RJ Esq
Prick Since 1974
<TABLE><TBODY><TR><TD class=storytitle colSpan=3>Monday Morning Quarterback </TD></TR><TR><TD class=primaryimage vAlign=top>
</TD><TD noWrap width=3></TD><TD vAlign=top><TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=4 width="60%" bgColor=#f5f5f5 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD vAlign=center noWrap>By Matt Zemek
CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Oct 7, 2007
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Where the Weekly Affirmation left off, the Monday Morning Quarterback picks up.
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ByMatthew Zemek
Mr. Zemek's e-mail: mzemek@hotmail.com
For part one of this diary, go to the Weekly Affirmation. This is a blow-by-blow account of Saturday's college football dramas, as they happened in real time. The fun started at 9:12 in the morning, but only now are the marquee matchups flooding the networks and filling the time slots. Safe to say, the nighttime was the right time for sporting spectacles and scenarios that won't soon be forgotten.
5:15 p.m., Pacific (Seattle) time, Colorado with no letdown against Baylor, up 17-0. Good for Dan Hawkins and his kids.
5:19 p.m.: Rutgers QB Mike Teel bobbles the ball three times and Cincinnati recovers. A promising drive is abruptly halted for the Scarlet Knights.
5:28: That looked like an Ohio State touchdown, but the play deserved a review.
5:29: Cincinnati flying on defense against Rutgers.
5:30: Tim Tebow with an 11-yard strike. Florida needs to establish a vertical passing game against LSU.
5:32: Cincinnati misses a field goal, so both teams have provided early gifts in Piscataway.
5:33: Florida and Kestahn Moore running hard and powerfully. Urban Meyer and Dan Mullen flung the pigskin first, and then came back with the ground game. Good play sequencing from the Gator braintrust.
5:35: The stats say Tebow gained three yards. The eyes say Tebow made one helluva play to avoid a crippling sack.
5:36: That's a play Mullen should stay away from. "Tebow up the middle" is a crutch, and it also subjects the quarterback to a pounding.
5:37: Ohio State driving. Purdue has rarely if ever won this kind of game (namely, a big one), and this could get ugly very soon.
5:38: Field goal, Florida. 3-0. Your serve, Matt Flynn.
5:40: Touchdown, Ohio State.
5:41: Touchdown, Rutgers, on a pick-six. After the loss to Maryland, an early lead is huge for Greg Schiano's boys. It doesn't matter one whit that the defense produced the points.
5:43: Matt Flynn flinches. He throws a ball behind an open receiver on a quick slant, and the "deflection that causes interception" (much like "the abomination that causes desolation") gives Florida an early opportunity.
5:47: It's early in the game, but LSU's Alley Highsmith has already knocked down two Tebow passes.
5:48: LSU's defense gets a big three-and-out.
5:49: Cincy answers with a touchdown to tie Rutgers. Brian Kelly has clearly instilled some mental toughness into his team.
5:51: LSU and offensive coordinator Gary Crowton flashing some creativity via Ryan Perrilloux. A fake end-around pitch, followed by an eight-yard run and a delayed option pitch. A sign of things to come. The Tigers will run some variations of that play before the night is over.
5:54: LSU tries a power run. No dice against the Gators' front seven.
5:56: An old demon gets LSU: a bad drop by an open receiver who was about to rip off a big gain. It's amazing how certain flaws remain in the same programs over many years.
5:57: This is how bad Notre Dame's offense is: the Irish, after a turnover caused by their defense, started a drive at the UCLA 2. They ended the drive on the 9. It's 3-3 in Pasadena.
5:59: There's a wasted trick play. As the astute Gary Danielson ("astute Gary Danielson" is a redundant phrase) pointed out, the play should have involved a bubble screen or flat pass behind the wall of linemen set wide.
6:04 p.m., Pacific time: Field goals for Rutgers (up 10-7) and Ohio State (up 17-0).
6:05: Wow! USC up just 9-7 over Stanford in the third. THIS is stunning. That the Stanford touchdown came on a pick-six is really shocking. This is a BAD (not mediocre; BAD) USC passing game right now, on October 6, 2007.
6:07: Fred Davis gets a first down for USC with a 3rd and 5 reception. He then fumbles, and the Cardinal recover. It's getting tense in the Coliseum.
6:09: Lost in the implosion of SC's passing game is the fact that Pete Carroll's defense is throwing a shutout and playing flawlessly.
6:10: Tebow to Harvin. A staple play gets Florida to the LSU 2.
6:11: I beat you by two seconds, Verne Lundquist (okay, maybe 1.4 seconds...). Yes, that wasn't quite the jump pass from last year, but it was still impressive and effective. 10-0, Gators. If I'm Les Miles, I need to keep Ryan Perrilloux on the field for a few snaps.
6:17: Booty gets picked again, but Stanford doesn't get points (or even a drive start in USC territory). USC's two-point lead is unsettling in an obvious sense, but it still feels weirdly safe.
6:19: Interception, USC. LSU converts 3rd and 2 to get to the Florida 39. Flynn completes another pass to the Gator 27.
