Cardinal Roundtable: CMU Edition

In an effort to rally the troops of the blogosphere who share their affinity for the Ball State University Cardinals, OTP is proud to present the next installment of the Cardinal Roundtable. Each week, a different BSU blog will pose questions to the group about the upcoming game and the season in general. Brandon at Ball U Nation is up this week, and the links to Ball U Nation and The Sixth Ball Brother can be found at the bottom. Go Cards!

1. Obviously the big news this week is Ball State dropping three spots in the BCS poll and being passed up by both BYU and TCU. In your opinion, was it our rather lackluster win against Miami or our schedule that led to us dropping?
According to those in the know about the computer rankings margin and style don't matter. A win is a win regardless or whether it's a pretty one or not. So I reckon it has to be the schedule. Miami is awful. I mean downright terrible. I'm disappointed that we looked sloppy against a team that much weaker than us, but I'm more disappointed they were even on the schedule to begin with. I know it's conference and we have no choice, but it's still a bitter pill to swallow that so many things are happening far beyond our scope of control that is preventing us from reaching that brass ring.

2. Our chances of making it to a BCS bowl are obviously on life support, do you think a victory over Central Michigan will help us in the BCS or just add fire to the charge that the MAC and our schedule is weak?
I think a win against Central will do several things... most notably in the eyes of the human voters. Certainly schedule strength will improve a bit, but Central isn't playing that tough of a schedule either. This game is important for a number of reasons like competing for a MAC title, etc. and improving our strength of schedule numbers for a computer poll is pretty far down that list.

3. If you could save one Central Michigan player, who would it be and why?
Frank Zombo. The guy is chaos in a bottle on the d-line, and it would shore up a Cardinals attack that has struggled to get pressure on opposing QBs at times this year.

4. Central Michigan has been the top dog in the MAC for the past couple of seasons, how confident are you that this will finally be the year we knock off the Chips?
I'm feeling good about our chances. Everything points to a Ball State win from the statistics, to the common opponents, to the style of offense, to the sense of destiny this team seems to have. CMU is a damn strong football team, though, and this one will be dicey early.

5. Central Michigan and Ball State both have powerful offenses, do you think this game is going to be a shootout or will Ball State's defense be able to slow down CMU?
I think if one defense is truly capable of shutting down the other's attack it's the BSU defense. I could see CMU shutting down Nate through the air or perhaps MiQuale on the ground, but no team this season has been able to do both for 4 quarters of football. That's what should worry BSU opponents the most... the balance this team shows.