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</td><td class="cc c">12:30 PM (10 minutes ago)
The Alphabetical: College Football, Week 4
from
The Sporting Blog
Each Sunday during college football season, Spencer Hall offers a letter-by-letter analysis of Saturday’s college football games.
A is for Arriba, Los Espartanos! Michigan State decided to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by putting Sparty in a sombrero-topped mariachi outfit, complete with a stunner of a lip stripe (at right). If this is the start of a whole series of variations to Sparty’s usual green armor outfit, the Awesome Committee approves.
B is for “Bless his heart, he needs some prayer.” That’s an actual quote from Knoxville local news from a female Vol fan when asked about Jonathan Crompton’s performance against Florida in the
at home. Crompton is a young quarterback who is being asked to run a complex system, but he’s also the guy who brain-locked on two crucial occasions against the Gators, throwing two picks in the endzone and taking 14 points off the board for Tennessee.
Tennessee would have serious problems if their QB was merely turnover prone. They would have serious problems if their offensive coordinator was challenged by implementing a new system. Tennessee, however, has both, a situation that the phrase “serious problems” doesn’t come close to properly describing.
C is for Cough Cough Mark May Cough Cough. Mark May gave his helmet stickers out for the week and included LSU QB Jarrett Lee in his list of honorees, mentioning that “some people didn’t think he should be the QB,” while Rece Davis, off-camera, repeatedly pulled the fake cough “Mark May” in the background.
Mark May is eminently more likeable with Lou Holtz and Davis taking joy in puncturing the sizeable bubble of smug surrounding him.
D is for Decline. A sure sign of the universe being in an entirely new and eccentric alignment : seeing the 9-3 score for Wake Forest/Florida State in the fourth quarter and thinking that Florida State was completely and utterly screwed.
Wake Forest owns the Seminoles; the simple act of typing this phrase ten years ago would have ripped a hole in the time/space continuum. Now Riley Skinner looks like the best quarterback prospect on the field, while the Wake defense was the side marauding the quarterback and picking off passes with glee -- Florida State had a galling seven turnovers on the day, and threw another valiant defensive effort on the scrapheap of their program’s rotting greatness.
E is for Exuberance, Irrational. Iowa: possibly good! Winning ugly! Tight defense! And all decimated with a tight loss to Pitt, a team that coughed up a loss to Bowling Green in Week 1 and was reeling going into conference play. I won’t let you give up on Iowa yet. But only because I want to beat you to it, since I’m giving up on Iowa and want to be first. One immutable rule of reality is this: losing to the Wannstache has dire consequences beyond your control, mortals. (Ask West Virginia.)
F is for Factual. “Considered Best Dancer On Team.” Blurb on Demetrius Byrd on ESPN’s broadcast of LSU at Auburn. This important fact brought to you by the LSU Football Team Committee on Competitive Interpretive Dance.
G is for Gnomon. Gnomon is a mathematical term that describes the part of a parallelogram that remains when a similar parallelogram is removed from one of its corners. Or in other words: the crucial missing part, as in Ray Rice from Rutgers. Without Rice, Rutgers is 0-3, Mike Teel has thrown 1 TD to 6 INTs, and
things are getting slappy on the sidelines.
H is for Hullabaloo. LSU/Auburn usually resembles the scene in
Batman: The Dark Knight where three men are fighting to the death with two pieces of pool cue: short on points, long on concussions.
The game fulfilled the concussion requirement: Andrew Hatch, the LSU QB who seemingly recovered from a hard hit only to wobble, fall and spend the rest of the game on the bench. It failed on points thanks to the usual storm of Les Miles-related insanity: a halfback pass, the emergence of Jarrett Lee as the starting quarterback, brutal running from Charles Scott, a recovered onside kick, and a 26-21 win for LSU in the day’s most festive of games.
LSU now takes pole position in the SEC West, wearing a Mardi Gras mask and covered in beads, and Auburn wonders how two crucial special teams plays -- the crucial onside kick and a bad punt late in the game -- put them in a hole they’ll spend all season digging themselves out of.
I is for Improbably Undefeated. Or as they’re better known: Vanderbilt. 4-0 and riding the high side of probability after Ole Miss fumbled away the game into the endzone in the fourth quarter.
J is for Jaybo Georgia Tech’s backup QB, Jaybo Shaw. Jaybo is the logical answer to the timeless dilemma of “What if I like both the name ‘Bo’ and ‘Jay’ for my son?” Innovation never sleeps, people. The Mississippi State offense does, however, allowing 438 rushing yards to Georgia Tech in a 38-7 loss.
K is for KTFO. In the first quarter, Alabama had run six plays and led by 21 at one point. The game finished 49-14. Alabama’s degree of goodness is still being determined, but Arkansas’ weakness? Established fact as definite and decisive, as the pick Casey Dick confidently slugged into the arms of Alabama corner Javier Arenas for six the other way. (It was a great touchdown throw. To the other team. Which is important to mention.)
L is for Lucky. Gary Rogers, Washington State QB, spent 15 terrifying minutes on the ground following a late hit in the WSU/Portland State game.
Rogers was taken to the hospital, and fortunately has feeling in his extremities while showing overall positive signs of recovery.
