Troy Smith nursing injured thumb

There has been many questions coming up over the past few weeks as to just what the deal was with Troy Smith's wrapped up thumb on his throwing hand (seen here). Well, what was once speculation is now a fact: Troy Smith has a bum thumb.

Smith insists that the injury has had no effect on his play this season, and I have absolutely zero reason to believe that statement. This definitely seems to go a long way when it comes to Troy Smith's recent production (or lack thereof) through the air. He has seemed much more timid in the pocket in recent weeks, which one can only assume is a direct result of a lack of confidence in his ability to make the throws he had no problem making in the early part of the season. Also, it seems to me that when the easy throw isn't there for Smith, instead of finding a way to squeeze the ball into tight pockets, he is simply taking off and running instead. Also, one has to think that this injury played a large role in the horrendous, one-dimensional play calling from the final half of the Illinois game.


AROUND THE NCAA I'm currently watching the Louisville-Rutgers game on ESPN (Louisville is on pace for a win at this moment), and I actually have a bit to say about not necessarily this game, but for the Big East conference as a whole. People have been saying that the Big East is "Back" because of the two recent huge conference games (this one and last week's Lousiville/WVU matchup). Just exactly how can a conference regain prominence when they're beating up each other on Thursday nights? The premier teams in the Big Least need to start performing against other upper-tier teams in the nation. So far, of the top three teams in the conference, the biggest win they've had came against a Miami team that was in total disarray. How am I supposed to believe that a conference that never schedules games against any other top talent teams is good enough to play in the National Championship? Although I do feel that Louisville would be a worthy team to play in the Championship, that's just based solely off of what I've seen them do against mediocre talent and what I feel they are capable of. If Louisville made it to the championship I wouldn't necessarily be angry, but I don't think they deserve to go because they haven't shown their abilities as much as, say, Texas or Florida have this season.