As I was trying to say..... The proudest father alive this week must be Lou Holtz.  His son, Skip, has led the ECU Pirates over Va Tech and WVU back to back weeks to open the season. This had led many commentators to ask two questions:  Is WVU that bad?  Is ECU that good?

I decided the only way to answer the above questions was to do some analysis on the games each team have played so far.  Disclaimer: I didn't actually watch any of these games, except for a few minutes of the ECU/WVU game.  I used the box score from these games to get the data.

Week 1:

First, I thought Villanova only played basketball.  Say what you will about the SEC, but at least when we schedule a 1-AA patsy it’s a football school.  The scoreboard doesn’t tell the whole story for WVU.  It looks like a pretty strong win for WVU until you notice that they were out gained by Villanova 54 yards total, by 61 in the air, and only out rushed them by 16 yards.   Pat White had a stellar day throwing a 75% completion rate and 5 TDs.  But WVU had a hard time controlling the clock (more on this later) and the defense was horrible against the pass.  I think that the voters focused on the score and Pat White’s production after this game and conveniently ignored everything else.

Looking at the numbers of the second game, it would seem that Va Tech’s outing wasn’t all that bad.  They allowed ECU to control the ball better and gave up an extra 126 yards total.  The difference in this game seems to be Glennon’s 2 picks.  Also, the special teams play that this doesn’t show.  Glennon still had 60% completion percentage and averaged 9.9 yds a throw, but it doesn’t seem like he was able to get the team moving against ECU.  Pickney, on the other hand, had a great day.  He had 82.6% completion percentage and averaged 11.1 yards a pass with a TD to top it off.  His two main backs also combined for 102 yards and kept the Va Tech D honest.