M is for Musburger Hyperbole Machine. “Forget about SEC Freshman of the Year: HOW ABOUT THE BILETNIKOFF AWARD!” Brent Musburger, demonstrating his usual restraint by suggesting that Georgia receiver A.J. Green’s impressive performance (8 Catches, 159 yards, 1 TD) against Arizona State puts him in the running for the top receiving award in the nation in his third game playing college football.
N is for Nonplussed. One hundred degrees at kickoff, getting there the day before the game, much open kvetching from the Bulldog fanbase over the lack of preparation for the desert conditions ... and no cramping whatsoever in a 27-10 victory. Georgia appeared to be the home team, actually, so good was their conditioning; the least prepared Dawg on the field appeared to be Uga, who was chest down on the grass and panting early in the second quarter.
O is for Olive Garden. “While you do the math, I’ll do the Alfredo.” If people actually get this excited about eating at the Olive Garden, I’m emigrating, because this country is doomed, doomed, doomed. This commercial frequently-aired during this year’s football season isn’t just a bad, obnoxious piece of advertising; it’s an indictment of humanity.
P is for Pryor. Todd Boeckman’s line against Troy Saturday: 0/1 with 0 yards. The Pryor era is underway in Columbus, and the rest of the season will be his freshman multidisciplinary studies seminar. It promises to be educational for us all, especially Big Ten defenses: Pryor went 10/16 with 4 TDs and 1 INT against an acceptable Troy defense, and ran 14 times for 66 yards.
Q is for Quality Control. Georgia’s 27-10 victory over Arizona State highlighted the M.O. for a Mark Richt team functioning on all cylinders: smooth, even performance across the board. Also notable was their lack of panic in a scoreless first quarter, the even defensive ferocity that kept Rudy Carpenter reeling helplessly through his covered reads all night long, and the almost leisurely way Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno dispensed of the Sun Devils’ attempts to disrupt the Bulldog attack.
The discovery of a pass rush may be a mirage since Arizona State’s offensive line is bombed out and depleted, but the overall workmanlike cool of the team is a fact. If USC is the quick-strike knockout artist in one corner of the national title race, Georgia is the body- blow endurance fighter in the other, a four-quarter brawler with submission holds on their mind.
(Additional scary note: The Dawgs went out West with a patchwork offensive line and still wrecked shop. O-line coach Stacey Searels continues to be coaching duct tape: he can fix
anything.)
R is for Ringerbot. Michigan State RB Javon Ringer had 39 rushes, 201 yards, and 2 TDs against Notre Dame. A cyborg running back an excellent understanding of psychology: he appeared at the post-game press conference with his offensive line behind him and gave them all the credit. You do that, and the offensive line will run headlong into tree shredders for you for the rest of the season.
S is for Sideline confidential. “I know he’s not drunk because he’s a Mormon, but that’s how he’s walking around.” -- Holly Rowe, on Andrew Hatch staggering off the field in an LSU victory he likely does not remember.
T is for Teach, Edward. East Carolina loses to a North Carolina State team that spent the first three weeks of the season as a punchline for ACC ineptitude. Remember that Teach, better known as Blackbeard, East Carolina’s favorite pirate son, didn’t end well; neither did East Carolina’s brief sojourn in the top 25.
U is for Undefeated, Really? Minnesota, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Colorado, Ball State, UConn, Utah and Wake Forest are all undefeated on September 21, 2008. The bowl season could be weeeeeeeird, indeed.
V is for Voodoo. The floating voodoo curse-cloud that struck UCLA’s quarterbacks this offseason has floated north to Eugene, Oregon. Nate Costa fell to a knee injury in Week 1; then Justin Roper went down, leaving third-stringer Jeremiah Masoli with the job for the Boise State game, where he suffered a concussion and was replaced by Justin Harper, who was so ineffective that fifth-stringer Darron Thomas was brought in to try to lead Oregon back after falling behind 37-13 to the Broncos.
Good news! It almost worked, as the game finished 37-32. Bad news: YOU ARE ON YOUR FIFTH-STRING QUARTERBACK. The curse-cloud is moving north. Washington and Washington State, take note and encase your quarterbacks in barbed wire and armed guards for the next month or so.
W is for Winless: Florida International, who at 0-3 can at least claim a moral victory by holding South Florida to 17 points in a 17-9 loss on Saturday. Also sad, winless and in need of cuddling and a good cry: Army, Ohio, San Diego State, Washington, North Texas, UTEP and most shockingly, Rutgers.
X is for Xerox. Or a carbon copy of their last game, really, for BYU: 44-0 win over Wyoming, 3 TDs for Max Hall and a sleeper for our new leader in the “BCS Boise State Invitational Slot for a non-BCS Team That May Upset Someone Or Get Blown Out Like Hawaii Did. “ (I’ve got to work on shortening that name up, btw. Clunky.)
Y is for Yielding, Continually. Reality continues to grind away at UCLA, who recovered from the 59-0 epochal defeat at BYU by improving to a more respectable 21-point loss to Arizona. If punting really is winning, UCLA was lolling in a mudpit of victory: they punted 11 times on the day for 496.1 yards in total field position.
Z is for Zoo. Or the ACC at this point, where Wake is your leader, UNC somehow loses to Virginia Tech, NC State comes back from the dead, Georgia Tech trounces Miss State, and Miami suddenly grows an offense against Texas A&M. Let the record show that after a dismal start, the ACC went 4-0 this weekend against their 1-A (or FBS, for you slaves to the NCAA’s Newspeak) opponents.
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