2019 Week 9
October 30, 2019
This is always my favorite week in the entire sports calendar. Baseball will finally end tonight! We can get on with our lives and talk about some actual exciting sports, heck, even curling and badminton are more fascinating than watching some pitcher take two minutes to deliver a curveball in the dirt.
Also, the end of baseball means ESPN finally gets off their duffs and starts providing us with MAC-tastic November. There's nothing like a 31-3 game being played in Muncie on a Tuesday night in front of 3,400 fans.
We had some very good matchups last weekend. One of the most exciting games was played on Friday night before a crowd of 30,000 in Boulder and a TV audience of maybe 30,000 across America. Southern Cal came back from a deficit to knock off the Buffaloes, 35-31.
In the Midwest the games weren't quite as exciting. Michigan had little trouble with Notre Dame in spite of a downpour, winning 45-14. The storm meant coach and wrapper B Kelly now knows what it's like to be on the receiving end of a yellowish shower.
In a huge Big Ten showdown Wisconsin actually hung with the Buckeyes for a half, then Ohio State stopped playing with its food and blew out the Badgers, 38-7.
One of the most dramatic games of the day took place in Manhattan. That would be KC suburb Manhattan Missouri as Kansas City State took on the 5th rated Sooners. KCSU got on a run and opened up a 25-point lead over OU, then the Sooners made a dramatic comeback and pulled within 7 with just under two minutes to go. Now I'm still not sure about these onside kick rules. Oklahoma bounced the ball then it took a weird hop and OU recovered it. The refs then said that Oklahoma had touched the ball before it had gone ten yards so it was KCSU football. But that makes no sense - Oklahoma touched the ball before it went ten yards when they kicked it and that happens on every kickoff.
The final game of the night was also pretty exciting - Washington State came back and took a late lead on Oregon, but Bobby Herbert's son Justin threw a couple long passes and Oregon kicked a field goal at the buzzer to win 37-35. Cougars just can't compete with young Beavers.
My Panthers lost a tough one to Miami, 16-12. Coach Nuz's field goal offense appears to be finally paying some dividends for Pitt as they came within two boots of winning.
Elsewhere in the ACC, North Carolina won its big rivalry game with Duke, 20-17. That's what I love about the Duke/UNC tilt, they're so into hoops that even their football games end up with basketball scores.
Texas Christian knocked off Texas, 37-27. I'm not sure about Coach Herman's team this year, but at least they didn't lose to Maryland. Speaking of which, the Twerps got clobbered by the Minnesota Golden Buffaloes, 52-10.
I'd like to congratulate Coach Miles on yet another win at Kansas. This time he pulled out yet another of his trick plays, what he called the "Leon", where Kansas deliberately kicked a nearly impossible field goal low, then chased a Texas Tech player around until he pitched it wildly, whereupon Kansas recovered and had a much shorter kick for the win. You may think that couldn't have been planned, but Coach Miles is known for field goal innovations like the blind pitch over the holder's head.
The biggest game of the day was played in Baton Rouge where Coach Ogre's Bayou Bengals stayed undefeated with a 3-point win over Auburn. I think everyone is looking forward to LSU's visit to Tuscaloosa to take on the Crimson Tide in two weeks.
In the meantime we'll just sit back and enjoy the World's Largest Cocktail Party in the FU Gator Bowel in Jacksonville as Georgia and Florida compete to see which SEC South team will get crushed by the LSU/Bama winner in the SEC title game.