Emotion Detector Registers in the Red Every Saturday

It is not that kids don’t believe anything they read and hear these days -- they apparently believe everything.

Call it one of the lovable differences between professional and amateur football that college players are so influenced by the extracurricular.

“It’s really easy to get distracted,” UCLA tackle Brian Abraham acknowledged after Stanford had his Bruins distracted, 24-3, at one fourth-quarter point Saturday in Palo Alto.

The NFL essentially puts its players under house arrest from August to January, but the NCAA allows coaches only 20 hours a week to brainwash the brethren.

College football is perhaps the only sport in which emotion, or lack thereof, drives the engine.

Take what happened over the weekend:

Some at USC thought it was a crime against humanity that the Trojans dropped to No. 2 in the bowl championship series standings -- even though it wasn’t.

So frenzy-whipped was USC at this perceived outrage that it blew the doors off Washington State, 55-13, just in case anyone was wondering who the best team really was.

Like children on a playground, USC grabbed back two first-place votes from Texas in Sunday’s Associated Press poll and swiped three votes in the USA Today coaches’ poll.

Today, by the swing set, USC might take back No. 1 in the BCS.

Texas, meanwhile, spent the week basking in the glory of its exalted No. 1 BCS ranking while various talking heads were proclaiming the Longhorns a better team than USC.

Really, who were the Longhorns to argue until they went into Stillwater and found themselves down, 28-9, in the first half against Oklahoma State?

You can almost see these things coming.

UCLA parlayed a win over Oregon State last week into a jump from No. 9 to No. 6 in the BCS, and then almost got jumped at Stanford.

Miami, looking ahead to next week’s big game at Virginia Tech, almost forgot it had a game against North Carolina on Saturday.

Florida State sported a 14-1 all-time record against visiting Maryland and then got booed off the field at halftime when Maryland had the nerve to be leading.

It says a lot about college football’s fragile, week-to-week nature that four of the top 10 teams in last week’s BCS standings had to overcome deficits against inferior opponents.

Texas, UCLA, Miami and Florida State trailed Oklahoma State, Stanford, North Carolina and Maryland by a combined scored of 92-33.

It also says something when you can turn emotion off and on like a water pump.

Texas went on a 38-0 blitz to finish off Oklahoma State, UCLA outscored Stanford, 27-3, Miami went on a 27-0 run against North Carolina and Florida State won by eight after trailing by 10.

The players would love to take these games one at a time, as their coaches always lecture, if only we would let them.

Weekend Wrap

These are just the facts: Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis signed a 10-year contract Saturday after starting his career 5-2; Tyrone Willingham started 8-0 at Notre Dame in 2002 and got extended, after three years, to Puget Sound.

Times sure have changed. Rutgers beat Navy on Saturday and collected 12 points in Sunday’s AP poll. Oklahoma beat Nebraska and picked up 11.

Times sure have changed II: Who could have fathomed in September that Rutgers would become bowl-eligible before Tennessee?

Three coaches you would not want to be Sunday:

* Tennessee’s Phillip Fulmer. His team started the year ranked No. 3 but is now 3-4 after Saturday’s loss to nemesis Steve Spurrier. Fulmer has just about spent all the capital from his 1998 national championship, and now, one week after being outmatched against Spurrier, he’ll have to match wits against Notre Dame’s Weis in South Bend.

* Stanford’s Walt Harris. Cardinal watchers were trying to weigh whether the first-year coach looked more devastated after the September loss to UC Davis or Saturday’s overtime loss to UCLA. Either way, those are not two bookends you want on your mantel. It gets worse for Stanford, which travels to No. 1 USC this week down another starting receiver after Mark Bradford was injured in the first quarter Saturday. If you were to pick a final score against USC, 60-3 might not be far off.

* Air Force’s Fisher DeBerry. Days after DeBerry had to apologize for inappropriate comments regarding race as it relates to foot speed in football, Air Force scored 41 points and still lost to Brigham Young. It locked up consecutive losing seasons for the first time in DeBerry’s tenure at Colorado Springs.

Scouting report: UCLA’s next two opponents, Arizona and Arizona State, started first-time quarterbacks Saturday and they both won. Freshman Willie Tuitama threw for 335 yards against Oregon State in Arizona’s first Pacific 10 Conference win, and Rudy Carpenter, subbing for injured Sam Keller, threw for 401 yards and three touchdowns in Arizona State’s win over Washington.

At least he was honest about his fib. ... Sun Devil Coach Dirk Koetter admitted after the game that he had misled the media on the extent of Keller’s thumb injury. “I originally told you guys it was a sprain because I didn’t want you guys to know about it,” Koetter told the Arizona Republic. In fact, Keller had been playing with a torn thumb ligament that will end his season.

In case you didn’t know, Bobby Bowden is 202-1-1 at Florida State in games in which the Seminoles have scored at least 30 points.