2018 Week 14
December 4, 2018
Conference championship week was both exciting and confusing! Lots of games were played and a good time was had by all of us up here.
Before we get to the conference title games, there were several games that were makeup games due to the hurricane in September. North Carolina State had no trouble with nearby expansion state East Carolina, winning 58-3. South Carolina went intersectional and cut down Acorn, 28-3. And Virginia Tech got a win to make themselves bowel eligible, beating Thomas Jefferson State cross-state rival Marshall 41-20. Finally, Iowa State held on against a game Drake team 27-24 as apparently the storm hit the Huckeye State too. I think the last time a hurricane caused that much devastation in Iowa was when Michael Irvin missed a connection and ended up in the Des Moines airport with a straw and a kilo.
Coach Bill Walsh had been pretty upset that the Big Game between Stanford and Cal had been delayed due to wild fires. He told me "heck, Beeno, I can remember one time when we played Cal and there was an earthquake in the third quarter. We didn't stop the game, we just put a tarp over the 50-foot crevasse. Though I do remember Joe Kapp running a quarterback draw then disappearing through the tarp until he crawled back out two quarters later."
The Stanford Trees did pull out a tight win over their hippie archrivals and both teams will be boweling. They will also be playing some post-season football.
The regularly scheduled games were pretty exciting too. Central Florida continued their unbeaten ways, coming from way behind to blow out Memphis in the second half to win the Conference UFO title, 56-41. Appalachian State pulled away late to beat Louisiana 30-19 and take the Sun Belt title. And Alabama Birmingham continued its comeback from the ranks of dead programs to beat Middle Tennessee State 27-25 and win the ACC JV title.
One of the more interesting games was the WAC title game between Fresno State and Boys' State. The game went to overtime in the snow up on the blue turf in Idaho. Now I'm still a bit confused about these overtime rules. In this one they had a field goal shootout and Fresno made two field goals for 6 points while the home team only kicked 1. I do think it was a bit unfair as the Fresno goalie didn't slip on the ice unlike his counterpart so was able to get over the crossbar and tip away one of the kicks.
Clemson won the regular ACC title by pulling away from my Pitt Panthers, 42-10. It's been a great year for the Tigers while Pitt has continued to struggle ever since Johnny left.
There were several non-traditional non championship games. Washington took on the University of Texas at Houston in a cross-sectional game in California and won a scintillating battle of field goals and safeties, 10-3. Northern Illinois came back from a huge deficit to beat Buffalo, 30-29. It was a tough loss for the Bills.
There was a do over for the Red River Shootout as Oklahoma scored just about every way possible late in the game, a field goal, a safety, a touchdown, an extra point, and two rouges to beat Texas 39-27.
Ohio State took the Big Ten title game, pulling away late to beat Big Ten North champion Northwestern, 45-24.
In the biggest game of the weekend, Alabama, behind backup quarterback J Len Hertz, came from behind to beat the Georgia Bulldogs. After J Len did his Michael Vick impression on UGA Alabama went on to win the football game.
So now the BS playoffs have been lined up, with Oklahoma taking on Bama and Clemson going up against Notre Dame (who defeated Brigham Young - East in what I guess was the SECT league championship). And of course we now know all of the bowel matchups as well.
And that's great news - we are heading toward the absolute best time of the year, bowel season! Be sure to stay tuned for Beeno's Bowel Preview, as I dig around the bowels and see what nuggets I can pull out. Talk to you soon!
See Beeno's 2018 Bowel Preview