Before we embark on a Raven-less afternoon of NFL football, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on yesterday's college football action:

Congratulations to the Midshipmen of Navy for defeating Wake Forest for their fifth straight victory. Coach Ken and his undersized crew again are proving what you can do with great preparation, great discipline and great desire.

Now that I have that out of the way, I totally disagreed with the decision to punt on fourth-and-1 at the Wake 39. I just hate it when a team builds a lead with strong, aggressive play and then suddenly goes defensive at a pivotal moment. Wake was back past the 39 in about 30 seconds and put the game back in doubt with a very quick touchdown. Navy gets one yard there, the Mids run at least another 2 1/2 minutes off the clock in a two-score game. I know it was raining, but I never like handing back the momentum. Turned out okay, but I still didn't like it.

Sort of the same thing in last night's game between Tennessee and top-ranked Alabama. The Volunteers were driving toward a huge upset victory, but went conservative during the last 40 seconds because they were out of timeouts. The Vols sat on the ball when they had time for one more play and a spike, content to take their chances on a medium-long field goal after missing two of their previous three in the game. The kick was blocked, so I guess you could try and make the case that it wouldn't have made any difference, but it certainly did because of the lower trajectory of the longer kick.

I suspect that Florida will be back on top of the AP poll this week after a fairly handy win at Mississippi State. I am always rooting for an upset so that my USC Trojans can get closer in the BCS standings, but who am I kidding. They scored a lot of points and won at home last night, but they had no defensive answer for Oregon State, which is pretty troubling.

There's a lot of college football left to play, of course, and a couple of the undefeated teams will eventually lose a game. I'm starting to think that Iowa might just run the table, though they would have to defeat Ohio State on the road. Even if they do, however, they probably would still be blocked out of the BCS title game because of their strength of schedule.