The Greatest Saturday
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Last Friday after covering the Parkview/Camdenton game for the JOCK
98.7, home of the most updated High School Football coverage every
Friday (cross promotion), I decided to call it an early night. I
wasn't feeling sick, wasn't overly tired, and wasn't short on options
of things to do; I just wanted to be rested for my Saturday of sports
watching. After spending the better part of two of the last three
years stumbling into college classrooms reeking of booze twice a week I
know how a night of drinking can effect concentration. I was NOT going
to let some hangover compromise my concentration on what shaped up to
be one of the best sport watching Saturday afternoons in recent memory
(although some of what I've disclosed in the previous paragraph my call into question my short term memory).
With an 11 am kickoff for
the Texas/Oklahoma game the college football fan had to be up early and
ready for action or they could miss the game of the day. The annual
Red River Rivalry (you can’t say Red River Shootout anymore because if
you say that you are encouraging kids to play with guns) is one of the
best games of the year regardless of how the teams are doing that
season. When both teams are undefeated and in the top 5, its almost
guaranteed to be a classic.
The excitment started right out of
the gate after a 5-yard Sam Bradford touchdown pass to Manuel Johnson
gave Oklahoma a 7-0 lead under three minutes into the game.
Bradford’s second of five touchdown passes on the day gave OU a 14-3
lead early in the second quarter, and it looked like we might be in for a
romp.
Jordan Shipley’s 99 yard return for a touchdown on the
ensuing kickoff put thoughts of an OU romp on hold while making
Shipley one of the favorites to win the Tim Dwight award for fastest
white guy in college football (note: this award is not officially
recognized by the NCAA). Despite being out gained and outplayed in the
first half, the Longhorns went into the break trailing by only one
point, 21-20.
The game went back and forth in the early stages
of the third quarter before a knee injury to Oklahoma Linebacker Ryan
Reynolds on created a swing in moment. Reynolds, a Junior from Las
Vegas, was a preseason 1st team Big XII player with a history of knee
injuries- he missed the entire 2006 season after suffering a knee
injury during preseason drills, and had another during the 2007 offseason.
On the Longhorns first offensive possession Reynolds feel to the ground in the OU defensive huddle in
obvious pain. Despite barley being able to even stand up he
tried to stay on the field. Watching him limp through a play was like
watching a stray dog limp across a busy highway- your heart skips a
beat and you're worried you are about to see something horribly
gruesome happen. Luckily he was taken out of the game, and was
later diagnosed with a torn ACL that will sideline him for the rest of
the season.
After Reynolds was forced out of the game the Texas
offense went to work, outscoring the Sooner's 25-7 after the injury.
With Reynolds in the game to Longhorns averaged 4.6 yards per play,
with out him the number ballooned to 8.3. Reynolds's injury was not
the sole reason for Texas's 45-35 win, but to deny it played a major
role is ludicrous.
In a game that early on appeared would be a
Sam Bradford Heisman showcase may have in fact turned into Colt McCoy’s
(Bradford is a better player and played a better game, but many Heisman
voters will look only at the final score). McCoy’s poise and accuracy
in the pocket allowed him to complete 28 of 35 passes for 277 yards. After
the fifth time Kirk Herbstreit mentioned McCoy’s 4.5 speed I started to
look for it, and the next seven times Herbie mentioned it I was able to
notice McCoy’s deceptive mobility*. Other than McCoy’s tendency to go
into Manu Ginobli flop mode whenever he it touched near his own
sideline there is nothing to not like about the guy. Even his name is
awesome, not since Major Applewhite was under center has any one had a
more perfect name to play QB for the Longhorns. That got me thinking, what guys in the history of college football have names perfect for the school they quarterback for? Here are some of the best thus far (feel free to offer other submissions):
John Parker Wilson- Alabama
Glen Foley- Boston College
Eli Manning- Ole Miss
Thaddeus Lewis- Duke
Brady Quinn- Notre Dame
Ryan Perrilloux- LSU
Gino Torreta- Miami
Kaipo-Noa Koheaku-Enhada- Hawaii (the only problem is that he plays at Navy)
*I
usually love Kirk Herbstreit, but good God did he want the viewer to
know about McCoy's athletic ability. I spent entire commercial breaks
trying to figure out what Herbstreit had to gain from me knowing that
Colt McCoy can run forty yards in 4.5 seconds. If he had lowered his
voice half an octave, and left four seconds of dead air after everything he said I could have sworn I was listening to the Jim Rome
Show by the way he was hammering his point into the ground. The Jim Rome
Show can be heard weekdays from 11-2 on JOCK 98.7 (cross promotion).
