2017 Week 3
September 21, 2017
We had some fine intersectional games last weekend. One of the most exciting occurred at the Coliseum, where Southern Cal beat Texas in triple overtime, 27-24. Now I'm still a bit confused about these overtime rules. Texas scored a TD then USC stupidly kicked a field goal so the game should have ended with Texas winning. But then they played a couple more overtimes and finally Southern Cal scored a TD and Texas kicked a field goal, so they gave the win to the Trojans.
USC's sister school UCLA went to Memphis and lost in an exciting battle, 48-45. I think Coach Mora doesn't have to worry about the playoffs.
Fellow Pac-8 member Stanford was upset by a mid-major themselves, traveling out to Brookings and losing to South Dakota State, 20-17.
In the MAC Northern Illinois stunned Nebraska 21-17, Ohio University beat Kansas 42-30, and Toledo outlasted Tulsa 54-51. It's going to be a rough year in the Big Eight.
The most stunning result occurred in Gainesville, as Florida hit a "Hail Mary" pass on the final play of the game to upset the Vols. Elsewhere in the SEC, Mississippi State pounded LSU and Coach Ogre, 37-7.
Penn State ran up the score on Georgia's JV team, Georgia State, 56-0. Coach Franklin even called a time out to freeze the kicker late in the game, apparently seeking payback for all of his Vanderbilt team's slaughter-like losses to UGA.
I also enjoyed the Big East vs. ACC challenge. Notre Dame won big at Frodo State. Clemson had little trouble with the St Louisville Cardinals. And Kentucky beat South Carolina.
There was a bit of a flub on ESPN during the Notre Dame game. The network showed an old locker room photo from the days when Frank Leahy coached Notre Dame. In the background you could see one of the players with his Irish visible. I haven't seen a hairy naked pole like that since Roman Polanski's sex tape.
As you probably know, football players get really sweaty during games, thus they get to the locker room as quickly as possible, remove their uniforms, and take a shower. Sometimes that leads to a guy in the background of a photo being naked as a jaybird.
The nudity angle had an interesting aspect that had a big impact on the sport over 100 years ago. In one of the first intersectional games, Brandeis went out to Orange County to play a game against one of the University of California's satellite campuses in Irvine. The stadium was a bit cramped and there was only one locker room, so the two teams dressed before the game in the same room. The game was a vicious struggle, with numerous scrums, and it ended in an unsatisfying 13-13 tie.
One of the issues was that Brandeis, being an innovative program, was one of the first teams to wear protective headgear. This gave them an advantage in the collisions in the trenches. Many of the Irvine players were more than a bit dazed.
As the teams returned to their shared locker room the teams began to strip down and take showers. Then one of the Irvine players shoved a Brandeis player and a brawl broke out. Unfortunately, being out of uniform and completely unclothed, it was a bit tough for the coaches to figure out which brawlers were from which team.
But at that point the coaches began to notice a key difference between the players on the two teams, as the predominantly Jewish Brandeis squad had all been circumscribed, while the Irvine team's players hadn't had any surgery "down there". Coaches from both schools thus were able to separate the two teams and they showered at opposite ends of the locker room and left the locker room without further incident.
The postgame brouhaha did lead to some interesting long-lasting changes. Brandeis' headgear, in honor of their infanthood surgery, became known as "helmets". And the Cal-Irvine football team, recognizing their "au naturel" state, earned the nickname "Anteaters".
And now you know the rest of the story.