2018 Week 9
October 30, 2018
This is my favorite week of the year. The leaves have changed colors, the air is crisp, there's a lot of excitement as the stakes get greater. And, most importantly of all, the baseball season is FINALLY over. It used to bug me greatly when baseball got done around October 10th, but now we're lucky if it's done by Halloween.
Speaking of that spookiest of holidays, we do celebrate it up here even though management isn't very keen on all that sacrilegious stuff. This year Coach McKay is going to put on an all crimson outfit complete with horns and be Nick Satan. Coach Bryant will just dress as himself because that's how Coach Bryant rolls. I also won't have to put on any costume as I'll just show up and tell people I'm Jabba the Hut.
We had some great action over the past weekend and we are also finally into MACtion season. I've noted before that those games feature a lot of empty seats, which I guess means that Stanford is now an honorary MAC member. I'm not saying their fan base didn't turn out for their loss to the Fighting Pirates of Wazoo, but I've seen bigger crowds at Sacramento Kings games.
The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party resulted in Georgia pulling away from Florida. It was a rough weekend for legendary Florida powerhouses. Miami lost to Boston College 27-14. And Florida State was destroyed by Clemson 59-10. I haven't seen a semenhole get blown out like that since the days of Fatty Arbuckle.
In the Big Ten we had some exciting games. Iowa and Penn State played yet another of their multiple safety games, with the home team putting up 15 safeties to 12 to win 30-24. It was a big week for backup quarterbacks in the league, Wisconsin had to bench Alex Hornybrook in their loss to Northwestern. The Michigan State Fighting Chippewas pulled off a tight win over a rising Purdue team, winning 23-13. Second string MSU quarterback Rocky Lombardi had a nice debut. We don't see Coach Vince much because he's so focused on the pro game, but he was walking by and I asked how he felt about his grandson's big game. He said "Beeno, that blond surfer boy is no grandson of mine, my progeny all have crewcuts!"
In a non-conference Big Ten game the Nebraska Cornholio outscored my daughter Beth Cook. She only managed to score a mere 9 times with the Nebraska boys. She's slowing down in her old age.
A lot of ranked teams were knocked off. Texas struggled up at Stillwater, losing to the Oklahoma State Fighting Mullets 38-35. Washington was stunned by the Cal Fighting Hippies, 12-10. Mississippi State had a decisive win over Texas A&M. Even some unranked teams had surprising struggles. In a battle of satellite campuses, the University of California at Los Angeles lost to the University of Texas at Houston, a 41-10 win for U.T.A.H.
Another team that's struggling is the St Louisville Cardinals, as Wake Forest batted around a few times in their 56-35 victory. It's been a tough year for coach Petino who may want to switch back from teaching baseball players how to play football and focus on teaching basketball players how to avoid getting charged.
There were some real odd endings as well. Kentucky benefited from a questionable pass interference call to win at Missouri, 15-14. Colorado built up a huge 31-3 lead over struggling Oregon State, only to lose 41-34 in overtime to the Ducks. And Cincinnati pulled out an overtime win against SMU on a pick six, 26-20. Now I'm still a bit confused about these overtime rules. SMU scored on defense on the first possession of OT but they declared the game over and didn't give the Bengals' defense a chance to score against SMU's offense.
In any event it was quite a week. Next week we have the big showdowns in Baton Rouge, Ann Arbor, Austin, Chicago, and Akron. Should be great!