2016 Week 1
September 7, 2016
I've been chomping at the bit for months, just waiting for the college football season to start. I mean that literally. My good friend Sergeant Bob Neyland put a bridle with a bit on me because I was keeping everyone awake, impatiently waddling around up here in the heavenly reaches.
Speaking of heavenly reaches, I finally met the lovely Miss Mae West and she showed me her favorite instrument, the Rusty Trombone. I'll never feel the same way about "The Music Man" again.
So did we have some outstanding action last weekend or what? I saw that my good friends at ESPN referred to it as the "greatest opening weekend ever", though I think the producers who pulled in $10 million in 1972 dollars the first three days of "Deep Throat" would disagree.
They've started this whole pre-season NIT type setup, with ranked teams playing each other, but there was an odd number of such teams so I'm a bit unsure what they were up to. And the winners aren't playing each other this coming week. I asked my good friend Jim Valvano how these pre-season basketball tournaments work. Thirty minutes later he was still talking about how "High Point" was a university and not his backup ganja-loving small guard and I fell asleep.
There were some fine inter-conference matchups. The University of Houston made a great splash by knocking off Oklahoma, 33-23. Houston may finally get that coveted invite to join the Big Eight. Speaking of SWC teams, TCU had a wild win over San Diego State, 59-41.
Stanford pulled away from Kansas City State, 26-13. The Michigan State Fighting Chippewas, behind 6th year quarterback O'Connor Cook, upset the mighty Furmanamruf Palindromes 28-13.
Yukon mushed their way to the East Coast and had a narrow win over Maine, 24-21. Wake Forest had a scintillating 7-3 triumph over the Tulane Green Wave. The Richmond Spyders upended their archrivals in Charlotte, beating UVA 37-20. It was a bitter defeat for the Hokies.
There were some other upstart smaller schools that pulled off shockers. Northern Illinois beat the Iowa State Cyclops 27-20. But the real shocker was Texas State, which won a wild one over the mighty Buckeyes, 56-54 in overtime.
The big story of the day was the struggles of the highly-regarded Southeastern Conference. The SEC had some premiere matchups and a number of their teams struggled.
#1 rated Alabama wasn't one of them. They really stuck it to Southern Cal, winning 52-13. I haven't seen a bunch of Trojans get burst like that since my good friend Fatty Arbuckle's "Teeny Bopper Fest 1923".
Given Bama's dominance, USC probably shouldn't have gone with the split squad approach, but their backups did knock off the SEC's Vanderbilt, 13-10.
Elsewhere in the SEC there were some unimpressive wins by Tennessee over Appalachian State and Florida over famed Catholic school U-Mass.
Auburn and LSU were bounced by big-time opponents Clemson and Wisconsin respectively. I enjoyed watching the Wisconsin linemen do the Green Bay Limbaugh Leap, though I'm guessing folks there didn't enjoy the 4.3 Richter scale earthquake that resulted.
R Kansas had a nice comeback win over the fighting Frenchmen of La Tech. But one of the powers of recent years, Mississippi State, lost to an apparent all-star team, U.S.A., 21-20.
Things did close on a happy note for the SEC, as SEC South powerhouse Florida State had a great second half in their win over Ole Southern Miss, 45-34.
One of the things I noticed this week was an increase in the number of teams playing two quarterbacks. Auburn ran three quarterbacks out there at various times. And Notre Dame and Texas each used a pair of QBs in their thrilling Sunday night battle, won by the Aggies 50-47 in double overtime. Texas coach John Mackovic Brown looked very relaxed after a fine summer off and had a great looking tan.
Now I'm still a bit confused about these overtime rules. Because baseball bores me to tears, I watched a lot of soccer over the summer. So I've gotten used to these shootouts where each team designates five players and the teams take turns, through 5 rounds, trying to score penalty kick goals.
Apparently they now do something similar in college football, because Texas had to use a different quarterback in the second overtime. I wasn't sure what Notre Dame did, but they were alternating all game so Coach B Kelly may have gotten away with pulling a fast one. I'm just glad the game didn't go 5 overtimes, otherwise we may have wound up with some placekicker lining up under center.
So, a great first week and let's get ready for next week, with great matchups like Lamar at Houston, the Men of Troy - bouncing back from the Bama loss - going to Clemson, and my daughter Beth Cook opening her season at North Texas. Be sure to get your shots, Denton boys.