By the time OU/Texas was done Nebraska and #7 Texas Tech were
getting into full swing after their 2:00 kickoff. Tech is always
interesting to watch because the way Graham Harrell runs Mike Leach's
spread offense the Red Raiders are capable of dropping 60 points on
anyone. After Nebraska laid an egg at home on primetime
national television last week I wasn't expecting them to put up to much
of a fight down in Lubbock. Prior to the game I thought there was a
better chance of Harrell passing for 800 yards, than for the
Cornhuskers to cover the 20 1/2 point spread.
As it turned out,
the game I didn't even plan on watching may well have been the best of
the mid afternoon. After Tech took a 31-24 lead with under 2:30 left
in the fourth quarter, Joey Ganz lead the Huskers down the field to tie
the game with :29. In overtime Tech realized this wasn't 1997 and that
they were the top 10 team, not Nebraska. Tech scored on their first possession, taking a 36-31 lead. A Nate Swift interception of a Ganz
pass on Nebraska's possession ended the game and Tech's upset alert.
After Tech's alert turned out to be a false alarm I switched over my
upset radar to #13 Vanderbilt at Mississippi St. Going into the game
I'm sure a lot of college football fans such as myself had questions
about the legitimacy of Vanderbilt. Sure, the Commodores were 5-0 and
leading the SEC east, but its a difficult to believe a school with the
admissions standards of Vanderbilt can compete an entire season against
the rest of the football factories in the SEC. A place that puts so
much emphasis on the academic aspects of the student athlete experience
can't recruit the same athletes as the rest of the SEC, where remedial
literacy skills are grounds for the dean's list if you can run a 4.3
forty. After the Commodores defeated Auburn last week the Tiger's fired
their offensive coordinator Tony Franklin. If losing to your team cost
someone their job it means people don't really have that much respect
for you- Vegas had them as only 2 1/2 point favorites over the worst
team in the SEC. Vandy didn't exactly shut their critics up by falling
17-14 to MSU.
By the time Vanderbilt came back to earth
ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 finally put the Notre Dame at North Carolina game on TV.
I know people get sick of seeing Notre Dame on national TV every week,
but come on, it was by far the most intriging game going. You had a
rebounding ND team, lead by 2010 Heisman trophy winner Jimmy Clausen,
playing a ranked North Carolina team. That's the most popular program in
America playing against a team with as good as chance as any to win the
ACC, but instead I was forced to watch this garbage:
Michigan St. at Northwestern
MSU
is a pretty good team, lead by a beast of a running back in Javon
Ringer playing against an undefeated Northwestern team. While on paper
it looks like a decent match up the game wasn't even a sellout. If
people living in the suburban Chicago area didn't want to take time out
of their Saturday afternoon to watch this game live, what makes ABC
executives think people in southwest Missouri are going to want to take
time out of their Saturday afternoon to watch it on TV?
Purdue at Ohio St.
I
like watching THE Ohio St. University embarrass itself on national TV
as much as anybody, but watching them beat up on mediocre Purdue in a
boring game...I'll pass.
Arizona St at USC
USC is always
interesting to because you're not quite sure what USC team is going to
take the field. Will it be the group that looked like the best team in
NCAA history after they dominated Ohio St., or the team that got
physically man handled by Oregon St? After jumping out to a 21-0 first
half lead it was obvious this wasn't going to be another Trojan banana
peel slip. By early in the 4th quarter with the score 28-0 I'd say it
would have been safe for ABC to do a live look in to Chapel Hill.
The
only thing that kept me from breaking the TV in front of me when I
couldn't get the Notre Dame game, was because of the sick enjoyment I
get out of watching ASU quarterback Rudy Carpenter get the crap beat
out of him. Carpenter apparently graduated from the Troy Aikman/Trent
Green/David Carr school of avoiding the hit. Usually by the third
quarter of a game against a good team can be seen walking with a limp,
and coughing up blood with the look on his face that he just sniffed a
soiled diaper. There really needs to be a Rudy Carpenter montage to the Daniel Powter song "Had a Bad
Day."
