2002 Week 13
November 19, 2002
There was lots of excitement last week in the world of college football.
Texas dropped from the ranks of the once-beaten with that dismal defensive effort against Texas Tech up in Lubbock.
You'd think that Mack Daddy Brown would have figured out how to stop a motion offense. Coach Brown did complain after the game, saying that the referees didn't call all those illegal picks set by the wide receivers. Suddenly there was a sharp sound, like a rifle shot, and Mack slithered away, whimpering. Reporters looked up and there, holding a whip and laughing, was the master of the pick and roll, Texas Tech's Coach Knight.
Texas Tech has another big battle up at Oklahoma this week. Tech's already broken the heart of star Texas QB Chris Simms, here's hoping they don't also hurt the sensitive feelings of Chris' uncle, OU legend Billy Simms.
The Alabama Crimson Tide rolled into town and smashed the living feces out of the LSU Tigers one week after the Tigers' miracle win at Kentucky. I guess ole Satan Nick made a mistake when he bowed to pressure from some of those babtists and took the pentagrams off the LSU helmets and the 50 yard line.
Speaking of miracles, Georgia pulled one out down at Auburn on a last-second TD pass.
I'm beginning to think that the there's a problem with prevent defenses in the Southeastern Conference.
My good friend Herb Street agreed with me. He said that after the Florida/Georgia game in Jacksonville he was at a bar at closing time and talked to an Georgia coed. Her drunken boyfriend tried to cut in, but slipped and fell flat on his face, and Herb said he scored. So Herb told me that there's a problem with SEC people not being able to stop quarterbacks from scoring on last-minute passes.
Sometimes I don't quite understand what Herb's talking about.
Iowa had their first undefeated Big 10 season since the McKinley administration with a blowout win up at Minnesota. Coach Fry has done a great job with the team this year. It was especially exciting to see the Hawkeye fans running around the Maul of America with those goalposts, breaking windows and doing some really strange farm animal things to that giant cartoon beagle Sloopy.
The biggest news in college football last week actually occurred a week ago, down in Huntington Virginia, after the Miami of Ohio vs. Marshall game.
As you probably have read, the Marshall fans came out onto the field after the Marshall win to celebrate, and one of the fans got too close to a Miami coach and got decked.
There was a lot of talk about how violence-prone individuals tanked up on drugs should be kept off the field, but then it was realized that would deplete most teams' rosters.
In the old days they really didn't have as strong of crowd control measures as today. Nowadays you have to climb over your seat (like I'm going to try to do that) then jump down four feet to get to the field.
But in the past schools would have the fans on the edge of the field actually marking the field. It's like those soccer moms today marking off the edge of the field while their little kids run around and wave their sticks and throw that little ball at each other. Jim Brown was a pretty good stick soccer player in his day.
The problem when football teams used to play on a field bordered by standing fans was that the players got tired of running into the sidelines and having some little old lady whack them with a purse, especially when that purse was filled with lead.
So that's why they built the stands, to keep those little old ladies with leaden purses away from the players and coaches. In fact, that famous incident with Coach Woody Hayes and that Clemson player was portrayed in a way that was pretty unfair to Woody. Coach Hayes had a sudden reaction because he thought he was about to get clubbed, and swung his fist to protect himself from the little old lady with the lead in her purse. Little did he know that he'd just punched a Clemson player.
The other great danger was from the goal posts, because players would run into them and get hurt. That's why they went from the two stick goal posts to the one stick goal posts. Of course Florida State still uses the two stick ones, that way their players don't run into the posts, but go wide right.
Running onto the field goes back well before football started. It actually first occurred in ancient Rome.
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was at a chariot race in 46 B.C., when he led a band of his drunken merrymen onto what was Ceasar's field. The result was as ugly as you might imagine, as it happened to be in the middle of a race and, well, the chariots had no brakes.
The tragedy of Cincinnatus and the chariots is what led to what is known as the "Cincinnatus tradition" of today's modern football, where other teams frequently run over the Bengals.