The Dallas Morning News is no longer allowed on the Obama campaign plane, but as a consolation it was able to secure interview time with HP on the subject of Colt McCoy and Texas-Texas Tech.

While Florida-Georgia is big, the biggest game when it comes to the Heisman this weekend will be Texas-Texas Tech.

Simply put, if Texas wins this one, Colt McCoy locks up the Heisman and has a good shot to win the trophy by the biggest margin in history.

If Texas Tech wins, then Graham Harrell will stake his claim. However, even if that happens, I still like McCoy’s chances.

Tech has to win out for Harrell to have a chance of winning. Subsequent games against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State make that likelihood slim. If Tech proves me wrong, Harrell may snatch a come-from-behind win. After all, he will have led wins over three highly-ranked foes. However, I would rate that possibility about as strong as John McCain’s chances of overtaking Barack Obama at this late hour. Could it happen? Yes. Will it? Most likely not.

If Texas wins and McCoy has his typical game, this race is over.

I’ll be on Fox Sports 1340 with Jenni Carlson in about 20 minutes (2:40 PT).  Be sure to tune in.

Sorry for the non-existent posting today.  Celebrating my birthday, so I’ll be back tomorrow!  Cheers, HP.

Has a state ever done a worse job at producing quality football teams than Washington has this year?

Washington State has one win against 1-AA Portland State, but has lost its other games by an average score of 54-9.  The Cougars (1-7) are almost assuredly the worst Pac-10 team of all time.  They rank no better than 102nd nationally in every major team category.

Meanwhile, the Huskies are 0-7, losing by an average score of 40-16.    The most successful team might be Eastern Washington at 3-4.  Still, even the Seattle Seahawks are 2-5.

At least we can count on either Washington or Washington State winning one more time this year, as they do play each other.  Although maybe for just this once, the possibility of a tie should be reinstated.

…the talk has always been of the great defenses.  Yet, only two SEC teams–South Carolina and Alabama–are in the top 10 of the total defense rankings (5 are in the top 20).

That’s not a horrible stat, unless you consider that there isn’t a single SEC offense in the top 20 of the total offense rankings .

In other words, SEC defenses haven’t been doing so hot of a job stopping some pretty anemic offenses.

But wait, year-in and year-out….oh, never mind.

Earlier this season, the thought was that it was the non-conference schedule that accounted for the predominance of Big 12 quarterbacks atop the passing ratings.

Well, we are now eight games in and the stats look like this :

Colt McCoy, 2nd

Sam Bradford, 3rd

Zac Robinson, 4th

Chase Daniel, 5th

Graham Harrell, 6th

Joe Ganz, 14th

Todd Reesing, 17th

Jerrod Johnson, 20th

That’s five of the top six and eight of the top 20 rated passers nationally.  Another quarterback, freshman Robert Griffin of Baylor, is the only starting quarterback in the country with no interceptions.  He has thrown 175 career passes with no pick.