ABC did eventually get to the Notre Dame/UNC game, just
in time to see Notre Dame lose on the last play of the game 29-24. As
a Notre Dame fan its frustrating to watch a team constantly find new
ways to lose, but after 15 years I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Like
any addiction, rationalization is the key: Notre Dame is still you
young team, they had five turnovers on the road and still had a chance
to win in the final seconds. Jimmy Clausen passed for nearly 400
yards, and is slowly developing into a premier college football
quarterback...There, I think I have successfully talked my self back
from the ledge for this week.
After Notre Dame’s heartbreak, and
the obligatory thirty minutes of rationalization and self reflection
that comes with every Notre Dame loss, it was time for the night
games. Between an SEC rivalry game (#4 LSU at #12 Florida), a golden
opportunity banana peel slip game (#17 Oklahoma St. at #3 Mizzou), and
the chance to see a dead man walking (Wisconsin at #6 Penn St.) it
could have been easy to forget the Red Sox and Rays were playing game
two of the American League Championship Series.
The Red Sox/Rays
game, in a weird was the black sheep of the day, had everything you
could want in a playoff baseball game: Lead changes, timely hitting,
and 1:00 am CST finish, and a lot of commercials for Frank TV (maybe
not the last two). After watching a pitchers duel in Boston’s game 1
win, the 9-8 extra inning epic to tie the series at a game a piece was
just what the doctor ordered. It had the slow playoff drama baseball
purist love with the offensive fireworks that draw in the casual fan.
I was like if the movie Citizen Kane had nudity*. Other than the fact
that the game was played in a dome in St. Petersburg, FL it had just
about everything that makes playoff baseball great.
*I have no idea
if Citizen Kane actually does have nudity. If it does in fact contain nudity please insert another classic movie that will make the anology
work better. Thanks!
I honestly didn’t spend too much time
watching the Wisconsin/Penn St. game, there was just so much else going
on. I did however spend about 45 minutes speculating with friends
exactly how Penn St. was pulling of their ‘Joe Paterno is alive,’
heist. It was determined by my buddy Mitch and me that JoPa is like
Osama Bin Ladin- there are four or five of look a likes of each that
take turns making video taped appearances to keep the American public
guessing in regards to their living status. As for the game, Penn St.
ended up creaming the Badgers by a score of 48-7. Penn St. is now
ranked 3rd in the country and sits atop the Big 10, I just threw up in
my mouth a bit.
Down south the fraud that is the 2008 LSU Tigers
were exposed in a 51-21 beat down at the hands of Florida. There was
nothing surprising about the outcome of this game, except that people
seemed genuinely surprised by the outcome of this game Anyone who
thought LSU would cover the 6 ½ point spread set by Vegas deserves to
be shot. People who put money on a team with a former Harvard transfer
(Andrew Hatch: #330 ranked quarterback coming out of high school)
receiving significant playing time at quarterback deserve to lose that
money. People put money on a team lead by Hatch and redshirt Freshman
Jarrett Lee keeping it within one touchdown at Florida: and we wonder
why this country is in such financial despair.
The big shocker
of the night took place up in Columbia. Since JOCK 98.7 broadcast the
Mizzou games I’m sure everyone listened to the Tigers 28-23 upset at
the hands of Oklahoma St.(…raise?). The Tigers banana peel slip should
not come as a huge shocker to anyone. Before the season I predicted MU
would lose to an inferior opponent a home, I just didn't think it would
be OSU. Its nearly impossible for a team to make it through a
difficult conference schedule with out a loss these days. If they win
out the rest of their regular season games they will still make it to
the Big XII Championship. If they win the Big XII Championship they
will have the opportunity to play in the BCS title game. I don't think
Mizzou is good enough to win out, I'm just trying to help Tiger fans
step back from the ledge I find myself looking over five to six times a
season.
After one of the best college football Saturdays in
recent memory sports fans were treated to a record 5 NFL games that
ended in the last 10 seconds on Sunday. I’d love to say a little
something about these games, but seeing as to this has already gone
over 2,000 words I’ve probably worn out my welcome (totally forgot to
mention Missouri St.’s homecoming win over Youngstown St.).
One
closing thought: beware of the Trojans. I’ve been saying it for weeks;
USC will be back in the BCS title game. Top teams will continue to
fall and USC will continue to climb (up to #4 in the coaches poll). If
gambling were not against Meyer Communication policies Chuck Booms
would owe me $50 come January 2009.