Got back from
Miami a few hours ago. One of these days, I'll learn not to take the earliest flight out of the airport, since those 5 a.m. wakeup calls can be simply brutal. What helped today was there were only 26 people (and no wailing infants) on my flight back, so it was "Choose Your Own Row Day."\
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Before a look back at some of the game, I wanted to revisit something Maryland coach
Ralph Friedgen said near the end of his postgame remarks last night at the Orange Bowl.\
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"We'll find out what we are in the next four weeks because I don't think anybody in the country has as tough a schedule as we do in the next four weeks...," Friedgen said. "Tell me anybody who has four games like that."\
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Official Beat Diva Heather Dinich of the Baltimore Sun offered up Florida International's opening stretch, but Friedgen wanted to have tunnel vision and specified it had to be over the next four weeks. And to be fair, West Virginia-at Wake Forest-at Rutgers-Georgia Tech is no picnic.\
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There are comparable stretches awaiting other teams. To wit:\
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* Alabama: The Crimson Tide gets Arkansas and Georgia at home, plays Florida State in Jacksonville and then returns home for Houston.\
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Florida: The defending champs get Tennessee at home, visit crazy Ed Orgeron and Ole Miss, come back to Gainesville to play Auburn, then travel to Louisiana State.\
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* North Carolina: Butch Davis gets Virginia at home next week, then visits South Florida and Virginia Tech before a highly anticipated date with Miami in Chapel Hill.\
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* Washington: The Huskies only play the next three weeks, but those games are Ohio State-at
UCLA-Southern California. Even with a bye, that's a nasty sequence.\
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I thought about including Notre Dame (at Michigan-Michigan State-at Purdue-at UCLA), but that isn't as arduous as the other four teams listed. Not that the Irish won't struggled to win twice in that stretch.\
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Florida and Washington might have the Terps trumped, but probably not by much, so I'll have to resist rolling my eyes at Ralph's bemoaning of the fate handed down from Mount Pigskin by the scheduling gods. This time, he has a point.\
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--
Patrick Stevens
