Years of abuse have taught me to expect the worse. It reminds me of my childhood cat, one time when he was about to run out of the house my brother threw a pair of keys at him as he bolted for the door. It was a really good throw, it was the JJ McCarthy on the rollout 30 yards down the sideline type of throw. It smoked the cat, and Ace quickly abandoned his decision to bolt and ran upstairs instead. For the rest of the cat’s awesome life, he feared the sound of jingling keys. I fear the feeling of a pick 6 right before half and somehow being down at halftime after dominating the opponent all game. This is the exact type of game Michigan manages to blow. But maybe that is the Michigan of the past, maybe the 400+ yards of on the ground nullifies any chance of blowing it. Maybe our offensive line and RB is so good we are just going to beat any team who can’t stop us on the ground. Maybe if I keep saying maybe it will come true and we have an encore performance against Michigan State. Maybe like, Jim Harbaugh’s team maybe.
USC gets one of the best coaches in football. Has some of the best college football history ever to lean on. Has infinite resources and a veteran QB and starts winning immediately. Utah has slowly and steadily built this program from nothing, has a Coach who looks like your cool Uncle who can’t stay long for Thanksgiving because he has to go do something even cooler, and is from Utah. The Trojans vs. The Utes. Fire vs. Ice. And what do we get? The undoubtedly coolest way this game could go. Utah fights off defeat by mounting a 4th quarter come back and then GOES FOR TWO to win the game. Cam Rising is just a competitor and so much fun to watch. This game makes me retroactively even more sad that Utah lost to Florida at the beginning of the year. It did feel like USC was holding that perfect record together with the slimmest margin possible. Surely this was the best possible game of the weekend right? BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE.
What an awesome win for Tennessee. Gutsy performance, absolute peak quarterback play from both teams. Back and forth the entire game. A 52-49 wild ride of a finish. Games like this are just so incredible, it’s so easy to go back and play the what-if game, but let’s look at just three moments in the final minute. I ALREADY SAID THIS WAS AWESOME. I AM NOT DISCREDITING TENNESSEE, I AM MARVELING AT THE NATURE OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL. NO DISREPECT. DON’T GET MAD AT ME WADE.
1. Gibbs drops a sure first down and possible touchdown pass out of the backfield that would’ve all but ensured Alabama’s victory.
2. Alabama Kick goes wide right.
3. Tennessee kick gets partially blocked and still goes in from 40 yards.
Think about that for a second, if one dude has a centimeter longer finger, this whole thing goes in the opposite direction. The butterfly effect from this win will be felt for years, ask Michigan about a fingernail of a distance between first down and a turnover. I almost didn’t get to see Saban looking absolutely dismayed, life comes at you fast. This game was truly won on the absolutely smallest of margins possible. I mean, if Tennessee had not deployed one of the coolest intimidation tactics I have ever seen, maybe they lose? Who is to say?
Top 15 double over-time in conference thriller, and no one will even talk about it. TCU and OK St. are better than their big brothers at football but it’s sort of like what happens when you get better at your Big Brother at anything else. You don’t get to do it anymore. I’m fairly convinced the last time my Brother touched a basketball was when I torched him in a game of 1-on-1 in the Wheeler road driveway. What did he do? Got married and moved away almost immediately. You mean TCU and OK State are finally good enough to beat their big brother and they are bolting for the SEC!? This isn’t fair! I have a literal lifetime of losses to avenge! The Big 12 was here to keep everything balanced, who is going to give us the Dad stare if we get out of line?
Syracuse dominates NC State in a game I am told I should care about. I don’t think anyone from the ACC is good, even Clemson. Am I supposed to be convinced Syracuse is good? Or rather, are we artificially inflating them just because of the 0 in the loss column? Speaking of artificial inflation, what are we doing with pumpkins here people? I spent 4 hours at a Cider mill battling crowds of idiots in flannel and the wafting smell of rotting apples all so I could drink a literal sip of apple cider and pick out an extremely overpriced pumpkin? Pumpkins have almost 0 nutritional value, you are lying to yourself if you like pumpkin spice. You like it for one month of the year because of artificial scarcity. Anything a pumpkin can do a sweet potato can do better. I’m seeing grown adults run through this pumpkin patch literally wheel-barrowing his 64 pound haul to the checkout and happily paying $32 so he can poorly carve a Superman S into it only for a squirrel to eat it long before Halloween even arrives. It’s like a farmer grew a whole bunch of pumpkins one year and suddenly realized that 0 people on the earth would ever have need of a pumpkin and decided, I know what I’ll do… I’ll use them to decorate. The only food on this planet that is better served as a decoration then actual food. If God never made Pumpkins literally no one would care. The most useful a pumpkin has ever been is that it was a fictious carriage for all of of 4 hours. I don’t have a funny commercial for this so here is more Peyton Manning. And oh yeah, I hate Pumpkins.
Gamenotes 