Rex Nelson: Week 9 College Football Picks

Each week throughout football season Sporting Life Arkansas excerpts Rex Nelson’s Weekly Arkansas College Football Picks and links to Rex’s Southern Fried Blog for his full predictions. Rex makes his prediction for every NCAA Division I and Division II college football team in the state. Here are the week 9 college football picks. Enjoy.

My picks were almost as bad as the Razorbacks’ play on the field last week.

I went 3-4, the worst week here on the Southern Fried blog in several years.

After the win over Ole Miss, I had climbed back aboard the Razorback bandwagon and foolishly selected Arkansas to beat Auburn despite the deficiencies in the Razorback offensive and defensive lines that had been so glaring in one-sided losses to Alabama and Texas A&M.

Arkansas finds itself 1-3 in Southeastern Conference play with none of the three losses having been close.

Yes, I’ll pull out the old joke: I’m picking Arkansas to slip past B.Y.E. this Saturday.

I also was done in by a trio of upsets in the Great American Conference as Southern Arkansas defeated Henderson a week after losing to Ouachita, Ouachita lost to UAM a week after upsetting the Muleriders and Arkansas Tech lost to Southeastern Oklahoma following convincing victories the previous two weeks.

The only consistent team in the GAC this year is Harding. I expect the Bisons to finish the regular season with an 11-0 record.

The record for the season is now 43-20.

Let’s get to the picks for Week 9 and see if we can recover from the prognosticating disaster that was Week 8:

Arkansas State 34, Louisiana-Monroe 31: When he spoke to the Little Rock Touchdown Club last week, Red Wolf head coach Blake Anderson chastised me (with a smile on his face, mind you) for picking against his team in the first two Sun Belt Conference games. Arkansas State had gone 0-4 in nonconference play, including that loss in Jonesboro to an FCS team (UCA from the Southland Conference). Can you blame me? But the Red Wolves are 2-0 in conference action after wins in Jonesboro over Georgia Southern and South Alabama. And they’re back in Jonesboro this Saturday for a fourth consecutive home game as Louisiana-Monroe comes to town. We’ll step out there and pick ASU against a Louisiana-Monroe squad that’s 2-5 overall and 2-1 in the Sun Belt. The victories have been by scores of 38-21 over Southern University and 40-34 over Texas State. The losses have been by scores of 59-17 to Oklahoma, 23-21 to Georgia Southern, 58-7 to Auburn, 34-31 to Idaho and 59-17 to New Mexico. Don’t let me down, Coach Anderson.

UCA 30, Southeastern Louisiana 22 — The Bears remain on a roll. UCA moved to 6-1 overall and 5-0 in the Southland Conference with a 22-12 victory over Lamar in Conway last Saturday night. This is a Bear team that seems to get better each week. UCA now must head south to take on Southeastern Louisiana in an afternoon game Saturday at Hammond, La. This one won’t be easy. The Lions are just 4-3 overall but find themselves 4-1 in conference play following three consecutive victories. The losses were by scores of 61-7 to Oklahoma State, 28-23 to Southern Utah and 38-14 to Lamar. The four conference victories for Southeastern have come by scores of 34-24 over Northwestern State, 31-24 over McNeese State, 58-34 over Stephen F. Austin and 37-3 over Houston Baptist.

Harding 38, Southwestern Oklahoma 21 — The Bisons improved to 8-0 on Thursday night of last week with a 35-7 win at Ada, Okla., against an East Central Oklahoma team that’s now a disappointing 1-7 on the season. This week’s opponent, Southwestern Oklahoma, started the season 0-4 and seemed to be in for a season just as dismal as that being experienced by East Central. But the Bulldogs have turned their season around with four consecutive victories, including a 37-35 come-from-behind win over Oklahoma Baptist last week. Expect the Bulldogs to hang around for three quarters or so in Searcy on Saturday afternoon before Harding pulls away.

To see all of the week 8 college football picks, click here.