each other in The Game That Both Teams Absolutely Must Win Or Else and watch what happens.       But first, you might want to travel to Knoxville and buy up every box of razor blades in sight before the natives can get their hands on them.
4. Arkansas – Give those Hogs a participation trophy for putting up a good fight against TAMU! That game with Auburn in four weeks could be the most disappointing game in the history of life (for both teams).
5. VaTech – It’s an old recipe for chaos: coaching legend stays a little too long. Things aren’t awful, but they go downhill just enough that the natives start bitching. The coach doesn’t want to go yet; he wants to fix things first and then hang ’em up. There’s a long-time successor-in-waiting, but the fans want a big name who probably wouldn’t touch the gig with a ten-foot pole. Throw in the coach’s desire to see his son, who’s on the staff as an assistant, succeed him.
6. South Carolina – See VaTech.
7. Territorial Cup – Remember when the Arizona schools were considered big-time players in the Pac-12 South, and because of that, national pictures?   Now that the SoCal schools have immolated them at home for 98 points, you can probably forget about it.
8. Ohio State – About that whole deal with having three Heisman-caliber quarterbacks: maybe the best one is play wide receiver.       It’s a good thing they’ve got a long way to Michigan State and a whole lot of cupcakes to devour before then.
9. Wyoming – You know you’ve got trouble when you’re 0-4, and the “good” loss is to Washington State. (Hey, it beats losing to Eastern Michigan, an FCS team, and the ramblin’ wreck from New Mex.) They’re paying Craig Bohl how much money for this?
10. UTEP – Memo to Sean Kugler: bro, wake up! You stumbled into a quarterback, and you have no more running game. Also, you just got spooked by something called Incarnate Word (which is not what a devout Catholic version of Vanilla Ice would wish to your mother).       Take your “team identity” and that three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust act and shelve it for the next several years.
11. Missoura – The best way to f up a really good quarterback?       Put him in an in-season competition with another really good quarterback who has no experience.       You knew after three weeks of playing with fire, that Mizzou would eventually get burned, but Kentucky?
12. Fresno State – All hope is not lost. Hawaii is still on the schedule. Just kidding – yes, Hawaii is still on the schedule – actually, all hope is lost.
13. Purdue – The “good” news? Bowling Green is pretty good, so that one-touchdown loss isn’t that bad. The bad news? Everything else, starting with next week’s little visit to East Lansing.
14. Nebraska – The nice people of Lincoln are starting to ask questions about the defensive coordinator. Nicely, of course. They’ve got one week to fix it before Wisconsin, Minnesota & Northwestern, whose quarterbacks might be a little better than the Southern Mississippi dude who just hit them for 447 yards.
15. Kansas – With the best week of their season – the bye week – now in the rear view mirror, the Jayhawks are staring at their last, best chance to get a win this year. Too bad it’s also Iowa State’s last (okay, it’s also their first – but now you’re nitpicking), best chance to win a conference game.
16. Rutgers – After winning a “battle of troubled programs“, they now get to enter their best week of the season – also their bye week – assuming no one uses the extra time to get arrested or into an academic scandal.       Better still, they now have two weeks to prepare for – wait for it – Michigan State.
17. UCF – Speaking of battles of troubled programs, if you lose one of those – say, against – South Carolina, things aren’t going very well at all. Here’s hoping their A.D. has a sit down with the head coach after they gave up 300+ yards of total offense to a true freshman making his first start. Perhaps he should open with the words, “You seem distracted…”
18. Auburn – Two possibilities: Coach Boom got his end of things fixed and Coach Malzahn found a quarterback or there’s a Halloween bloodletting on the horizon against Ole Miss. Bet on the latter.
19. Oregon – What, precisely what THAT?!? (Outside of Big Trouble In Little Eugene, of course.)       As the program shifts out of Guys That Chip Kelly Recruited mode, there seem to be a few problems with things like offense and defense.
20. Miami (OH NO) – Two thoughts: Chuck Martin was The Man! in D2. Also, it’s a good thing they put Presbyterian on the schedule. After all, it’s along way until that Eastern Michigan game.