5-at-10: The Committee did what?, Where does Dirk rank, Moss and Rushmore of Al

College football rankings

photo Alabama head coach Nick Saban talks to an official during their game against LSU in Baton Rouge, La., last Saturday. Alabama won in overtime 20-13.

Did that just happen?

Did once-beaten Oregon pass unbeaten Florida State?

Is Alabama on the outside looking in at TCU despite the Tide winning at LSU at night?

Yes, yes, and an emphatic yes.

With that, the latest round of rankings from the College Football Committee unloaded a truckload of intrigue and a full measure of perspective.

In the intrigue column is the fact that the eye test and the magnitude of singular accomplishments are of greater import than we originally believed in the view of the committee. Also, the narrative of each individual team obviously matters.

Take Oregon, which has a loss - a seven-point defeat against Arizona - that happened when the Ducks offensive line was hampered by a bevy of injuries. The Ducks are No. 2 ahead of unbeaten FSU, which has been unblemished but not overly impressive. Also, the Seminoles' best win - a narrow victory over Notre Dame - was severely devalued by the pantsing the Irish received from Arizona State.

In the highly controversial No. 4 spot was TCU, which is ahead of Baylor, which beat the Horned Frogs a month ago.

Now for the perspective - since top-ranked Mississippi State visits Alabama this weekend, there certainly will be change in next week's poll. And in truth, all the rankings before the final poll are little more than conversation pieces.

But, what did we glean from Tuesday's rankings?

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Dirk

photo Dirk Nowitzki

Dirk Nowitzki moved into ninth place on the NBA scoring chart. He has 26,953 points, seven more than Hakeem Olajuwon, and is the top scoring international player in NBA history.

Not bad for a lanky 7-footer who was traded straight-up for Robert "Tractor" Traylor on draft day. (The Mavs dealt Traylor to Milwaukee for Nowitzki and Pat Garrity, who they then dealt to Phoenix for Steve Nash. Turning Robert Traylor and some pieces into two Hall of Famers is one of the best days in NBA GM history.)

Nowitzki is averaging almost 21 points a game this season, and he will move into seventh overall in the next few months. He's 36 points behind Elvin Hayes and 456 behind Moses Malone. Shaq O'Neal is sixth with 28,596 - 1,643 more than Dirk.

The leap from there is much grander, since Wilt Chamberlain is fifth at 31,419.

Nowitzki is in his 16th year and is 36 years old, so he could conceivably have a few more years left and climb into the top five.

So, where does Dirk Nowitzki rank all-time? Is he the best foreign-born player - we'd go Hakeem there. Is he better than Larry Legend? Is he the best non-power power forward of all-time or the best tall small forward ever?

Thoughts?

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College hoops

Much thanks to UTC coach Will Wade for joining us on Press Row on Tuesday.

We covered a wide range of topics, that included:

• As many of you asked, Wade is confident that this version of the Mocs will be "much closer" to running his defensive sets and unloading Chaos on the rest of the league. He, in fact, used the phrase "hawk the ball" several times, and that sounds pretty fierce.

photo UTC men's head basketball coach Will Wade

• He sounded genuinely excited, and that makes sense. If teams in general make the biggest progress from the first game to the second, we believe the second season for most coaches would have to be viewed as a lot of fun.

• He spoke about the ability to practice basketball more this year, as opposed to practicing winning habits and working on how to work.

• He noted that the jump in competition from the opener against Hiwassee on Friday to Sunday's date at Wisconsin may be the biggest in history.

• He also noted that Kentucky is scary good. Having seen the Wildcats during preseason scrimmages, Wade said the Wildcats would not beat NBA teams, but wouldn't get blown out either.

On that last note, here's hoping the Wildcats make a long run with a bagel in the loss column.

Hey we need something to add intrigue to the most meaningless regular season in all of sports.

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This and that

- In addition to the Top 4 being slotted in the most recent rankings from the College Football Playoff Committee, there are some early possible bowl matchups being bounced around. Couple of things of note. One, almost all of them have Tennessee listed among the bowl teams, be them in Memphis of Birmingham. Two, there is a real chance that Texas and Texas A&M could play on the Texas Bowl. And yes, that would be awesome in its awesomeness.

- The CY Youngs will be handed out today, and the 5-at-10 will eat our visor if Clayton Kershaw is not honored. In the AL, we'll go with King Felix Hernandez.

photo South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier.

- Meet Megan Whitt, the Notre Dame coordinator of recruiting operations. Crazy to think of guys like Saban or Spurrier or Bill Snyder needing a social media expert, but that's where we are.

- Great stat here: The last time the Cleveland Browns were in first place in Week 10 was 1994, when Bill Belichick was the head coach and some young go-getter named Nick Saban was on his staff.

- Not surprisingly, but the 30-on-30 about Randy Moss was pretty entertaining. Yes, it was certainly pro-Moss, but considering the ever-expanding line of what we deem bad behavior from athletes, Moss kind of got the short end of the stick.

- Speaking of Moss, we heard an interesting question on Tuesday evening. Knowing that Jerry Rice had a much better career - maybe the most accomplished career of any football player ever at any position - if you had your pick of any wide out ever in his prime, who would you take? Moss is most certainly in that discussion. Our list would likely go Calvin Johnson, Moss, Rice and then either James Lofton or T.O.

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Today's question

Sports announcer Al Michaels turns 70 today.

We believe he is the best at his craft.

What's our Rushmore of Al's?

(We could do Rushmore of play-by-play guys, but that's pretty general, you know?)

So you have options.

Go - and remember the mailbag.

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