6:22: LSU playing pitch and catch with relative ease.
6:23: On 3rd and 2 from his own 37, Booty uses play action to hit Fred Davis on a downfield pass, and the tight end shrugs off an undersized Stanford defender to take it the distance. 16-7, USC.
6:24: Flynn converts a big 3rd and 8 on a perfectly executed wide receiver screen.
6:25: Florida's Jermaine Cunningham somehow disrupts Perrilloux's 3rd and goal pass. The Tigers will go for it from the 1.
6:28: USC has outgained Stanford, 379-73. And the Trojans lead by only nine?
6:30: Perrilloux walks in for the touchdown. Good play selection by Gary Crowton.
6:31: Just when Stanford seemed likely to go away, the Cardinal hit a bomb to the USC 2.
6:36: Touchdown, Stanford. Touchdown, Missouri (7-0 over Nebraska early on). Tebow leads the Gators downfield again.
6:37: Oklahoma State 17, Texas A&M 0, early in the third quarter. Bye-bye, Fran.
6:41: Tebow made a huge glove save there. Almost a 16-yard loss if that bad snap isn't caught. Almost. Instead, first and goal for Florida.
6:43: USC converts a 3rd and 1 just past midfield in a 16-14 game.
6:44: Touchdown, USC. Booty to Ronald Johnson for 45 yards. Trojans up by nine again, 23-14.
6:46: On 3rd and goal from the 9 (not the 3, but the 9), Tebow positively floats into the end zone. Lundquist started saying "touchdown" when No. 15 crossed the 5. Know what's really scary? I couldn't fault Verne for being premature.
6:52: Florida's soft coverage enables LSU to move the ball easily in a two-minute (offense) framework. The combo of an insufficient pass rush and a suspect secondary is Florida's biggest pair of weak spots. (Tebow will mask most, if not all, offensive shortcomings.)
6:54: Stanford kicks a field goal, but USC jumps offside. First down, Cardinal. USC jumps offside again. SC is injured, but there's precious little excuse for the kinds of mistakes the Trojans are making right now.
6:56: After Florida gets a little pressure and cranks up the defensive intensity, Colt David biffs a field goal, enabling the Gators to head to the locker room with a 17-7 lead.
6:59: USC holds. Stanford still gets the field goal after all, but two minutes fall off the clock.
7:05: Patrick Turner gets four yards for USC on a huge 3rd and 3. Four and a half minutes left in L.A.
7:06: Stanford gets a sack to force a 2nd and 19.
7:07: A screen to Chauncey Washington is smothered. 3rd and 19.
7:08: INTERCEPTION, STANFORD! Ball on the USC 45 with 2:50 left. Buckle up.
7:09: Jim Harbaugh goes for the whole enchilada without hesitation. SC drops a pick in the end zone.
7:10: Pass interference on USC. Good call. Ball on the Trojan 30.
7:11: What should have been an eight-yard loss on a busted halfback option pass becomes a four-yard gain. USC playing nervous football and basically feeling the heat. An injury on the field creates a break in the action.
7:13: Stanford quarterback Tavita Pritchard scrambles for a first down to the USC 19.
7:14: Incomplete pass--broken up on the left sideline.
7:15: Holding, Stanford, at the worst possible moment.
7:16: USC finally gets a little pressure from a corner blitz. Incomplete pass. 3rd and 20.
7:17: The Stanford receiver stepped out of bounds on his own power before coming back in bounds. Incomplete pass, proper ruling.
7:18: FIRST DOWN, STANFORD! The Cardinal convert a 4th and 20, as SC still can't get to Pritchard.
7:20: They're reviewing the play to determine the spot. The ball should be on the nine and a half yard line. I don't know if that should produce a first down or not...
7:22: The play (in other words, the spot) stands. First down. I can accept the spot.
7:23: I love Jim Harbaugh's thought process. A run to the 5. Run at least some clock. Decide the game here. Don't give Booty a real shot if you score.
7:25: Incomplete, back of the end zone.
7:26: Incomplete, corner of the end zone. 4th and ballgame from the 5.
7:27: Timeout, Stanford. 54 ticks left. This needs to be a rollout with Pritchard, or perhaps the Statue of Liberty or some other Boise State special. Here we go...
7:28: Wait. Timeout, USC. No timeouts for Troy if Stanford scores.
7:29: TWELVE IN THE HUDDLE FOR STANFORD. Wow! Now from the 10. A run-pass option just went out the window.
7:30: HE CAUGHT IT! Nothing but a simple jump ball, and Stanford's Mark Bradford beat USC's Mozique McCurtis for the score, with 49 seconds left.
7:31: PAT good. Stanford by one. The biggest upset ever? Very possibly so if the Cardinal can hang on.
7:32: Harbaugh on the sideline: "Let's finish it! Let's finish it! Let's finish it!"
7:33: Personal foul face mask on Stanford to give SC a drive start at its own 41.
7:34: Sack! Remember, no timeouts for SC. Ball spiked with 27 seconds left.
7:35: Turner was wide open, but the pass clangs off his hands. 4th and 17.
