September 9, 2026

Well, it's great to have college football back, it only seems like yesterday that we were watching the Miami Hurricanes lose a hard-fought national title game to, uh, Indiana. I'm still trying to wrap my arms around that, then again I'm still trying to wrap my arms around my belly.

Once again we started the year with a bunch of week 0 games. And I guess the powers that be are going to allow all teams to start playing in week 0 next year and pretty soon we'll have week -1 games, then week -2 games, which will eventually get to my goal, which is to start college football right after the All-Star Break. And then we can extend spring football practice to right before the All-Star Break. Then there will be no need to watch any baseball ever.

At this point we still have a pretty dead schedule from mid January to late August. And up here that means a lot of down time. So we were told by the powers that be to clean up each other's places. They said that some of the folks here were getting sloppy so they assigned us to each other's quarters to do some cleaning.

Due to luck of the draw, I got stuck cleaning Bronko Nagurski's place, which was an absolute pig sty. After a time I started having trouble breathing and they had to bring in a hazmat team as there was some mysterious bacteria festering under Bronko's bath mat.

The bacteria were so bad that a huge sample was loaded into a special pneumatic tube and shot down to the place downstairs where I guess it will be used for the eternal torment of new arrivals.

I mentioned Miami earlier, they got off to a solid start, culminating in a 45-6 win over the Stanford Cardinals. They had some excellent quarterback play, though I'm confused why a guy named Mensa isn't playing in Palo Alto. In Coral Gables he's hanging out with a football program known for SAT scores that are barely triple digits.

One of the wildest games was played in the Carolinas. Charlotte was locked in a tight one with the Citadel and the game went to three overtimes. Now I'm still a bit confused about these overtime rules. Each team scored in the first OT and made the extra point. Then in the second OT Charlotte scored but went for 2 and missed. Then the Citadel scored but instead of kicking the extra point for the win they went for two. Then they each ran one more play and the Citadel was declared the winner.

The star of the game was Citadel running back Gavin Garcia, who ran for three touchdowns. I haven't seen a Citadel cadet score so much in 60 minutes since Nancy Mace.

Notre Dame had a great opener, knocking off what looked like Rutgers in Green Bay's legendary Limbaugh Stadium, 41-13. Their JV team, ND State, also did well, beating the Jacksonville Jaguars, 33-7.

Speaking of JVs, Texas pounded their own JV team, Texas State, in order to prepare for the arrival of the Ohio State Huckeyes next week.

The most controversial game of the week was played in Anne Arbor, where replay officials mysteriously gave Michigan an extra play and they hit a pass to defeat Western Michigan 13-12.

I was trying to explain it to some of the guys and I said "I think the officials were dealing with a messed up clock" and they misheard me and thought I was talking about prison officials who put our old friend Al Capone in solitary confinement leading to his demise from syphilis.

Northwestern had a big win over SDSU, 34-18. The Aztecs have fallen off of late. Coach Prime Directive won a tough one in his old stomping grounds of Atlanta as the Golden Buffaloes blocked a late Rambling Nerd field goal to beat Georgia Tech 14-13.

In the some things never change category, Central Florida scored 73 times on my daughter Beth Cook.

The LSU Bayou Bengals opened their season with an easy win over Clemson. Coach Dabo sure seems to be struggling of late while Coach Kiffin is doing better than he did in his previous NFL stint with the Raiders. Ole Southern Miss shook off Coach Kiff's departure and kicked a late field goal to beat the St Louisville Cardinals, 41-38. And UCLA won the Pac-8 fight song war over Cal, 45-24.

The oddest non clock related moment of the week occurred in East Lansing, where the Michigan State Fighting Chippewas came from behind to defeat the Toledo Mud Rockets, 30-20. After their go ahead touchdown, Michigan State went for 2 points and, on the play, their right tackle deterred a pass rusher by blowing chunks at him. Coach Fitz even gave the player a "puke and rally" award, though I'm afraid to ask what materials they used to make the award.

We were discussing this and my good friend Coach Lombardi told me of a story from back in his college playing days. He said the team's diet made them a bit gassy and weak so after the 1935 season Coach Crowley had a friend at the drug company Upjohn named Norberto who offered to help out.

After ingesting Norberto's concoction for a few days before the next game against SMU they felt much better and tougher and defensive linemen would try to charge into the play but would stumble and fall to the ground

It turned out Norberto's invention was the wonder drug known as Kaopectate, which, after a few days of constipation, led to solid bricks being dropped on the field by the Fordham players, which tripped up the defenders. Those droppings became famous as Fordham's "Seven Blocks of Granite".

And now you know the rest of the story.