2019 Week 3
September 20, 2019
We had an odd mix last week of cupcake games and conference openers, but, as always, there was plenty to enjoy.
One of the less enjoyable games was LSU's crushing of Northwestern State, 65-14. I'm not sure what Coach Fitzgerald was thinking, sending out the Wildcat JV to take on the Bayou Bengals. And this trend of private colleges creating public option colleges for their JVs to practice with is very troubling. Notre Dame's done something similar with their D-1AA powerhouse public option college ND State. I think the NCAA better investigate.
Speaking of the Irish, they welcomed home their former coach to South Bend with a 66-10 hamblasting. Before the game Bob Davis was inducted into the new Irish Hall of Honor located in the crypt underneath the Basilica, along with former ND coaches Charles White and Ty Dillingham. They will join their former colleagues Terry Brennan and Jerald Faust living in a warm basement room with two meals of gruel per day.
In a great cross-sectional game, the fighting Pirates of Pullman won at Houston, 31-24. Even more impressive was Coach Miles' first big win for the Jayhawks, as they beat Boston College, 48-24.
Oklahoma traveled west and had no trouble with satellite campus Cal - Los Angeles, winning 48-14. The Texas Longhorns left the friendly confines of Austin and traveled east and had little trouble with Rhode Island Continuing Education. It was Texas' 14th straight win over R.I.C.E.
Florida pulled a rabbit out of the hat at Kentucky, holding off the Wildcats 29-21. Wake Forest had a similar dramatic finish against North Carolina. The Demonic Deacons are off to a 3-0 start and have a showdown with their toughest foe yet, Elon High School, this Saturday.
One of the more stunning games took place in Champaign, as the Eastern Michigan Fighting EMUs blew a late two-TD lead then beat Illinois in overtime. Now I'm still a bit confused about these overtime rules. EMU moved the ball into position then kicked a field goal and were declared the winner. I thought they got rid of this sudden death overtime and had these new rules where if one team kicked a field goal the other team got a shot to try multiple two point conversions to retake the lead. Maybe the rules are different for the Big Ten vs MAC Challenge.
Other Big Ten teams had very odd finishes too. The Iowa Huckeyes managed to beat cross-state rival Iowa State after two Iowa State guys collided while fielding a punt, setting up Iowa in prime field goal range to win the game.
Even more bizarre was the climax of the game between Arizona State and the Michigan State Fighting Chippewas. MSU lined up for a game-tying field goal at the end of regulation, then got penalized for having 12 men on the field. I thought the rules of the game were based on where the game was played and since this game was in Canada MSU should have been allowed to play 12 guys, put extra men in motion, and apply rouge.
The most disappointing result was the defeat my Pitt Panthers suffered at the hands of Penn State. The most controversial play was when Coach Narduzzi, with Pitt trailing by 7 points late, elected to kick a field goal while at the 1 yard line. I'm guessing Coach Duz didn't do very well on the math portion of the SAT.
There's been a lot of talk about new legislation in California that would permit college football players to benefit financially from their likeness, whether it's to do ads or to sell trading cards.
This is not a new thing in college football. In the Roaring '20's many famous players were paid to use their likeness. Notre Dame's famous Four Horsemen were featured in an ad for a plow company where they rode some draft horses that were pulling boats along the Erie Canal.
Red Grange was used to sell Pall Mall cigarettes until Coach Zuppke found out and made him switch to shilling for Coach's family's Prohibition era moonshine business.
The practice was banned by the NCAA in 1930. No, not because of the Great Depression. There was an unfortunate incident involving Minnesota star Bronko Nagurski. Bronko was a big man in all dimensions and one of the new fangled condominium companies wanted him to endorse their new super-sized product for "large" men. It was made using natural rubber from the Dutch East Indies.
Bronko proudly did the advertisements and got a large monthly supply that he used with his many female fans to avoid any little Bronkos running around. Unfortunately his second month's supply of condominiums were made from a rubber tree that had been infected with chimpanzee syphilis and it resulted in significant Bronko shrinkage as well as a disease outbreak that left most of Minneapolis infertile.
The NCAA stepped in to regulate and eventually decided to ban the use of player likenesses due to the infamous Land O Lakes Birth Dearth. And now you know the rest of the story.