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Tag Archives: LSU

Cleaning Up the Mess: Week 3

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September 14, 2014
College Football
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(Via Jeff Blake – USA Today Sports)

Cleaning Up the Mess is here to make sense of what just happened at your weekend-long television party. Who put Goldfish in the blender? And why is the thermostat on 42?

This week: The SEC East came from an open bar, outdoor wedding that was caught in a rainstorm and trekked mud all throughout the house. They also had time to pee on your nice rug before leaving. The ACC just sat on the couch mumbling about ‘golden years’ and ‘basketball’ then went the way of an Irish goodbye. Meanwhile, the Top Four teams drank soda all night and laughed at the latest ‘Lie Witness News’ sketch from Jimmy Kimmel. 

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Cleaning Up the Mess: Week 1

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September 1, 2014
College Football
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This sign says it all.

Cleaning Up the Mess is here to make sense of what just happened at your weekend-long television party. Who put Goldfish in the blender? And why is the thermostat on 42?

This week: A&M sends the Gamecocks back to the bars early. LSU is doing drunk magic tricks. And who left these think pieces about “piercing the armor of a powerhouse” in the living room?

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TV Party: Week 1

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August 27, 2014
College Football
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Welcome to TV Party, a weekly segment where we preview ten of the week’s most exciting match-ups in college football so you know when to grab some beer and ignore the outside world. 

This week, football is back! How sweet it is! And here I was, dreading that I have to put up with a sport whose key demographic is Tim Kurkjian.

Still Love My Tigers, Y’all: Lessons from Week 8

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October 23, 2013
College Football, Sports
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The world watched as Jameis Winston and the Florida State Seminoles crushed Clemson into a miserable solid orange pulp. The Seminole defense would not stand for any magnificent Tajh Boyd to Sammy Watkins or Martavius Bryant connections. There would certainly be no running game either. The Tigers were relegated to punt after punt after punt which turned into a lesson in why you never want Winston, or the Florida State offense in general, to have possession.

Winston zinged, lobbed and floated passes to Kelvin Benjamin, Rashad Greene, and Nick O’Leary that forced one of the loudest atmospheres into hushed tones. There were plenty of shots provided by ESPN cameras of Tiger fans whose disbelief was on display for all of America. After all, this wasn’t supposed to happen to Clemson. This team was returning more play makers than Florida State had lost to the NFL. If anything, this game was supposed to be a shoot out; not a day of reckoning for The Wonderful Monster.

In the end, the score was 51-14 and the best summation of this beat down is the universal Clemson fan base coping mechanism: “I still love my Tigers, y’all”.

The ACC “game of the century” with the grand introduction of the Tigers and the subtle insert of Jaboo’s pre-game pep talk gave the nation goosebumps. I felt the electricity from my seat on the virtual bus ride over from the home locker room in Death Valley to Howard’s Rock. All those warm, fuzzy feelings of competitive football washed away after the 1st half. At this point, LSU-Ole Miss was waaaay more intriguing than a game where Lamarcus Joyner was single handily shutting down both Martavius Bryant and Sammy Watkins.

That’s not to say that Florida State’s demolishing act was like watching Alabama. Quite the opposite, actually.

Alabama, in their 52-0 victory over Arkansas, is moving through the SEC West as if the path to a national championship is paved in gold. The Tide is like Prairie Home Companion: successful, inoffensive (on-the-field, of course), and mired in the mundane. That’s why it’s the least interesting team that stands atop the first BCS rankings of the season while the teams below are a gaggle of personalities and chutzpah.

Florida State may have been methodical in their approach but Winston certainly offers a panache that other quarterbacks certainly lack to keep things interesting.

Aside from learning that Clemson has become one of the most GIF-able environs in college football, what other nuggets of information did we learn?

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Drop Picks On ‘Em: Week 8

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October 17, 2013
College Football, Sports
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Welcome to a better late than never edition of Drop Picks On ‘Em where Jacory Harris Stephen Morris almost lost this week’s picks by way of a helmet deflected interception. Hey, that ACC is a spunky little league, man. If you’re not careful, you can find yourself playing a team wearing alternate jerseys named after a play on words of a successful Navy Seals operation. Zero Dark Thursday? More like Bay of Pigs, AMIRITE?!

In honor of the conference that stretches itself from South Beach to the shores of Plymouth Rock, this intro will be designed to highlight all things ACC not named Clemson or Florida State. Yeah, I get it – it’s the biggest game the conference has going for it so far this year. That’s great! Good for them. #goacc and all that jazz but this conference still has Paul Johnson and the slow, R.Kelly grind of the triple option. This is a place where the adjective spunky applies to three teams and the rest have varying self-confidence and identity issues. Let’s break it down, shall we?

Syracuse and Georgia Tech play each other which means you get to see two of the most horrifying color schemes and uniforms (we see you, Russell Athletic) face off against each other in Atlanta. Virginia still plays football and they do so against Bear Bryant protege, David Cutcliffe, in a battle of the privileged East Coast fan bases. Wine and cheese, indeed! If you want something a little bit more blue collar, Pittsburgh is right up your alley. They play Old Dominion this week and I’m sure there will be a lot of Schlitz and Primanti Bros. sandwiches consumed as a topper to a great win and a fatality free day at the steel mill.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on Maryland and Wake Forest. This is going to be a tough road test for the Terps as they take on a feisty Wake Forest team, who in recent years has played heart breaker to multiple teams. Wait, that’s not right. Sounds like a basketball preview. How about this? Have fun trying to stop anything, Demon Deacs!

