Just another week of nailbiters, crazy coaches, embarrassing AP polls, and ummm a player handing out dates with his mom. Yep, that was a thing. We’ll get to crazy coaches in our pro tips, but how about that ND-TAMU game? An epic battle of two huge brands trading blow after blow that comes down to what we all know football is all about – the ability (or lack thereof) to catch a ball and stand it vertically while taking a knee so the smallest guy on the field can kick it. We originally thought we’d be writing about how incredibly euphoric it is to witness the tradition of a crowd wearing synchronized colors celebrating a big victory against a rival by immediately flipping from Biggie to John Denver and belting out a ubiquitous ballad about a neighboring state. Instead, college football decided to take it to another level by giving us an underdog QB who celebrated a conference upset on the road by fulfilling his commitment to setting up a comedian/podcaster with a date with his mom and working to parlay that into his own date with Tate McRae. Yes, that is a 100% true sentence about real life in college football!
Week 4 Pro Tips:
- Our pro tips this week are all centered around the absurdity that surrounds college football coaches and what they say in front of microphones. First off, we have Lincoln Riley (or TBOW as he’s affectionately known in Norman). Anyone recall when he made some crazy strong convictions about the future of USC football? Here we are, 4 years later, and the guy is penning his name to a letter begging fans to show up and support the program. He’s slowly turning the USC program from Denise Richards in Two and Half Men to Denise Richards in the Netflix documentary about her time on Two and Half Men.
- Dabo Sweeny and Brian Kelly put together more memorable performances at the podium than they did on the field. Dabo goes into full defense mode that more closely resembles the delusion of the Store Manager of the first closed Blockbuster than a leader with a plan to take his troops into battle. Brian Kelly took a different strategy and with this diatribe in response to first question of his presser. To be fair, maybe it was the lingering effects of totally eating it on the sideline and going into instant pissed off mode like when one of your kids hits you with something unexpectedly at home. Hopefully he remembers the southern accent next time to take a bit of the sting off.
- We had our first firings this week, which somehow opens up the transfer portal immediately for those players? Not even we can come up with an analogy to fit that ridiculous non-sense. Literally, a ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ moment. Anyway, Va Tech was pretty much forced to part ways with the dude who got
outscoredbeatsmokedtotally dominated by Old Dominion 45-26 (with 19 of their points not coming until game was out of hand in the 4th quarter). Now, I think ODU might be fairly decent, but they have such a putrid name that it feels so much worse. Seriously, if you were reading an article and saw someone got beat by IMG Academy or Old Dominion, which one sounds worse? It’s never good when your first assumption is the team is made up of middle aged truck drivers. Brutal, just brutal. What was even more brutal is that UCLA waited this long to fire DeShaun Foster. I mean, who didn’t see this coming after the stellar start to his Bruin coaching career?
TOS GAME OF THE WEEK
SMU @ TCU (-6.5) 11:00AM CDT, ESPN2
What we like about this game: When two private schools in one of the most pretentious metro areas in the country come together to play football, the jokes pretty much right themselves. It’s like twin brothers talking trash to each other ignorant to the fact that they share the exact same characteristics they are bashing. Instead of exchanging an iron skillet after the game, it seems like the losers should have to hand over their Patagonia vests, pin needle belts and boat club embossed croakies. At least we do get the latest installment of a “shove it up my ass” bet, only this time it’s with something that appears to have exited from the same place it may go.
What we love about this game: There’s two things we love about rivalry games – points and pride. For some crazy reason, this week’s Battle for the Iron Skillet is the last one currently scheduled, ending a series that spans over a century. Yes, that means bragging rights for a LONG while. Now let’s talk points: 93, 34, 92, 54, 79, 76, 76, 51, 108. Those are the point totals dating back to 2015. The over here is 63.5, which is lofty, but remember that these two teams hate each other and they don’t have to answer for anything that happens until several years down the road. It’s either a tight shootout or a total route with no mercy. Either way it’s POINTS, POINTS POINTS!