7:36: No, it's not a dream. Lil' ol' Stanford 24, USC 23. Final. Words are my stock and trade, but they're not coming.
7:41: Tiger Stadium--in response to the announcement of USC's loss--has another Tommy Hodson "earthquake" moment, nearly 19 years to the day after the original event. What a sight (and what a sound!) for anyone lucky enough to have a seat in the house.
7:45: The earthquake moment quickly fades, as Tebow rocks LSU with an easy touchdown pass. 24-14, Gators. (Oh yeah, that's right--LSU scored a touchdown while I followed the amazing turn of events in Los Angeles.)
7:47: They'll call this "Black Saturday" in Los Angeles. UCLA is handing Notre Dame turnovers, points, and Charlie Weis' first win of 2007. The City of Angels doesn't mind the lack of an NFL team, but that's because the college ball has been pretty good. Today, though, might change things. A note about Karl Dorrell: given that the Bruins really wanted to avenge last year's devastating loss in South Bend, a loss to a horrible Notre Dame team is a particularly damning indictment of the UCLA program.
7:52: Florida and Jermaine Cunningham pressure Flynn again, and an LSU drive is halted. Sometimes, football isn't very complicated.
7:55: Kestahn Moore is powering through LSU's defense, but while the skill people get the accolades, it's Florida's offensive line that's going above and WAY beyond the call tonight.
7:57: Cincinnati, once down 17-7, scores a touchdown to take a 21-20 lead in New Jersey.
8:00 p.m., Pacific time: Florida fumbles and Rutgers gets intercepted.
8:01: Touchdown, Cincinnati, on a bomb. 28-20, Bearcats.
8:04: After a flurry of momentous events, a brief breather and some channel surfing reveal that A&M has taken a late 24-23 lead over Oklahoma State. Franchione might not leave the Ranchione just yet...
8:08: Oklahoma State roughs the Aggie punter with 1:46 left. (Insert your choice of Franchione or Mike Gundy reference here; plenty of material to work with.)
8:09: UCLA with another turnover. Oh, the carnage in L.A. tonight.
8:10: Get this: after Florida's increasingly confident and physical defense stopped LSU at the Gator 20, the Tigers--with Florida not rushing the field goal (LSU's kinda good at this fake field goal thing...)--commit a holding penalty. What's even more amazing is that Colt David missed the un-attacked kick. Gators still lead by ten.
8:13: For the second time in the past 20 minutes of real time, Florida bails LSU out of jail. A poorly designed route and the turn of Cornelius Ingram's head produce an interception inside the Gator 30.
8:16: Joe Haden makes a monster tackle to stuff a 3rd and 1 from the Florida 2. 4th and 3 from the 4.
8:17: Flynn, on a must-make play, calmly throws a strike for a vital touchdown. Game on. The hitting in this game has been sensational, with Florida dealing out most of the punishment. LSU is playing poorly but fighting quite admirably. The Gators have to be very irritated after giving the Tigers nine lives (and then some).
8:24: Brandon James was out of bounds at the 14. Why is Les Miles challenging? Talk about high risk, low reward.
8:26: Cincinnati pounds out a 3rd and 1 at midfield, leading (now) 28-23 with 7:30 left.
8:27: Just when Bearcat quarterback Ben Mauk looked like Tebow Lite, he fumbled at the Rutgers 37. The Scarlet Knights get saved.
8:28: How is there no flag against LSU on that 3rd and 4? Wow.
8:31: Cincy's defense forces a Rutgers punt with 4:52 left on the banks of the old Raritan.
8:32: Touchback on the Rutgers punt.
8:33: Offensive pass interference puts LSU in a hole.
8:34: 4th and 1. LSU going for it near midfield.
8:35: Wow. Jacob Hester with a late, late (did I say late?) surge to get the first down. The play was initially stuffed, but Hester got the first down through sheer will.
8:37: Lots of mistakes tonight, but the effort of both Florida and LSU has been extraordinary. More great hitting, chasing, reacting and gaming from all involved.
8:39: Notre Dame wins. It's official: Black Saturday in L.A.
8:41: Gary Danielson, after Joe Haden stops a 3rd and 1: "He's only a freshman."
8:42: Les Miles knows no fear. LSU gets a ballsy first down by inches. Danielson marvels at the quality of competition. I fully agree.
8:43. Incomplete. 2nd and goal for LSU at the 5.
8:44: Three yards. Third and goal at the two and a half yard line. A buck-fifteen left and counting. Urban Meyer with a timeout. What a ferocious football fistfight.
8:45: Oh, there's this modestly interesting game in New Jersey. Rutgers, down by five, has a first down at the Cincinnati 24 with 1:44 left.
8:46: Touchdown, LSU. Cincy picks off Rutgers in the red zone. Jacob Hester is the last player to get up after scoring for the Tigers. That lad spilled his guts tonight. He'll be the toast of Baton Rouge if the Tigers can hold on in the final 1:09.
8:50: Cincy gets a first down, and it's all over in Piscataway.
