2024 Week 1
September 4, 2024
It's great to be back with another season of college football.
Some of you have asked how we pass the time during the long lull before college football starts up again.
Well, there are various activities that a few of us like. I even took a cooking class from my good friend Julia Child. Julia is a very pleasant lady and she worked very patiently to teach us the ins and outs of fine French cuisine. She started us slow with some crepes. I came up with one that featured flank steak and mushrooms and it was very popular with the guys.
In the next class she taught us how to make French onion soup. That didn't seem to go as well, my classmates thought mine was too beefy. So I said I'd step outside and add another ingredient and ask them to try it again. My new recipe was a hit, my fellow classmates felt my revised soup had a perfect tangy taste. Julia asked me what my new ingredient was. I said "wild turkey". She said "this doesn't taste like poultry". I said "no, not the bird. I added a pint of Wild Turkey to the soup". Soon after that most of the guys were pretty tipsy and class was dismissed.
I was kicked out of the class the next week after I prepared escargot and beans. I hate snails so loaded up on the beans and, well, they don't call me Beeno for nothing. The classroom was shut down for a couple weeks to fumigate and I was asked not to return.
By this point I was beginning to develop a taste for French culture. I even thought I might start rooting for La Tech. Then I saw that the Olympics were going to be held in Paris, so I tuned that in. It was very exciting, especially a sport I'd never seen before called Handball. Basically these people would run up and down the court like it was basketball. But, unlike basketball, when there was minor contact nobody flopped over like they'd been shot. Even better the players were grabbing and tugging on jerseys and even sneaking in a few kicks to the groinal area. It was like watching the '37 Bears play, but the players had funnier names than Bronko Nagurski.
After that I took a nice healthy ethanol aided two week nap and woke up rarin' to go.
As has been the case in recent years, there was a week 0 to go along with week 1. So there are a number of teams that have already played two games. But I want to talk about the one unfortunate team that's already 0-3.
I'm not sure about the wisdom of some of these tough schedules. Florida State and Georgia Tech flew to Ireland for some reason to play football and the Noles got rocked by Georgia Tech's running attack and lost 24-21. Then FSU came back to the USA and played a game in Anne Arbor and did well but gave up a couple late TDs and lost (I will note that Michigan Coach Jack Harbaugh looked quite youthful thanks to his nice tan). A mere two days later they returned to Tallahassee and lost yet again to Boston University. I think cramming 3 games into a 10 day span was a huge error. I'd ask Coach Bowden for his thoughts but he left our realm once regular Georgia put up 66 on his old school at the Orange Bowel. Nobody's seen Bobby since.
Most of the other games were not very good. We're seeing a disturbing trend of scheduling very easy foes in week 1 that exceeds the third week in November SEC cupcake fest. Sometimes a name school will play a smaller school team from its own state just to give that school some exposure and a big paycheck. For instance, Tennessee bombed UT Chattanooge 69-0. Purdue had no trouble with Indiana State. Auburn beat something called Alabama A&M 73-3. Illinois shut out Eastern Illinois. And R Kansas ran up a 70-0 win over R Kansas Pine Bluff.
It wasn't always in-state cupcakes though. Southern Utah traveled to the Loan Star State and lost 49-0 to the University of Texas at Houston. That's quite a long flight for Southern Utah to go play a tough U.T.A.H. program.
There was a lot of other Houston action. UNLV came in and had an easy win over regular Houston. And the Sam Houston Institute of Technology defeated Rhode Island Continuing Education, 34-14. So I guess once again S.H.I.T. was all over R.I.C.E.
I looked at the scores and saw that my daughter Beth Cook was scored on 48 times by South Florida. You'd think she'd be slowing down by now.
There were other intra-state weak foe blowouts - Alabama beat Western Kentucky 63-0. Ole Southern Piss bombed Furman 76-0. Iowa set a school record for points in a month by putting up 40 against Illinois State. Some schools even scheduled teams I'd never heard of - Kansas beat a school called Lindenwood 48-3. And top ranked Georgia had little trouble, winning 34-3 over some weakling team whose named sounded like Phlegmson.
There were some far better games. The Fighting Irish made a trip to State College Station and broke a tie with 10 late points to beat Texas A&M 23-13. That was an impressive win for Notre Dame.
Coach Bryant was with me watching the game as he coached the Aggies prior to returning to Bama. Now we have a great TV setup here with huge screens. The level of detail did not work out well because in the second quarter Texas A&M quarterback Connor Weigman threw up in living color. Bear apparently is a bit squeamish so he started getting sick himself.
Coach Hayes, seeing a rare opportunity to get the best of Coach Bryant, came in and started taunting Bear, saying "greasy pork sandwich served in a filthy ash tray", which caused Bear to start retching himself. Woody just kept it up, he rewound the TV to reshow the Weigman puke segment over and over, then laughed thinking he'd stuck it to the Bear.
Next thing I knew, I heard Woody say "goddamnit, Bear, it was just a joke" and I noticed Woody was hanging from the ceiling fan from his underwear. That Coach Bryant sure can give a good wedgie.
Also on the Notre Dame front - their JV team ND State took Colorado to the wire, losing to Coach Prime Directive 31-26.
I was a bit disappointed that my Panthers' long-time rival Western Virginia decided to schedule a second Backdoor Brawl, this one against Penn State. I'm hopeful that the Mountain Men learned a rough lesson as the Penn State offense made them squeal like a lost New River canoeist.
Miami renewed acquaintances with the Florida Gators, going up to Gainesville and draining the swamp 41-17. Arizona took on a foreign team and beat New Mexico 61-39. But I have to say one of my favorite results was Vandy blowing a 17-point lead then coming back to beat Virginia Tech 34-27. It's a huge win for the Commodes.
Well, weeks 0 and 1 are in the books. I was hoping there'd be some better games next week but the pickings are a little slim. There is the visit by the Longhorns to Michigan, that might be good. Tennessee takes on North Carolina State in the Coach K's Jizz Classic in Charlotte. And Colorado's visit to Lincoln, where the Cornholio athletic staff reportedly will unveil a statute of late Nebraska legend Lawrence Phillips choking some pencil necked geek. Nope, haven't seen Lawrence around here, I don't think he made the cut.
Oh, one more thing - NFL scheduling getting out of control. A Friday game in Brazil and a season opener on college football Saturday with Pittsburgh playing at Cincinnati???