2024 Week 12
November 19, 2024
For a week with few marquee matchups, there was a lot of excitement in college football.
I'll start with the game that was most disappointing to me. My Panthers had a big game versus Clemson and looked really good throughout the game. After a nice drive that led to a tie-breaking 47 yard field goal for Pitt, Clemson got the ball with a minute and a half to go. Tiger quarterback Cade Klubnik ran a quarterback draw and made a couple sharp cuts and went 50 yards for the game winning touchdown. I'm not saying that the Panthers took bad angles; I'm just saying I've seen better lateral moves at Parkinson's Jazzercise.
Stanford had their own exciting finish against the St Louisville Cardinals thanks to a field goal with 1 second left. The batsmen had a 35-21 lead with 10 minutes left but Stanford scored twice to tie it. Then, between the 11 second and one second marks, St Louisville turned the ball over on downs, committed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, then jumped offsides. I haven't seen three such embarrassing failures within ten seconds since my prom night.
Missouri and South Carolina had an entertaining intersectional tilt. The two teams went back and forth in the closing minutes with the Tigers hitting a bomb on fourth and 5 to go up 30-27 with a minute left, but South Carolina quickly drove the field and won the game with a TD with 15 seconds left. Meanwhile Florida pulled away from LSU, 27-16, in a mild upset in The Swamp. The most notable moment was when Bengal coach B Kelly told one of his wide receivers that he was "uncoochable". I didn't know Coach Kelly was into football player cooch.
Kansas had an impressive win at Bring 'Em Young, scoring a late TD for a 17-13 win. What was most interesting was that the Jayhawks did a quick kick that bounced off a BEY helmet, which Kansas then recovered to set up the winning score. I'm not sure why someone would be dumb enough to let the ball bounce off the helmet like that, but I guess that's why those Provo LSD guys are called Morons.
Georgia bounced back from a disappointing loss in Oxford to score the final 17 points to beat Tennessee 31-17. Top ranked Oregon went into Madison and had a rough time as the Badgers played a very tenacious game. With the game tied at 13 a Wisconsin drive ended due to a chop block penalty being called and Oregon was able to drive to kick a game winning field goal. Replay indicated that the chop block call was incorrect. I'm just glad that Coach Alvarez is still alive or else we'd probably be getting in trouble with management up here.
While Coach Barry is still in the earthly realm, we got to welcome some new people to our area last week. Coaches Faust and Robinson arrived after getting through processing (Coach Gerry said his surname caused some confusion but a couple popes vouched for him). Coach Faust had shown up with a green Notre Dame jacket on and that apparently gave Coach Robinson some 1977 flashbacks and he broke out in hives.
Things did settle and Coaches Faust and Robinson ended up joining me because I don't care what they wear or who they coached for and we watched USC's win over Nebraska and Notre Dame's win over Virginia and a good time was had by all.
Things were a bit more complicated earlier in the day. Some of you may not know, but I once worked for ABC and back in 1969 I was the one who spearheaded moving the Texas at R Kansas game to early December. The move worked out great, as by December the two teams were ranked 1-2 and it was a classic game, with Texas coming back from a 14-0 deficit to win 15-14. Back then I assigned my good friends Chris Schenkel and Bud Wilkinson to cover the game, so they joined me to watch the latest Horns/Hogs game.
Then we had a surprise visitor. One of the biggest controversies during the 1969 season was when the winning team, Texas, was given a plaque recognizing them as national champions. That angered the other major undefeated program, Penn State, and their coach Joe Paterno. Nope, I still don't know where Coach Paterno is these days, haven't seen him.
The person who gave Texas the infamous plaque was President Richard E Nixon - and, as we sat waiting for the game to start, in walked President Nixon. Apparently he'd just gotten out of 30 years of purgatory and was eager to join us. We watched the game and Texas ground out a 20-10 win. Unfortunately for Mr. Nixon, he was caught grabbing our gallon jug of Jack Daniels and I haven't seen him since. I'm guessing he was on parole from purgatory so he may have gone right back.
Next week should be a classic. We have a top five matchup with Ohio State hosting Indiana. Yes, Indiana. We have the Stanford vs Cal game. And we have SEC cupcake week with numerous weak teams playing SEC powers, like UMass vs Georgia, UTEP vs Tennessee, Wofford vs South Carolina, and Oklahoma vs. Alabama. Should be fun!