8:52: Tebow taking way too much time. If you don't throw beyond the sticks, you're basically wanting to fail in a two-minute drill.
8:54: Tebow scrambles for a first down at midfield.
8:55: Timeout, Florida. Either a Hail Mary or a Boise State play.
8:56: One chance left. LSU on the verge of being No. 1 with no comparable contenders.
8:59: The final play: batted down in the back of the end zone. The Gators are crushed, the Tigers exultant. The vivid emotional portraits tell you how badly these two teams hungered for ultimate victory. Many games will involve more artistry, but none have witnessed more effort than this 15-round heavyweight bout. Florida-LSU 2007 reminds us why college football is the best sport on the planet.
9:10 p.m., Pacific time: Time to write a cartload of Instant Analysis pieces. A postscript will follow...
12:23 a.m., Pacific time, Sunday morning: the last Instant Analysis piece gets filed. (Games assessed under the Instant Analysis banner: Florida-LSU, Stanford-USC, Oklahoma-Texas, Cincy-Rutgers, Ohio State-Purdue, Virginia Tech-Clemson, Nebraska-Missouri.)
5:02 p.m, Pacific time, Sunday afternoon: here's a postscript after this experiment with a running diary of a whole day of college football:
One diary on one day will not be enough to tell you all you need to know about the thought process of a sports journalist. However, it can (and should) provide important insights into the deeper mechanics of this job. One aspect of college football writing that should stand out for you, as readers of this column (and CFN in general), is that the columnist watches tons of games and countless snaps over the course of twelve to thirteen frenzied hours. Thousands of individual insights will be made, and hundreds of mental notes will be jotted down on paper or registered in the brain.
What does this mean? It means that a national college football columnist is way too busy on Saturday to make judgments that reflect a rooting interest or an entrenched bias. Any sports fan remains a fan, even when becoming a sportswriter. You don't write about sports if you don't love sports. With that said, though, the business of writing something honest, lucid and informative is too demanding for me or any of my colleagues to get caught up in petty politics or teenage passions. As people who must watch sports in a professional manner, sportswriters quickly learn to see games through the prism of how they'll write their story. The very nature of the sports journalism business--at least on a national level, divorced from local markets, local teams, and intimate communal rooting interests--makes it virtually impossible for a national columnist to nakedly display juvenile tendencies or excessive (read: institutional) biases. And if a national columnist does reveal these manifest flaws? He (she) will be out of a job, pronto.
When I'm wearing out my remote, and when my neck is getting sore from all the rotations my head is doing to follow three monitors as closely as possible, the plays are coming at me fast and furious. When I switch to another game, I have to immediately process the new scenario in the new game on the new channel I've just turned to. The job of national college football writing--for those of us who watch a bunch of screens and are not assigned to cover individual games--involves making judgment after judgment on play after play over the course of at least 12 hours on Saturdays. One play blurs into another, and when you accumulate a few years in this line of work, there will be many times when--as fun as this gig is--sportswriting can be a hard, long slog.
Love of the sport brings a sportswriter into the arena, but a love of journalism and the craft of sportswriting are what enable the journalist to stay in the fight over the long run. Having a rooting interest connects us to sports in our early years, but when you become an adult, the desire to produce good work--work that makes you sleep well at night, safe in the knowledge that you're doing something meaningful, and doing it well--becomes the driving force in your life. When I sit behind a keyboard or when I watch a stack of games, I want to write Instant Analysis pieces that are fair. I want to write reports that are worthy of the games I cover.
As you can tell from this week's Instant Analysis pieces, I save my best writing for the biggest and most memorable games; the blowouts receive clean, but very brief, treatment. For example, it would have been inappropriate for me to have written too much about a Nebraska-Missouri game that, due to the USC and LSU dramas, I didn't get to see. The fluctuations, twists and turns of a football Saturday take the national college football writer in different and unexpected directions. Following the flow of urgent action--what's significant, what's close, what's late--is the top demand for the national college football journalist.
When you realize how long this diary was (despite the brief and very clipped nature of almost all of the individual entries), it should dawn on you how much professionalism a national football writer must devote to the craft on a weekly basis. Just imagine doing a running diary every Saturday--wait a minute, we DO compile these diaries every Saturday! It's just that we leave a lot of material on the cutting room floor or stuck in the notebook. We don't publish every single thought, just the particularly salient ones, and we polish our insights from the time we go to bed early Sunday morning to the time we crank out our feature columns on Sunday night or Monday morning. Conducting a full (or at least substantial) survey of the larger college football landscape is an arduous enough task for one weekend; when you do it from Labor Day weekend through early December, and then on New Year's Day, there's just too much responsibility involved for a writer to indulge his (her) childhood memories, school allegiances, or regionally-influenced perspectives. And even if we did, well, we wouldn't have any credibility in this business to begin with.
As this week's column comes to a close, consider this: other than God, the last person this sportswriter wants to disappoint is Grantland Rice, not the Arizona State Sun Devil fans I grew up with in Phoenix, or the Washington Husky fans who live near me in Seattle. Paradoxically, though, that's precisely why those fans--and all college football fans throughout America--should be able to trust me, my CFN colleagues, and my fellow college football writers.