And there you have it – the ACC Week 8 preview you’ve been clamoring for. No fancy pants Jameis Winston or Tajh Boyd here. Just some good ole fashioned Mid-Atlantic to barely into the southern most tip of America football. Now that that is out of the way – let us discuss the ranked teams playing, shall we?

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Drop Picks On ‘Em: Week 7

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October 10, 2013
College Football, Sports
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This week’s College Gameday is heading to the University of Washington for the first time ever since the show’s first broadcast in 1987. This is huge news for the Huskies, who find themselves in the middle of a period of resurgence as of late. But if you’re an individual on the East Coast (such as myself), you probably know very little about Seattle, the city that houses UDub. In fact, the only thing you probably know is that Seattle is the home of Starbucks, rain and grunge. And that’s fine. Be prepared to face the unknown. Seattle is strange to you, but don’t fret, it’s not Portland weird.

Also – I am not really sure what the Washington fan base is like. I’ve seen them pop on random message boards from time to time recalling the Don James era, but I am really unfamiliar with how these people operate or how they tail- WAIT, WHAT? THEY TAILGATE ON BOATS? CAN WE GO TO THE GAME NOW? PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASEEEEEEEEEEE.

Enough of this wishful thinking about boatgating – LET’S GET IT.

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Fire(d) Lane (Kiffin): Lessons from Week 5

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October 1, 2013
College Football, Sports
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If getting fired after being pulled off the team bus from LAX to campus isn’t the most Hollywood thing ever, please give me another example. This felt like a seedy termination. A scene, not unlike the one in Dog Day Afternoon, where the main character fails, and the repercussions involve a swift execution. Lane Kiffin didn’t even step foot on the USC’s campus before Haden uttered the words that put Kiffin out of job and Ed Orgeron in control of a faltering program. Now, the hunt begins anew for the Trojans, who have slowly started to slide into irrelevancy as the Pac-12 has started to gain notoriety as the second-best conference in America. Gone are the days of USC and everybody else. USC can’t compete with Arizona State, or even downtrodden Washington State. The whole country says “adieu” to Kiffykins, the man responsible for Tennessee fever dreams and the underdevelopment of all-around awesome Marqise Lee.

While your favorite team’s coach may not have been fired as soon as he exited the plane, his days as head man may be numbered. Look at UConn. Now Earl Campbell’s taking shots at Mack Brown? The coaching carousel may be fired up sooner than expected.

Aside from learning that, yes, the world of college football is on fiiiiiireeeeee, what else did we take away from this marvelous weekend?

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A Tale of Two Quarterbacks

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September 29, 2013
College Football, Sports
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Aaron Murray jumped around excitedly with his teammates as Zach Mettenberger’s last-ditch attempt to convert on 4th and 10 ended in an incompletion. Mettenberger looked over across the field dejected. There was a little less than a minute left on the clock; the game was all but over. Murray put his head gear on and headed out onto the field to execute the victory formation. Meanwhile, Mettenberger sat on the bench, staring into an endless sea of red shirts, dresses, and poms poms. He wanted a chance to play in Sanford again. He wanted a chance to beat his old team. Instead, he’d have to settle for watching Murray flip the helmet off of his head, flash a winning smile and embrace his coach.

As the clock wound down to 0:00, the score stood at 44-41 Georgia. It was over. And it was one of the best football games I have ever watched.

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We’ve Lost Them: Lessons from Week 4

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September 24, 2013
College Football, Sports
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It was around the second quarter when the hemorrhaging really started picking up. At the half, Miami had scored an unanswered 49 points. Savannah State had seen this before. After all, they are a cat with nine lives that keeps getting paid to get run over by people that don’t like felines. The bleeding only continued into the third quarter with the carnage getting worse as time ticked away. In the end, a mangled, battered, and beaten football team was before the savage masses within Sun Life Stadium. The primal fringe of the Miami fan base stayed to watch as the Tigers received the ten count and then whisked away to seek medical attention. But it was too late – the Hurricanes had done their damage. “Dammit,” a doctor in a nearby Miami hospital screamed. “We’ve lost them!”

The pummeling of Savannah State for the third straight year in a row by an FBS team (they’ve lost by a combined score of 216-7 for three years) was pretty much a microcosm for this weekend, in general. It was also a reminder that programs who schedule teams like Savannah State are pretty much sadists. So, what else did we learn in a week whose one highlight included Michigan almost losing to a perceived lesser opponent? Quite a bit, actually.

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Drop Picks On ‘Em: Week 4

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September 19, 2013
College Football, Sports
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You might have had a recording from two years ago of you cussing leak on the Internet, Bo Pelini, but that tape is not nearly as offensive as the slate of games scheduled on Saturday. I mean, come on. Georgia – North Texas? Idaho State – Washington? Hell, College Gameday kicks off from North Dakota State! Yeah, we’re in for a rough one. Don’t believe me? Let’s run down the highlighted games for each time slot:

12:00 P.M. 

Florida A&M at No. 4 Ohio State

3:30 (THE EXCEPTION…MAYBE) 

Tennessee at No. 19 Florida

7:00

No. 23 Arizona State at No. 5 Stanford

8:00 

No. 15 Michigan at Connecticut

If you have a project that a Home Depot commercial has convinced you that you have to get done, go ahead and do it. Start moving, America! Because this week fucking sucks.

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