2026 Week 2
September 15, 2026
Well, we are still largely in the lame non-conference portion of the college football season, with a few marquee matchups and a bunch of blowout contests. Some of these schools should be embarrassed about scheduling and annihilating far lesser programs from mid-major conferences such as East Tennessee, UC-Davis, and Rutgers.
Probably the worst example was Miami, which put up 7 TDs and 500 yards in the first half against Florida A&M, then cruised to a 77-7 victory. At least the 5,000 or so Cane fans who packed a couple sections of the Orange Bowel got to see a quality marching band. Gotta love those FAMU twirlers.
LSU decided to take things a step further. At least Miami had the decency to give a home state team a payday. LSU decided to play a foreign team, La Tech. And they struggled for a while against the Fighting Frenchmen, only leading 10-7 at halftime. I could hear my good friend General Patton laughing his ass off from a couple rooms over. LSU did pull away for a 45-14 victory.
Coach Monty Kiffin may have wanted to fly back with La Tech as I imagine he would have a more pleasant time next Saturday in Paris than he will at Ole Southern Piss. I understand that Oxford area stores are sold out of D cell batteries.
Michigan bounced back and only needed 60:00 to defeat Oklahoma. I'm glad to see such a big win for Coach Willingham. It's great he came out of retirement to take the U-M job.
Tennessee rarely goes to Atlanta these days as you don't need "UT" to spell "SEC championship game", but they did pay a visit to take on Georgia Tech, and pulled away for a 45-24 win.
Iowa booted a late field goal to beat cross-state rival Iowa State 16-13. The Huckeye offense is beginning to crank it up and soon may break 20 points against a power conference team.
Some leagues are already playing conference games. One of the biggest ones was in Lawrence, where Missouri scored late to run it up in a 38-21 victory over the Jayhawks. Apparently the Tiger faithful were upset about a Kansas video about events surrounding the Civil War. Which reminds me, General Sherman shows up here every so often and gets under the skin of a few southern types by sporting a tee-shirt that says "SEC Champion 1864-65".
The Jayhawks' cross-state rival, R Kansas, had their own conference tilt, as they lost 43-10 to their Southwest Conference rival, the University of Texas at Houston.
But most of the action was non-conference and even cross-sectional. Duke traveled up to Champagne and won a slobber-knocker over the Illini and Coach Butthead, 31-27. Notre Dame had no trouble with Rhode Island Continuing Education.
The biggest shocker of the day took place in Stillwater. Last year Oregon annihilated Oklahoma State 69-3 and everyone expected something similar this time, but the Cowpokes not only pulled out a 39-31 win, they dominated the game, nearly doubling Oregon in total offense. After a struggle with Boys' State and a loss to Okie State, I'm not sure that the Ducks are ready their upcoming games against USC and UCLA, they may struggle in the Pac-8.
Of course the biggest game of the weekend was in Austin. Ohio State dominated on both offense and defense and built a seemingly insurmountable 23-3 lead over the Longhorns. Then the Huckeyes decided to practice their pass prevent along with some intricate dance moves on fourth down plays and Texas stormed back with 3 touchdowns in fourth quarter to take a 24-23 victory. The only person more shocked than Coach Day was Coach Sark. I now predict that Peyton Manning III will follow in his Dad's footsteps and win that greatest of early season honors, the September Heisman Trophy.
As you can imagine, we had quite a few folks watching this showdown. I didn't see Coach Hayes much after Ohio State built their big lead but I sure could hear him down the stretch. It's best that Woody is stationed up here because he made it clear he'd yank out Coach Day's beard hair by hair.
Texas' comeback was keyed by some great tough runs by their halfback, Hollywood Smothers. I admit I wasn't familiar with him or his background, though I have to say he's got a great name. After the game ended some pale scrawny guy carrying a guitar came by and said he was Hollywood's grandpa Tommy Smothers. Not sure who this Tommy guy was, but he took his guitar and started playing "The Eyes of Texas" in tribute to his progeny. I put down my mint julep and said "I suggest you stop playing", but he ignored me and kept warbling and strumming the fight song. Sure enough, I heard a roar and out came Woody and less than five seconds later the guitar was smashed into little pieces.
This Tommy guy then said something about how he used to have a TV show and some guy on that show smashed his guitar once and another guy named Keith Moon set off an explosion on set. Then Tommy said "uh oh, I mentioned Keith Moon". I said "why does that matter?" "He's like Rumpelstiltskin, if you mention his name he shows up".
Then these two limeys came bounding into the room, one being this Keith guy and the other some guy who called himself Bonzo. Keith saw my nearly finished drink and asked if I had anything else to drink. Now a man who likes hooch impresses me a lot more than a man who wants to play acoustic versions of great college fight songs. So I pulled out my best Pennsylvania moonshine and me, Keith, and Bonzo got into a drinking contest.
After about five drinks Bonzo said he was feeling nauseous and left. I asked Keith why that would matter, he said "he's had a rough time with regurgitation, that's how he ended up here".
So that left two of us and we exchanged shots until Keith fell over and I won. Don't ever think you can outdrink me, my third liver was specially trained on Susquehanna White Lightning.
I admit that the whole event did take a bit out of me so I'll probably take it easy next weekend. Then again, I've seen next week's really weak schedule and it's clear a lot of top football teams are going to take it easy too.