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</TD><TD noWrap width=3></TD><TD vAlign=top><TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=4 width="60%" bgColor=#f5f5f5 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD vAlign=center noWrap>By Matt Zemek
CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Oct 7, 2007
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Where the Weekly Affirmation left off, the Monday Morning Quarterback picks up.
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ByMatthew Zemek
Mr. Zemek's e-mail: mzemek@hotmail.com
For part one of this diary, go to the Weekly Affirmation. This is a blow-by-blow account of Saturday's college football dramas, as they happened in real time. The fun started at 9:12 in the morning, but only now are the marquee matchups flooding the networks and filling the time slots. Safe to say, the nighttime was the right time for sporting spectacles and scenarios that won't soon be forgotten.
5:15 p.m., Pacific (Seattle) time, Colorado with no letdown against Baylor, up 17-0. Good for Dan Hawkins and his kids.
5:19 p.m.: Rutgers QB Mike Teel bobbles the ball three times and Cincinnati recovers. A promising drive is abruptly halted for the Scarlet Knights.
5:28: That looked like an Ohio State touchdown, but the play deserved a review.
5:29: Cincinnati flying on defense against Rutgers.
5:30: Tim Tebow with an 11-yard strike. Florida needs to establish a vertical passing game against LSU.
5:32: Cincinnati misses a field goal, so both teams have provided early gifts in Piscataway.
5:33: Florida and Kestahn Moore running hard and powerfully. Urban Meyer and Dan Mullen flung the pigskin first, and then came back with the ground game. Good play sequencing from the Gator braintrust.
5:35: The stats say Tebow gained three yards. The eyes say Tebow made one helluva play to avoid a crippling sack.
5:36: That's a play Mullen should stay away from. "Tebow up the middle" is a crutch, and it also subjects the quarterback to a pounding.
5:37: Ohio State driving. Purdue has rarely if ever won this kind of game (namely, a big one), and this could get ugly very soon.
5:38: Field goal, Florida. 3-0. Your serve, Matt Flynn.
5:40: Touchdown, Ohio State.
5:41: Touchdown, Rutgers, on a pick-six. After the loss to Maryland, an early lead is huge for Greg Schiano's boys. It doesn't matter one whit that the defense produced the points.
5:43: Matt Flynn flinches. He throws a ball behind an open receiver on a quick slant, and the "deflection that causes interception" (much like "the abomination that causes desolation") gives Florida an early opportunity.
5:47: It's early in the game, but LSU's Alley Highsmith has already knocked down two Tebow passes.
5:48: LSU's defense gets a big three-and-out.
5:49: Cincy answers with a touchdown to tie Rutgers. Brian Kelly has clearly instilled some mental toughness into his team.
5:51: LSU and offensive coordinator Gary Crowton flashing some creativity via Ryan Perrilloux. A fake end-around pitch, followed by an eight-yard run and a delayed option pitch. A sign of things to come. The Tigers will run some variations of that play before the night is over.
5:54: LSU tries a power run. No dice against the Gators' front seven.
5:56: An old demon gets LSU: a bad drop by an open receiver who was about to rip off a big gain. It's amazing how certain flaws remain in the same programs over many years.
5:57: This is how bad Notre Dame's offense is: the Irish, after a turnover caused by their defense, started a drive at the UCLA 2. They ended the drive on the 9. It's 3-3 in Pasadena.
5:59: There's a wasted trick play. As the astute Gary Danielson ("astute Gary Danielson" is a redundant phrase) pointed out, the play should have involved a bubble screen or flat pass behind the wall of linemen set wide.
6:04 p.m., Pacific time: Field goals for Rutgers (up 10-7) and Ohio State (up 17-0).
6:05: Wow! USC up just 9-7 over Stanford in the third. THIS is stunning. That the Stanford touchdown came on a pick-six is really shocking. This is a BAD (not mediocre; BAD) USC passing game right now, on October 6, 2007.
6:07: Fred Davis gets a first down for USC with a 3rd and 5 reception. He then fumbles, and the Cardinal recover. It's getting tense in the Coliseum.
6:09: Lost in the implosion of SC's passing game is the fact that Pete Carroll's defense is throwing a shutout and playing flawlessly.
6:10: Tebow to Harvin. A staple play gets Florida to the LSU 2.
6:11: I beat you by two seconds, Verne Lundquist (okay, maybe 1.4 seconds...). Yes, that wasn't quite the jump pass from last year, but it was still impressive and effective. 10-0, Gators. If I'm Les Miles, I need to keep Ryan Perrilloux on the field for a few snaps.
6:17: Booty gets picked again, but Stanford doesn't get points (or even a drive start in USC territory). USC's two-point lead is unsettling in an obvious sense, but it still feels weirdly safe.
6:19: Interception, USC. LSU converts 3rd and 2 to get to the Florida 39. Flynn completes another pass to the Gator 27.
6:22: LSU playing pitch and catch with relative ease.
