Pigskin Postmortem No. 3: Excellent at the Top, but Somewhat Putrid Underneath

Well, that was an absolutely abysmal weekend.

I think the team from the 614 needs a huge wake up call. In their last three large stage, non-conference games, the Ohio State Buckeyes have gotten absolutely throttled by an average score of 38-14.

Saturday’s game was difficult to watch on many different levels if you’re an Ohio State fan, and now it may be time to consider handing the keys to the offense to Terrell Pryor, who was the lone bright spot for this team Saturday night.

To be frank, I don’t know if having Chris “Beanie” Wells would have made much of a difference against the USC defense—especially in the second half. But having Wells and Pryor on the field together might have helped a little—emphasis on little.

But Todd Boeckman is a statue in the pocket, and the line didn’t help him out at all, getting manhandled by the USC front for five sacks.

Of course, the ugliness of the weekend didn’t end there. There was plenty of let down to go around. And I’m not just talking about the complete egg that Michigan laid in South Bend, either.

I’m actually referring to the state of the Pac-10 conference after this weekend.

Yes, USC proved that (once again) they are at the head of the class in college football. Oregon State beat up on a rebuilding Hawaii program and Oregon escaped from West Lafayette with an overtime victory over Purdue.

But the rest of the league threw up on their collective jerseys.

Washington State may challenge Syracuse for worst BCS program in the country after going on the road and losing to Baylor 45-17. Yes, the game was moved up a day to Friday, but I don’t really think that affected the outcome in any way, shape, or form.

Washington got flattened by Sam Bradford and Oklahoma, 55-14.

New Mexico beat Arizona for the second straight year.

Stanford got shut out in the second half of their game at TCU and lost by 17 points.

Cal sleepwalked through three quarters of the game against a Maryland team that had lost to Middle Tennessee State the week before and fell short in their rally, 35-27.

Arizona State may have gotten caught peeking ahead to their game against Georgia and got picked off by UNLV, 23-20 in overtime.

And then there was the BYU-UCLA game. BYU looked like they were running the seven-on-seven passing skeleton drill, as Max Hall tied a team record with seven touchdown passes.

Oh, I know that there were other games that were clunkers on Saturday (see: Auburn 3, Mississippi State 2). And yes, the Pac-10 gets credit for going on the road for some of these challenges—especially going on the road to play at the Mountain West venues, since some of their BCS brethren won’t travel or hardly travel to play non-BCS foes at all.

I’m not trying to pile on. Any conference can have a bad week. However, I don’t think that you Pac-10 fans can deny that a lot of the squads from the conference played el stinko this past Saturday.

Hopefully, it was just a bad week.