6:23: On 3rd and 2 from his own 37, Booty uses play action to hit Fred Davis on a downfield pass, and the tight end shrugs off an undersized Stanford defender to take it the distance. 16-7, USC.
6:24: Flynn converts a big 3rd and 8 on a perfectly executed wide receiver screen.
6:25: Florida's Jermaine Cunningham somehow disrupts Perrilloux's 3rd and goal pass. The Tigers will go for it from the 1.
6:28: USC has outgained Stanford, 379-73. And the Trojans lead by only nine?
6:30: Perrilloux walks in for the touchdown. Good play selection by Gary Crowton.
6:31: Just when Stanford seemed likely to go away, the Cardinal hit a bomb to the USC 2.
6:36: Touchdown, Stanford. Touchdown, Missouri (7-0 over Nebraska early on). Tebow leads the Gators downfield again.
6:37: Oklahoma State 17, Texas A&M 0, early in the third quarter. Bye-bye, Fran.
6:41: Tebow made a huge glove save there. Almost a 16-yard loss if that bad snap isn't caught. Almost. Instead, first and goal for Florida.
6:43: USC converts a 3rd and 1 just past midfield in a 16-14 game.
6:44: Touchdown, USC. Booty to Ronald Johnson for 45 yards. Trojans up by nine again, 23-14.
6:46: On 3rd and goal from the 9 (not the 3, but the 9), Tebow positively floats into the end zone. Lundquist started saying "touchdown" when No. 15 crossed the 5. Know what's really scary? I couldn't fault Verne for being premature.
6:52: Florida's soft coverage enables LSU to move the ball easily in a two-minute (offense) framework. The combo of an insufficient pass rush and a suspect secondary is Florida's biggest pair of weak spots. (Tebow will mask most, if not all, offensive shortcomings.)
6:54: Stanford kicks a field goal, but USC jumps offside. First down, Cardinal. USC jumps offside again. SC is injured, but there's precious little excuse for the kinds of mistakes the Trojans are making right now.
6:56: After Florida gets a little pressure and cranks up the defensive intensity, Colt David biffs a field goal, enabling the Gators to head to the locker room with a 17-7 lead.
6:59: USC holds. Stanford still gets the field goal after all, but two minutes fall off the clock.
7:05: Patrick Turner gets four yards for USC on a huge 3rd and 3. Four and a half minutes left in L.A.
7:06: Stanford gets a sack to force a 2nd and 19.
7:07: A screen to Chauncey Washington is smothered. 3rd and 19.
7:08: INTERCEPTION, STANFORD! Ball on the USC 45 with 2:50 left. Buckle up.
7:09: Jim Harbaugh goes for the whole enchilada without hesitation. SC drops a pick in the end zone.
7:10: Pass interference on USC. Good call. Ball on the Trojan 30.
7:11: What should have been an eight-yard loss on a busted halfback option pass becomes a four-yard gain. USC playing nervous football and basically feeling the heat. An injury on the field creates a break in the action.
7:13: Stanford quarterback Tavita Pritchard scrambles for a first down to the USC 19.
7:14: Incomplete pass--broken up on the left sideline.
7:15: Holding, Stanford, at the worst possible moment.
7:16: USC finally gets a little pressure from a corner blitz. Incomplete pass. 3rd and 20.
7:17: The Stanford receiver stepped out of bounds on his own power before coming back in bounds. Incomplete pass, proper ruling.
7:18: FIRST DOWN, STANFORD! The Cardinal convert a 4th and 20, as SC still can't get to Pritchard.
7:20: They're reviewing the play to determine the spot. The ball should be on the nine and a half yard line. I don't know if that should produce a first down or not...
7:22: The play (in other words, the spot) stands. First down. I can accept the spot.
7:23: I love Jim Harbaugh's thought process. A run to the 5. Run at least some clock. Decide the game here. Don't give Booty a real shot if you score.
7:25: Incomplete, back of the end zone.
7:26: Incomplete, corner of the end zone. 4th and ballgame from the 5.
7:27: Timeout, Stanford. 54 ticks left. This needs to be a rollout with Pritchard, or perhaps the Statue of Liberty or some other Boise State special. Here we go...
7:28: Wait. Timeout, USC. No timeouts for Troy if Stanford scores.
7:29: TWELVE IN THE HUDDLE FOR STANFORD. Wow! Now from the 10. A run-pass option just went out the window.
7:30: HE CAUGHT IT! Nothing but a simple jump ball, and Stanford's Mark Bradford beat USC's Mozique McCurtis for the score, with 49 seconds left.
7:31: PAT good. Stanford by one. The biggest upset ever? Very possibly so if the Cardinal can hang on.
7:32: Harbaugh on the sideline: "Let's finish it! Let's finish it! Let's finish it!"
7:33: Personal foul face mask on Stanford to give SC a drive start at its own 41.
7:34: Sack! Remember, no timeouts for SC. Ball spiked with 27 seconds left.
7:35: Turner was wide open, but the pass clangs off his hands. 4th and 17.
7:36: No, it's not a dream. Lil' ol' Stanford 24, USC 23. Final. Words are my stock and trade, but they're not coming.
7:41: Tiger Stadium--in response to the announcement of USC's loss--has another Tommy Hodson "earthquake" moment, nearly 19 years to the day after the original event. What a sight (and what a sound!) for anyone lucky enough to have a seat in the house.
7:45: The earthquake moment quickly fades, as Tebow rocks LSU with an easy touchdown pass. 24-14, Gators. (Oh yeah, that's right--LSU scored a touchdown while I followed the amazing turn of events in Los Angeles.)
7:47: They'll call this "Black Saturday" in Los Angeles. UCLA is handing Notre Dame turnovers, points, and Charlie Weis' first win of 2007. The City of Angels doesn't mind the lack of an NFL team, but that's because the college ball has been pretty good. Today, though, might change things. A note about Karl Dorrell: given that the Bruins really wanted to avenge last year's devastating loss in South Bend, a loss to a horrible Notre Dame team is a particularly damning indictment of the UCLA program.
7:52: Florida and Jermaine Cunningham pressure Flynn again, and an LSU drive is halted. Sometimes, football isn't very complicated.
7:55: Kestahn Moore is powering through LSU's defense, but while the skill people get the accolades, it's Florida's offensive line that's going above and WAY beyond the call tonight.
7:57: Cincinnati, once down 17-7, scores a touchdown to take a 21-20 lead in New Jersey.
8:00 p.m., Pacific time: Florida fumbles and Rutgers gets intercepted.
8:01: Touchdown, Cincinnati, on a bomb. 28-20, Bearcats.
8:04: After a flurry of momentous events, a brief breather and some channel surfing reveal that A&M has taken a late 24-23 lead over Oklahoma State. Franchione might not leave the Ranchione just yet...
8:08: Oklahoma State roughs the Aggie punter with 1:46 left. (Insert your choice of Franchione or Mike Gundy reference here; plenty of material to work with.)
8:09: UCLA with another turnover. Oh, the carnage in L.A. tonight.
8:10: Get this: after Florida's increasingly confident and physical defense stopped LSU at the Gator 20, the Tigers--with Florida not rushing the field goal (LSU's kinda good at this fake field goal thing...)--commit a holding penalty. What's even more amazing is that Colt David missed the un-attacked kick. Gators still lead by ten.
8:13: For the second time in the past 20 minutes of real time, Florida bails LSU out of jail. A poorly designed route and the turn of Cornelius Ingram's head produce an interception inside the Gator 30.
8:16: Joe Haden makes a monster tackle to stuff a 3rd and 1 from the Florida 2. 4th and 3 from the 4.
8:17: Flynn, on a must-make play, calmly throws a strike for a vital touchdown. Game on. The hitting in this game has been sensational, with Florida dealing out most of the punishment. LSU is playing poorly but fighting quite admirably. The Gators have to be very irritated after giving the Tigers nine lives (and then some).
8:24: Brandon James was out of bounds at the 14. Why is Les Miles challenging? Talk about high risk, low reward.
8:26: Cincinnati pounds out a 3rd and 1 at midfield, leading (now) 28-23 with 7:30 left.
8:27: Just when Bearcat quarterback Ben Mauk looked like Tebow Lite, he fumbled at the Rutgers 37. The Scarlet Knights get saved.
8:28: How is there no flag against LSU on that 3rd and 4? Wow.
8:31: Cincy's defense forces a Rutgers punt with 4:52 left on the banks of the old Raritan.
8:32: Touchback on the Rutgers punt.
8:33: Offensive pass interference puts LSU in a hole.
8:34: 4th and 1. LSU going for it near midfield.
8:35: Wow. Jacob Hester with a late, late (did I say late?) surge to get the first down. The play was initially stuffed, but Hester got the first down through sheer will.
8:37: Lots of mistakes tonight, but the effort of both Florida and LSU has been extraordinary. More great hitting, chasing, reacting and gaming from all involved.
8:39: Notre Dame wins. It's official: Black Saturday in L.A.
8:41: Gary Danielson, after Joe Haden stops a 3rd and 1: "He's only a freshman."
8:42: Les Miles knows no fear. LSU gets a ballsy first down by inches. Danielson marvels at the quality of competition. I fully agree.
8:43. Incomplete. 2nd and goal for LSU at the 5.
8:44: Three yards. Third and goal at the two and a half yard line. A buck-fifteen left and counting. Urban Meyer with a timeout. What a ferocious football fistfight.
8:45: Oh, there's this modestly interesting game in New Jersey. Rutgers, down by five, has a first down at the Cincinnati 24 with 1:44 left.
8:46: Touchdown, LSU. Cincy picks off Rutgers in the red zone. Jacob Hester is the last player to get up after scoring for the Tigers. That lad spilled his guts tonight. He'll be the toast of Baton Rouge if the Tigers can hold on in the final 1:09.
8:50: Cincy gets a first down, and it's all over in Piscataway.
8:52: Tebow taking way too much time. If you don't throw beyond the sticks, you're basically wanting to fail in a two-minute drill.
8:54: Tebow scrambles for a first down at midfield.
8:55: Timeout, Florida. Either a Hail Mary or a Boise State play.
8:56: One chance left. LSU on the verge of being No. 1 with no comparable contenders.
8:59: The final play: batted down in the back of the end zone. The Gators are crushed, the Tigers exultant. The vivid emotional portraits tell you how badly these two teams hungered for ultimate victory. Many games will involve more artistry, but none have witnessed more effort than this 15-round heavyweight bout. Florida-LSU 2007 reminds us why college football is the best sport on the planet.
9:10 p.m., Pacific time: Time to write a cartload of Instant Analysis pieces. A postscript will follow...
12:23 a.m., Pacific time, Sunday morning: the last Instant Analysis piece gets filed. (Games assessed under the Instant Analysis banner: Florida-LSU, Stanford-USC, Oklahoma-Texas, Cincy-Rutgers, Ohio State-Purdue, Virginia Tech-Clemson, Nebraska-Missouri.)
5:02 p.m, Pacific time, Sunday afternoon: here's a postscript after this experiment with a running diary of a whole day of college football:
One diary on one day will not be enough to tell you all you need to know about the thought process of a sports journalist. However, it can (and should) provide important insights into the deeper mechanics of this job. One aspect of college football writing that should stand out for you, as readers of this column (and CFN in general), is that the columnist watches tons of games and countless snaps over the course of twelve to thirteen frenzied hours. Thousands of individual insights will be made, and hundreds of mental notes will be jotted down on paper or registered in the brain.
What does this mean? It means that a national college football columnist is way too busy on Saturday to make judgments that reflect a rooting interest or an entrenched bias. Any sports fan remains a fan, even when becoming a sportswriter. You don't write about sports if you don't love sports. With that said, though, the business of writing something honest, lucid and informative is too demanding for me or any of my colleagues to get caught up in petty politics or teenage passions. As people who must watch sports in a professional manner, sportswriters quickly learn to see games through the prism of how they'll write their story. The very nature of the sports journalism business--at least on a national level, divorced from local markets, local teams, and intimate communal rooting interests--makes it virtually impossible for a national columnist to nakedly display juvenile tendencies or excessive (read: institutional) biases. And if a national columnist does reveal these manifest flaws? He (she) will be out of a job, pronto.
When I'm wearing out my remote, and when my neck is getting sore from all the rotations my head is doing to follow three monitors as closely as possible, the plays are coming at me fast and furious. When I switch to another game, I have to immediately process the new scenario in the new game on the new channel I've just turned to. The job of national college football writing--for those of us who watch a bunch of screens and are not assigned to cover individual games--involves making judgment after judgment on play after play over the course of at least 12 hours on Saturdays. One play blurs into another, and when you accumulate a few years in this line of work, there will be many times when--as fun as this gig is--sportswriting can be a hard, long slog.
Love of the sport brings a sportswriter into the arena, but a love of journalism and the craft of sportswriting are what enable the journalist to stay in the fight over the long run. Having a rooting interest connects us to sports in our early years, but when you become an adult, the desire to produce good work--work that makes you sleep well at night, safe in the knowledge that you're doing something meaningful, and doing it well--becomes the driving force in your life. When I sit behind a keyboard or when I watch a stack of games, I want to write Instant Analysis pieces that are fair. I want to write reports that are worthy of the games I cover.
As you can tell from this week's Instant Analysis pieces, I save my best writing for the biggest and most memorable games; the blowouts receive clean, but very brief, treatment. For example, it would have been inappropriate for me to have written too much about a Nebraska-Missouri game that, due to the USC and LSU dramas, I didn't get to see. The fluctuations, twists and turns of a football Saturday take the national college football writer in different and unexpected directions. Following the flow of urgent action--what's significant, what's close, what's late--is the top demand for the national college football journalist.
When you realize how long this diary was (despite the brief and very clipped nature of almost all of the individual entries), it should dawn on you how much professionalism a national football writer must devote to the craft on a weekly basis. Just imagine doing a running diary every Saturday--wait a minute, we DO compile these diaries every Saturday! It's just that we leave a lot of material on the cutting room floor or stuck in the notebook. We don't publish every single thought, just the particularly salient ones, and we polish our insights from the time we go to bed early Sunday morning to the time we crank out our feature columns on Sunday night or Monday morning. Conducting a full (or at least substantial) survey of the larger college football landscape is an arduous enough task for one weekend; when you do it from Labor Day weekend through early December, and then on New Year's Day, there's just too much responsibility involved for a writer to indulge his (her) childhood memories, school allegiances, or regionally-influenced perspectives. And even if we did, well, we wouldn't have any credibility in this business to begin with.
As this week's column comes to a close, consider this: other than God, the last person this sportswriter wants to disappoint is Grantland Rice, not the Arizona State Sun Devil fans I grew up with in Phoenix, or the Washington Husky fans who live near me in Seattle. Paradoxically, though, that's precisely why those fans--and all college football fans throughout America--should be able to trust me, my CFN colleagues, and my fellow college football writers.
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